Alright, we’re gonna ride today! But first things first – BREAKFAST! Last night was so good, we’ll go see the gal from the bike shop at her second job, as a waitress, at Bully Blends. Well, she comes in later, but we left word to thank her for pointing us to such good places to eat. This place? I had eggs and bacon, with three pancakes. Well, the eggs were PERFECT (over medium, thank-you-very-much), bacon THICK and crisp, and the pancakes. Oh LORDY, these things are the size of dinner plates! I could not finish them, sorry to say. GREAT breakfast!

Oh yeah, the place is Bully Blends, here:

Then, of course, the ride. We decided to keep it close by, so went to the local park to ride “M Hill”. After a false start, we got on the right track, which seemed to be STRAIGHT UP. I was not built for this! My puny flatlander lungs were screaming at me, and we hadn’t gone a quarter mile! Well, after that nice warmup, they actually decided to give in, and the rest of the ride went very well. Why “M Hill”? I wondered that too, but it’s because the hill has a huge “M” on its side, close to the top, with an “S” on the left, and a “D” on the right (both of those smaller than the “M”). I realized it was because of the school in town! I was about to ask one of the locals if Marcel Marceau had ever been a guest lecturer, when It dawned on me this is the South Dakota School of MINES, not mimes. Ooops. Mea Culpa.

On the way down, we got a little lost, did a little trespassing – no one called us on it, so I guess we got away with it. Good ride! Not very long, but we didn’t want to re-injure The Bear’s right paw.

So, what to do in the afternoon? Go to Sturgis! Bike week is coming up, first full week in August, so we just had to stop by. Of course, we had to go by the Harley dealership and get some T-shirts and a cap:

And after that, of course, we had to grab a beer somewhere. One-Eyed Jack’s looked pretty good, so we went in, The Bear had a JD and Coke, and I had a Guinness on tap, and we hoisted our glasses and made a toast to our neighbor Dave, who, sadly, died two weeks ago. Unfortunately, I didn’t know Dave nearly as well as I wish I had, but I do know he had a Harley that he liked and rode a lot. I don’t know if he ever got to Sturgis, but I do know if he had not yet got there, he’ll be there next month, at least in spirit.

While there, I got a chance to pose with another Bear:

I hope this is as close as I get to a grizzly on this trip (or any other trip, for that matter).

After all this, back to town, dinner at home, and update the blog (somewhat). I found out it’s a lot of work to keep a blog up to date, but it’s worth it for my friends!

Oh, yeah – almost forgot! Since we were out this way, well, we HAD to visit Deadwood. I wish I’d skipped it. One of my favorite TV serieseses is “Deadwood”. It has some really hilarious moments in it, and the people for the most part seem to have been portrayed the way they probably really were – rather coarse, of course. And modern Deadwood I suppose has kept true to its roots – it is a gambling – excuse me, GAMING (I guess they want to make it sound better) – town. And I have no use for gaming/gambling, so it was pretty much a waste. I had hoped they would have kept some of the original (or at least original-style) buildings, but even the architecture for the most art was a bust. Oh, well, lesson learned.