800-Mile Road-Trip to Sturgis! 1938 Harley vs. 1938 Indian | Common Tread XP

And we got it! So that's probably how we would have kicked off a CTXP episode if it was 1938 we were headed to the very first Sturgis motorcycle rally. But it's 2025 and it's the 85th edition of Sturgis. So to honor the world's largest motorcycle rally turning nearly 100 years old we thought it'd be fun to recreate what it might have been like to ride to the very first one. And to do that I will be aboard a 1938 Harley-Davidson Big Twin Flathead. And Zach is gonna be on a 38 Indian Chief. And our goal is to travel from here in historic Eureka, Utah more than 800 miles to Sturgis, South Dakota in time for the rally. Now to keep things period correct we will be navigating with maps made from paper. In 1938 our cell phones have been locked away, we have a saddlebag full of tinned fish, and wool blankets for sleeping. In other words, no GPS, no internet, no fancy camping stuff. And no rear suspension either. That's true. So we're liable to be a little bit shorter and a whole lot dirtier when we hopefully make it to Sturgis, South Dakota for the biggest motorcycle meetup in the world. Should be easy enough right? All we got to do is start them up and go. Yeah. How do we start them up again? It's very unfamiliar. Right. It's actually a lot harder to start them up and go than usual. I'll go first. Okay. Just like slight small malfunction, just a really small one. This is pretty sh**ty timing. Do you want to try this? Our goal was to ride these machines all the way to Sturgis. But these geriatric ponies are nothing like the polite push-button bikes we know today. There are hand shifters, foot clutches, and in the case of the Indian, a throttle on the left side. Not to mention the elaborate startup procedure. Alright I got to do my super secret handshake on this era Harley. That means throttle goes wide open. I actually turned this grip to, this is ignition timing, which needs to go back. Make sure I'm in neutral. Clutch down here's on. Choke fuel's on. Key is off because I need to prime it. Only halfway through your procedure too. No it's, okay, it's prime kick. Now it's key on, throttle closed, and then open a little bit. And, whoop, throttle's open. Here we go, hmm. Yeah! Alright, I got left hand throttle, crack, back, front brake. Nice! Okay buddy, after you. Oh wait, hang on. Oh yes. Not ready to ride until the goggles have been deployed. Yes indeed. I'm going to push my heel down to disengage the clutch. Nice. I'm not sure if it's actually first or not. I have no confirmation. And then it's tow to go. Oh he's off! I'm off, I'm off, I'm going! Wow that was abrupt. Alright I got to go front brake. I got to go clutch. I got to go shift with my left hand first gear. Left hand throttle. We're merging. Oh god, oh gosh. Oh yeah, we're off baby. I'm off. I'm going for second gear. I got to shift up as well. It means I got to heel disengage, shift with my left hand, tow to gauge, and there we go. This is so rad. What a weird, awkward layout of controls that are formerly familiar, but totally unfamiliar and out there in different locations. The only thing that's a sort of quasi normal for me is I got a front brake on the right hand and I got rear brake on the right foot. Otherwise everything's cattywampus. We got a lot to learn dude. It's really hard to imagine that at any point this will feel comfortable and natural, but I imagine it will with time. And given the fact that we've got the better part of a week and the better part of 900 miles to figure it out. Yeah buddy, here we go. You look great by the way, Zach. You look fantastic. Oh why, thank you. Sturgis, here we come. To keep things easy on day one, we aim for a campground a mere 100 miles away. We figured that was an attainable goal while we familiarized ourselves with road tripping on 85 year old bikes and all that comes with it. Yo dude, there's something dangling off your rear wheel. There's like a string or something going to the back wheel. A belt? Yep. That's gonna be a problem. I'm gonna pull over up here. Okay. Zach's chief was dangling this little belt here which we're pretty sure, we're not super familiar with this bike, we're pretty sure this is for the Magneto which is what gives electricity back into the battery. But yeah, the Magneto itself kind of walked out of its mount and threw the belt off and now the belt is very much junk. So we're gonna try and replace it. Hopefully this won't take too much time to fix. Yeah and to be fair, the guy that we are borrowing the bikes from said that on road trips like this, like the first couple days, you're gonna encounter a lot of trouble, you're gonna suss out your issues and then it should be smooth sailing for 85 year old motorcycles. Like something's probably gonna break. These are all original tools which is pretty flippin cool. Parts for these old machines can be precious and rare, but luckily the Magneto belt was not one of them. But it was still a clumsy job for rookies and it ultimately took more than an hour to swap the belt, remount the Magneto, and get everything lined up properly. So this is all back in place now. Eric just kicked it over. It's turning which means the engine will turn the Magneto and provide electricity for the battery. So now we're just gonna cover it up. We got a belt back on the bike. You've left a bunch of oil here. Yeah, if we stay here any longer I'm gonna have to add oil to my engine so we need to hit the road. You know every road trip has to have its issue, its mechanical trouble or challenge, so you know hopefully we got it out of the way or like right out of the gate. Yes, nice easy fix. 20 miles in, shake the rust off, you know. Uh-oh, she's fully dead. What happened? Another 14 or 20 miles on, we're working on the other old bike. Well each one need to have an issue on day one. So yeah, Harley just doesn't want the Indian to feel bad. Correct. And then we'll be fine. Just take this off? Yeah. Okay, quite a few loose fittings under here. Aha! Well, I love simple fixes. So loose connection. All right. Okay, seriously this time, we were back on the road and ready to make some miles. And since we were aiming to make this entire trip accurate to the era, we were sticking to routes that would have existed way back when. At least, theoretically. According to the map, this road was here in 1938, but I bet it didn't look like this, like a four-lane highway, agreed? Yeah, probably a lot narrower. Our motorcycles have two gas tanks, a left and a right, and the bikes are good for about a hundred miles range or so. I've already exhausted my left and switched over to my right, so probably a good time to start looking for some gas. Yes, we should be to a gas station in about, let's see, six miles. So that'd be a good place to stop. I'd rather play it safe than sorry this early in a trip. We're gonna have to hope that they take paper money here. Silver dollars, right? Silver dollars. Buffalo nickels. 40 on pump three. I mean, the two-tank thing is pretty cool. I think that's just kind of a fun novelty. Instead of like flipping over to reserve, you're like, I have a whole separate gas tank. While we filled our bikes, the crew drove ahead to grab some shots of us riding by, which was initially a good idea. Situation report, we are at Soldier Summit still. We're supposed to be catching up to the camera crew to do blow-bys, but instead Dendian didn't start. We got no way to communicate with the team either because they have our cell phones. Yeah, that's the other tricky thing here. Even if we go in and use the phones they have at this gas station, I don't know what everyone's phone number is because I'm a millennial. So he's taking the battery apart. Another adventure, everybody. Every time this box gets opened, the person who opened it gets oily hands. Oh, hey, look who it is. Oh, about time you guys came back for us. We determined it was a dead battery. Yes. We don't know why the battery died, but we think it's because it was being held in this case behind the engine. It got really hot and batteries don't like getting really hot. And so it just like kind of roached the battery. And that was why the bike wouldn't start. We tried to leave the gas station. Yeah. And we do have a spare because that was something we were instructed to do on these old bikes. And we think the solution is going to be, we're going to jettison the stock battery box because it's too insulative and we're going to get the battery more air. It's made of post 1938 plastic. Yeah. Plus, yeah, it's a reproduction. We don't want that on our bike anyway. And then we're just going to like shim the battery in there with wood and bits so that it gets more airflow. And then we're going to cross our fingers because if this battery dies, that suggests there is a larger, more complicated problem that we're probably not going to be able to fix beneath the overhang of a Chevron gas station. Breaking up some pallet slats to provide shims. It's not quite enough. If you have a problem in life, make sure you check the trash for a solution. Nice. There we go. Hell yeah, brother. That's one for two, man. Let's see. Wish me luck. Beautiful as the scenery was, the reality of our trip was starting to set in. It took us all day to cover our 100 miles and there was still a very long way to go. All right, bidet. 20 miles of climbing up into the hills and here it is. A Ventican campground. Look at these birch trees. This is gorgeous. Seriously. How about this one? This is nice and big. I like it. Oh geez. Oh wow. Good save. Almost the very last thing you did on day one. If you're road tripping for the first ever Sturgis rally, you might camp in the woods along the way and you might use a stove similar to this. This is our little camp kitchen and we're heating up baked beans. Cracked open this can of tuna fizz with this can opener, which I've never used before, but it actually worked pretty well. It's like Tom and Jerry style, right? And then some wasa crackers. I don't know if you guys had crunchy enough parents to eat these, but it says right under there since 1919. Cheers. Cheers. Fish flesh on a cracker. Hey, welcome to MTV Cribs. This is my crib. This is the wax cotton and wool bedroll on which I slept and this is the now very dirty wool blanket and this is my luggage. A pillowcase with one extra t-shirt, one extra pair of underwear, a spare sweater and an extra pair of socks that I balled up and put under my skull. And then when it started raining, I moved myself to one side of this. I balled myself up like a little mummy so that the wax cotton was faced outward toward the water falling from the sky. It's really, it's the perfect system. Honestly, it doesn't take up much room on a motorcycle. It's also not very comfortable. Chunk of sweetness. Chunk of sweetness. It's food. So we are here. This is our campsite and we're going to go north on what used to be the 33, but it's now the 191 up to Duchesne and we will head east through Mighton, Roosevelt, Bernal, the town of Dinosaur and then later today we will cross over into Colorado from the Colorado border out toward Steamboat Springs. There's nothing. There's really not much. There's nothing. Hopefully, you know, there will be some signs of civilization that have cropped up in the past 85 years. Yep. The goal is to get to the town of Maybell which hopefully will provide a good campsite. So 2x what we did yesterday. Yes. And that took us all day. But working the kinks out of the bikes, we are going to go over them this morning, do some maintenance, check some nuts and bolts, check oil, all that to hopefully ensure that they're ready for the big day. It's pretty remarkable how much work you need to do to keep these old bikes on the road. You have to tighten anything that can be tightened, grease anything that can be greased, and add an embarrassing amount of oil. It's tedious, but it makes you grateful for the things you would normally take for granted like the sound of a running engine. Impressive. First kick. Yeah, first kick. That's remarkable. Off we go. All right. All the washboard on this road is making me glad that we did all that maintenance. When it goes over bumps, it sounds like a pillowcase full of pots and pans. Just like all this clattering and metal jangling around. It is fun to ride them on dirt though. It's like another little kind of time machine moment, right? Like this is probably how a lot of people traveled on these things. It's kind of fun. Yeah. Presumably a lot less pavement. 38. Okey dokey. All right. Off we go. Colorado, here we come. Skipping modern highways meant our long trip was even longer, but there's something to be said for riding these bikes on the kind of roads they were designed to explore. And best of all is the way that quiet back roads leads you to towns from another time. All right. Marion's Variety. Founded 1933, and we don't really know much else about it, I don't think, do we? Just the fact that it would have been here on this very same road had we been riding to Sturgis in 1938, which makes it a valid place to stop for lunch so we don't have to eat out of cans or paper bags. I don't know if you can tell, but we're very excited having slept on the ground and eating spam and tuna out of a can. Oh, look at this place. Heck yeah. I heard the barbecue burger is really good here. We're famous. Okay. I'll just do a standard double cheeseburger, please. You like tomato and onion? Yes, please. Okay. What leaks more, your Harley or your burger? I think they're equivalent. Both make a mess anywhere they go. I mean, it's pretty cool to think that someone might have been sitting here 85 years ago in the same building eating something similar. It's like my vehicle may have hemorrhaged while we were at lunch. Between the good food and lack of mechanical issues, day two was turning into a huge success. By early afternoon, we had crossed into Colorado and already covered a couple hundred miles. We had made so much progress, in fact, that we arrived at our camping destination well ahead of schedule. There was only one problem. There's clearly weather on the horizon, and we're contemplating whether or not to push on or camp here in this quaint little prairie town because it's got campsites, so it's a bit of a dilemma. What's your gut tell you, buddy? I don't know. I'm kind of short-sighted sometimes. My gut tells me to push on. If we camp here, we get rained on, whereas if we ride on, we ride through rain, and then we camp where it's dry, potentially. You know what? At that last stop, I found a quarter. Should we flip it? Heads, we carry on. Tails, we get cozy here in Maybell and wash our feet in a river. Heads, my friend. Heads it is. It's sprinkled on us, but now it's properly raining just as the sun is going down. We dodged it for like 30 miles, dude. Yeah, but now I'm worried there's not going to be enough daylight left to actually dry us out. This is bad timing, and we're only like 10 miles from where we're hoping to camp. Fingers crossed for some shelter, too. Oh my god, that would be amazing. Oh man, these big drops. I don't like them. Yeah, they really hurt. We'd hoped an extra 50 miles would get us beyond the reach of storm clouds, but we never fully escaped the threat of bad weather. Regardless, we were ready to be off the bikes and grateful for some amount of shelter. Here we go. Instant bed, kind of. Audience, we hope you, after watching this episode, enjoy your hopefully warm bed and dry house and just recognize that when you watch our adventures and you think, man, that looks awesome, that right now, it's not awesome. And if you're a child, get a degree. Yeah, go to school. Don't end up like this. Too old for this. We made it through the night, thankfully. Mercifully, it did not rain anymore. We have clear skies above us. We got a fire going because it's actually quite cold. Got a coffee pot going over there. Here's Zachary. He wakes from his slumbers. We're going to dive in to tune up the bikes, do all the normal maintenance so that we can hit the road because we have a lot of distance to cover. And yeah, hopefully headed toward a city with a historic hotel where we can treat ourselves to a real bed because this, this was not comfortable. But I'm grateful it's morning and I'm looking forward to riding. Oh, beautiful. Wow. First kick, first kick. It's amazing. All right, Zach, it's another day on the road and I got to apologize for being in kind of a sour mood as we went to bed last night. But ultimately, I'm grateful it didn't rain on us and it's not raining now. So, you know, it's looking good. All's well that ends well. We do have an awesome day on the road potentially going all the way through the Rocky Mountains, through Steamboat Springs, through a pass of nearly 10,000 feet and hopefully ending up in the great state of Wyoming. So I'm looking forward to it, but it's going to be a tough day on the road. And therefore, I am also grateful we logged those extra miles because it's a lot less stressful today. And today's kind of a cool day because at some point we will be halfway on our journey. And if we reach Laramie, we have identified lodging that existed in the 30s, which means Zach and I may actually get to sleep in a bed tonight instead of compacted gravel, which I think we can both agree is going to be a big upgrade. In the meantime, we got more beautiful plains and rolling hills to ride through before we start climbing to the Rockies. Onward! Our route for the day would take us through the famous ski town of Steamboat Springs and the nearly 10,000 foot Rabbit Ears Pass. A beautiful place to ride, but hard work for Roosevelt-era machines. Yeehaw, that's a steep climb. This is punishing travel for 85-year-old motorcycles though. Every so often you're supposed to close the throttle to help suck oil back into the top end, so rolling off the throttle while going uphill is obviously not great for momentum. As with most things with these bikes, lots to think about. Lots more to think about than on regular motorcycles. Part of what Zach and I enjoy about riding motorcycles is how engaging they are, and this is easily the most engaging motorcycle I've ever ridden because it requires so much coordination, and you literally have more controls than you do on a standard bike, so it's a new juggling act for me. The bikes are struggling mightily. We are really high up, and this bike will barely pull forth. It's missing, it's running really poorly, it's sucking a lot of gas. Yeah, we're tired and probably a little bit hungry. After filling our bellies with another period-correct meal, we headed back out for the final 60-mile stretch to Laramie. While the bikes weren't happy riding at elevation, we figured we were nearly through the worst of it. Dude, this thing is struggling really bad. This doesn't seem like just elevation. It's gotten worse in the past couple of miles. Yeah, it's backfiring. I can see fire coming off the tailpipe. Wow. Pulling over. I feel good about pulling over in the grass, frankly, considering how hot this bike is. Bike is running like proper garbage right now. I just had to downshift from fourth to third to second to get up this last hill, and it was pretty abrupt. Yeah. You said it seems like it's running on one cylinder. Yeah, it's not like the switch thing or any other crap we're dealing with, so I guess we can pull plugs and see if there's anything obvious. That's a good place to start. All right, get the toolkit going. I think if I was doing another one of these road trips on a vintage Harley, I would bring an EasyUp. Oh, geez, look at that. Oh, wow. Thing went for a bath. Yeah, that's a pretty obvious sign there. We got a very wet spark plug because it's not firing. Front cylinder is not doing its job, so we got a single cylinder. Now we got to figure out why. I don't know why that would be loose, but none of the other ones are. It's a push rod, right? Yeah. That's controlling the valves. Oh, geez. That would have tension on it if the spring was intact. Right. That's a bummer, man. We have discovered that there's a broken valve, it seems which is very important. Yeah, which is why the one cylinder wasn't running, and we cannot continue forward with it as is because if we try and run on one cylinder, we're going to damage the rear cylinder because the parts are still flailing around. Walden is five miles behind us. It's a very, very small town. You have rope, so tow your bro back to town, Zach. Yeah, this is quite literally one step back. This stuff hits the fan pretty frequently in this show mechanically, but I will honestly say that I've never felt as helpless and defeated as right now because we're working on a motorcycle that is so old and precious and unfamiliar to us, and so out in the middle of nowhere. I think what we should maybe do is get going, kick down the hill a little bit. The standard operation for towing with a rope is to start tension, but you're just worried about the clutch. Yes. Okay. This is higher stakes than I thought I was going to face with a left-hand throttle and a foot clutch and a right-hand shift. Dog paddle. Oh boy, you're a heavy bike. Let's push. Okay, here it goes. Okay, gently as G can because we got some slack to deal with right now. Okay, we're rolling. Are we going? We're going. This is about as fast as I'm comfortable with, to be honest. Okay, you got rear brake on? I got rear brake on, and every time it pulls, it pulls me hard to the left. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Oh, yeah. You okay? Yeah. Oh God, it's so sketchy. This could be a long couple miles. Oh my gosh. Our nerves were frayed and our hopes of making it to Sturgis were dimming. We were also running out of daylight and options. By the time we got back to town, everything was closed, and our best hope for a well-lit workshop looked suspiciously like a motel room. The Harley is currently in the operating room because it is dead, and so are our dreams of 1938 and of getting to Sturgis. This bike is terminal. The valve spring, it cannot run with the valve spring being broken, so we are fully embracing the present in order to get this motorcycle fixed so that we can get back on the road. In other words, we've pulled out all the stops of the internet and our production team and that kind of thing, and we have tracked down parts, we think, but before the parts get here, we need to tear the bike down and get to the valve spring, which is kind of an involved process. Other than the electrical work that you've already watched us do, we're not really familiar with these bikes. Never worked in a Harley before in my life, as a matter of fact. It's gonna be a long night. There's your problem, son. This is the valve spring that is normally in one piece, and that is responsible for retaining this monster of a valve, which I have never seen one that big before in my entire life. It has got a little bit of a curvature problem. We're like halfway there. Halfway there figuratively? Figuratically. Literally with the bike and with our journey. Right, true. While we were working on the bike, a heroic member of our crew drove 400 miles round trip to pick up a valve and spring from a museum in Colorado Springs, but when he got back, we realized that one of the parts was wrong. So in the morning, we headed toward Denver, where we heard there was a chance we'd find what we needed in another motorcycle museum. After an hour in the van, we got a call from the crew saying they had definitely found a valve in Laramie, 65 miles in the opposite direction. So we flipped around, and a couple of hours later, we finally had the valve we needed. Unfortunately, when we finally got back to Walden, we were asked to remove our motorcycle from the motel room. Y'all be safe. Thank you. Get her running. Yeah, hopefully you're gonna hear a kickover and start later today. We'll do a parade lap if we do. We'll look for you. Bye. Pretty friendly considering we turned the motel room into a workshop. Lucky for us, the hotel also had an actual workshop, and despite our clear lack of judgment and character, they let us set up across the street in a far more appropriate space. Finally, we had the parts we needed, room to wrench, and a very small chance that we could still get the bike running in time to make it to the rally. All right, choke. Fuel goes on. I'm in neutral. Clutch is engaged. Ignition timing is turned down. I feel good. I feel good. I feel cautiously optimistic. Just a little energy out into the world. Prime one. Prime two. Choke to one click. Follow up on that close. That's okay. That's okay. Take your time. Take your time, big guy. I should probably turn the key on. Come on, ULH. Oh my god. You're killing me here, man. Yeah. I feel so much better. Today was like all of that from yesterday afternoon until today. It was a pretty low moment. Nice work, man. Good job, dude. Yeah, buddy. I think it runs better than it did before, frankly. Who knows how long that valve was suffering in there? It is wonderful that the motorcycles work. However, their headlights do not work well, and as you can see, the sun is beginning to set, so we are not going to ride after dark. We burned a whole day working on these bikes, but we will freaking slog tomorrow and do our best to make it happen. I mean, what do we got? Three 60s to get to Sturgis? A lot more than our longest day so far. Two days into one, we're going to get up with the sun, if not a little before, and we are going to do the thing where we cross our fingers for ourselves, for the bikes, and for salvaging this whole adventure. Yes. Potentially a very long day, but potentially we get to Sturgis tomorrow, where we've always wanted to be. Brother. It is a lot colder than I want it to be. I'm wearing every piece of clothing I have. Yeah. Nice. First kick on both of them. Yeah, that's not bad. I am ready to freeze my butt off. Sturgis the best, baby. Off we go, buddy. Our bikes hopefully ready for a long journey. We got an early start. We got all day, but we got a lot of ground to cover. I'm going to third gear. I'm going to top gear. I got sunrise to my right. Beautiful. Mustache is waxed. I'm with my best buddy. I'm freezing cold, but life could be worse. I'm going to give it a honk. Yes. It was almost hard to believe we were back on the road, but our machines seemed willing to keep going as long as we were, which isn't to say it was all smooth sailing. The Indians started misfiring and needed its valves adjusted. The Harley's copper fuel line snapped. Wow, it actually broke. The Indian's pet cock started leaking. I see it puking gas. The Harley's headlight fell out. Well, that's too bad. And with each stop, we left a small puddle of oil memorializing our agony. Whenever someone says they want to ride a vintage bike, I'm always like, be careful, there are a lot of work. And this just takes it to the absolute extreme. I mean, multiple times a day, you're going to have to pull over to work on your bike. Despite it all, we made fixes, we made miles, and we made fixes again. But the problems were never ending. I throttled a little hard. Yeah, it doesn't do anything. I'm just opening the butterfly by fingers. Let's go to the gas station. Appears to be a problem with We have a mechanical issue. Can you imagine? The like pilgrimage is getting more concentrated. Yeah, man, we're getting close. It was almost impressive how many new and bizarre problems these old machines threw at us. This time, of all things, a busted throttle cable. We straightened things out and adjusted the throttle as best we could, praying to the vintage motorcycle gods that it would hold on long enough to make it the last 150 miles to Sturgis. Smoke, Zachary. A lot of hours, a lot of miles, a lot of breakdowns. And yeah, it's been it's been a heck of a ride. I've enjoyed it. But I'm ready to be done. I'm ready to get Sturgis. I'm excited to get Sturgis. Yeah, I'm excited too. I gotta say I'm honored and, you know, very impressed with these bikes. But I think they have taken some years off our lives. They've served their tour and so have we. Yes. OK, one last sprint, dude. We got a couple hours of daylight. We got less than an hour riding theoretically. Here we go. You may notice that I'm hunched forward with my left arm down in the engine cavity. That's because my throttle cable, which we repaired earlier, broke again. So I am operating the carburetor butterfly with my index finger. And your headlight fell off and your battery is dead. So you have a Camp Lantern battery charging your spark plugs. Good thing we don't have any traffic or traffic lights or pedestrians or anything like that. Holy **** this is sketchy. The stakes are pretty high at this point. Sturgis, baby. There it is. There it is. Population seven thousand and two. Since these boys are in town the rest of the year, this is just a quiet little country town. And this place over the course of two weeks sees over a half a million bikers come through. Are you suggesting that it's not going to be a quiet little town for me to roll through right now? We have one final gauntlet, which is to make it across town to the campsite on the other side, which is going to be sticky for me and even harder for you. Come on, dudes. Come on, guys. Let's go. A lot more stop signs. Oh my god, I'm not first. Come on. I'm waiting for you. Thanks. This bike's getting hot and my hands get hot. Energy and stamina. I can't. Otherwise I would. It's missing. A helpful citizen. All right. We made it through main drag of downtown Sturgis. We did it, buddy. You did it. A round of applause for everybody. How about that? No throttle cable. No headlight. No problem. There it is. Glencoe entrance. What's up, man? Thanks, buddy. This campground is the biggest campground I've ever been to. I mean, it's its own little city. It really is. Over here. Is it over? This is it. This is it. We made it. I can't believe you rode the last dozen miles with your hand stuff between the cylinders and no headlight with everyone shouting at you in downtown that you didn't have a headlight. Now that I'm on the other side of it, I could perhaps laugh with you, but my hand is too burnt and my brain is too fried to really appreciate what was just achieved, but we did make it. So we're here. We get to unfurl our bedrolls and collect ourselves and relax for once because that was a heck of a lot of riding. The bikes were epic. You, sir, are stud. I think I did all right as well. Likewise. At least we got some nice soft South Dakota grass to unfurl our bedrolls. Might be the best night's sleep we have outside. I'm as tired as I've been on this trip, that's for sure. The scene that greeted us was a far cry from what we would have encountered at the original Black Hills Rally in 1938. What started as a motorcycle riding competition with nine participants has morphed into a city-sized carnival that's as much about people watching as it is bike riding. There are still some glimmers of the original rally, with riding competitions for old bikes and new bikes alike, but more than anything else, being there in person was a reminder that ours was just one of the millions of road trips that have taken people to Sturgis. And while we might have had more breakdowns than most, doing it on these bikes allowed us to get a taste of what life was like 85 years ago, and to ride in the boots of the rally pioneers who started it all.