When we lived in South Dakota, we tended to think of the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis as a bit of the culture of the place where we lived. I’ve never been much for crowds. I don’t attend many live concerts. I don’t own a motorcycle. But the people who do attend the rally are interesting people and we got used to the annual influx of visitors. Each year we’d read the statistics of how many people came to our part of the country for a few days or a week of entertainment and riding motorcycles. I’d strike up conversations with guests at gasoline stations, but we often would avoid going out to eat during the rally because there were so many people that it was easier to do that kind of thing when the town wasn’t quite so busy. People who have never lived in a place where the tourists outnumber the locals don’t quite understand. The motorcycle rally more than doubled the population of the entire region. There were a few years when we were out of town during the rally. We didn’t feel like we were missing out on much.

There was a time in my life when I had a brief flirtation with motorcycles. In high school, I had a friend who really liked motorcycles. He saved up his money and bought a Honda 350, which was quite a bike for our small town. We had a used Honda 90 trail bike that got traded for some piece of equipment at the shop and I was allowed to ride it around a bit. It wasn’t much, but my friend’s big bike impressed me. Sometimes he would let me ride it around town. I felt like I was really something. Then I noticed that he was dropping by more often and offering me the opportunity to ride the bike more often. It took me a while to realize that what was going on was that he was interested in my sister and they’d get me to take a ride on the bike so that they could have time when I wasn’t hanging around.

That was a long time ago. I’ve barely been on a bike since, but he remained very interested in motorcycles. Our lives took different paths and his story is not mine to tell. He’s had some hard times and some good times and we’ve sort of kept up with each other over the years.

One year, early in our time of living in South Dakota, he came by the church during the rally. We hadn’t seen each other for quite a while, so I eagerly accepted his invitation to go get a cup of coffee and talk. I hopped on the back of his bike and we went down to the civic center where there was a reception area for Harley Owners. As we pulled into the parking lot and he found a place to park his motorcycle, I thought to myself that we must make a strange pair. He was dressed in his leathers. I was wearing a white shirt and a tie, having come from work. I briefly thought that folks might notice that I wasn’t exactly dressed for the rally as we walked into the Civic Center. However, no one noticed at all. There was every kind of person you could imagine in that busy place and a guy with a tie might have been a vendor or some other person. No one paid any attention to us at all.

Like I said, his story isn’t mine to tell, so I won’t put in many details, but here is what the newspaper said:

“In Jackson County, a 58-year-old female died Friday in a motorcycle crash west of Kadoka.

“The name of the person involved is also not being released pending notification of family members.

“Preliminary crash information indicates that a 2012 Harley Davidson FLSTC motorcycle was westbound when the motorcycle went into the median and struck a road sign. The driver, who was not wearing a helmet, was pronounced dead at the scene.” (Rapid City Journal)

I know the country around Kadoka. I’ve been there in all of the seasons of the year. It is right on the edge of the badlands, without many trees at all. The wind can really howl there and you can see for miles if you are on top of a bit of a hill. Most of the time it is pretty empty country and even when the Interstate is full of vehicles, the land around is open.

I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened, but I can imagine. He was riding a different motorcycle. He’s owned a couple of Harley Davidson motorcycles for decades. He’s made the trip from his home in Missouri to the Rally a lot of times. He knows his way around South Dakota. He served in the Air Force at Ellsworth. He graduated from USD. I wonder if he saw her bike drift off of the road in his mirror. Whatever he saw, he would have been there within a very short time. He’s seen plenty of accidents. He is a physician. He’s rendered first aid a thousand times. The newspaper says she was pronounced dead at the scene. He might have been the first one to know.

My friend wasn’t successful in marriage. He grew up in a household with its share of troubles. He married and divorces multiple times in the half century since we went to high school. It isn’t my story to tell. But in my imagination I can picture him, in the median between the two lanes of Interstate 90 west of Kadoka on a dry and smoky August day, his motorcycle parked alongside the road, his wife dead on the ground. The image haunts me. It breaks my heart. I wish I could have been there just so he wouldn’t have been alone.

Of course he wasn’t really alone. There would have been others who stopped. Law enforcement and other first responders would have been called.

The crowds of the rally aren’t just masses of people. They are individuals with thoughts, feelings and intentions all their own. They are folks like you and me. They are the people we love. And they experience joys and pain that run the entire spectrum of human emotion.

Be careful out there. We count you when you leave and we count you when you return, praying to get the same number.