Travel | Baggers' 3,000-Mile Hell Ride, Part 4: Nebraska To Sturgis

At Rapid City H-D I finally was able to ditch my travel partners and ended up hanging with Toph (the boss man of this magazine you're reading). It ended up being a long night. I got booted from the HA's clubhouse. I was just trying to get in to check things out. I got stopped at the door and some big guy asked if I knew anyone there. I shook my head and told him I just wanted to see the bikes. The gentleman kindly said, "We're closed," and he said goodbye. I never felt in any danger, but apparently the camera hanging from my neck and my photo-geek appearance made the brothers a little nervous. They surrounded me and gently herded me back to the street. After the hellacious L.A. to SD ordeal, he offered to share his bed with me, at least I hoped so, but he showed me to the couch when we got to the house.

The night ended after a quick "testdrive" in someone's rental car. It was drizzling again and the driver was practicing his best drifting exercises around the backstreets of Sturgis. All I remember is something about jumping a curb, spinning down a steep embankment, and helping the driver to push the car farther down the hill in hopes to hide it. For some reason he thought if the car was hidden that no one would find out about the damage. He even attempted to stuff all the deployed airbags back into their compartments in the hopes of hiding the accident. The axle was broken; the car wasn't going anywhere. As we all walked from the scene we were passed by emergency personnel in search of the screeching, sliding, and now smoking Camry. I walked back to the rental house where we were all staying and dry humped the rocking horse in the basement for a few laughs. Poor family...they were nice enough or dumb enough to rent their furnished house to a bunch of dudes for a week, and some asshole gets it on with their child's favorite toy. I am for sure going to hell for this one.

Day 10 Time to Move On
I hate crowds and have no patience to wait in line to get food, gas, or booze from a bag of cottage cheese stuffed into some skanky leather bikini. As for photography, there wasn't much talent around with a 10,000-to-one ratio of fat dudes to fat women. I had to bail and look for finer pastures up north. I could only hope Mother Nature had gotten over her PMS, as I had a long way to go, and from here on out, I'd be flying solo. She and I would certainly have to learn to get along.

His Name Is Tom *
In 2002 the National Weather Service hired some new blood to improve the voice you hear on the weather band. They called it the Voice Improvement Plan (VIP). What they came up with was to slightly improve upon the voices of Craig and Donna. The robot couple sucked and was replaced with the current voice of the NWS, Tom. The NWS offices use Tom for the majority of broadcast products, but who knew there were other characters such as Donna, Paul, or Harry?

All Hail Mother Nature
You always hear folks claiming they saw hail the size of golf balls. The National Weather service actually uses golf balls and other items to describe hail size. Check out the chart below and amaze your friends.