This is South Dakota

He came to the back door of Wild West Wheels Fix it Shop. He was tall, thin and anxious. His son was sitting in the cab next to him.

"I have been driving all over town trying to find someone who could help me. Can you get my motorcycle off of the back of my truck?"

Bob took one look. "No problem. Just back up to the loading dock."

Later his wife joined the pair. The man was uncommunicative and seemed in a hurry. Bob presumed they were camping in the area and wanted to tour with the motorcycle.

Bob looked at the license plate on the back of the white truck. It identified the vehicle from New York.

Bob interrupted his work on a lawn mower to slip the Triumph motorcycle off of the back of the truck. It took him about 20 minutes because the man needed help in parking his truck correctly in order for Bob to unload it.

"How much do I owe you?"

"Not a thing. It only took a few minutes of my time. This is not New York and this is the way we do it in South Dakota."

To the family from New York: enjoy your trip compliments of Wild West Wheels from South Dakota!

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.