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Event Reports

Sturgis Family Vacation

Article By: Chris Callen

Originally Published In The November 2014 Issue Of Cycle Source Magazine

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With all the responsibilities that the Sturgis rally holds for us, it’s sometimes hard to remember what a great part of the country this is to ride a motorcycle or just to be and experience. That’s why this year it was an especially great treat to have the chance after the rally to see it all over again Article By: Chris Callen through a fresh pair of eyes. In all the years that Heather and I had been working Sturgis, Amelia had never been, so we made a plan to stay an extra couple of days and show her the sights.

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Of course we visited the monuments, both Crazy Horse and Rushmore, but we also got lost in Custer where we would see almost every type of wildlife that South Dakota has to offer. This included a heard of wild jackasses (and none of them actually wearing Cycle Source work shirts, hmph, go figure) that clogged the passageway through the park and was cause for tons of giggles and remarks.

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We even had dinner down near Pine Ridge Reservation at a brother’s house. Even the events we managed to do during the rally like attending the hillclimbs at the Jackpine Gypsies facility were unique in the fact that me made it part of what we were doing to make sure that Amelia got more out of this than just another rally working the show booth and having us drag her from spot to spot.

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All in all it was like a family vacation complete with selfies and ohhs and ahhhs…over wild herds of buffalo, the badlands and all their wonder and a beautiful prayer my brother gave in Lakota over the dinner table. Just by watching her expressions at all this wonder I got the chance to live it all over for the first time again. We did Needles Highway and even picked wild sage in the grasslands.

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By the time we were heading back across South Dakota and had stopped for a swim in the Missouri River, she had come to expect another surprise in the trip and almost a sense of excitement about what we might do next came over her. It was an epic adventure that for years now I had been forgetting to have and I thank her for that. In the end we didn’t have enough time during our short but well deserved sabbatical after the rally to get to Devil’s Tower, Iron Mountain Road or Deadwood, to which I happily commented, there’s always next year Killer!

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