Back when hard-partying outlaw bikers dominated the Sturgis motorcycle rally, there was a running joke, always delivered in a sarcastic tone.

Most of the bearded, tattooed, leather-clad bikers, the joke, went, were really "doctors and lawyers and dentists."

The joke spoofed chamber-of-commerce types who insisted that trouble at Sturgis came from a tiny "rat bike" minority.

I remember walking Main Street with a Meade County sheriff when a couple of especially rough-looking rat bikers approached.

"Whaddya think, Bill?," the skeptical sheriff asked me. "Doctors or lawyers?"

The outlaws are still here. (They own real estate.) However, the "doctors and lawyers and dentists" are winning, with help from a surprising array of other professionals.

On Saturday, for example, I ran into David and Andrea Wiwchar of Port Alberni, which is on Vancouver Island in British Columbia.

David turned out to be a fellow journalist, and Andrea copy edits technical writing.

David's 2004 newspaper story, "Bad Blood," was about a researcher using Native American blood samples for DNA studies - without consent of the Nuu-chah-nulth people. A national award for that story led to David's job as West Coast reporter for Channel A, which, in turn, explains why he and Andrea could afford to ride to Sturgis on a 2007 Harley-Davidson Road King.

"Television pays better than newspapers," David cruelly informed me.

Then I met David and Marie Calvin of "Colorado and Arizona," who arrived in Sturgis in a luxury bus and who were riding Main Street on their snazzy custom choppers.

David was in "insurance, oil and real estate development," which is to say, he rides a more expense bike than even a TV reporter.

It was too noisy to chat on Main Street, so David handed me a card that led me to a Web site for Paradise Earth, the 85,000-acre "rain forest habitat" David is building in near Phoenix.

Al Gregg of Brookings had a more modest ride - a 1999 Yamaha scooter. "You can spend $30,000 on a bike to get attention, but this gets as much attention as anything," he told me.

Al, who is 59, is attending his 37th rally.

He went to Daytona this year, too, but not for motorcycles. Al owns Dakota Towing Service, and he also drives tow trucks at NASCAR races. In fact, he retrieved David Roush's broken Number 6 car at Daytona.

So there you have it, TV guys, rain forest developers and NASCAR tow-truck operators.

I guess it's time to think of a new Sturgis joke.

Reporter Bill Harlan's column daily during the Sturgis motorcycle rally. Contact him at 394-8424 or at bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com or at 394-8424. See online reports at the Sturgis street blog at www.rapidcityjournal.com