One Street of Many
Henrietta was looking as bad as I was when I arrived in Denver, so she needed sprucing up to shine like the rest of the Harley’s around the place. We went into town, where for $20, I could hand her over to a couple of bikini clad young ladies, who would make her shine again, while I watched with a beer in hand. The sun was shining but the thunder was constant as the stream of Harley’s arrived into town. When this rally started all those years ago, I expect there were a bunch of bad assed bikies, terrorising the town, these days, it’s a consumer and commercial paradise with bankers, lawyers, mechanics, bums from Australia, young folk, old folk, families, all in their leathers, wandering around, soaking up the atmosphere and spending big. I picked up the bike and headed back to the chip to check out the amphitheatre, where every night, starting tonight, there would be a concert of three or four bands, tonight was Journey and War. I remember back in Falls Creek asking the young guy behind the bar if that was his music playing, “if you can tell me who it is, I’ll give you your beer for free” he said, “that’s War” I said, “they did an album with Eric Burdon back in the seventies”…Cisco kid was a friend of mi-ine…! Now here they were telling me Eric was there, only coz the record company insisted he sang. I went for a wander and was accosted by a couple of lovely’s, shaving heads, for the wounded warrior project, I was one of the first as things hadn’t really got started yet, later in the week, I went back and had another shave. Whatever you think of the politics of this nation, the people are trying to compensate, by making a huge effort to make these young men and women proud of their efforts. I saw many older guys with a patch on their vest which read Vietnam Vet, we won’t forget, they of course came home and were ridiculed. There were a lot of ex military at Sturgis; I ended up riding with Greg from the, MC MC that’s Marine Corps Motorcycle Club but they were here from all branches of the military. I made a mistake staying at the buffalo chip, they were partying all night, and I mean all night, so it was hard to get any sleep and I had to get up by 9am as the tent turned into a sauna with temperatures in the 80’s and 90’s during the day. The days were spent riding around the Black Hills which are fantastic, Custer, Hill City, Crazy Horse, Deadwood, Mt Rushmore, Devils Tower, and many more destinations. At night there were plenty of choices, The Full Throttle Saloon, The knuckle Saloon, Easyrider Saloon and the Chip of course, everywhere, bikes lined up. I was starting to feel the effects of too much alcohol and not enough sleep by the end of the week. It was time to move on but where too, I hadn’t given much thought to where would be my next destination. Greg was heading down 85 to Denver, on to New Mexico and eventually Texas, I decided to ride with him as far as Denver, there should be a letter waiting for me there. We were riding side by side cruising down 85 south, he was Wyatt or Captain America (Peter Fonda) I was Billy the Kid (Dennis Hopper) I was 15 again, watching Easy Rider in awe of the choppers, I kept wondering when the rednecks would show up and blow us away, it didn’t happen. Instead I noticed a lot of bikes all of a sudden coming the other way, there had been a head on, further down the road and the road was blocked, no one seemed to know exactly what was going on but a guy stopped and said the road would be blocked for 5 hours, there were no bikes involved. The detour south would be 250 miles, we hung around for a while wondering what to do, watching bikes going this way and that, like a bunch of worker ants heading back to the nest not knowing which way to go. I said to Greg I’m going back to Newcastle which we had come through 30 miles back, get something to eat and stay in a motel, we can get an early start in the morning. It was decided, the Geordie Boy was back in Newcastle, Newcastle Wyoming, that is!
I am….THE LONESOME TRAVELLER….travelling east….BE HAPPY!