by Bill Gedye

There is a place where things are as they used to be, where the smog of political correctness has disappeared. Its not Mexico, Cuba or Vegas, although the similarities are striking. Its a place where the old west has been successfully blended with our modern amenities in a relaxed and blissful manner. You can ride down the road fully geared or bareheaded with flip flops. You can smoke in the bars.

The trip begins hot as a pistol through the familiar roads of the Similkameen. The faster you ride the hotter you get. Its like riding in a hairdryer. The only relief is the wet bandanna around your neck and a stop in an old bar outside Hedley, where you sit on the veranda and catch what little breeze makes it around the corner.

The deer at the side of the road seem content to munch on the long grass. Its distracted them enough to forget flinging themselves into you like four-legged Kamikazes.

The coming Labour Day weekend means that motel rooms are harder to find than a straight flush at a hold-em game, so you end up staying in the overflow room by the abandoned go-cart track for the first night.

Crossing the border, the US Customs officer rolls his eyes when you tell him you’re heading to Nebraska to buy a pair of riding boots. Later, you find that he asks your buddy how long he’s known that crazy guy up front. Who the hell goes to Nebraska to buy boots?

A huge fire near St. Regis, Montana fills the sky with smoke and you smell like a campfire at the end of the day’s ride – another last chance motel room made available by a cancelling ball team. Flip for the king bed. Loser gets the pull-out sofa.

Funny the characters you meet on a ride. Like Mike, waiting for a ride to the jobsite outside Columbus, Montana. Mike is a recovering alcoholic who is now working steadily and trying to stay off the booze, despite the domestic wreckage he walked away from. Mike’s eyes light up when he receives your gift of a cigar. You’re proud of him and wish him the best on the rest of his journey through life.

Stop at the old Montana State Prison, in Deer lodge, and you appreciate your fortunate life. You’re free to smell the grasses, relieve the heat with a cold drink at your leisure, and ride the road in any direction for as long as you can.

Plenty of deer, and even an elk lie at the side of the road having fulfilled their mission. Are they martyrs and heroes in the world of ungulates? Do they get a hundred virgins when they go to deer heaven? Now you know why more and more Kenworths are sporting huge ‘roo bars’ which necessarily spoil the factory aerodynamics.

Butte, Montana reflects a day when mining was the cash machine spitting out volumes of the stuff which was converted into extravagant brick mansions. The old mine heads are monuments to the thousands of men who inhabited the abandoned 15 story hotels and grand office buildings in downtown Butte. You can just imagine how it looked with dirt streets, horses and gas lamps if you squint your eyes in the dusk.
Farther along the road, baking in the oven of Wyoming, Sheridan appears with a motel pool. You feel like jumping in the water with all your gear on but it was hard enough to renew that passport without having to replace that soggy mess it will become if you can’t resist the temptation. Buffalo Bill Cody built a grand hotel here served by a railway line which brought wide eyed tourists from the east and beyond to behold the exotic cowboy and indian shows, featuring the real thing.

The next day starts off cloudy and cool, with the smell of rain in the air. In anticipation, you unpack your rain gear and pull it on over your riding armor feeling as restricted as a 5 year old in a snowsuit. If the sun comes out, it will quickly become a personal sauna, like it did when you were stuck in traffic outside Hope, B.C., after that tanker truck overturned and burned. But it rains, and the wind starts up. No matter. Let it blow. You’re warm and dry, listening to Waylon Jennings on the headset. Go ahead, pick any station. They all play country music.

There it is on the right. That large green sign pointing to the promised land. Just 20 more miles on a new four laner taking you to….Deadwood. If you think that its going to be like the HBO series, you’re only partially right. The echo of the Deadwood spirit lives in the names of the buildings but the original wooden city was destroyed by a fire in 1878 that ate Bill Hickock’s favorite No.10 saloon and culminated when it arrived at the hardware store. That place held 8 kegs of gunpowder which provided a spectacular end to the historic boardwalks, false-fronted buildings and hitching posts.

Today, Deadwood Dick’s Bar, far enough off the main drag to develop the patina of neglect, welcomes you with worn and weathered arms. Its peaceful inside, with none of the bonging slot machine bells, canned western music or glittering chandeliers. Neon from the Budweiser signs mixes with sunlight from the huge old front windows to cast a warm glow on the bar taps featuring ‘Moose Drool Beer’, Busch and Miller. In answer to your query, Cindi strolls around the corner of the bar to reply that someone had bought the last two rubber tire ashtrays from the antiques display last week. They also have an old rocket ship piggy bank that you used to spend hours with as a kid, but at $250, it’s as affordable as a tankful of rocket fuel.

Stroll up Deadwood’s Main Street and you may see the staged shootouts, which give the local kids an outlet for their energy and fantasies. Off on a sidestreet, the sound of these little dramas is a mite unnerving as they sound too much like a drive-by.

A Bill Hickock look-alike beckons you inside for a prime rib buffet as you head down the street toward the subterranean Deadwood Tobacco Company, below the Oyster Bar. Run by a couple of tattooed, no-nonsense, biker brothers, this is another oasis of tranquility and a hell of a cigar shop.

Riding back to your motel home aboard the $1 Deadwood trolley, you can reflect on the everyday tensions and annoyances which have accumulated over the last year and how they have been washed out of your brain by this week’s ride and the beer at Deadwood Dick’s, then rinsed clean at Deadwood Tobacco Company’s smoky bar.

This is a civilized place.