This year's Sturgis Rally was great; there were probably half a million riders on every kind of bike ever made as well as hundreds of vendors. The weather cooperated most of the time; we didn't have the high heat that plagued the event the last couple of years. And when it didn't, Mother Nature put on a light show that was stupendous -- the price of admission was a bit of rain.
The high point on nature's schedule of events for Sturgis was a lightning strike on the city's electric plant at about 9 p.m. on Wednesday, which knocked out the power for an hour or so. This and the ensuing downpour made for an evening to remember. Not to be outdone, those weather gods at Deadwood scheduled their own downpour highlighted with a mudslide down the main drag for the following afternoon.
The rainstorms were brief, a half-hour at the most, so they didn't interrupt the main attraction which was bikes, thousands and thousands of bikes, and bikers. The favorite pastime was riding; they were riding everywhere. The surrounding area has an unmatched number of sights to see and places to go from Mount Rushmore to the Bethlehem Caves, the Custer Battlefield and historic Deadwood which has become the gambling mecca of the Midwest.
Downtown Sturgis was party-central, and every storefront was turned into a biker venue. There were hundreds of T-shirt and food vendors along with countless tattoo parlors. The larger bars: Broken Spoke, Full Throttle, and Buffalo Chip booked big-name headline acts such as Billy Idol, Joan Jett, and Charlie Daniels.
All in all, it was a great time to be had. If you were there, we hope to see you in Sturgis again next time. If you missed it, try to make it there next year.
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Food vendors were everywhere; they offered everything from prairie oysters to Chinese take
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Found: living versions of Knuckle Head, Pan Head, and Shovel Head.
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Victory set up in a storefront on Main Street.
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Like we said, we saw every kind of bike being ridden.
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Some people want to remember Sturgis in the weirdest way.
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Ron Simms showed up with a lot of bikes.
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The parking lot for the Broken Spoke Saloon.
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Big Dog was showing off their new choppers.
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Pretty girls and beer just go together.
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This young lady had an airbrush parlor all set up.
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Put a good-looking lady on a bike and the guys will come.
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The afternoon action at the Hot Rod Bikes house.
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Cars were outnumbered by bikes.
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Redneck had some radical choppers.
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Cory Ness' new Y2K Chopper.
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The laundromat becomes a tattoo parlor.
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Who is this guy?