I spent an hour or so fretting over the weather forecast with its tales of apocalyptic chaos between the cold air in the north west and the record breaking heat in the south east. Route 20 seemed due to host a series of events ranging from thunder storms and tornados through plague and pestilence to hail stones of fruit like dimensions. I elected Route 44, to the north, for the role of carrying us to Sioux Falls rather than Sioux City. A remote journey through saturated fields and over rivers swollen to bursting surprising flys with extreme velocity change as they impacted my helmet and visor.
The road to, and from Hell, for motorcyclists is not paved, it has rain grooves. So it was for 10 miles of Route 44, someone, to be forever cursed, had ripped up the smooth surface and had the audacity to repaint the road markings as if to say “there, that’s a road’, either side of bridges they had removed it completely leaving a rutted muddy mess excused by a single sign reading “BUMP”. The effect of rain grooves on a motorcycle is devastating, imagine if you will riding with two flat tyres buffeted by side winds, the cycle veers violently from left to right at the whim of whichever groove each tyre is following.
The maintainer of the property above may have once tried to ride a motorcycle down this road, or possibly just built a nicer one farther from the road and left it to rot, as is the way in this part of South Dakota. I stopped for coffee and a mini pizza in a remote diner behind a gas station and chatted to the fellowship of retired gents that gravitate to these places for communion.
Today was about miles and staying dry and alive and not being that idiot by the side of the road with an empty tank in the vast spaces, spaces so remote that Google Maps gave up on tracking us, between gas stations. Not empty spaces, cows with their calves in vast green fields lush from the recent exceptional rainfall and ranch hands releasing livestock from massive trailers watched our passing.
Sioux Falls is big, normally too big for me but I found a corner that I liked, the ‘Corner Pub’ hiding amongst well kept suburban homes an oasis of anti-sobriety. there I met Doug (a renowned sprint car flag-man in their hall of fame), Greg, another Doug, Tony, Troy, Tom, Sherrie and Jim who ran the place.
Greg, a very generous man with an amazing collection of toys and rare artefacts invited me back to the house that he shared with Wilson, his energetic dog. As a young man he had been a guest of his government for an infringement that may have involved the manufacture or distribution of methamphetamine. A hard man in a hard country he gave me beer given flavour by adding olives and a tour of his vehicles and treasures, not letting me leave until he had climbed into the roof space to retrieve a banner ‘saved’ from the Sturgis motorcycle rally. I’ll have fun getting that home.
Coincidentally the only model aircraft was of a Stearman like the one that I had flown in. Greg offered me a room and garage space should I stay in Sioux Falls another day, I’ll see what the weather brings.
Le Mans man 