By Bruce Arnold, originally published in Wheels On The Road

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For eleven days in August, I dodged and defied the deadly iron cages of cellphone-impaired KILARYDAs to make my annual pilgrimage to Sturgis for the great gathering of the brave tribes of the proud RYDABYKA nation. I rode my steel horse 2,365 miles from Miami Beach to Gillette, Wyoming, where I made my base camp. From there, my travels took me 1,135 miles more through our sacred Black Hills and the scenic Badlands and Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana. I then logged another 2,421 miles of saddletime returning home.

Each year on my long ride to Sturgis, I see fewer bikes and more trailers along the way. Couple that with the fact that what actually takes place in the town of Sturgis, South Dakota is an increasingly smaller part of the overall events agenda, and a credible argument could be made to change the name from "Sturgis Motorcycle Rally" to "Black Hills Trailer Classic". Nevertheless, "Sturgis" remains the world's greatest motorcycling event. And despite the fact that a growing percentage of those attending were NOTARYDAs, tribes of the RYDABYKAs continued to dominate the two-wheeled landscape:

The KROMAPOSA Tribe

Members of the KROMAPOSA tribe purchase sixty grand plus chrome penis extensions from the Billys, Eddies or Paulies, then have them shipped directly to the doorsteps of their secluded ranch houses, private lodges or high-dollar hotels in or near Sturgis proper. They rarely venture far from town without their wrench in a chase car, and never mount their shiny steeds in anything less than ideal weather conditions. KROMAPOSAs can often be seen wobbling their gleaming chariots up and down Main or Lazelle ... dragging their bared legs and tennis-shoed feet for balance as they make their way to the Broken Spoke or Full Throttle Saloon ... where their drop-dead gorgeous gold digger raises her hot-panted ass off the bike (hopefully) just before the KROMAPOSA drops it trying to park.

The TOWAPOSA Tribe

Members of the TOWAPOSA tribe own top-of-the-line cruisers, full-dress touring bikes and Geezer-Glides, which they proudly trailer wherever they go. No motorcycling event is too far away for these hardy long-drivers, who truly "live to tow". TOWAPOSAs are the most rapidly growing of all the RYDABYKA tribes found in Sturgis. They can be identified by the oversized HOG chapter patches that often cover their vests, and the Harley-Davidson dealership shirts they always wear beneath them. TOWAPOSAs rarely ride alone, and groups of their immaculately clean bikes can usually be seen parked in neat rows at all Sturgis area bars, restaurants and tourist traps. Unless it's raining, of course, in which case you can expect to find them closely clustered under the nearest awning, bridge or overpass.

The POPAWILI Tribe

Members of the POPAWILI tribe tend to be younger than most other RYDABYKAs. This is partly because they are often rebellious youths who have broken away from the more conventional tribes, and partly because these Crazy Horsemen ride like there is no tomorrow, which frees them from wasting a lot of time worrying about the concerns that come with old age. Despite the shortened life expectancy assured by their high-speed stunting, this tribe's numbers continue to swell as the attraction of the adrenalin rush brought on by doing 12 o'clock wheelies, biscuit-eater stoppies and switchback burnouts outweighs the attrition of Natural Selection. Although spotting a POPAWILI at Sturgis was once like finding a virgin in a whorehouse, the colorful blurs of their crotch rockets blazing down I-90 are increasingly commonplace.

The ELDIWINI Tribe

Rarest of all in Sturgis are the ELDIWINIs. Should you encounter one, expect them to look lost ... because they probably are ... most likely due to a bad GPS routing. Sturgis is, after all, the Mecca of "...the Hardly Maggot lifestyle biker, the chrome and leather crowd" that ELDIWINIs loathe and fear as much as their guiding satellites do sunspots. Perhaps a result of in-breeding, many ELDIWINIs suffer from AMHA (Alligator Mouth, Hummingbird Ass), the symptoms of which they regularly project across the Internet, but rarely in personal encounters with the dreaded chrome and leather types. ELDIWINIs are easily identified because they place blind faith in ATGATT, wearing all their gear all the time. They are most likely to be spotted on the side of the road ... looking eerily astronautical in their Shoei brain bucket and seven hundred dollar Aerostich suit ... with their Oxtar Matrix glove-leather booties planted softly beside their fubarred foreign ride ... combining the marvels of satellite positioning and cellular communications to report with four-digit locational precision the demise of their final drive.

The MOTOHICAN Tribe

Once as plentiful as the blades of grass on the prairie, the MOTOHICAN tribe is now going the way of the buffalo. Like the bison before them, the thunder from the engines of thousands of MOTOHICAN cycles converging on Sturgis every August once shook the very ground for hundreds of miles around. But alas, those days of unbridled freedom and glory are waning, as each year more and more of these riders forsake the ways of their ancestors, abandon the exhilaration of wind in their faces, and put their horses in their carts. Despite their dwindling numbers, it is easy to pick the members of this tribe out of the crowd at the great gathering: Just look for the riders with raccoon sunburns, blistered noses and grit-encrusted fingernails ... wearing well-worn leathers adorned with serious pins and soiled patches ... smiling and sitting proudly on theirs, the grungiest of all motorcycles. These will be THE LAST OF THE MOTOHICANS.

Until Next Time ... Ride Long, Ride Free!

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