Coast2Coast Day 6 - OK... not such a great day on the bike

Today started off great! The sun was out, it was warm. I went to Mt. Rushmore first thing this morning. The Black Hills are so beautiful. I was really enjoying myself when I caught up to a quartet of Harley bikers. They're going slow. No big deal. I'll pass them. As I began to pass their group the rear rider sped up to try and cut me off. "What ever" I'm going to get past this asshole. So I passed the entire group and went on my merry way. A while later at an intersection I was checking the GPS to see which way to go when two of the riders in the group pulled over next to me and were irate that I had passed them.

Now these weren't like gnarley bikers, they were yuppy bikers. But they were going apeshit. I told them where they could stick it and went on my way. But the younger of the two assholes wouldn't let up. He actually tried to run me off the road! The guy swerved into me, ramming me bike to bike and kicking my panniers. Then he got ahead of me, pulled to a complete stop and tried to ram me when I passed.

Unbeliveable.

The guy was young, and dumb, and skinny, and not wearing any motorcycle jacket or helmet. I'm 215 lbs, plus I was wearing a full face helmet, armored jacket, and gloves with titanium knuckles. I would have totally kicked the crap out of the guy.

But that's just the thing. I don't want to get in some altercation. I just want to ride cross country and enjoy myself. I finally managed to slip passed both asshole #1 and asshole #2 and just bolted out of there.

What a nice way to start a day... get attacked by two yuppy harley assholes. Grrrrr.

Needless to say, I decided to put some distance between myself and them so I was carving up the black hills pretty nicely, and actually having a great time.

I pulled into the gas station in Sturgis and a dump truck driver who I had passed earlier got out of his truck and was yelling at me about passing him. I'm not joking, this guy was like 300 lbs and had ONE TOOTH (bottom left K9).

Dude... passing a dump truck? That's cause for alarm? He was going 35...maybe.

I filled up, and got the fuck out of Sturgis.

So here's the lesson... if you ride a BMW, stay the hell away from the shit ass town. I skipped the Motorcycle museum and just bolted north for North Dakota.

I headed mostly North today, but a fair bit east too. Heading North there was a tail wind, so that's the way I spent most of my day.

In Faith SD I met a couple from Sturgis. They were really cool. The husband had both Harleys and BMWs. He said that the Sturgis locals are cool, but the out of town kooks come and go crazy living out some agro biker dream. We had lunch, they were cool folks.

Faith SD is also the T-Rex capital of the world. Just thought you should know that.

I picked up the Lewis and Clark trail this afternoon. As the afternoon progressed thunder storms developed again. Huge scary ones. I used the tail wind to my advantage in the wide open plains and just did 100 to 110 MPH for the last hour trying to beat the rain.

I managed to beat the rain by about 10 minutes into Bismark ND. Now it's storming like crazy. I'm going to hole up in my room this evening and get some rest.

It was nice to be on the road again today, but I am missing Gwen and the boys badly. But really, today mostly sucked. I awoke with a stomach ache, then dealt with yuppy biker assholes, then thunder storms again.

I'll try and keep everyone posted again tomorrow. I've got some sweet pics I need to upload too. Maybe I'll try and get them up.

Ciao,

rC

By The Numbers
States today: 2 SD & ND
Miles Today: 400.9
Miles Total: 2103.2


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