Taking the Thunder Road
What are your daydreams? Queen of an alternative universe? Las Vegas showgirl? Whipping all comers at the U.S. Open?
Rosemary Carstens - Sinbad, first motorcycle.
Arriving at the office one morning, charging straight into your boss’s office and single-handedly tweaking his obstinate, pointy little head until it faces in a whole new direction? At heart, most daydreams are about escape, achievement, or more control over our own lives. They can also be just plain fun!
My mind runs freely, like a dog on the loose looking for chow in all the wrong places. I never let reality get in the way of “Let’s Pretend.”* In the best of my fantasies, I am always an action goddess—strong, beautiful, athletic, loved and admired by all. Of course, many of these stories that play out in my head as I go about routine daily chores are not anything I would really try to do. I just take pleasure in imagining them. But, now and then, an idea repeats itself insistently and demands I bring it to life. Such was The Case of Motorcycle Fever.
In my early fifties, I got braces on my teeth, went back to graduate school, and met The Deuce. A civil engineer with a weakness for buxom blondes and fast motorcycles, he was called “Deuce” because deuces are wild and often pretenders. As it turned out, he was an express bus making a quick detour through my neck of the woods. During this excursion, I saw some beautiful Colorado wilderness from the back of his motorcycle, and it proved to be the beginning of a passionate love affair—not with the man, but with a motorcycle named Sinbad.
Riding with The Deuce I had begun to notice every motorcycle on the road and any news about them. In August each year, hundreds of thousands of motorcycles roll across the United States headed for the annual Harley-Davidson Rally and “run-what-you-brung” races held for a week in Sturgis, South Dakota. Motorcycle aficionados around the world know “Sturgis” as a siren’s call. Anyone who loves the sound of thundering pipes feels the urge to make this pilgrimage at least once, if only to say they’ve been.
I had come across the rally website while surfing the net and found myself totally distracted by pictures crowded with big men and scantily clad women astride powerful, shiny motorcycles. The bikes were gorgeous, compelling, and dangerous looking. The bikers riding them were like pirates—edgy, earringed rebels with the open road as their cause. I instantly calculated that if I left home at six the following morning I could be in Sturgis by mid-afternoon.
Most people ride motorcycles to Sturgis—it is a point of honor to “ride your own.” Only a wanna-be drives a car. But I didn’t let the lack of a bike hold me back—by this time my daydreams were breaking through into “gotta do it.” Throwing my Harley boots and some black jeans into a bag, I headed north.
The closer I got, the more motorcycles I saw converging on this one small town. There is a visceral excitement and energy generated by the sights and sounds of more than half a million big, bad bikes funneling in from all directions for wild times in the Black Hills, including thousands who annually visit from overseas. They come to honor the iron ponies, to race, fight, drink, gamble, trade, swap lies and generally party hearty. It is the sound of thunder, the rumble and roar of mechanical horsepower, a raw sexual energy with the routines of daily life stripped away and dreams of being a renegade come to life. It feels like a chance to write your own legend.
How was my first Sturgis Rally? Well, I have to admit that I have always considered myself a liberal-thinking person—but, in that scene, I was definitely a conservative. I saw more tattooed flesh on display than at a Sumo wrestlers’ convention, and most of it should have remained covered in the name of environmental decency. Bare breasts, bare butts, bare bellies—and every imaginable (and unimaginable) item of black leather clothing. Outrageous was the name of the game and everyone was a player.
The five short blocks of Main Street in this small Midwestern town (from the corner of Junction Avenue west to Fifth Street) was completely jammed with motorcycles of every color and model, both stock and fantastically customized. Here, Harley Davidson is king of the road, the American definition of two-wheeled cruising. I saw Softail Customs, Super Glides, Knuckles and Pans, easy rider choppers, Boss Hogs, and more. Every other imaginable brand name is considered a runner-up at this event, but they were there—from Motoguzzis, Indians, and Goldwings to Viragos, Big Dogs and Victorys. Themes of skulls, American flags, wolves, women with impossible physical attributes and even more improbable postures, plus a wide variety of other concepts, finds illustration on tanks, bodies, posters and clothing.
A thousand motorcycles lined each side of the street facing outward, each a scarce two feet apart. The chrome was blinding. In the middle of the street there was a double row of hundreds more, with an aisle on either side allowing a moving pathway through the crowd. From dawn until late into the night, these aisles buzz and rumble with people parading their bikes and themselves in a constantly changing tribute to the great American motorcycle. It was, “See and be seen, baby—it’s happening!”
For forty-nine weeks out of the year, the buildings along these five blocks are the usual small town fare: hardware stores, insurance offices, drugstores, cafes, and ordinary retail shops. But for the week of the annual Rally, and a week before and after, that all changes radically. Storeowners rent out their places for $5,000 and up, depending upon location—and city permits to display or sell merchandise rise every year. Motorcycle parts, photographs, tattoo parlors, food vendors, and every conceivable item that can be imprinted with a motorcycle, a party motto, or the official emblem of the year is there.
There is big-time money in this for the locals and a year’s income for those who bring their goods to market. Since its inception in 1938 as a local weekend of low-key racing and rallying put on by the Jackpine Gypsies riding club until the event caught fire after a CBS piece on it in 1971, crowds have continued to build. At the 60th anniversary event held in 2000, attendance was estimated at between 550,000-633,000 and the City of Sturgis collected roughly half a million in sales taxes. In 2015, attendance was estimated at 739,000. Every possible accommodation and campground is sold out within a 200-mile radius. Many of the mere 6,800 residents in this town leave for the rally period and make thousands of dollars a week renting out their homes for blocks around Main Street.
That year I drove to the rally, I walked the streets for hours, checking out bikes, bikers, and biker babes, leather goods, food booths, and all the weird and wonderful vendor products reflecting the biking culture. I even broke down and wore a couple of my own new purchases, trying to look as though my big old Harley was parked just around the corner! I considered how a tattooed rose might look, but couldn’t figure out what body part to put it on that would be guaranteed not to sag.
Social niceties of everyday life fall by the wayside here. Where a man or woman might check out a person of the opposite sex discreetly on the street back home, here the gaze is direct, appreciative, and speculative. If you are going to be offended by candid sexual interest, this is not the place for you.
Amazed by the number of women driving the biggest and most powerful of machines—Low Riders, Fat Boys, Wide Glides and Road Kings, to name a few—I realized it had never occurred to me that a woman could manage one of these 650-plus pound bikes. A light began to shimmer in the back of my mind. Although memories had faded of rides as a passenger on several motorcycles in my distant youth in southern California, now I recalled that wonderful thrill of freedom riding through the curves on a mountain road. I had never thought to do it again, until fate brought The Deuce into my life for a brief spin on the wild side. Being in Sturgis, my mind and heart reverberated with new possibilities for adventure.
Spearfish Canyon on my way to Sturgis, riding Sinbad.
Sturgis was a surreal trip, a foreign film in loud, uninhibited color. The variety of people and activities ranged from the raunchy to the amusing, from the obscene to the bizarre. The scene was simultaneously entertaining, shocking and exciting; you checked your judgments at the town gates and just let it flow! It was avant-garde Biker Theater in full regalia, and I wanted a walk-on part. I went, I saw, I fell in love. One year later, I would return—riding my own.
My fantasy had poked its head through the thin membrane between dreamtime and real time and was demanding attention. The dream had been identified; it was time to figure out whether this was something I could really do. I felt fear and I felt excitement—the tension between “do it” and “forget it” had been cranked up a notch. I was ready to take the Thunder Road. # # #
*”Let’s Pretend” was a popular Saturday morning kids show of the forties, the inspiration of Nila Mack, who developed a company of versatile juvenile talent to play a variety of changing roles in fairy tales week after week. She was known as “the fairy godmother” of radio.