Great trip. I did not even have to put on my rainsuit. There were a few showers around but I managed to miss all the heavy ones. I did get to see a couple inches of hail that fell just before I passed thru a valley near Rushmore.
The news said there was about 500,000 bikes this year. All I know is everywhere I looked there was a motorcycle. Last year I only saw about half a dozen Valkyries, this year I saw at least a couple hundred. I think I saw George Jackson's bike on main street but if it was he has changed the color of the seat.
If you've never seen 500,000 bikes in an area the size of Sturgis and surrounding communities then it would be useless for me to describe it to you. On every roadway it is just a constant stream of motorcycles in both directions. Main streets of all the towns were filled with bikes parked side by side. Turnouts and scenic views on all the roadways had several bikes in them. Everywhere you looked or listened there was a motorcycle. There was enough black leather that if reassembled back into the cows it came from would probably make the worlds largest cattle herd. It will probably be bigger next year. If you want a room better reserve it now, a campsite, you can probably wait a few months.
I talked to a couple of people that were at the ride-in in Colorado last month. I enjoyed the ride-in better than Sturgis but everyone needs to go to Sturgis at least once.
Downtown was mostly t-shirt, patch, pin, leather and food vendors. All the Harley clone makers were there. They make some good lookin bikes but all were priced way above what a person would pay for a bike for serious riding. They are great for posers with big bank accounts. I guess that leaves me out, if not for the posing, for the big bank account.
I have a little more respect for the power of the new Harley 88 inchers. I met a friend of mine at the campsite. He has a 88 inch dyna-glide with the ignition kit, carb kit and screaming eagle pipes. We punched it at several different speeds on the hiway and I could not get away from him. I do outweigh him by 50 lbs and was running a windshield with about 60 lbs of tools, etc in the saddle bags but the Harley did a good job. Once he was two up with his lady friend and I walked away from him with no problems. If I had been on the Harley with a shield and loaded bags the Valk would have ate my lunch so I don't think I will be looking at the Harley for a power gain.
I'm about to turn 40,000 miles on the Valk and have not had any problems. I keep worrying about the wheel bearings but so far they are OK. I was going to have it dynoed at Sturgis but they wanted 40 bucks and there were 17 Harleys ahead of me. I used the time to ride out to Devil's Tower in Wyoming and then ran up north to Montana just to look around.
If you've never been to Sturgis it is a great place to ride even if it is not during the Rally. There are many sites to see including Mt Rushmore, Chief Crazy Horse, the Needles, the Badlands, Custer Park with the bison, donkeys, and mountain goats and many other sites on about any road you get on in the area.
I will have some pictures developed and scan them in sometime this week. Stay tuned.Some pictures here. More as I scan them.
Bob