This is me on my boyfriend Steve’s Harley, a Sportster, just before taking off on our grand adventure from the Midwest to Seattle, Washington in 1979, the year we had both graduated from college. I graduated at 36, while he was about 13 years younger, but nevermind. Off we went. Which we had no business doing on a Sportster.
A Sportster is rather lightweight for a Harley, not really built for long hauls. Steve might have known that, but I didn’t. His bike looked big enough to me. I loved it. A Harley Davidson motorcycle in gleaming black, with a long lean panther of a man at the throttle. And me in a new leather jacket proudly perched on the pillion. We wore helmets on the road west because some states required them. Wisconsin didn’t. In Wisconsin, our hair blew free.
Of course, I never thought of learning to ride it. That would mean learning to kick start it with no kickstand in place and keeping it from falling over while I was at it. I used to say I was about as thin as a #2 pencil, and I would have broken both me and the bike. Steve would never have forgiven me for hurting the bike. I did, however, learn the basics of being a biker girl. It was my job to signal turns. Straight left arm for left turns. Straight left arm hooked up at the elbow for right turns. Plus I had very stern rules for myself. Number one rule: never complain. Having no role models, I was in a fantasy land in which I thought strength consisted of silence and compliance. I later met real biker girls. “Old ladies”, more precisely. Who did complain. Who gave the “old man” a real piece of their minds when they were pissed off. Who were strong and competent and had minds of their own. But that is a story of another time.
This picture was taken at my parents’ place near Bemidji, MN. We rode west from there into South Dakota. My big plan for South Dakota was to ride in a halter top soaking up the August sun. Somewhere, god was having himself a good laugh. South Dakota was cold and windy. I never even took my jacket off. Even worse, it took us a week to reach Wyoming. You might even call South Dakota a shakedown cruise. If it was gonna shake down, it shook down in South Dakota.
Somewhere between the border with Minnesota and Pierre, something shook off – I don’t remember what. A brake cover? It escapes me. The friendly Harley shop that sheltered us for a couple of days had to send to Rapid City for it. All I remember is spending some time looking at the Missouri River, winding placidly along, and reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” which I don’t think taught me anything particularly zen and nothing about motorcycle maintenance. My code of silence and compliance was about as zen as I would ever get. Could have used a little bit of motorcycle maintenance though.
You have not lived until you have ridden down the wall of the Badlands with no clutch cable as your driver manually kicks the gears from one to another down the steep descending curves of the road. No wonder most of the bikes you see pictured gathered at Sturgis are hogs. Big, burly motorcycles packed with every tool and spare part one might possibly need on an overland trip. We got nuthin’. So we just bucked down the winding road to the tiny hamlet of Interior, South Dakota, which boasted a garage where Steve took the bike and a tavern where I went to play pool.
Steve never taught me to drive a motorcycle, but he did teach me how to shoot pool. I loved it, I loved getting good at it. Pool was not a game one had to hurry with. Everyone involved was patient with the one lining up a shot. And everyone involved was impressed when a difficult shot went right. I got to be very good at taking somewhat difficult shots. In the hamlet of Interior, I played pool with a few local ranchers. Not ranch hands, it seemed. Maybe they were busy working the ranches. No, these were weathered looking older men who claimed to own ranches, one in particular boasted of thousands of acres. Interior is just off the northeast corner of the Pine Ridge Reservation of the Sioux. I didn’t bring it up, but I eyed the ranchers suspiciously and played the best I could in silent honor of the victims of Wounded Knee. I think I won a couple of games, too. Or maybe the wizened old rancher who seemed to have taken a shine to me let me win. Whatever. I was very relieved to see Steve come in. He had managed to jury-rig a cable that we hoped would last until Rapid City. So I bid farewell to the ranchers and we took off down Route 44, the scenic route through the Badlands that skirted the northern border of Pine Ridge.
The scenic route was well worth it and if you ever have the chance, go for it. For one thing, it helps you bypass the siren call of Wall Drugs, which is not worth it at all. I followed it one time years later and was sorry. For another it leads you through a stone forest, rock formations rising one after another from the valley floor roughly sculpted by wind and water into a crenellated tableland, a magical landscape where there is nary a green plant to be seen, but where one could well imagine there be dragons. Clutch cable be damned, we could not resist one stop to test ourselves against the ramparts.
We found a clutch cable in Rapid City and rode on west into the Black Hills National Park, where we set up what we thought would be our last campsite in South Dakota. Wyoming was just over yonder. When we woke in the morning it was raining.
To be continued …