Alex B.'s Birthday Bash-- Installment One

It all started on Friday (birthday-2) when I decided that it was worth venturing off on my own to the other side of the state to participate in a protest. The Sturgis motorcycle rally is just starting this weekend, attracting about 500,000 people to the tiny town of Sturgis, just a few miles away from Bear Butte, a sacred Native American site. Each year Sturgis rally interrupts prayer on Bear Butte and each year the bikers get closer and closer to the mountain- a place where silence is necessary for sacred rites to be performed. A biker bar just opened up about 5 miles away from Bear Butte and the owner has not been particularly concerned with the rights of Native Americans. I wrote a paper on this very topic in May for my environmental history class and I felt like it would be pretty lame to sit back and not go to the rally that Native American groups were holding to defend Bear Butte (defendbearbutte.org). It took me a long time to decide that I was brave enough to drive my new car the six hours alone and camp out alone and protest alone and drive back alone on my birthday. I woke up Saturday morning and took off at 7am, feeling pretty good about my decision and better than I'd thought about sharing the road with bazillions of bikers and their trailers and their rvs and their equipment.

When I was beginning to feel a little tired I put on some Christian radio, and believe me, that shit wakes you right up. First Dad was telling little Billy that his friend sounded like no good, and couldn't he wait to meet some new friends at Church. Then Uncle Jim and Aunt Jean educated all the children on hypocrites, mostly on how Jesus doesn't like hypocrites. Then some anonymous kid sang a little song about how bad hypocrites are just to drive the point home. I was getting a little freaked out by the whole talking like the folks in Reefer Madness and cautioning (threatening?) children against crossing Jesus when a new story started. In this tale a woman with a vaguely British, vaguely witchish accent started to talk about how "Rabbis don't even talk to women!" I began to understand that she was speaking from the time of Jesus and was educating me on women's rights. "Even when Peter came home and made his mother rise from her sick bed to prepare food for his friends she was happy, because she was serving Jesus." Then it got staticky and I took my cue to listen elsewhere. btw- this was broadcast from Milwaukee. Shouldn't the Guis family get on that?

Sometime during this I crossed the Missouri river. People here talk about East River/West River all the time. East River (where I live) is where corn and soybeans are grown while West River is like the frontier where ranchers herd cows and steer and do rancher things. I was not prepared for the massive topographical shift right alongside the river. I felt like I had been transported out west, with rolling hills of hay and cows meandering and just a very unique landscape. (I understand that pictures would help, but my camera is broken, which sounds bad, but is apparently just foreshadowing). The scenery kept me motivated, and for the first time in my life I was feeling like I HAD to see Mount Rushmore (a mere 100 ish miles away). The billboards every mile or so advertising a plethora of tourist traps were also working their magic. Gas stations seemed few and far between and while I felt ok watching all the bikers go by from the safety of my car I sort of felt petrified by the chance that I would break down and be left to their mercy. So I pulled off the exit at a little town called Kennebec (pop. appx. 241) and my car promptly died.

Yes, my used car which I had just registered in my name THE DAY BEFORE had died. I magically drifted into the gas station where I calmly informed someone that my battery had died and she calmly called Sam over as he calmly used a tow truck to push my car into the garage. Two hours later, after watching Sam fix some tires, while countless people wearing leather chaps drifted by, some bikers had borrowed the drill bit to fix some big hunk of something, and Sam had sawed at something to attach my battery without using any form of protection and almost certainly getting sparks on his face, it was abundantly clear that it was not just the battery that was dead. After much cursing and frantic phone calling I found that it would cost $400 to tow it to a mechanic, who probably wouldn't be able to look at it until Monday and who knows how much that would cost. I abandoned said car and checked into the Budget Inn that was thankfully right across the street. Just for reference, this is the most exciting thing in Kennebec: http://www.grainelevatorphotos.com/photos/sd/kennebec.html

Happy birthday to me. More later...