The Lesson of Sturgis

Like the thunderstorms that arrive at the end of an overheated summer day here in the nation’s heartland, we’re seeing new cases of Covid-19 following the recent Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

Not a lot of surprise there. If a virus could possess a malign intelligence it would probably cook up something like a giant gathering of freedom loving Harley riders to super-spread itself around the countryside.

By now we’re getting a pretty good idea how the lethal math of this virus works. New cases appear in handfuls. Then bigger handfuls. And so on as the next surge of disease sinks its teeth into us.

As of this writing one Sturgis attendee has died from Covid-19 in my home state of Minneapolis. There’s a press account of another going to a wedding the week after Sturgis and spreading it to the guests. The Dakotas, Kansas and Iowa have become the nation’s new Covid hotspots.

If the rest of us are disciplined we might manage to keep the new Sturgis infections from going exponential. But that means more school kids stuck learning at home this fall. More restaurants and bars struggling to stay afloat with a few tables on the sidewalk instead of being able to actually reopen their establishments. More weeks and months before anyone can start to feel like we’re getting our normal lives back.

Riding a Harley has always had its rebellious side. But what exactly was being rebelled against by the nearly half-million riders who flocked to Sturgis this year? Kindergarteners and bar owners?

I watched the whole Sturgis thing play out with a mix of sadness and anger. I spent the better part of my career writing ads for Harley-Davidson. For more than a dozen years I put my heart and soul into building up the legend — of both the Harley rider and the annual Sturgis rally.

Now I’m left with a grim sense of loss.

A colleague once wrote an ad with the headline, “Ride, because children need heroes.” It captured better than anything else what I admired about the idea of riding a Harley, and what I admired about the many riders I’ve had the privilege to think of as brothers and sisters.

There was nothing heroic about partying up and down the streets of Sturgis SD in the middle of a pandemic. It was pure dumb…

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