When I awoke I had every intention of driving the 470 miles
to Sturgis to meet some of the guys in the motorcycle group I belong
to.
They were going to be at the Broken Spoke Saloon in Sturgis,
drinking away and I was all too ready for a night of adult beverage
consumption
and making a fool of myself.
The group I belong to is the Orange County Assholes and I
apologize if that offends anyone, but I am not a big fan of political
correctness.
Some of the OC Assholes, whose
nicknames include Crazy, Butthead, Fang, and Big Dog.
On the surface they look like boozing, carousing
misfits. Ok,
we are that, but we also raise money and provide gifts for the Fred
Jordan
Mission in downtown
My belief is that being PC is basically censoring yourself
and we have taken sensitivity to a level of McCarthyism.
Consider what was in the news a couple of days ago. A talk show
host in
The host said the Giants had to many “brain-dead Caribbean
hitters hacking at slop nightly and that Alou’s “mind had turned to
Cream of
Wheat.”
The first statement is wrong and the host should have been
disciplined for that, but some people were saying the second statement
was
racially insensitive because the old pictures on the box of Cream of
Wheat were
of black people.
That logic is hard to follow and is a bigger stretch than a
yoga class maneuver.
Anyone who knows me, knows I am not prejudiced, but I do
openly discriminate against one segment of the human race – stupid
people. I
have no time for them, they take up oxygen I could be using and they
get as
many votes as I do. There is no excuse for stupidity, it can be
overcome, most
people just choose not to.
The reason I am ranting about this is I was riding through an
Indian reservation and knew I was going to write about it. The debate I
had
with Libertad was do I go with the politically correct term of Native
American
or do I write Indian.
I choose Indian. I’m not calling myself German, French, and
Irish American. I’ve met a lot of bigots who use the term African
American.
Once
you get through the Bozeman Pass of Interstate 90 it is a fairly boring
ride so
my mind wandered to other topics and this was one of them. Maybe it is
cyclical. I keep thinking this is a period Americans find themselves in
and at
some point the pendulum will swing back.
It
saddens me we don’t allow ourselves to use the brain we were given and
just let
society tell us what is correct and not correct.
But
I had more pressing concerns in the middle of this thought. I was
running late
and had to make up time if I was going to get to Sturgis at a
reasonable hour.
I was riding hard and the bike was laboring along, not enjoying the
stress I
was putting it through.
My
own anxiety was causing me to push harder than I normally would. I was
also
worried about the storms in the area.
I am
trying to get Libertad to 80 mph, but she’ll have none of it. She seems
to be
straining to get to 75 and I can’t figure out why. All I know is I
needed to
get to Sturgis.
Then
something in me clicked. If I get there, I get there, but I am not
going to try
and force it.
I
had skipped breakfast and was going to get something to eat at a gas
station
when I next filled up and decided against it.
Instead
I pulled the motorcycle off the interstate and found a diner. I bought
a
newspaper and enjoyed lunch.
It
was then I realized what was wrong with Libertad. I had put synthetic
oil in
the motorcycle and there is always a little seepage when you make the
conversion. It needs to adjust and because it is thinner, tends to need
a
little time to work into the gaskets. The tendency for it to burn a
little in
the beginning is also there.
In
But
now I wasn’t in a hurry to get there. I saw the clouds were threatening
and
decided I wasn’t going to kill myself trying to get there.
Instead
Libertad and I had a leisurely ride down the interstate.
One
of the places we stopped at was just before the border at
Indian
Casinos are not like the monstrosities we have in
These
are small one room, one-story buildings that have only video poker or
keno
machines.
The
entrance to the casino has a loud speaker playing Indian war chants.
The
parking lot is drab and the inside even bleaker.
The
casino was built to help those who live on the reservation, but it
appears the
only people that visit the casino are Indians. Out of the 36 people
gambling,
30 of them were Indians.
It
made me think of lotteries. The very people it is supposed to help are
the
people who are playing. So it basically comes down to a tax on poor
people.
When
I left the casino the clouds were turning ugly and rain was inevitable.
The
last 40 miles I was surrounded by lightening and moderate rain. I got
the first
hotel that I could find in