My wife bought me a retractable tether for the tour pak lid. When I saw the skinny cable on it I decided not to use it for its intended purpose. I attached a piece of leather to it strap it to my belt and it now holds my keys and fob. Spare fob on a dog tag chain around my neck. Works for me. Maybe it'll work for you.

 

The spare is fob supposed to ride in the pouch in the tour pack. lol

 

Oh my he went there

 

The New Holiday Inn next to the Pizza Ranch is a really nice place. We spent a night there last year on way though and one night this year during the rally..they even shuttle you around during rally...

pizza ranch chicken....perfect dinner after a day in the sun...

 

Wow Bob, you sure can tell a story. I am really enjoying this. And as I live in SD and have traveled all the places you are talking about I can actually picture it all in my head which makes it all the better.

On the topic of the fob. I put one in my pocket, where it stays for the entirety of my ride. I keep the other in the pouch in the tourpak. It gets taken out at stops and I lock everything. When I return, I unlock and then deposit it back in the pouch. My wife is good about losing keys so she doesn't get the spare.

 

Lol......yeah. But 99.9% of the folks here take it as the joke it was intended to be.

That's the one. I've stayed there a number of times. Nice folks. And hell yeah to Pizza Ranch. I love their chicken and it's all you can eat. Kinda rough on the waistline, but whatever.

I appreciate the kind words. I think that's part of what we like about ride reports - hearing another perspective on things we've done. The other thing is learning about places we haven't been. I always appreciate the efforts of those who can give me advice on places I would like to visit.

As far as losing things - I'm notorious for it. Pretty much every ride report I do has an instance of me losing something. Our 13 state ride report has me losing my wallet and having to ride for 3 hours to retrieve it while poor Cheryl sat in a Starbucks in Eureka California.

Here's the link if you're bored - https://www.hdforums.com/forum/road-...000-miles.html

 

Day 3 - A day of surprises. Some good.....some not as much.

We got up early to drop the bike of in Rapid City at Black Hills HD. As mentioned, I had hoped to drop it off the night before, but when I told them I might get there right at 6 the girl on the phone said they wouldn't be there. Huh? You close at 6 and you'll be gone before that? "Yeah....we wrap things up and everyone leaves right at 6." I guess I couldn't argue with that. But I'm used to shops by me saying they'll be around anyway so no big deal. I guess when the bell rings the bull leaves the gate at Black Hills. So we made the trip back to Rapid City from Sturgis, which is always farther than I think it is. In my head it's a ten minute ride. The reality is it's 30 minutes. Still not far, especially considering the miles we log. But still.....it just feels farther away.

Cheryl does a great job of keeping up with my 90 MPH morning dash (so yeah, maybe 25 minutes) following in the rented Toyota Highlander, and she does an even better job of protecting my *** from stupid drivers. Gotta love that girl! Not that there was any particular incident...just the general stupidity of the motorized public that we as riders are all too familiar with. As I recall there was at least two incidents where she shoo'd tailgaters off me. Nothing new there. She was right with me when we took the exit for Black Hills. It was at the stop light that I felt my horn banging off my knee. How the heck did that happen? It was just dangling there by the wires. So I gingerly rode to the parking lot and shut her down - adding the horn to my list.

The service department wasn't too busy and I was able to check the bike in right away. I had the scheduled service to perform, the missing key fob, and now the horn. They advised me that they could do the fob, but in programming it, there was a 50/50 chance of that it would nullify the fob I had at home. Apparently there are two matches to the bike and not knowing which one I lost, chances are (50/50) that they would overwrite the one I had at home. In hindsight I should have said no, because I still wouldn't have a key to lock the bags, and I got pretty good at the turn signal start thing. But stupidly I said go ahead (for $85).

We hopped in the Toyota and headed for Sturgis. I called the client who informed me that they didn't really need anymore training, so I was off the hook until Go Live on Monday. What a shame. Now we had to find something to do all day. Of all the rotten luck. So totally dejected, and not having a motorcycle to ride, we had no choice but to rent an UTV.

I know this is a Harley forum, and I'm doing a ride report, so I'll keep Day 3 to a minimum. But seriously, if you get to Sturgis not during the rally, consider going for a trail ride. It's a shitton of fun. The Indian dealership actually rents them, among other Polaris products. We have a two up Polaris ATV, so we decided to try one of the big UTVs. And the cool thing about riding ATVs/UTVs in SD and WY - they are street legal. So we basically used it as our car in town when not trail riding.

But obviously, one needs to know where to ride. The "helpful" people at the rental place told us there was some trails about 50 miles down the road. WTF? Fifty miles? Didn't sound like a ton of fun but we had nothing to do. So we took the UTV back to the hotel and prepared to go for a ride. Fortunately, "Bob" who is the maintenance guy at the HIExpress was outside when we pulled up. He asked where we were headed, and when we told him, he had this "WTF?" look on his face (yes, a common theme). He told us he could direct us to trails less than 2 miles away. He tried to direct me as best he could, but he could read the "I have no idea what you are talking about" look on my face and said "Ok....just follow me." He went inside, told them he was leaving, and we followed him. Not to the trail, but to his house. He took us inside, laid out maps, told us where to go, and then had us follow him to the trailhead. Now that's some hospitality right there!

So now I'll post up some pics with descriptions just to give you an idea of what's available in the Black Hills off-road -

Here's the trailhead Bob led us to -



The trail runs right behind (to the south) of Sturgis and heads straight into the hills -



We stopped at a spot Bob told us about where he and his friends gathered to spread the ashes of a friend they lost. It was a nice spot with a good view (behind Cheryl) -



I let Cheryl take the wheel at this point -



Here she is at the helm at another lookout -



Riding on the blacktop in the black Hills is spectacular. But the views are pretty nice from the unpaved roads as well -



We rode into a small town that's not even on Google Maps, can't recall the name -





We spent about half a day roaming around the Black Hills off-road. The terrain varied from sedate to downright treacherous. We didn't see too much wildlife, probably because of the noise the UTV made. We did come across a bunch of Longhorns milling around. We slowly picked through the herd and went on our merry way. In the late afternoon it started to drizzle a bit, which was refreshing considering temps were in the upper 90s. We made our way back into town just before the heavy stuff started.



The ATV got a nice wash out in the parking lot. Unfortunately this particular storm started a significant wlldfire nearby. More on that later.

To be continued.......

 

I'm pretty sure "Bob" is the shuttle guy during the rally...good dude

 

That would make sense. Yeah....definitely a great guy.

 

Well Bob, good to see you at it again. I really enjoy reading your stories. And now that I've been to Sturgis (the last two years), I can envision right where your at.

I've taken part of that section of hwy 44 both years on my way home from Sturgis. Was thinking your screwed when you were looking for gas because I know there is not much out there in that area. I couldn't think of any in the area you where you got it. had to look at google maps and realized that I always turn south there at that town and therefore really miss the town and didn't realize there was a gas station.