Today was check out Sturgis day for all of us for the first time. This is probably the largest motorcycle rally. Basically a huge congregation of bikes/bikers of every type/size/color you can imagine and then some! The downtown exists for this one purpose and is set up/geared up to take it in stride. There are set rules that are enforced such as speed limits, coming to a complete stop and putting both feet down at all stop signs and parking in designated areas that are plentiful. This is a seasonal place so most of the help are part-timers but they do it year after year. There are a bazillion souvenir shops all selling "offically licensed merchandise" although not sure how many "officials" are doing the licensing!! Here's a couple shots on Main St.
You can get anything related to motorcycling here in mass quantities. Every manufacturer/seller/reseller is here in a big way. Seems like Hot Leathers has the bulk of the shops. One of the best shirts I saw was "I rode mine to trailer week". My guess is that 50-60% of the bikes here are trailered which I am of the opinion is BS. Of course some of the custom bikes you wouldn't wanna ride more then 10 miles on. There are tons of tatoo artists/shops as well and a lot folks showing thier tatoos as well lots that shouldn't!!! For the most part there are not a lot of very young people. It takes money to have a nice bike and travel. Lots of 30 something and up folks and lots of couples where both ride thier own bikes and tons of 2ups. Went through the biker build off tent and saw some neat bikes like these.
Old School
We have tix to Zac Brown later tonight so we made plans to meet up back at the hotel around 4 to figure out what we would do for dinner and then go to the Buffalo Chip for the show. Some of us went back to the hotel around noonish, Smurph & I hung around for a couple hours more. He & I will have a surprise to bring back to the club! It was a hot day so when we met up we decided to hit the pool and then go to dinner around 6ish and then get to the "Chip" around 8:30. We'll we didn't get out of the pool and meet in the lobby until 6:45 and then decided to go to Outback supposedly across the street and walk there. We'll after a half hour of walking we finally found it hiding behind the Holiday Inn. (We found another couple also aimlessly walking in search of the Outback!!) We'll the waiter told us how slow they had been earlier that day and was glad to get busy. We'll we didn't get out of there until 8:20 and by the time we walked back and got geared up for the ride it was near 9 heading to the Chip about 30 miles away. Smurph had made a GPS custom route to try and avoid downtown Sturgis as it would be a zoo. We'll we got off his exit and went about 400 yards and the road turned to dirt! Can you say Smurph now is in the TOM GPS club!!!! Of course it is pitch dark and we're late so I was leading and stayed the course. It's good to be the lead dog in the dirt!!! We'll 8 miles later we came out onto the main drag about 3 miles away from the Chip. The Chip must not care about folks who buy day pass tix as there is not much for signage of where to enter for an event. We finally go about a 1/2 mile into the dirt/grass parking area weaving between cars and come to a gate with an attendant. He says where's your wristband and I say all I have is my emailed confirmation print out. He says great but take that to the ticket booth and get a wristband.Of course I had to ask where the ticket window is as there are no signs. It was nearby and we got our writbands where the attendant lady says you better hurry or you'll miss the show! By now its 9:30 and the warmup act, candlebox went on at 9. Well we go back to the gate, show our wristbands and drive about 1 mile on a dusty road with no clue of where we're going and finally get to a parking area that is filled to the max. We split up trying to find spaces. By the time we all assemble to enter the arena Candlebox is done. The Chip is an open arena with nothing but bars/beer station/food/merchadise vendors and no seating. You stand for the show. They have a Miss Buffalo Chip preliminary round every night between the warm up & feature act and the top 3 every night move to the Saturday finals. They also have a 4 line zipline over the top of the grounds and people are zipping by all night long as well as tire burnouts and fire eaters all going on during the performance. Her's crappy cell phone pic as I forgot my camera.
I must admit I was a bit skeptical of Zac Brown as I'm not a country music fan but I really liked them. They have a rock flavor to thier music. Surprisingly they played some cover music from Aerosmith/Marshall Tucker and Charlie daniels that I enjoyed. Thier fiddle player is very talented as is the lead guitarist. The show got over about midnight and similar to the adventure to get in they do not mark the exits either as we circumvented the parking lot a few times til we got out. we even asked one of the drones working how to get out and he sent us the wrong way when he was about 100 feet from the exit!! Everyone else headed back to the hotel. To get home you have to go into downtown to get back to I-90. I decided being already in town that I would see what the Sturgis nightlife was like so I head to the Knuckle bar.
It was LOUD hard core rock & roll. Lots of drinking/dancing. After about a 1/2 hour I called it a night and got back to the hotel about 1:30 and went to bed.
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