Perhaps the whole gig was soured for me the night before when Jimmy D's kinda-sorta hospitality reared its ugly head. We had been invited to Hulett by Jimmy in the first place and had unwittingly stepped on Jimmy's toes when we accepted rally promoter Spider's offer to pay us to park our cars downtown during the gig. After parking the cars, I had ventured on up to Jimmy's to say hello and feel things out. By now I knew that Jimmy was disappointed, but I had no idea how thoroughly the tide had turned against us. Jimmy was downright rude and bitter about the whole thing, essentially lumping us in with all the wrong that had come to the festival he'd started years before. After a good half hour of eating crow at a table with Jimmy and his friends, I left with my tail between my legs, thoroughly convinced that I'd done a bad thing and that we should pull out of town immediately.

But thank God for the good sense and commitment to personal boundaries I'd been developing since a winter of depression. With every step away from Jimmy's I thought up damn good reasons for my actions. For one, had I thought of it on the spot, I would have told Jimmy that after six or eight years of taking shit for driving a weird car that when someone offered to pay me to have that same car show up somewhere, I considered it an honor and god damn right I jumped on it. And if indeed I had screwed up one commitment by upsetting Jimmy, I wasn't gonna bail on my commitment to Spider, no matter how bad Jimmy said he was. As it happened, Spider had paid us cash by the time I got back from Jimmy's, coming through with flying colors on his promise to us. All I could think of was "What had Jimmy given me?" The answer was a big guilt trip and a ration of shit that didn't belong to me. Fuck him. We stayed. We had a good time. And Seven pulled in a ton of dough, shaking down every biker that snapped a shot of his car.

Now we look west at some 1200 miles of highway and mean mountain passes and I wonder about old Duke, who for all his strength seems to be crying out at last for some sort of mechanical help. He lags at speed and every bit of firm pressure on the accelerator elicits a hair-raising squeal that I can only hope is just a loose belt.

Packed up and headed out for breakfast. Some roadside restaurant 2 miles from the Tower entrance. Had enough of the KOA scene. I didn't want to do breakfast there after the whole scene with Jimmy, an employee of the place.

More Massachusetts bikes. The accent gives it away every time. Milling around Sturgis has been like old home week for me and Seven, both natives of Mass. We keep running into bikers and concessionaires from all over NH and MA. The food is on Seven. He pulled in $142 in donations yesterday at the Hulett biker rally, squeezing every biker with a camera for a dollar for snapping his car. For all the flack Ned and Ramon and Tex and even I have give him for his strong arm tactics, well.. he's buying us lunch. Hard to argue that logic. Even with Tex assisting, Duke and I didn't pull in dick yesterday. The soft sell didn't cut it with the Hell's Angels crowd or their tourist-biker peers.

But ole Seven, Mr. Little Bighorn sitting in his wheel chair shaming them got a buck outa every camera-wielding passerby.

Now its the highway west again after what feels like a millennium in South Dakota and just over the border at Devil's Tower.

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Last update April 1, 2004