Some of the best rides in New York State, in the 1980’s were the ABATE sponsored helmet protests. There was usually a designated camping area and riders made it a weekend event. The pack, consisting of several hundred bikes would meet on Monday in the huge parking lot near Taft Furniture, and the helmetless parade would ride Central Avenue into Albany, the capitol, where speeches and meetings with politicians took place. The whole event had a festive mood; I never saw animosity. After the event, folks put their helmets back on and rode home with a feeling of accomplishment and camaraderie.
It was our first ride to Sturgis on the new Superglide and we rode through torrential down pours, truck gauntlets, Chicago traffic jams, unrelenting midwest sunglare and crossed the mighty Mississippi. We’d set our daily limit at 500 miles per day, an easy goal west of the Mississippi; we spent our first Sturgis night in Wall. Badlands was spectacular, but hot and dry, so we headed west looking for a bar. In New Underwood, we found “The Worlds Smallest Biker Bar,” a friendly place where the bartender held coins between her cheeks and dropped them into a cup.