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Article from Argus Leader
http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs...508110352/1001
STURGIS - As a pair of ESPN camera operators fanned out onto Main Street from their "SportsCenter" set at the intersection of Main and First to get images of the crowd Wednesday, there was no shortage of people seeking a moment of fame.
Obviously.
This street this week is a powerful draw for individuals who are yearning to stand out and are as clever as Thomas Edison in inventing ways to do so. They generally can be grouped into two categories: those who figure putting something on will get them noticed and those who figure taking something off will.
Not everyone wanted to be a star, however.
"My wife doesn't know I'm here. If she sees me on TV, I'm in trouble," one man said.
Showing up as background scenery on ESPN was not the only way to get busted Wednesday. Rolf Olson and his wife, Marcia, of Vermillion and Kim Olson of Yankton were holding up an immense banner advertising the University of South Dakota. They were trying to attract a camera lens when Bob Peitz of Yankton walked by and declared approvingly, "Go Yotes."
His black vest full of rally pins recorded 18 trips to Sturgis. He was a USD alum, he said, and had earned a pair of master's degrees there in the 1970s.
"It was a fun school," he recalled.
But an earlier memory is more fascinating.
"I went to school with (USD President) Jim Abbott," Peitz said.
Really?
"I knew Jim when he worked at the Tastee Treat Drive In in Yankton," Peitz continued. "He wasn't a great carhop, but he was a pretty good cook."
The Olsons happened to be on Main Street with their banner because Rolf, director of the USD marching band, mentioned to the university's athletic director, Joel Nielsen, that he was coming to the rally for the first time.
Nielsen prevailed upon him to take the banner and try to get it some airtime on ESPN.
The Olsons almost made it happen, too. They had a camera operator prepared to roll tape until he was overruled by the director.
"He's more about the bikers, I guess," the operator told Olson. Moments later, he turned his lens on a wild-haired woman whose coif looked like a riot in a rainbow and who was pushing the bounds of modesty - hard - with a leather bikini.
While ESPN's Kenny Mayne was extolling South Dakota sports from the outdoor studio set downtown, some actual competition took place at the Jackpine Gypsies hill climb about a mile away.
The course, about 200 feet, rose in a steep, short pitch; a small terrace; a second, shorter rise with a groove in the middle the riders aimed for as their route; then a bowl; and finally, above that, a long pitch that had only enough relief in the gradient to keep the sand that absorbed any trace of speed riders managed to carry with them to that point from sliding off.
The thing looked like an unsolvable geometry problem. The angles were impossible. Indeed, the hill stopped many riders by the second rise. Others, with the temerity to make it as far as the lip of the bowl, had their motorcycles rear back on them and chase them sliding down the hill.
And then Jesse Varns of Rapid City, in the 250- to 400-cubic-inch class, wriggled his way up the first two-thirds onto the vertical beach of the final wall, where he somehow kept the bike moving upward until he finally laid it on its side at the peak.
Hill climbers are a droll bunch. After Varns rode around the hill back to the base, he parked next to Chris Hlucny of Greenbush, Minn., who was waiting his turn to climb.
"Bike run OK at that elevation?" Hlucny asked. "What's it look like up there?"
Varns turned to him and grinned.
"Weather's good," he said.
Reach reporter Peter Harriman at 575-3615
http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs...508110352/1001
STURGIS - As a pair of ESPN camera operators fanned out onto Main Street from their "SportsCenter" set at the intersection of Main and First to get images of the crowd Wednesday, there was no shortage of people seeking a moment of fame.
Obviously.
This street this week is a powerful draw for individuals who are yearning to stand out and are as clever as Thomas Edison in inventing ways to do so. They generally can be grouped into two categories: those who figure putting something on will get them noticed and those who figure taking something off will.
Not everyone wanted to be a star, however.
"My wife doesn't know I'm here. If she sees me on TV, I'm in trouble," one man said.
Showing up as background scenery on ESPN was not the only way to get busted Wednesday. Rolf Olson and his wife, Marcia, of Vermillion and Kim Olson of Yankton were holding up an immense banner advertising the University of South Dakota. They were trying to attract a camera lens when Bob Peitz of Yankton walked by and declared approvingly, "Go Yotes."
His black vest full of rally pins recorded 18 trips to Sturgis. He was a USD alum, he said, and had earned a pair of master's degrees there in the 1970s.
"It was a fun school," he recalled.
But an earlier memory is more fascinating.
"I went to school with (USD President) Jim Abbott," Peitz said.
Really?
"I knew Jim when he worked at the Tastee Treat Drive In in Yankton," Peitz continued. "He wasn't a great carhop, but he was a pretty good cook."
The Olsons happened to be on Main Street with their banner because Rolf, director of the USD marching band, mentioned to the university's athletic director, Joel Nielsen, that he was coming to the rally for the first time.
Nielsen prevailed upon him to take the banner and try to get it some airtime on ESPN.
The Olsons almost made it happen, too. They had a camera operator prepared to roll tape until he was overruled by the director.
"He's more about the bikers, I guess," the operator told Olson. Moments later, he turned his lens on a wild-haired woman whose coif looked like a riot in a rainbow and who was pushing the bounds of modesty - hard - with a leather bikini.
While ESPN's Kenny Mayne was extolling South Dakota sports from the outdoor studio set downtown, some actual competition took place at the Jackpine Gypsies hill climb about a mile away.
The course, about 200 feet, rose in a steep, short pitch; a small terrace; a second, shorter rise with a groove in the middle the riders aimed for as their route; then a bowl; and finally, above that, a long pitch that had only enough relief in the gradient to keep the sand that absorbed any trace of speed riders managed to carry with them to that point from sliding off.
The thing looked like an unsolvable geometry problem. The angles were impossible. Indeed, the hill stopped many riders by the second rise. Others, with the temerity to make it as far as the lip of the bowl, had their motorcycles rear back on them and chase them sliding down the hill.
And then Jesse Varns of Rapid City, in the 250- to 400-cubic-inch class, wriggled his way up the first two-thirds onto the vertical beach of the final wall, where he somehow kept the bike moving upward until he finally laid it on its side at the peak.
Hill climbers are a droll bunch. After Varns rode around the hill back to the base, he parked next to Chris Hlucny of Greenbush, Minn., who was waiting his turn to climb.
"Bike run OK at that elevation?" Hlucny asked. "What's it look like up there?"
Varns turned to him and grinned.
"Weather's good," he said.
Reach reporter Peter Harriman at 575-3615
to get on TV in an Argus story anyday and twice on Sunday.
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