Jim writes: We're Jim (56) and Sandy (54). I rode as a young man, quit when the kids came, and in 1993, with the last one out of the house, Sandy said "if you're going to keep looking at motorcycles in the paper, go buy one." So I did. The surprise was that Sandy liked riding on the back better than I liked riding on the front, and now it's her trip as much as mine. More, some days. She plans the route, keeps the log, and reads the map at lunch. I turn the throttle.

We ride a big touring cruiser, a 1996 model, about 1,300cc, with hard saddlebags, a trunk, a windshield and a backrest for Sandy, which is the single most important piece of equipment on the whole bike and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise. We call her Big Red. (The bike. Sandy's a blonde.) Two-up touring on a machine like that isn't fast and it isn't fancy, but it'll go 350 miles a day, all day, in comfort, which at our age is the whole idea.

Sandy writes: Jim will tell you about the bike. I'll tell you about the trip. We've done the Great River Road, the Upper Peninsula twice, the Ozarks, Door County more times than we can count, and this August we finally did the one we'd been talking about since 1994: Sturgis week and the Black Hills. That's most of what's on this page right now, because I just finished typing up my log. Jim did the packing list. We argued about the rain gear part and both wrote it.

Sandy's log, cleaned up. 2,140 miles round trip from Rockford. Ten days, nine nights, one big storm, zero flat tires, one buffalo in the road.

Friday, Aug. 6. Rockford to Sioux Falls, S.D. (about 400 miles). Longest day of the trip and we did it on purpose: get the flat part over with. Interstate across Iowa and up. Hot. We stop every 100 miles, no matter what, for gas and water and to walk around; that's a rule, and it's why we can do 400 without being wrecked. Motel in Sioux Falls booked back in January (see the motel section for why).

Saturday, Aug. 7. Sioux Falls to Rapid City (about 350 miles). I-90 west across South Dakota, which is longer than it looks on the map and windier than it looks from a car. Crosswind all day; Jim's shoulders were done by Wall. We stopped at Wall Drug like everybody, had the free ice water, bought the bumper sticker. The Badlands loop off the interstate is worth the extra hour even in the heat: the land just drops away into striped pink and gray, and there's nothing like it in Illinois. Bikes everywhere by now, every direction, every kind. Rolled into Rapid City by supper. Our motel there was the base for the whole week.

Sunday, Aug. 8. Rest day, sort of. Rapid City, laundry, oil check, a short ride up to Mount Rushmore in the evening when the tour buses are gone. The new entrance and the avenue of flags were finished last year and it's very grand; we liked it better from the parking lot at dusk than up close at noon. Four presidents in the last of the light, and about two hundred motorcycles idling below them. Jim got a little quiet, which is how you know he's moved.

Monday, Aug. 9. Sturgis. Rally week starts. We rode the 30 miles up to Sturgis to see it, and we saw it. Main Street is closed to everything but motorcycles and there are thousands of them parked in rows down the middle, and thousands more people walking, and vendors selling everything from leather to funnel cakes. It's loud and it's a lot and it's the most motorcycles either of us will ever see in one place. We walked it, ate a bratwurst, bought Sandy a rally pin and Jim a T-shirt, and were back on the bike by two o'clock. Sturgis itself is a spectacle. We're not spectacle people. But we're glad we saw it, and the roads around it are why everyone comes.

Tuesday, Aug. 10. The Needles Highway and Custer State Park. This was the day. Highway 87 south from Sylvan Lake, the Needles Highway, is 14 miles of the best road we've ever ridden: tight switchbacks up through granite spires, and tunnels blasted through the rock so narrow that Jim folded in the mirrors for the Needle's Eye. Slow. First and second gear. Sandy held on and looked up. Then the Wildlife Loop through Custer State Park, where a buffalo the size of a Buick was standing in the road and we simply waited, engine off, until he was done with the road. You do not honk at a buffalo. Also burros, who will put their heads in your saddlebag if you let them. Lunch at the State Game Lodge.

Wednesday, Aug. 11. Iron Mountain Road. Highway 16A from Custer up toward Keystone. Three tunnels cut so that when you come out of them, Mount Rushmore is framed in the opening, dead ahead. And the "pigtail" bridges, where the road corkscrews over itself to lose altitude. Whoever laid this road out was a genius or a madman. Rode it twice. Would ride it a third time but a thunderstorm came up over the hills at three o'clock and we ran for Keystone and sat it out under a gas station canopy with about forty other riders. (See rain gear.)

Thursday, Aug. 12. Devils Tower, Wyoming. About 120 miles each way from Rapid City, out past Spearfish and across the state line. You see it from twenty miles off, sticking up out of the prairie like something left behind. It's the country's first national monument (1906), and up close the columns on the sides are enormous, and the prairie dogs at the base are shameless. We walked the loop trail around it, 1.3 miles, in our boots, which Sandy does not recommend. Great day. Long day. Back by dark, which we try not to do, because of deer.

Friday, Aug. 13. Spearfish Canyon and Deadwood. Highway 14A down Spearfish Canyon, limestone walls and a creek and waterfalls, cool even in August. Then Deadwood, where the whole town is a casino now but the hill where they buried Wild Bill is still worth the climb. Our quietest day, and our favorite after the Needles.

Saturday, Aug. 14. Rapid City to Chamberlain, S.D. (about 220 miles). Started home. Easy day, back on I-90, tailwind for once. Motel by the Missouri River. Ate a walleye and watched the bikes go by the other direction, still arriving for the last weekend.

Sunday, Aug. 15 to Monday, Aug. 16. Chamberlain to home (about 620 miles over two days). Long, hot, flat, uneventful, which is the best kind of last two days. Pulled into the driveway Monday afternoon, sunburned, stiff, and already talking about next year.

Sandy's totals: 2,140 miles. 58 gallons of gas. 9 nights in motels. 1 rain suit ruined (Jim's, see below). 1 buffalo. 0 regrets.

Two people, ten days, two saddlebags, one trunk and a duffel on the passenger seat behind Sandy's backrest. Every year we take less. Here's this year's list, and it all fit, and we used all of it except the tire plug kit, thank goodness.

Jim: Here's what happened at Keystone. Storm came over the ridge fast, the way they do out there. I said "we'll make it to town." We did not make it to town. By the time we pulled under the canopy I was soaked through, and when I put my rain suit on over wet clothes, it just held the wet in like a sandwich bag. Then the suit, which was a cheap two-piece I'd had since 1994, split up the seat when I swung my leg over. So I rode back to Rapid City in a rain suit with no seat, which is a special feeling. Lesson one: put the rain suit on when you see the storm, not when you feel it. Five minutes on the shoulder beats an hour wet. Lesson two: buy a good one. I did, in Rapid City, the next morning.

Sandy: I put mine on when I saw the clouds, while Jim was saying "we'll make it." I was dry. That's the whole lesson. But here's the rest of what we've learned, in nine summers:

• Two-piece over one-piece. You can get the jacket on in a hurry at a gas stop without taking your boots off. A one-piece is a wrestling match.
• Get it a size big. It goes over your leather jacket, not instead of it. Jim's split because it was tight over the jacket. Also he'd put on a few pounds since 1994. (Jim: unnecessary.)
• Bright colors. Yellow or orange. In the rain nobody can see a black motorcycle with a black rider in a black rain suit. We want to be seen.
• Rain gloves and boot covers. Your hands and feet get cold first and stay cold longest. Cheap rubber overgloves and boot covers live in the trunk and weigh nothing.
• A dry bag for the film and the maps. One big zip-lock. Nothing in the trunk is as dry as you think.
• Sometimes you just stop. Hail, lightning, or the kind of rain you can't see through: pull under something and wait. The bike will be there. The Black Hills storms come up in the afternoon and blow through in an hour, and we met some nice people under that canopy.

We've done both. We camped on the Great River Road and up in the U.P. and loved it, and for a long weekend we still do. For a ten-day trip, at our age, we're motel people now, and here's the honest arithmetic:

Our compromise: motels on the long trips, and we keep the tent for the weekends. And on any trip, we reserve every night ahead of time. Riding into a strange town at dusk, tired, looking for a vacancy sign, is how bad decisions get made.

Helmets. Always, both of us, every ride, even to the store. South Dakota doesn't require them for adults, and at the rally most people don't wear one, and that's their business. Ours is that we have grandchildren. Jim wears a full-face; Sandy wears a three-quarter with a shield because she likes to hear. Both are DOT-approved and were replaced in 1998 because helmets don't last forever.

The course. When Jim got back on a bike in 1993 after 20 years off, he took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation's beginner course at the community college, because he was honest enough to admit he'd forgotten more than he remembered. In 1997 we both took the experienced rider course together, on our own bike, with Sandy on the back for the two-up parts. Best $50 either of us has spent on motorcycling. You learn to brake hard in a straight line with a passenger, swerve, and take a tight turn at walking speed, all in a parking lot where a mistake costs nothing. Jim says it's the reason the buffalo went fine. Check with your state; a lot of them run the courses cheap or free.

The rules we ride by:

• Gear on every ride: helmet, jacket, gloves, boots over the ankle, long pants. Even in August. See the packing list.
• Stop every 100 miles. Water, walk around, check the load. Tired is how you get hurt.
• No riding after dark if we can help it. Deer. Out West, deer and antelope and, apparently, buffalo.
• No drinking and riding. Not one. We have our beer at the motel with the bike parked for the night.
• Sandy has a job on the back: she watches the mirrors and the right side, and we have a set of taps on the shoulder that mean "car coming," "slow down," and "I need to stop." Two-up is a team.
• Tires, chain or belt, oil and lights checked every morning of a trip. Ten minutes. Jim does it while Sandy gets the coffee.