South Dakota With Motorcycle.com – Days 5 and 6

May 16th, 2023 – Keystone, South Dakota to Keystone, South Dakota: ~150 miles
Featured Photo: I get a little air on the Ducati DesertX.

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Did you miss Day 4? We get to the fun stuff – filming some off-road exploits.

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This would be our last day filming so we had to make sure that we got the necessary content for the stories and videos that the Motorcycle.com guys had planned to create – the main priority was recording the video of us all talking about the bikes and the experience.

We had to focus on drone work in the morning/early afternoon as the drone pilot had to leave early. The first portion was drone work on pavement as a group, so I didn’t have time to capture any behind-the-scenes (plus it wasn’t that interesting). But the off-road drone work was pretty cool – the camera crew pulled us aside on one trail as they thought it was make for a good drone shot. I went first and wasn’t really sure what to expect, but thanks to the Cardo communicators on our helmets we could hear “Action” in our helmets from far away and respond to any guidance like “go faster, you wuss” or “slow down, you idiot.” After my run, I tried to film the drone pilot’s perspective while recording Ryan:

As you may have seen in the above video, at the end of the designated filming spot there was a pretty decent jump. Evans posted up to get a photo of everyone finishing up the run. Here’s Evans shooting John on the KTM 390:

This is what the photo of John looked like – he must have been wringing the neck of the 390 to get this kind of speed on it as there was a corner right before it. I did this jump on the DesertX (as shown in the lead image), and with that motor I could just lazily come around the corner and then goose it to get a little air.

After a couple of days of riding these bikes off-road, I had enough seat time to form a few opinions on the bikes in advance of the discussion we’d be having on camera. The Tuareg was my favorite overall (and the one I’d buy myself), but the DesertX was definitely the rowdiest. If I was more skilled off-road, I’d probably have more fun on the Ducati but the Aprilia weighs 42 pounds less (450 vs. 492) and that’s more important to me than the power deficiency (80 vs. 110). The ergonomics of KTM 390 ADV made me look like a question mark, I couldn’t find a way to stand on it correctly. I called it a billy goat because it would get everywhere the bigger bikes would, just slower. I liked it, it’s just not for someone my size (6’3″, 195 pounds, give me a 890 Adventure R instead).The ergonomics could be addressed but I had to form my opinions based on what I was provided. The BMW? Well, that was unrideable because I killed it.

We found a vista to film the “stand up” video, and then we talked. And we talked. And we talked some more. The Motorcycle.com team turned around the video impressively quickly and while I hate watching myself talk on camera I loved seeing the footage of the bikes. My only concern is that it was called a “Shootout” when the bikes weren’t really being compared against each other, it was more of a discussion about options available across displacements (you may remember from the first post of this series that the plan was to have 4 ADV bikes around the 800c mark). Here’s the ~20-minute video if you want to check it out:

We closed out the day with some final pavement shots. Chris got tracking video out of the back of the Mule – here’s Ryan riding the Desert X on Highway 16A, also known as Iron Mountain Road. This scenic road features three “pigtail” bridges, which are wooden structures that loop on themselves (hence the name) to minimize elevation changes.

It’s a very cool road that connects two highlights: Custer State Park and Mt. Rushmore. If you’re a nerd about road history, you should appreciate this 5 minute video:

One excellent shot that Evans had previously scouted and wanted to make sure we got by the end of the day was through the Doane Robinson Tunnel because you can see Mt. Rushmore through it – how cool is that?

Our guide Bill was no longer with us, but we took another of his excellent recommendations for dinner on our final night. Tourist season was approaching so some of the local favorites were opening up again – today was the first night of the business year for the Powder House Lodge/Restaurant.

We were told that their specialties were Prime Rib and Buffalo Filets. I would soon find out that they were also pretty good at gin & tonics and very damn good at martinis…

I was trying to pick between the two house specialties and eventually decided that while I can get good prime rib in Los Angeles, asking someone back home for a buffalo filet would probably result in confusion. So I went with the latter: “100% pure hand-cut buffalo tenderloin, wrapped in bacon and charbroiled to your liking recommend cooked no higher than medium.” Your truly went with medium rare.

We had seen Mt. Rushmore from afar several times during our trip, and we figured we should actually go up to it considering how close we were. Thankfully, the national park was open until 11pm so we had plenty of time to go check it out, even after a late dinner. In the parking lot, we encountered a couple of deer having dinner as well.

You start by walking through the Avenue of Flags, which features not 50, but 56 flags. That number comes from 50 states, one district, three territories, and two commonwealths.

Presumably powered by some martinis, I felt obligated to get a photo with the sign representing my home state.

If you want to get closer to the statues, you can take the 0.6 mile-long Presidential Trail. It’s a short distance but there’s 422 stairs. While there’s lot of viewpoints, night shots on my phone aren’t amazing so I stuck to memories instead of photos. Still, I had to get one shot of the illuminated presidents at the closest possible point. I had never been to Mt. Rushmore before, and it was an amazing way to cap off the night and the trip. Now I have to take Vy there!

May 17th, 2023 – Keystone, South Dakota to Los Angeles, California: ~1,300 miles
Today was simply a travel day to fly back home. The original plan was to fly out early, connect in Denver, and arrive in LA around 4pm so I could catch up a little bit at work before heading home. Unfortunately, the plane scheduled to get us at the Rapid City Regional Airport was having maintenance issues in Chicago and it’s not like United has spare planes or spare crew available in Rapid City, so we were delayed several hours waiting for another airliner to arrive. As you may remember from earlier in the story, I had secured a bag of local spicy chips for Vy to try. The safest place to store them during my flight? In my Arai VX-Pro 4 helmet, of course!

When we stopped to put gas in our rental truck before returning it, I stopped inside the convenience mart to see if I could snag any other chips. That mission was successful, but Ryan pointed out something that surprised us both: the suggestion to have the “chicken tenderstix” in a bun with mayo. I love chicken and I love mayonnaise, but the two together (and only together) seemed odd to us. Is this a midwestern thing or am I just out of touch?

Because of the flight delay, I got back to the office around 7:30pm so I just hopped on my Tesi and rode back to home to see Vy as I had been away from her for a week.

I had felt a little guilty leaving Vy for all this time as it was almost her birthday (on the 19th), but a quick stop at the always-wonderful and highly-recommended Malama Ponu restaurant helped because they always take care of us. Happy Birthday to Vy, who was having a hell of a year as an actress (among other things, she was in Thailand for a month filming for an upcoming HBO show) until the strike. Such is life, so remember to enjoy the good moments while they’re happening!

I get to re-enjoy the good moments with stories like this, so thanks for following along. So ends my travel log of South Dakota with Motorcycle.com! Many thanks to Evans and Ryan of MO for inviting me to join them – if you haven’t seen them yet, you can check out the story here and the video here. They also did “5 Things You Need To Know” about each of the bikes: the KTM 390 Adventure, the Aprilia Tuareg 660, and the Ducati DesertX.

Have any questions about the trip or the bikes? Let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them. As always, thanks for reading!