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Couple has message to noisy bikers - stay away
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KEYSTONE - Kris Anderson had to pause halfway through a sentence Monday afternoon as another string of motorcycles rumbled past her rural home.
"That's the way it is," she said, looking out from her front porch at the winding stretch of old Keystone-Hill City road that was, for a moment at least, relatively quiet. "We moved to the country for the peace and quiet. And we get this from 6:30 or 7 in the morning until dark."
"This" is the thunderous racket of motorcycles as they gear down for a sharp upward curve heading northwest toward Hill City or accelerate in a roar off to the east toward Keystone.
Either way, they ruin the atmosphere for Anderson and her husband, Bill Griffin, a point they made graphically in a sequence of hand-made signs jammed in the road ditch in front of their home.
"Noisy bikers stay on highway," the first two signs say, expressing the homeowner's wish that motorcycle riders take more well-traveled routes.
With their roadway message, Anderson and Griffin also express the sentiments of a certain percentage of Black Hills residents who dread the coming of the rally each year.
Although the event brings hundreds of thousands of bikers to the hills and generates millions of dollars for the economy, it also clogs streets and highways, stresses public services and aggravates some residents who say the rally is their least-favorite time of the year.
It isn't just the rural residents, either. In Rapid City, 74-year-old Burton Robinson said he hates the noise and congestion the bikers bring, regardless of how much money they spend.
"It would be a lot happier August if they would go someplace else," said Robinson, who has never ridden a motorcycle. "I think a lot of people feel like me, but they're not vocal about it. I think they feel pressured not to say anything."
Bill Honerkamp, president of the Black Hills Badlands and Lakes Association, said he understands that some people struggle to embrace the rally. Some tourism attractions even suffer a drop in business, despite the crowds of bikers, he said.
"You can understand that Storybook Island will not flourish this weekend," Honerkamp said. "And neither are some of the other family attractions, which are strong suits for the Black Hills. Their numbers will sag this week."
Actually, their numbers will sag for most of two weeks, since the rally has spread out beyond the confines of its official dates on the calendar. The lull for some businesses spreads right along with it, Honerkamp said.
"I think what bugs them more than anything is that there is no hard, fast, beginning or end to the rally," he said.
"We get into a thing called a pre-rally lure, which is about a two- or three-day changeover of clientele. And on the back end, we get about a two-day hangover, in which regular vacation clientele is not sure whether the rally is over or not."
Even so, those tourism businesses that suffer from the rally directly understand the benefits overall, Honerkamp said.
And the rally seems to be attracting people who come back beyond the week-long celebration in August, for bike vacations throughout the summer, he said.
"The ramifications of the economics of the thing are just incredibly good," he said.
Kris Anderson understands that. But it doesn't muffle the noise at her country home. She and her husband have had increasing problems with blaring traffic in recent years that accelerates with the coming of summer and explodes during what use to be called "rally week" and now spreads across two weeks or more.
There's no indication yet that the signs have reduced the biker traffic on old Keystone-Hill City road, a scenic 10-mile asphalt ribbon that winds along part of the 1880 tourist train route and slips to within 20 yards of Anderson's dining-room window.
That window shivered Monday afternoon when the loudest Harley-Davidson motorcycles bellowed past and calmed down when more subdued machines cruised by.
"Some of them aren't too bad - especially the Hondas, the Gold Wings, and motorcycles like that," Anderson said. "They're really pretty quiet."
But soft-spoken Japanese-made bikes are in the minority during the rally. Most machines are American-made Harleys with a stars-and-stripes attitude.
And most riders love that stout, staccato Harley song as much as their machines' muscular-metal appearance.
So Anderson and her husband grit their teeth and wait for the rally to end. They also warn those who visit their shady porch, where grosbeaks, chickadees and nuthatches softly chatter, that all conversations must be timed according to the rhythm of the passing tailpipes.
"You stop talking and wait for them to go by, then you start talking again," Anderson said. "It's all you can do."
That and put up some signs, of course.
Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com
Kris Anderson stands by the signs she and her husband, Bill Griffin, erected in front of their rural Keystone home to encourage riders to stick to the main highways. Kevin Woster/Journal staff
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