We Don't Serve Women, So Bring Your Own

That was actually posted on a sign outside a bar we passed the day before yesterday. Awesome.

First of all, I felt a lot better after I got a good night's sleep. I woke up and thumbed my nose at the previous day's self-pity party, chalked it up to PMS, and called it a brand new day. I'd also like to take back what I said about this trip not being what I hoped for. Two weeks is a long time to be on the road, and I'm just bound to have a bad day or two. C'est la vie!

So back to business. And by business I mean a proper blog, not all this whiney, angsty, teenagery livejournal bullshit. In fact I'll probably edit a lot of that out as soon as I'm near a proper computer.

We took our time yesterday morning, not really sleeping in, but at least relaxing more than usual. Dad and I dropped my bike off for repairs at a place in Sturgis, but he ended up being too swamped to be able to take it. At any rate I was without a bike and thus ended up on the back of Mattie's Road King. We headed out around 10, bound for Mount Rushmore and passed through some of the most beautiful country I've ever seen.

Unfortunately, we got stuck behind a bad accident; there are hundreds of thousands of riders here and accidents are bound to happen. This was really brutal though. We didn't see the accident itself but we saw the ambulances rush in and, a few minutes later, watched the paramedics pulled the white sheet and black body bag out of the truck. It was a somber procession as we rode through the scene, as soon as the police began directing traffic. The body was in the left lane, covered up except for a single foot sticking out from under the body bag, and the river of blood trickling down into the ditch. I had a really visceral reaction and had to fight not to throw up. It was definitely sobering. It made us all think pretty hard about why we ride. We do what we love and love what we do, but we have to realize the heavy risk we take every time we get on a bike. To me, it's worth it, especially when I look around and take in all the incredible things we saw the rest of that day.

For the sake of not making one stupidly long post, I'll post this much now and catch up with the rest later.