I don't even know where to begin explaining this day. It was generally miserable with a couple highlights. That about sums it up. This is not a great start to the trip.
To make a short story long, let me begin by saying that my motorcycle doesn't have a windshield. At least, it didn't until late this afternoon. For those of you unfamiliar with motorcycles, riding without a windshield may look really cool, but get up any faster than, say, 55 mph and it's like getting dragged into a dark alley by a bunch of angry Russians and getting the snot kicked out of you. Several parts of our trip today took place at 65-75 mph and all I can say is that I hope that is the closest I ever come to physical and psychological torture in my life. First of all, it's just a straight-up battle to sit upright when the wind is blowing into your chest like that. Second of all, the wind is practically deafening at that speed; I could literally feel my eardrums luffing like a sail inside my head. My ears are still ringing. Third of all, I had trouble seeing, especially after my sunglasses shattered against my skull due to the intensity of the wind. I'm not even kidding; the frame just suddenly snapped against my forehead. I thought I'd been hit by yet another bee or large beetle. Finally, there's a lot of dust in the air over the road, especially when passing vehicles and the bikes ahead of you kick it up and, believe me, that stuff STINGS at 70 mph.
To top it all off, I've been having engine trouble with my bike, and occasionally it would "stutter" or cut out completely, usually whenever I had just managed to forget about the last incident. It all just gradually added up and slowly drove me to distraction. I just about snapped. It was a really rough day. We finally wound up at the Harley dealership in Rapid City, where my dad finally bought me a really nice windshield from Memphis Shades, which was on the day's agenda even before I had my little meltdown. The difference was incredible. We got back on the interstate to head back to our campground and I was grinning like an idiot because, for the first time ever, 70 mph didn't HURT. I haven't had that much fun on a bike in ages. Plus my back felt better because I wasn't straining to hold myself up. The icing on the Awesome Cake, though, was stopping at the bottom of the ramp at our exit and seeing the license plate on the car in front of us from Nebraska. I've been "collecting" license plates from all 50 states for the last 3 years, exclusively on cross-country road trips, and I've been ticking off the last few from the Northwest on this trip. Nebraska was the very last one. (Okay, so technically I still need Hawai'i, but I never had high hopes for that one.)
At any rate, I'm exhausted and stressed and depressed and feeling incredibly out of place. I just don't feel like I fit in here, and it's really getting to me. When I get like this I tend to space out and do really stupid things, like accidentally leaving the truck running at the campsite the entire three hours we were down in Sturgis checking out the rally, which just makes me feel infinitely worse. I just keep screwing up, which makes me paranoid that no one likes having me around because, quite frankly, I don't want me around right now. I just want to stay in my tent and sleep and stop bothering everyone, but--oh, yeah--I can't do that either because the wind is so strong in this field it keeps crushing my tent on top of me and whipping it around so noisily I can't sleep. And I have a sunburn.
Anyway, here are some random pictures from the day: Lenny and Benny messing around with Lenny's mini-bike that he bought for his son years ago; the 6:30 A.M. sunrise from inside my tent; and a couple pictures from Spearfish Canyon and Spearfish Falls.
Yeah, the places here have awesome names like Spearfish, Dead Horse Gulch, and Hell Canyon. I'm jealous.
No comments:
Post a Comment