Home on a Harley

Mark Richardson

WHEELS EDITOR

There are three ingredients for any successful road trip:

1. You must go somewhere you've never been, either as a destination or just en route. Even if it's only a short detour off the highway to explore an interesting name on the map, that's fine.

2. There must be something unpredictable, to add a sense of achievement or accomplishment. Something to talk about afterwards.

3. And ideally, there should be a ferry.

Combine all three and you can't go wrong. Okay, so the ferry is sometimes tough, but it provides an occasion to the journey – an understanding that something a bit different has taken place.

And the 6,000 km ride out to the annual Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota and back will always – always – offer all three ingredients so that you just can't go wrong.

It's a long way to the Black Hills, home to herds of grazing buffalo and the presidents' heads carved into Mount Rushmore.

I left in early August on a Harley-Davidson ElectraGlide Classic with my 18-year-old nephew on the pillion seat; Oliver was visiting from England, where a trip can take hours but cover little distance.

He'd not ridden on a motorcycle before. The ElectraGlide has a well-padded seat and backrest so he felt safe and comfortable on the back, at least until I hit the first tight curve and scraped the left footboard against the asphalt.

Cars don't do that. He got used to it fairly quickly.

There aren't many curves on the road west to the prairies, but we sought out whatever we could find from the map, rocking the bike as we rolled down the highway.

It was to be a four-day ride to cover 2,500 km. That means more than 600 km a day which becomes a greater challenge when you avoid interstates and freeways and keep stopping to look at the sights that many people drive past.

The time in the saddle became an issue on just the second day, when we woke outside Detroit knowing we'd ridden only 350 km on Day One. The missing distance would have to be reclaimed. Outside, torrential rain soaked the roads and the bike. The forecast called for rain all day long.

Fortunately the forecast was wrong and by the time we reached Chicago, the sun was pounding on our exposed faces. The rising heat from the big Hog's engine cooked my thighs.

In stop-and-go traffic, the bike's air temperature gauge – affected by the motor – was buried against the stop at more than 120 degrees F, or 50 degrees C.

The heat did not let up as we carried on toward the Mississippi, where I planned to use one of the few remaining ferries that still cross the river. But when we made it to the dock at Cassville the next morning, a small sign showed the service did not run that day and we had to detour an hour north to the nearest bridge.

Not to worry. As adventure rider and author Ted Simon writes, "the interruptions are the journey."

We detoured along the Great River Road, a route I'd never travelled, and into the rolling countryside of eastern Iowa before the road unwound into a straight line across the state. Oliver discovered beef jerky in a small store at Strawberry Point and became a convert.

The helpful clerk at the Holiday Inn in Vermillion, S.D. warned us against riding too far the next day. I told her we wanted to stop just short of the Black Hills and their high Bike Week prices and sold-out motels, and asked if she could recommend anywhere on the Pine Ridge, S.D. native reservation that might have Internet access, but she looked concerned.

"It's very undeveloped," she said diplomatically. "You should probably aim to stop a couple of hours beforehand, or head down to Nebraska. You won't find anywhere on the reservation you'll want to stay."

This was better than the warning I was given 20 years before, heading into the same area.

"Stay clear of the Indians!" said some farmers eating in a restaurant at Winner.

"You don't want nothin' to do with them!"

All the way across South Dakota, the heat intensified into a white haze, the sun lowering through the afternoon so that it beaded through our sunglasses and pounded our heads – there are no visors on a motorcycle.

Perhaps getting through this would be the "sense of achievement" part of the recipe.

But no: The achievement came in finding a hotel next to a casino just past the destitute trailers of Pine Ridge, dry of drugs and alcohol and Internet but safe and warm and friendly.

Something to talk about afterwards.

Oliver and I rode around the Black Hills every day during our stay at Sturgis, enjoying the twisting roads and shaded mountains.

On the last day, we lashed a huge rally flag to the back of the bike and rode proudly around the town and into the countryside as it slowly shredded in the wind.

I wanted to visit some old friends on our return journey and so headed north to the state border and the small town of Lemmon. It's as prairie as it gets out there, and the strong headwind soon ripped our flag from its bike-bound mast.

Stopping in the middle of the emptiness to stow the flag, Oliver looked around and saw not a single tree and heard not a single bird.

We'd both shared the same feeling on the ride there, of Big Sky spaciousness and room to think. The bike has a CD player, but it was still unused. "Above all," writes Lemmon-based author Kathleen Norris in her book Dakota, "one notices the quiet, the near-absence of human noise."

Motorcycles encourage you to think and can be almost meditative in their constant focus, constant introspection on a long road trip. And on a prairie road, the best way to truly travel is out in the open, not shut into a car but riding along the top of it on a motorcycle.

It's tough to explain to someone who's only ever travelled behind a thick glass windshield, with the comforting thunk of the door closing behind before slipping the vehicle into gear and pointing it down the road. On a bike, there's no comforting thunk. The road is right there below you, blurring past your feet, ready to scuff your sole should you pull your boot from the footrest and let it touch the ground.

The wind is all around you and through you while the sun warms your clothing and your face. Oliver would hold his hands in the breeze and let them rise and lower with the slipstream as if they were a bird's wings. The distance passed quickly and easily, yet never seemed to move at all.

Through Minneapolis and on to Milwaukee, where we paused for a special just-for-us tour of the factory that made our Harley's engine, and it was finally time to cap off the road trip.

The Lake Express ferry is a hydrofoil that carries cars and passengers across Lake Michigan from Milwaukee to Muskegon, Mich.

It takes less than three hours to skim across the wide lake and, with the Harley lashed securely below, Oliver and I stood in the wind and watched the motors plume the water. We completely avoided the congestion of skirting around Chicago and would dock an easy day's ride from Toronto.

"You're right about including a ferry," said Oliver. "This is the way to travel."

Next week: So how was the Harley-

Davidson?

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