Stranger than Fiction

"You guys come from Sturgis?"

Of course I was referring to the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, SD each year. This year they were celebrating the 75th anniversary and Sturgis expected a million visitors for the event.

"Yeah, we just came from there" responded one of the two bikers sitting on a bench outside the gas station/restaurant along Highway 90 in Minnesota.

My husband and I were on our way to the Black Hills after a week in northern Minnesota and had missed most of the excitement. The bikers saw that we were driving a car and when they found out we were from the Black Hills one of them asked if we had left to get away from the commotion.

"Actually, I really enjoy seeing all the bikers. My husband and I went to many a rally in Sturgis in past years. In fact, my husband used to race motorcycles in the old days, but now we both prefer to visit with bikers at a distance from the rally itself. I hated to be gone during this week, but I had commitments in my home town at a class reunion."

I was curious about the numbers that attended this year. "Were there a million motorcycles", I asked the bikers.

"Oh, I think there were at least that many."

"What about accidents?"

"There were a bunch. In fact, my buddy here helped at one of them. He was right at the scene."

"Yeah", said the other biker. "I put on a tourniquet, but I couldn't save his leg. The strange thing is that I am a nurse and the second person on the scene was a doctor. And then, strangest of all, someone who stopped handed me some morphine. I gave it to the injured guy to help his pain. I really don't know where it came from, but there it was, just when needed."

A registered nurse, a doctor and morphine, all at the scene in the midst of hundreds of bikes in the remote forest of the Black Hills. A man's life was saved until a helicopter arrived. It was 45 minutes before it got there. The tourniquet saved a life and the morphine eased the pain.

"The funny part was I never did know where that morphine came from", puzzled the biker nurse from Wisconsin. He paused, looking at me quietly. "This is a rally I will never forget."

Somewhere in this country there is one biker, minus one leg, who is not apt to forget either.