2012 Walt Ride

Every year we have a Walt Ride, in memory of Bill's older brother, Walt, who is no longer with us. Walt got Bill into motorcycling, thus, we ride in Walt's memory. And by "WE" I mean the Red Wing Ironworks Motorbike Club. Our website is here: http://ironworksmotorbikeclub.blogspot.com/

We even have an official tattoo, designed by Rob's wife and sported by at least two of our members.

Usually the Walt Ride is the third weekend in June, and is a nice ride Wisconsin. In recent years we have grown more ambitious and made it longer ... like a ride around Lake Superior ... camping in Richland Center, WI ... drinking beer in New Glarus, WI... or watching vintage motorcycle races at Road America then riding in the rain for a few days.

This year we went west, to South Dakota and, briefly, Wyoming. And for some reason we decided to see who that Ben Ash guy is why he has a landmark. So twelve of us set out on a six-day weekend, taking the back roads to Custer, South Dakota.

It started OK. Most of us met up at a local Caribou at 7am. It was cool and overcast with showers in the forecast. After coffee and pastries we rode to our first stop .. Emma Krumbee's in Belle Plaine. There we met two more in our group, and Neal who rode down on his Ducati 748 to have breakfast with us. It was a nice gathering!

While there the skies opened up. It rained and rained. We sat there for a couple hours waiting for it to clear, but the radar kept showing more showers generating to the west of us. There was nothing to do but punch through it, and so we did. A little bit of drizzle, then a lot of drizzle, and we were in the clear! Blue skies, 90F and humid, we rode to the west.

It was sort of boring. The straight, flat, this-goes-on-forever sort of boring. We scared up a pheasant or two, and passed a lot of nothing. I got a call from work while on the bike, and stepped my co-worker through debugging a problem. How's that for telecommuting!

But in the end we arrived at our hotel, the Sage Inn in Gettysburg, SD. For a reasonable $54/night we all got clean and comfy rooms, except Paul and Amanda had a moldy shower and most of us had snorer's which we brought along. Hungry for dinner, the receptionist (who lived at the hotel) had a sign proclaiming the VFW/Legion (I forget) had the best food, but since she had never eaten there she directed us to the Firehouse. Which was closed and boarded up. So we went to the VFW/Legion, and told our waitress that our hotel receptionist told us to go to the Firehouse ... her response was "oh, you must be staying at the Sage Hotel". Clearly in small towns, everyone knows everyone's business.

We passed the police station which had a note in the window proclaiming it was closed for a week, but since we did see a patrol car passing the Sage Hotel several times we suspected that it was just the receptionist/dispatcher/office that was closed.

The food at the legion/VFW was good. Can't complain about oven-baked pork tenderloin for $6.95 or so. The beer selection was yellow fizzy stuff or Fat Tire ... I think we cleared out their stock of it. We also cleared out their customers. Within 15 minutes of our arrival we had the place to ourselves.

 After a short walk back the motel we passed an old Honda shop with some relics on the porch, and a mummified cat on the sidewalk. We got a photo of Rob molesting the pitbike, but not the cat.

Then we did the "SD Thing" and sat outside our rooms and sipped Tim's bourbon. After Paul retired, "someone" boxed in his bike with benches, and we learned that the other folks at the motel were silo builders and got pretty hammered. Eh, what else is there to do out here?