DAKOTA

Oh, well.. things are moving quickly, so ...wahdevva.

Let's call this one RAPID CITY South Dakota... I wrote a whole screed about this before and seems like I lost it in Transit from last night. I can't always get connection.

Problem for this gets to be that in the morning I'm rushing around, packing everything back in to a small cylindrical duffel-bag... and make damn SURE youy don't leave something important behind. A thoothbrush can be replaced; a debit card or toolkit could be a lot more problematic.

Let's see... thinking backards. Rapid City... right.
UUhhh.. I got up late after having a fine, (short) evening at a Rapid City bar/casino,,, (they have video gambling all across the West), and had to flee due to quickly-approaching (11 O'clock??? Who the fucjk requires anyone out before Christian NOON??). 

Yeah, so had some breakfast (still looking for decent Biscuits & Gravy...may have to wait till the South trip later on). Left there looking for a Suzuki shop to get oil changed over to fresh synthetic.. 15w50 from 10w40 left over from the Rebuild break-in. Found said shop.. asked them to check front brake bleed... as mushiness STILL apparent, two bleeds after brakeline installation in Illinois.
The shop was new qand EMPTY... one of these dream-fancy shops with a Customer Lounge with Donuts and full-blown, #2-friendly restrooms (how often do you get that in an east-coast bike shop,.. unless you got an MV-Agusta...ehh). But obviously this place had little business... despite the throngs of Japanese sportbikes I saw zooming around,.

back onto I-90... heading  now from Sioux Falls towards Rapid City.. a respectable 325 miles to the West. Mostly straight line.... with an occasional elevation change. Hot.

HOT??? Fujcking A HOT. It was like sitting in a chair and have a giant hair-dryer blow 80-mph, 100-degree AIR at you for six hours non-stop. Got it?

It SUCKS... mostly because it's scary. When you're out there trying to balance yourself and a 500-pound hunk of steel and plastic, you WORRY occasionally that somehow this might go wrong somehow....  and stuff like slippery rainstorms, fiery commuter traffic, or WEATHER extremes tend to put you in edge.

So: when you're halfway between dusty Indian crossroads towns 50 miles apart.. and there's NO POSSIBLE SHADE ANYHERE BETWEEN...no dwellings.... no nothing whatsoever. BAKING hot... and you realize what in incredible feat it was for anyone to deal with, wiothout air-conditioning and gas-station general stores. The landscape is wide, endless and unforgiving.

The trip to Rapid City... nothing. Blank. Terrible, unrelenting HEAT and a steadily flattening horizon. Hills become more like flat-topped mesas and you start to see horizontal strata colors in the hillsides. Dry. HOT.

Eventually....eventually..... eventually I reached Rapid City South Dakota around 7PM. I opted to stop. It had been a terrible, difficult day or extreme heat threatening heat stroke, striation , or something including passing-out in the middle of the roadway at 75 mph. In reponse to this challenge I spent great efforts in drinking huge quantities of water, an dousing my upoper body with water whenevr possible. Air-conditioned Dodge 3000 pick-up truck witnesses may have looked at me with disgust and confusion... but at least the first tewn miles would feel safe and comfortable to me. After that it became dicey and tense. Anytime you start feeling dizzy from the heat (I've had it happen twide already on this trip), you have a matter of seconds to get the bike stopped before you might drop. And if that's twenty-six miles from the next sign of Humanity, you may be well fusjked.

Rapid City was bustling. I checked into a budget hotel off the interstate.. and the guy saw me coming and got me for $55. Later I saw numerous cheap-o motels two blocks away. But the place was bustling with open-header pick-up trucks and heavily-dusted camaros. This was now the real... REAL wild wild West... and Rapid City was full of Cowboys and Indians.
I went into the Walmart across from my hotel to look for a long-sleeve white t-shirt to keep the sun off me, as well as a small bottle of laundry detergent so as to wash my shit more properly in the Motel 6's I seem to keep staying in. When you're traveling town-to-town so much and so fast you have a have a hard time maintaing some flow.. and I got caught in Rapid City. The Walmart had tons of Indian people shopping there... I assume members of the local Sioux nation... anyway, some of them kept goiving me a wierd look until I realized I was wearing a motorcycle t-shirt that had INDIAN written in big letters on it. I retired quickly.
Uneventful dinner at an Outback steakhouse. Expensive chicken salad... gotta watch my Coin.