DMV: The COMPLETE Journey to Sturgis, South Dakota
hey what's up this is joe i'm in sturgis south dakota just a few days before the annual black hills motorcycle rally i wanted to do something a little different in this video and give you the ride to sturgis in one piece in its completion from start to finish basically in the past i've just sort of ended up with so much footage that it's kind of been easier to sort of break everything up into sections and give it to you that way as i was going back and sort of reviewing i had something like 10 and a half hours of footage from my gopro and my phone and it occurred to me just what an epic journey it is to go halfway across the country on a motorcycle it was like 1700 miles but really i mean back in the day 1700 miles was a lot and and you see a lot in between from start to finish of that 1700 miles so i wanted to sort of give it to you in one piece just to sort of give you a feel of what a huge undertaking it is to embark on a journey like that i whittled it down to about 42 minutes which is still the longest video i've ever made and i guess if there's anything to get out of this video it would be when you live on a motorcycle or you just take a motorcycle trip across country you really experience the full spectrum of humanity good bad ugly everything in between as well as a lot of variation within the natural world cultural differences personalities all that stuff you just experience it kind of like amplified so with that being said if you enjoy this video please hit like and subscribe and as usual i've included an optional donate link in the dropbox if you'd like to contribute to this project otherwise enjoy the ride right around the middle of july i start getting butterflies in my stomach at the coming of the black hills motorcycle rally in sturgis south dakota i love the culture of south dakota working my gig with memphis shades meeting folks hanging out with friends and camping in the black hills safe to say at this point it's a bit like home i started my journey in virginia and headed across the appalachian mountains to morehead kentucky almost from the time i left i fell in love with my new bike the honda nc750x 70 miles in i'm in west virginia i got to say i have been really impressed this bike's a lot more comfortable at higher speeds than i thought it would be and packed up i thought it would really be struggling it handles all the weight no problem it just rides good the balance is great i pushed on towards morehead kentucky where i heard about some free dispersed camping located within the daniel boone national forest i guess i've ridden about 150 miles i just got a little bit of gas you know i was down to like a half a tank and came out to about 68 miles per gallon you know and it runs on 86 octane so i'm back to the regular stuff you know in times where the gas prices go up less people are buying plus and premium so that stuff tends to sit there the ethanol absorbs water you know now i'm back to regular gas and excellent gas mileage so i'll take it the verdant green vines off to my left are an invasive weed called kudzu it's all too common in this part of the country and has a tendency to overtake and suffocate any plants trees and bushes in its wake there was an effort to encourage consumption of this invasive plant which never really caught on but supposedly it's pretty tasty both as a food and in tea still in the state of kentucky just at the sort of northern foothills of the mountains as you can see i hear there's a bunch of dispersed camping up here about 40 minutes so i'm just doing my grocery shopping getting prepared kind of bittersweet to be leaving the mountains where i grew up but damn like it's been a cold ride all morning i've been wearing my heavy jacket just absolutely freezing i just took it off now i'm starting to actually burn up a little bit but man i don't miss the weather cool little spot out here in kentucky absolutely started to roast i'm technically in the foothills of the appalachians on the western side as soon as i got down in elevation instantly was absolutely burning up back home in virginia i was complaining how cold it was this place is absolutely free dispersed camping along the side of this like kind of a pond looking thing on the map it looked like an oxbow stream a river or something but it doesn't look like it's flowing to me looks more like a lake or a pond or something but man this looks fishy i was a little concerned having everything packed on this but man i was just impressed all day long you know rode like 300 miles today wasn't really that tired at the end of it handled great the turbulence riding behind trucks and stuff i could feel the turbulence like up here and on my chest and shoulders but the bike just absolutely stayed true i think because it's just such a low center of gravity i spent the next day in camp working on my video with no cell service to speak of i love this kind of camping it can be argued that smartphones are one of the ills of western society and it's a point i'm inclined to agree with while they've contributed a lot of good in terms of dissolving cultural barriers as well as keeping everyone connected i feel there's been a huge cost to much of the world in terms of mental health and in particular the youth there's simply too much money to be made from keeping you on the thing as long as possible headed into town yesterday and got my video uploaded scheduled and all that was just easier to just kind of come back here because i already knew where this place was but i came back everything was completely a mud puddle everything's muddy everything gets dirty there's no getting around it things are gonna be dirty you're gonna be packing some stuff up it's gonna be dirty if i was clean all the time i'd be the clean motorcycle vagabond but since i'm living in the woods i'm the dirty motorcycle vagabond anyway let's go as i mentioned before i was really excited about the route i'd chosen as it would take me through several states i'd never been one of these was ohio and once i was in the vicinity of cincinnati there was one thing i absolutely had to try so i'm just outside of a midwest institution this is skyline chili i've never been to one of these but i've seen them on tv so let's go check it out started in cincinnati tons of cheddar cheese chili and pasta spaghetti noodles probably not the healthiest thing in the world but when in rome you got to do as the romans do so that's what i'm about to do the smell coming off of this is absolutely fantastic that's awesome slightly sweet got a hint of cinnamon really good wow that was absolutely fantastic you know certain other types of chilis could be a little more hearty and with chunks of beef and stuff like that the beef was like chopped up really fine it was a little watery but that's probably from excess water from the pasta the service wasn't great anytime i wanted something i had to like literally like flag the waitress down so that kind of sucked but ultimately it was worth it i mean the cheese the pasta and the sweetness of the fine chili just all went together awesome apparently this is a cincinnati institution that was started sometime around 1949 it's like no other chili in the world man that skyline was some damn good chili i mounted my new steed and headed across the ohio river i can't say much about the state of indiana since i frankly passed through it pretty quick but there's a meditative quality about riding through the midwest with its wide open spaces that i really like in this type of country you can just sort of sit back and let your mind take a rest once i got to illinois i was ready to find somewhere to hunker down and shower after being filthy for the past three days i located a campground in kickapoo state park for 10 bucks and headed towards danville my criteria for campgrounds is simple if i'm on route and the price is 10 bucks or less i'll do it otherwise i'd have to be pretty desperate a hotel at least in the states is a very rare treat and for that to happen i better be caught in some seriously shitty weather or damn well done something to deserve it kickapoo state park in the state of illinois i almost forgot because usually when i think of illinois i don't think of all this lush forest woods and stuff it's ten dollars a night for a site without electricity which is these days about as cheap as you can get in the united states especially for a state park that figure is pretty incredible so i rode about 350 miles today did a lot of it on the highway on the interstate even though as you know i hate those the bike handled great at higher speeds i was riding through a headwind pretty much all day so typically when you're riding through a headwind especially on the interstate you're gonna get a lot of turbulence from any kind of passing trucks passing vehicles and things like that and i certainly felt a lot of turbulence but i didn't feel it in the bike the design of that motor where so much of the weight is down low and forward you know the the cylinder is shooting out at an angle just like that and then with the gas tank being under the seat it's just and i'm saying this tentatively i don't want to jinx myself but it is one of the best riding bikes on the interstate that i've ever been on right now i'm taking advantage of the sunshine drying everything out i was on a forum like a motorcycle camping forum and somebody asked the question what do you do when it's time to leave and all your stuff is wet it seems like such an obvious question but the answer while it would be ideal to dry out all your stuff and then hit the road sometimes you just have to pack everything up wet and there's no getting around it and when that happens i just usually try to stop somewhere and dry everything out as quick as i can pack it back up in this case i just kept riding and knew that i would dry it out at some point in addition to the sweet price tag kickapoo state park was filled with an abundance of wildlife turkey deer canadian geese as well as an extensive system of hiking trails canadian geese we are in the middle of illinois so middle of july presumably on their way back to canada to enjoy the summer and then be heading back down this way and ultimately i don't know where they end up if they go as far as mexico i've never seen any of them in mexico but i know that butterflies follow a migration sort of like that they sure aren't very shy never really heard of anybody hunting these i don't know if the meat's any good it'd be kind of cheating right in there is the vermilion river tomorrow making a journey into chicago or thereabouts i don't know if it'll be in chicago proper but somewhere around there and check on a deep dish pizza for this pizza mission i wanted to be as close to chicago as possible and still be in the woods this way i hoped i could try the closest approximation of true chicago deep dish without also experiencing the crazy chicago traffic amazingly i found another 10 buck a night campground and rode my growling belly towards illini state park riding through a bunch of back roads in central illinois a few hours south of chicago you know i woke up feeling in a good mood and and just everybody i've interacted with and talked to today has just been totally nice and cool and not strung out on dope so that's a big plus i almost feel like i'm i've stepped back in time it's a shame that there's not much out here aside from corn so anyway i'm heading a little south of chicago and get some deep dish pizza there was something really special about riding through these vast expanses of cornfields a feeling of being back home somehow maybe it was the friendliness of the people who tended these fields or simply the zen of being deep into a journey miles from anywhere either way i wished it would last forever it was noon when i reached illini state park and since the pizza joint didn't open until four i headed across the illinois river to marseilles to see about another chicago specialty the italian beef sandwich i knew i was going to be consuming some major calories today so i made camp and hiked over to town i've been so bored for the past couple years because i keep going to the same places but just to be exploring something you know somewhere i've never been is just awesome so this is a well-earned and welcome cheat day I've been pretty good on my diet except for yesterday with the skyline chili but you know... i guess about an hour and a half outside of chicago this is a place called bobaluks italian beef and hot dogs and pizza and stuff already seeing a lot of the obvious importance of sports in this part of the country so delicious looking cannoli italian beef smells like beef broth never tried one of these but a buddy of mine from chicago raves about them and always complains he can't get one where he lives take care buddy thank you pretty cool city because you got all the good culture from like the big city but it's a small town more laid back people more friendly nice little campsite in the great state of illinois i got all this nice canopy up there outside of a little town called marseille or marseilles depending on who you ask so i went up and got an italian beef which is a chicago specialty that i'd never tried it was to me a little bit like a philly cheesesteak without the cheese but the spice mixture was good i'd like to try some other examples just so i can know what's a good italian beef so i've been looking forward to this for days although i'm not in chicago and to get true chicago deep dish one has to travel into chicago i ain't traveling into chicago because i really don't like driving through crazy cities like that even though i do apparently there's a pizzeria just about a mile or two up the road that is supposed to be the best example of chicago deep dish pizza that's not in the city of chicago so this is sam's pizza let's go all righty let's see what we got here pretty convenient this place is right across the bridge over that way sam's pizza it's got a special type of box for deep dish looks pretty good this is very good a very respectable pizza it's not in the traditional style of the chicago deep dish in which you have the cheese the ingredients and then the tomato sauce on top so it's a little different they sort of varied a little bit from the tradition but the flavor of the crust is awesome it's it's very good pizza a lot of pizzaiolos or pizza makers will actually use a certain proportion of cake flour which is extremely fine extremely soft i just noticed as i'm eating this it has a very sort of a light almost cake-like consistency the italian sausage that was used for that pizza was of extremely high quality you could taste the fennel seed which is a key ingredient in italian sausage tasted like it was made fresh back home in virginia the stuff that we get is from the grocery store it's in lynx and it's just not the same at all so hanging out here and lo and behold there's another biker what's your name brother jake okay so jake is on a a triumph explorer over there correct yep yep cool bike i might walk over there and take a look at it so where what's your story man you've been on the road for two years yeah two years i'm originally from maryland okay i've just been traveling around the country been to 42 different states 32 on that bike i i test video games for a living for work and just live out of my tent that's perfect man you save so much money oh yeah when you when you live like this you gotta figure rents 600 to 1200 yeah depending on where you're at and i'm not spending that much money out here 10 bucks and even some campgrounds get crazy man i don't typically do the campground thing unless unless i can find one like this yeah that's for like 10 bucks a night I'm riding into wisconsin tomorrow okay i was there last month for a little bit and then for like two nights this month did you find anywhere like this out there cheap so just south of la crosse if you're ever that way yeah there was a scenic overlook with a really nice free site awesome i actually have everything to do all change which i'm actually gonna be doing one tomorrow cool you find an auto parts store yeah yeah i'll just put up on the center stand do it right there in the parking lot that's good let them recycle find you probably already know this but if you can find and dig around in the trash and find an empty oil jug oh yeah and just cut a hole in it you make your own oil pan you already know that oh yeah two years on the road you pick up stuff like that you know i i mean i love being on the road though it keeps the bad thoughts away that's for sure yeah i totally hear you on that man i find that one of the evils of our society i can't quite escape is the social media oh yeah i've been getting more onto instagram to try to like build up my following on instagram so i can try to get some sponsors or something like that yeah what's your what's your instagram it's nomad husky rides okay nomad husky rides yeah all right i will i'll have that on the video whatever you google ends up in the reel it seems like so i've got videos of these chinese guys yeah doing all these crazy motor rebuilds and i can't stop watching i just keep and i'm like man i've been doing this for like an hour yeah and i had no idea there was actually trees in illinois i thought it was all corn fields but this is almost reminds me of back home you know they got hills yeah so actually two years ago the first time i rode through here i stayed in wynette illinois had a crazy night oh yeah yeah ended up in an abandoned building just like wrecking [ __ ] with some locals it was like a crazy night all right yeah i wouldn't want to do a valve adjustment on that yeah yeah just to take off the the tank and everything just a pain in the ass oh yeah you gotta take the plastics off yep yeah take off like three of these there's like three different things connected you gotta take that off yeah man i bet it rides like a dream though yeah yeah i was stuck in montana for two months because my drive shaft broke on me last year it broke yeah the u-joint completely just while i was going 90 miles an hour it was terrifying the u-joint being like in there yeah yeah the fork seals gone out on there oh really three of them gone out oh [ __ ] so the first time it was like this left one that went out yeah the shop wanted 500 to do it i went on ebay and bought two new ones or well used ones for like 200 bucks yeah and then that they both end up going up so these are got the inverted forks yeah yeah i wonder if that has something to do with it well it definitely has something to do with the fluid completely running out of them i can see that yeah this is jb welded this is jb welded i like it man yeah my buddy of mine's got an old road glide that's basically held together with jb weld and zip ties yup yup there's a zip tie last year i was on the trail and rock hit my my cake kickstand sensor so over here it's just all taped up with some electrical tape so my bike will run with all the time with the kickstand right here okay yeah all right so me and jake are out here talking we're discussing the criteria as far as like saying that i've been to another state because sometimes i feel guilty because i feel like okay i just rode through a state for 30 minutes and now i check it off my list but i feel like i really haven't been there so what constitutes going to another state or riding through another state you know that's the question but jake has probably the best answer i've ever heard so what's that? so like for me i haven't been to a state unless i've peed in that state whether i'm in an airport just in a layover as long as i pee in that airport i've been to that state you've been there you've marked your territory yeah exactly i love it so i'm just gonna whenever i'm at to put my conscience at rest if i start feeling guilty oh i'm just riding through this state for 30 minutes or whatever i'm going to make damn sure that i pee yeah in that state before moving on one time i was just riding along the ohio turnpike okay right below michigan i got off the turnpike paid like five dollars to get off the turnpike right there just to go into michigan so i could pee and then get back on the turnpike and kept going just say i've been to michigan all right so finally got enough of a break in the weather i'm heading north to wisconsin west across the southern part of minnesota and making some miles i headed north into wisconsin towards the spot that jake had told me about passing through the city of madison and into amish country it was interesting that these country roads were all numbered alphabetically a b c etc riding through the lush green hills i could have almost sworn i was back home in southwest virginia i made a point to slow way down when passing one of the many horse-drawn carriages you see in these parts clearly i was in amish country i have a real soft spot for these people and find a lot of merit in their chosen lifestyle they've mostly eschewed technology in favor of a much more simple down to the roots existence and when it comes to hard work they're tough as nails i have a theory that if an apocalyptic event occurs it's these folks who stand the best chance of surviving would i like to live like this you ask probably not so much i get bored too easy for one and i really like riding motorcycles and making videos i do however deeply respect these people and their values what's more every time i've interacted with them i've been greeted by warm smiles and kind words i don't know if this is a natural formation right here in this rock but this is all rock walls all the way around but it's kind of curious there's a train track going that way along the river there's camp over there that is one hell of a river not sure where it starts i think in maybe minnesota camps down that way under that tree here's another one of these sort of bowl shaped depressions it looks natural to me i don't think they blasted it out would have been a hell of a lot of rock to carry off but it is curious got some nice tree cover to keep me keep the dew off everything tonight hopefully it doesn't rain but there's a bird's nest hanging down i am in western wisconsin and it's more mountainous than i thought it would be you know if you blindfolded me and dropped me here i would almost think i was back home in the appalachian mountains my misconceptions of the place completely went out the window when i saw that did about 300 miles today a little tired so i'm getting caught up on my fluids water and stuff and just relaxing and getting ready to sit down with my rock table and do some work on the computer see you in the morning after an almost unbearably humid evening beside the mighty mississippi i headed across minnesota towards mitchell south dakota about to make my way across the great state of minnesota i got about 675 miles to sturgis pretty foggy out i got my big jacket on just sitting here getting coffeed up so i can tackle this journey riding across southern minnesota now i've ridden a couple hundred miles it's about 10 a.m this is how i dry all my stuff out if i can't dry it out in the morning if i may stay in a hotel tonight because there's a heat wave coming through already now that i'm out of the mountains the temperature just absolutely skyrocketed this is one of the hottest places i've ever been hotter than you know mazatlan mexico in the middle of summer bikes doing good super comfortable and not too windy so i'm gonna try to put down some miles for years i wanted to see the legendary corn palace in mitchell south dakota and since it was on the way this seemed like as good a time as any with a facade made entirely out of corn husks and cobs it stands as a proud celebration to south dakota's corn farming roots unfortunately there was a barely audible song under copyright playing in the background so rather than fork over a hundred percent of the advertising proceeds of this video to the overzealous holder of said copyright i've chosen to remove the audio entirely and fill up the space by talking absolute nonsense which is what i do in most of my videos so really nothing has changed with the temperature climbing over 100 degrees i sought out the cheapest hotel i could find and prepared to cool down for the night as soon as i pulled in a girl from an adjacent building began mumbling something out the window she was tweaking hard and incoherent a man appeared and tried to start a conversation but i could only understand a little of what he was saying i was too stupid to pick up on it at the time but in retrospect they had been complimenting my bike and throwing out subtle hints that if i liked to party i should come upstairs the whole place had a really nasty seedy vibe i moved my bike under these steps and worked in the ac the weather forecast the next day called for temperatures in excess of 105 degrees i woke at the ass crack of dawn and headed across the wide open plains just around chamberlain across the mighty missouri river where lewis and clark had once paddled sailed and pulled their boats in their famous expedition to the pacific it was all going well until they had to spend a freezing winter in north dakota with frostbite being common among the men including parts of the anatomy where a man would least like it when spring finally came the resulting deer and buffalo were almost unfit to eat due to having nearly used up all their fat stores over the winter they continued to the source of the missouri and pressed on westward through the rocky mountains which is where things really got rough but that's a story for another video as soon as you enter south dakota you'll start seeing giant billboards for wall drug a sort of drugstore slash tourist trap that went completely out of control i'd intentionally skipped breakfast just so i could eat here and with the temperature already about 103 it was time to stop so this is a place that to me didn't quite live up to the hype it really ended up being a tourist trap you know take that for what it is they wanted to charge me something like 15 bucks for three eggs and a side of bacon so i said yeah all right yeah see ya so anyhow i'm just sitting here drinking the one thing on the menu that i can afford which is a five cent cup of coffee there was certainly a lot of cool stuff to see at this place but i was already sunburned hungry and cranky from the ride if you're interested i'd suggest visiting wall drug on a full stomach well you know i came here really wanting to enjoy the place i was really excited hadn't been here before but you know if you look at my life this is pretty much all i have so it's not that i'm anti-consumerism but a place like this doesn't necessarily speak to a lot of my needs the heat was absolutely downright rude at this point with the addition of 50 mile per hour wind gusts coming from my left as if riding into a blow dryer with a forceful and unpredictable crosswind even though i was almost to the black hills this section was among the most challenging of my journey wow it is oppressively hot and windy out here so i'm heading into that theater to watch a movie and cool off for a couple hours those are the black hills over that way i got a hamburger steak smothered in mushroom gravy from the diner down the road and stayed in the movie theater for the next couple hours the film was pretty forgettable a movie about a kid trapped in a psycho's basement who's forced to confront his fears to survive it was still blistering hot when i headed to sturgis being on the road you live a lot of life within a short amount of time over the past week i'd ridden hiked got muddy found zen in the cornfields of illinois ate some delicious chicago style pizza met another fellow traveler avoided tourist traps and nearly roasted to death in a south dakota heat wave my journey was now complete
2022-08-03 00:49
