Thursday, May 31, 2012

Maternity Bathing Suits

Many women dread anyone connected with wearing a bathing suit from trying on a suit, to buying a suit, to wearing a suit. This dread can lead many women to avoid any communal events connected with wearing a bathing suit. Unfortunately, if you have these feelings before you get pregnant, you can multiply them ten-fold once you are expecting a baby. For all you pregnant ladies out there who dread putting on a swimming suit, or who want to attend communal activities centered colse to wearing a bathing suit, who like swimming, who are taking a beach vacation, or who simply want a go-to swimming suit to get you through your pregnancy, these tips are for you! The following are some tips for selecting the best maternity bathing suits, so you can enjoy any swimming performance while your pregnancy.

Whether you want a one-piece, a tankini, or a bikini, ruching on the side of your suit is flattering. Ruching disguises any flaws or imperfections. Ruching is a fabulous way to disguise a growing belly, love handles, or corporeal irregularities which may cause bulging or bumps. Ruching on a bathing suit also makes it easier for the suit to grow with you. If you pick one with ruching you can wear it from the starting of your gravidity to the end.

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Another great option for maternity swimming suits is adjustable straps. Adjustable straps allow you to pick the level of withhold you may need, and these levels may convert with your growing shape throughout your pregnancy. Adjustable straps also allow you to make it a limited more or a limited less sexy by showing more or less cleavage depending on whether you are attending a child's birthday party or having a romantic pool-side day with your husband.

Maternity Bathing Suits

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If you opt for a two-piece maternity swimsuit, pick bottoms that can grow with you. Many maternity suits come with banded bottoms. These bands can be pulled up higher over you tummy, or rolled underneath. The great thing about these bands is that they stay where you put them. You won't have to keep pulling and tugging at your bathing suit bottoms so forget the need to continually adjust.

For those who are seeing for a limited more coverage in their maternity bathing suit, swim shorts are a great option. These shorts can be "boy-style" cut from stretchy material to grow with you throughout the pregnancy, or they can be "board-style" made to button up under your growing tummy. Swim shorts are excellent for providing a limited extra coverage, especially for those who are self-conscious about their backside or thighs.

Chic maternity swimwear allows pregnant women to attend events centered colse to a swimming suit with confidence. A great suit is both flattering and comfortable, and allows the wearer to forget about the fact she is wearing a bathing suit. Women can pick a suit that makes them look and feel their best. This way, they can focus on having a fabulous time instead of focusing on how they think they look in a bathing suit.

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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Newfoundland travel - Avalon Peninsula

Sunday, July 20, 2003

Our destination today was Terra Nova National Park, on the East Coast of Newfoundland. We were very surprised at the fees they charged: .00 per day per adult for use plus .00 per day for camping with no amenities (electricity was .00 extra per night). The area boasts arboreal forests reaching to the sea. There are many hiking trails, most between four and ten kilometers in length.

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We went to the marine interpretation center. A ranger explains the separate aquatic animals they have in their touch tank: stars, scallops, varied crabs, barnacles, etc. It was very informative. They also have tanks with local fish in them: cod, caplain, etc.

Newfoundland travel - Avalon Peninsula

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Monday, July 21, 2003

Took to some of the trails today to view the wildlife and the scenery, which Terra Nova has to offer. We saw three plovers, a herring gull, a whiskey Jack (a gray jay), and squirrels, which are not indigenous to Newfoundland. We saw moose tracks and droppings and bear tracks, but no moose or bear yet.

After a day of hiking, it was early to bed.

Tuesday, July 22, 2003

Drove to St. Johns, the capital Newfoundland. We parked at Pitty Park in St. Johns.  This is placed close to Memorial University.

Until 1948 Newfoundland was an independent country. On July 22, 1948, they voted whether to come to be part of Canada. The first ballot was noncommittal. After some negotiations with the Canadian government and important concessions, the citizen voted confederation by a very narrow margin. Many Newfoundlanders, even today many wished that confederation never took place. The other options they had was to come to be a member of the Usa or remain independent.

Drove down to La Manche (French for the sleeve) Provincial Park. We were put in the overflow section, which is perfect for us, because the area is wide open. There is no electricity or water, except for boiling ready in any of the provincial parks. So we are happy to pay .00 Canadian per night.  We are spitting distance to the lake, which has water the climatic characteristic of bath water. There are hiking trails. One leads to a picturesque falls, where swimming is allowed, but not recommended. Other leads to the ruins of the town of La Manche. After the Confederation in 1949, the residents of the town were given the occasion to resettle to a larger town, because it was too precious to articulate roads and offer other services, such as electricity. Most refused. After a major storm hit the area in the 1960s, the town had been wiped out and so the citizen were resettled anyway. Only the foundations of the structure remain today of this once prosperous fishing village. Similar stories exist for many of the fishing villages on the island. When the fisheries died from dredging, the life expectancy of the Newfoundland fisherman was also terminal. Many chose to give up the old ways, which originally had brought their families to this abundant island, and moved to larger towns to find less meaningful work.

Friday, July 25, 2003

Today we were going to go whale watching.  We found out that Gatheralls in Bay Bulls charged .00 per person, but someone recommended Seabird or Ocean Adventure Tours out of Bauline East, closer to the Park, for only .00 per someone for a one hour trip. We decided top check them out and see what they offered. We met Jerry, the owner operator of Seabird, who had just returned from a trip out to Great Island, the Puffin Sanctuary. He said that they had seen about six humpback whales out on the briny. By the time we left our small group of four had increased to over twenty people. There was abundance of room on board for all. Three Islands include Witless Bay Ecological Reserve: Great, Green, and Gull. Great is the largest and lays just off the coast of Bauline East. The first bird pointed out was the Northern Fulmar, a rarity since there are only twenty pairs on the island. Then there were the small puffins skimming the waters, wings beating practically as fast as hummingbirds, their colorful beaks contrasting to the black and white bodies. Also in abundance were terns, or Murrs in Newfoundlander, and black-legged Kittiwakes, a smaller member of the gull family, who has dipped its wing tips into bottles of India Ink. Adequate of the birds. Off for larger prey.

Everyone on the boat was scanning the horizon as we headed out to sea. Finally someone shouted, "Thar she blows, starboard." Off on the chase we went and there was our first humpback whale, faultless with a dive with a wave of his tail fluke. All in all we must have seen about a dozen whales. The whole might have been more or less. It is very hard to recognize them unless you get pictures. We got a couple of their flukes, which commonly have the identifying marks. Some of the whales were even vocalizing to us. Everybody on board acted like eight year old David, full of enthusiasm and awe at these magnificent persons. Sometimes we were less than five feet from the whale. Somehow I believe that they were having as much fun as we were, like the porpoises in Charleston, Sc Harbor. Our trip on the sea was over an hour long and we hadn't even started to return to Great Island or to the wharf.

We returned to the leeward side of the island and saw the nesting sites of the Kittlwakes, with adults and babies. We passed by numerous caves, one called skull cave because it looked like one, and natural arches etched from the rock by water and wind. The whole trip took practically two hours. Everybody got their money's worth, plus some.

After a quick sandwich we left for the twenty small drive to Ferryland. We wanted to see the Colony Avalon and other bright sights there. We would be returning to Ferryland for the Shamrock Festival tomorrow. When we arrived, they were still setting up the venue. Colony Avalon is right there too. We joined a guided walking tour, which had just begun, outside the visitor's center. Jennifer Carter was our guide. If she did not know the acknowledge to our questions, she was in constant communications with someone who did.

Colony Avalon is an active archaeological site of a four acre plus community founded by George Calvert, Aka, Lord Baltimore, in 1621. Situated on the banks of a naturally protected harbor, the colony thrived throughout the 17th century, cod fishing being the original industry. Thousands of artifacts have been found on the site, some dating back even supplementary to the Beotuck tribes and 16th century Basque, Portuguese, French and English seasonal fishermen. The Avalon Colony, however, had cobblestone streets, sewerage theory flushed twice daily by high tide, forge, wells, warehouses with doors on the harbor, palisades, a manor house, plus many other buildings. Excavations are still underway, with new artifacts found daily. On the day we were there, they had found part of a crystal goblet and a gold coin.

Lord Baltimore abandoned the community to Sir David Kirke and went on to found the colony of Maryland. Kirke did so well in building the colony, he was put on trial in England and convicted, most probably of embezzlement of funds which should have gone to the crown. His wife took over for Other twenty-five years. Most citizen have never heard of this prosperous community which predates Plymouth Rock. St. Augustine had been founded in 1565 and Jamestown in 1607.

Sunday, July 27, 2003

Went on a hiking trail to the ruins of the town of La Manche. The town was started in 1840 and built on the side of a steep hill, at least fifty feet above the shoreline. Living there had to be pretty tough because everything was up and down the steep hillside. Even though it was practically a mile from the closest road, the town prospered. When confederation with Canada took place in 1949, the government wanted to relocate the town so that services good be given. They refused. But their decision was reversed when a storm wiped out the town. It had to be one heck of a storm, because the town was so high from the water's edge. All that remains are foundations, some with basements, the cables from a suspension bridge traversing the river, and a doctor's house in ruins across the river and up the hill.

We saw a humpback whale frolicking in the bay. On the return home I found an old stone spearhead and gave it to Jordan, a ten year old boy who was taking the hike with us. Tanya Herlidan was our naturalist guide. Later she brought to our trailer pictures of the town as it once had been.

Monday, July 28, 2003

'Tis a fresh lovely Irish day to tour the Irish Loop: foggy, rainy, and windy. Our first stop was to Ferryland to the historical museum. We wanted to hear about the German W.W.Ii burials. The young citizen who were at the museum knew nothing about it, but had heard stories of U-boats in the area. We had been told that the Germans brought the body bags ashore and the local citizens had services for them and then buried them in their cemeteries. We were told that it was possible, because of the solitude of the local lighthouse, presently shrouded in fog, would be a good place to dump the bodies. They could not confirm the story, however. We asked where the old cemetery was located. We found it. As you can see in the picture, it was quite unkempt; many of the headstones were illegible and broken. whether the story is true or legend, it still is a great story.

Drove through Renews, where the Mayflower stopped for supplies while on the way to Plymouth Rock. Then off to Portugal Cove South. The scenery was fairly open at this point, a great place to view the caribou herds, which whole in the thousands. Arrived at the visitor center at Portugal Cove South in the fog. We were told by the young ladies at the center that the fog had lifted and it was quite nice outside. For the past week, they could not see across the road. Portugal Cove South has 158 days of fog per year, which is practically ½ of the time. When asked for the theorize why they were so blessed, they said that it was because of the confluence of the Labrador, Gulf of Mexico and St. Lawrence Currents. In the visitor's center were exhibits on the sizable and on fossils. The lighthouse men at Cape Race were the first ones to hear the Sos from the ill fated sizable in 1912. The wireless and the old house were demolished for a new on a few years later. So some historical artifacts lay buried. Along the road to Cape Race is Mistaken Point, a treasure trove of 575 million year old fossils. Because the cod commerce of the area has been destroyed, the local citizens have come to be the self-appointed keepers of the fossils gift tours and chasing off the poachers. Today was not an optimal day for viewing them, because they turn into a slip and slide into the North Atlantic. When I asked the young ladies what was ready in the area to keep them here, they said, "Nothing." Both were college students at St. John's majoring in group Work and corporal Therapy and were home only for the summer.

Off to Trepassey we drove. Trepassey was the liftoff point for Amelia Earhart's Transatlantic journey in 1928. We were in a driving rain storm. We took refuge in a restaurant, ate lunch and watched the storm. Off to St. Shotts to see some caribou. They were all hiding behind the fog. We saw zero caribou on the whole trip. We were told that the numbers have been severely reduced due to disease. There are very few left on the Avalon Peninsula.

We proceeded to the West side of the Irish Loop. The shroud of Brigadoon lifted to recap a beautiful Kelly Green scenery with small farms dotting the hillside. We broke into song, happy to see the remaining seventy miles of the Irish loop.

Tuesday, July 29, 2003

Went to Cape Spear, the Easternmost point on the North American Continent. Even though Newfoundland is an island, it is still considered part of the North American Continent. Just as Nord Cap in Norway, also an island, is considered the Northern most point in Europe. Also an 1835 lighthouse, one of the oldest in Newfoundland, the cape is also the emplacement of battlements erected by the Us and Canadian Armies while W.W.Ii to safe the St. John's shipping lanes from Nazi submarines. While there we saw minke whales breaking the surface. They were pretty far out to get pictures. Nevertheless it was exciting.

Returned back to the city and drove through the city. We stopped for ice cream at Moo Moo's, a popular spot for their 88 flavors of hard packed ice cream. After the cones we went to the Basilica of St. John's, where the diocese keeps their archives. We were told by the historian there that most of the Pelley clan placed in Anglican communities. St. John's was the closest port to Ireland. From St. John's they traveled to Halifax and then to Boston. Many Catholic Irish came over and placed in protestant towns because the Catholic Church was not well established in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The research which has been done is now being catalogued. I will send more data on to those who are concerned in their genealogy.

Tuesday, August 05, 2003

Today we drove the Killick coast. A killick is an anchor made out of long stones enclosed in pliable wooden sticks tied at the top and with crossed ones at the lowest to dig into the seabed.

Along the way are towns with names like Torbay, where the English landed to retake St. John's from the French.

Further on is Flat Rock, where the cod was laid out on the flat rocks to dry. Pope John Paul Ii was there to bless the fleet. It is also home to a replica of the Grotto at Lourdes, which is visited by many pilgrims.

Further on is Pouch (pronounced Pooch) Bay, founded earlier than 1611, which was the first documented date. Although permanent houses were taxed by the Crown in the 17th and 18th Centuries, neither the Royal Navy nor pirates dared to enter the hazardous waters of the harbor. So the town thrived.

We then took a side track to St. Francis Point, via a gravel road with barely Adequate room for passing. At the end of the road is a helicopter pad and light beacon to warn sailors of the rocks. To the North are Baccalieu Peninsula and Baccalieu. The view is breathtaking.

The Sierra Club must also think this too, because we met a group of hikers on tour of the East Coast Trail having lunch on the pad.

Finally on the trail is Portugal Cove, the terminus for the ferry boat to Bell Island. Bell Island is noted for its iron mines, which go under the sea. while W.W.Ii, the German Government hired the local boat captains to man their U-boats, because they were well-known with the area's waters. Newfoundland, at the time was an independent country. One of the ferry boats recently had a collision with a Russian trawler,  in restricted waters ,putting it out of commission. The government does not know whether to prosecute or repaymen the ferry captain. We had lunch at Beach Cove Café, part of a B & B by the same name. The fries were superb, a large platter of thick wedges.

Drove to the Cape Shore loop, which includes Placentia, the original French Capital. We took the overland route via a gravel road. The Fradshams have a summer home on this road, called Misty Mountain. No one was at home. So we left a note. The road passes by the Cataracts which cut a sixty foot gorge through the hills; a pretty sight. We parked at the beach where the Placentia Regatta takes place in July, part one of the Triple Crown of Newfoundland.

We visited the town of Placentia placed in 1662 to safe the French interests in North America. Castle Hill overlooking the city is a National Historical site. It successfully protected the city from invasion, but not from blockade. The ground was not conducive for farming and rival factions moderately doomed the colony. The French then built the fortifications Louisbourg, Ns, leaving Placentia to the British.

Also in Placentia are other archeological excavations happening at the base of the harbor. A dig is being done at Fort Louis, a military post, and at Fort Frederick, across the harbor inlet. The previous can be visited and you can see the process at work. The latter is less accessible, but a best capability of artifacts is being discovered there. They can be seen at the archeological treatment center in town.

Drove to St. Mary's Ecological Reserve, which is strictly for the birds: gannets,

On the return trip to Placentia we stopped at separate towns along the way. First was St. Brides, whose citizen doubled in 1941, when the Americans set up a listening base for German ships in the area. More than 400 Gis stayed for the war years. They were able to relay messages to the Us Naval base at Argentia thirty miles to the North.The military curative staff also took care of the locals since their was no other curative care ready to them.

Next we stopped at Gooseberry Cove, a small cove with a blackish sandy beach. It was quite peaceful, watching the wave come on the sand. Sand is unusual in Newfoundland, since most of the beaches are rocky. Some rocks strewn the beach, but most had been pulverized into sand by the performance of the currents.

Our next stop was Ship Cove, which had a man made stone breakwater. On the breakwater citizen erected cairns. I added mine to the collection. Meanwhile Maggie collected drift wood to work on her carving.

Home to Placentia and a stop at the Archeological Center. They had just found a silver coin, slightly smaller than a dime, with a cross inscribed on one side. The opposite side was more difficult to read. The lady also show us a copper coin, recently found, with three fleur d'leis on one side.

Off to the O'Reilly house, built around the turn of the century for the local magistrate. It has been refurbished with donated items. The house also contains exhibits about the resettlement of many communities in Placentia Bay. The stories are quite sad. All of the towns were fishing villages, independent from each other. As long as there was fish, there was work. When fishing was forbidden to them, their way of living was taken away. This is somewhat reminiscent of the destruction of the buffalo and the resettlement of the Native Americans.

Newfoundland travel - Avalon Peninsula

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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

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Monday, May 28, 2012

Sturgis Without a Motorcycle, Then Pilgrimage to Wounded Knee

My intention was to partake in the great biker hajj to Sturgis, South Dakota for Bike Week with several biker friends. "Sturgis" was about the only bicycle sense I lacked. I bought a Honda Super Bee for from a guy who was traveling cross-country and broke down in my hometown of Goshen, Indiana when I was fifteen. I rode all over the Midwestern U.S. On that old Honda. When I was nineteen I did a 7,000 mile trip from Indiana down through Mexico on my next bike, a Suzuki 500. But after I wrecked my Harley and nearly killed myself, I vowed I was done with motorcycles. I'm a middle-aged attorney with wife and kids for Gods sake! That was my third serious bike wreck, and I feared three was all fate may have allotted me. But old biker friends were going to Sturgis, and that last adventure on a bike beckoned.

How could I sense Sturgis without breaking my vow? A rental Harley seemed like a good solution, so I rented a Road King in July and did a weekend ride with three friends. But fear had a hold on me. When my front tire skidded on gravel on a curve on State Road 135 in Southern Indiana, I had flash backs to the last wreck. In that one I was thrown over the handlebars in the middle of a tree and a truck-size boulder as my out-of-control bike went over a creek bank and into the water. My front brake locked and I was thrown over the handlebars on a country road when I was sixteen, and was hit broad-side by a car at nineteen. I recovered and rode again. No problem. But my last wreck, maybe because I'm older with house responsibilities, imprinted a fear I'd not felt before. I decided the vow covered rental bikes too.

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But I was carefully to sense Sturgis. I decided to drive my new Sebring convertible to Sturgis and hook up with my biker buddies out there.

Sturgis Without a Motorcycle, Then Pilgrimage to Wounded Knee

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But Sturgis, I found, was not what I sought. I discovered what I was no ifs ands or buts seeking in small towns across the Midwest and in a spontaneous pilgrimage to Wounded Knee. On a hot cloudless day in August with the convertible top down I left Indianapolis and drove State roads across Western Indiana, Illinois and Eastern Iowa. When the Sun was setting I stopped in a diminutive town, Allison, off State Road 3 to gas up and find a place to eat. A young woman pulled up beside me in the parking lot of Casey's market and we struck up a conversation about her two diminutive redhead kids in the back seat. When I asked her advice about a place to eat, she said there weren't any places she could recommend, but she was on her way to a friend's for pizza and I was welcome to join them. So I spent the evening with two unwed mothers, Candace and Jen, and their four diminutive kids eating pizza, drinking Pepsi and playing with sparklers.

Jen's brother, Brian, had committed suicide just a few weeks prior and Jen told me that Brian had always wanted to go to Tibet and see the Himalayas. His ashes are interred in his mother's garden. I told Jen that I would put her in touch with my fiend Kp in Nepal, who runs a Himalayan guiding enterprise and he could dispose for some of Brian's ashes to be scattered in the Himalayas. She was very grateful for the offer, and Jen and Candace declared that I must be an angel sent by God to reply a prayer. (I would have notion that an angel deserved better than sleeping in his car at a rest area on I-90 just west of Albert Lee, Mn, but I was too tired to find a bivouac and set up my tent by the time I stopped to sleep after leaving Jen's house past midnight.)

The next day in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, I met my friend Bernadette. We became acquainted the old fall on a dive trip to Palau. She had invited me to partake in a Sioux Indian powwow through her brother Lantz's contacts, but Lantz's wife decided to have a baby instead. Bernadette explained that without Lantz, we would not be welcome as the powwow was not open to outsiders. It was ferociously hot, so instead, we went to Palisades State Park, which has "the old swimming hole" for locals. It's where a creek balloons into what looks like a quarry to Hoosier eyes, but water can cut sheer walls in granite over tens of thousands of years just like the cutters did in a few decades to make the limestone quarries around Bedford and Bloomington, Indiana. We sat on a boulder dangling our feet in the water and reminisced about diving in Palau. Just down-stream three juvenile boys in cut-off jeans repeatedly jumped off a 20-foot wall hooting and bellowing like crazy men.

A surprise thundershower sent us briskly on our way to evening meal at Crabby Bills -- a seafood bistro in Corson, S.D.! (Probably borrowed the name of a familiar bistro on the west side of Tampa Bay.) After evening meal I returned Bernadette to her new-born niece's side and found myself again driving late at night and too tired to look for a campsite. I slept in my car at someone else rest area on I-90 (near Mitchell, S.D. Famed for its Corn Palace). I thanked God and Lee Iacoca's successors for the comfort of my Sebring's reclining seats as the South Dakotan version of Crabby Bill's shrimp and I placed in for the night.

Throughout the night of August 3d and the following morning rain was a constant companion. I passed thousands of bikers as I terminated in on Sturgis. Maybe it was the rain, but they seemed like lemmings carefully to reach their fated destination.

The rain ceased and heat and humidity returned by early afternoon the next day, a Sunday. Creeping through Sturgis behind a seemingly endless line of Harleys, I ultimately made it to the Full Throttle Saloon, where I was supposed to meet John, Randy and Mark. I looked throughout the grounds, booths, pavilion, bars and port-o-pots of the Full Throttle, but didn't find my Indianapolis biker buddies. I crossed the street to the Glenco Campground, where they were supposed to have a campsite. They had checked in, as had 8,000 other campers who had paid the 0 fee, which Glenco charges whether you stay one night or all month. I snuck past security and hiked all over the sprawling grounds finding for my friends, but gave up after a consolidate hours of fruitless searching. No reply to my cell phone calls.

I spent the rest of the day and evening trying to enjoy the Fellini-esque parade of bikers and "bitches" in their costumes of leather, blue jeans or buckskins with accessories of doo rags, ear rings, tattoos and pony tails or shaved heads. But I found myself alienated from the great congregation of tricked out bikers. I felt like a Christian in Mecca during Ramadan, or a Cathar-heretic during the Inquisition. While I could talk the talk and walk the walk, I just couldn't get into the carrying out art of it. I left my biker leathers at home, and was walking around in sandals, trekking shorts and a t-shirt bearing the logo of a climbing-gear company. Although leather-clad bikers like to think of themselves as rebels, their politics and cultural values tend to be very right-wing (except with respect to nudity, pornography, drugs and hard rock 'n roll). finding like a tree-hugger, I worried that I might be suspected of opposing global warming or advocating gun control.

To escape the Sodom & Gomorrah of Sturgis, I drove out to Devils Tower, Wyoming in the early evening and stopped in Sundance on the way. The county fair rodeo was going on just outside of Sundance, and it was a joy to see the clean cut enthusiasm of the kids in their roping and riding contests. At a bistro in Spearfish I chatted with Biker-for-Christ Don, who'd brought his 16-year old son to Sturgis to help recognize to the godless hordes. They were dressed in typical biker uniform and Dad had the tattoos and accouterments of the serious biker. I didn't despair of their ministry, because bikers are drawn to expressive affinity groups, but suggested they time their services to be late enough that hangovers had passed but earlier than when the serious substance abuse of the evening would commence.

Refreshed by a break from Sturgis, I made someone else attempt to find my friends at the Full Throttle. Alone and forlorn I stood on a table, while Joan Jette and her band belted out hard, but good-time rock and roll. While scanning the crowd for my wayward friends, I was forced to experience the view of an amazingly sculpted stripper who slowly rotated about on the mechanical bull in the middle of the grounds, while surrounded by chest-thumping and hooting bikers. After midnight I headed back to a rest area on I-90, just east of Sturgis and fell asleep once again in my car.

The following day I drove up to Mt. Rushmore and spent an hour or so hiking around the grounds and not finding the presidents because of fog. I pitied and feared for the hundreds of bikers that rode through the fog to see more fog at the end of their ride to the Park, but thankfully I saw no wrecks.

During a late breakfast at the 1880 Keystone House house bistro in Keystone, while studying my maps, I had an epiphany. Sturgis was no separate than Daytona's Bike Week without a beach; it was largely a larger version of other biker gatherings I'd experienced - macho exhibitionism, sex, drugs and rock & roll. I no longer fit. For me, it was a bridge to nowhere. To make this adventure meaningful, it would become a pilgrimage. I would go to Wounded Knee.

An ancestor of mine was the only cavalryman killed in the "action" at Wounded Knee. My journalist mom wrote a story for our hometown newspaper, The Goshen News, in 1977 about our ancestor, Lt. James DeFreese Mann, because she attended, as a representative of the family, his "Last Roll Call" -- the 100th anniversary of his graduation from West Point. I had recently re-read her record while perusing the house scrapbook during a visit with Mom.

I find it both animated and perverse that I have an ancestor who managed to get shot, possibly by amiable fire, since the Sioux weren't doing much shooting, in one of the most notorious events in the sad history of the conquest of the Plains Indians by the U.S. Army. (Another ancestor is Cotton Mather of the Salem witch hangings infamy, but at least he had the compensating variation of being a famed scholar, preacher and educator.) I don't pretend to know a lot about the Indian Wars ordinarily or the Wounded Knee massacre specifically, but my Mom's record quoted from contemporary reports about the events of Dec 29, 1890, and Lt. Mann was even interviewed by reporters while he was dying from his wound. He claimed that the "Bucks" shot first and then the soldiers "poured it into them." Whoever shot first, the result was that the federal soldiers killed 300 Oglala Sioux, mostly women and children. As far as I know, no one from my house has made a pilgrimage to the place where our ancestor was shot while participating in the massacre. possibly a pilgrimage to Wounded Knee by Lt. Mann's ancestor would qualify as some sort of atonement.

Traveling through the Badlands National Park and the reservations of the Lakota, Oglala and Rosebud Sioux, one must be struck by the inhumane and cruel-joke of the government to have "reserved" this land for the Sioux people. While there is a stark beauty to some eyes, The Badlands are one of the most inhospitable areas in North America to human existence. The scenery is harsh, grim and the heat oppressive. And the cruel joke continues. State Road 40 is a rough but decently paved and maintained road angling southeast from Keystone toward the Pine Ridge Reservation. When it becomes a Bia (Bureau of Indian Affairs) road, it ceases to be paved. My poor Sebring endured 40 miles of gravel across Pine Ridge before reaching the Badlands National Park Visitors center and pavement again.

The ranger at the Visitors center told me that I might be disappointed visiting Wounded Knee, because "there's not much there." There is no ifs ands or buts truth in his statement, but then, there is not much there throughout the Badlands.

On the east side of the road at the site of the massacre were a consolidate forlorn booths with handcrafts for sale. An old man slept at one and a consolidate kids played in the dirt by the other. On the west side of the road is a white circular construction containing mostly posters and propaganda for Aim (American Indian Movement). There are testaments to Russell Means and Leonard Peltier and the demonstrations, minor insurrections and violence perpetrated against and by Aim. There was surprisingly diminutive information about the history and events of the 1890 massacre. On two hills behind the construction are two small cemeteries. I looked around both, but didn't see any monument to the massacre. I asked, and a Sioux man pointed toward a fenced area of about ten by six feet back in the closest cemetery to the Aim building. Within the fenced area is a six-foot high granite monument with names of victims and a record of the massacre. (Although my Mom's record said 300 of the 350 Sioux at Wounded Knee were killed, I counted fewer than 40 names on the monument.) A few token offerings were scattered around the base of the monument.

I placed two stones on top of a steer's skull at the base of the monument as my gift of symbolic atonement. I had purchased the rocks for each from a group of Oglala kids at the intersection of two gravel roads on the reservation. Their Dad told me he wanted to "encourage entrepreneurship" among his kids. I stood alone by the monument and looked back across the road where the Sioux had camped under the leadership of Chief Big Foot, who was known as a man of peace. I prayed for the souls of the Indians who were killed there; and for all the other Indians who were killed to allow the western expansion of the Usa; and for the sins our nation has committed against Red population and Black population in becoming the colossus it is; and that we Americans today will live up to the great principles of personel freedom and equal opportunity we profess; and for the soul of my ancestor, James DeFreese Mann, who spent 13 years of his life fighting in the Indian Wars for a cause in which he firmly believed, and who left a young widow and child at Ft. Riley Kansas, where he was temporarily buried before his remains were conveyable to Arlington Cemetery.

Back in the Aim building, I made conversation with the middle-aged woman sitting behind a counter. No other visitors entered the construction while I was there. I overcame my hesitation and told her about my ancestor's participation in the massacre. She evinced no hostility and only mild interest. She didn't know that a cavalryman had died in the action, but notion she recalled reading the old newspaper accounts that quoted Lt. Mann. She said the way the center got most of its materials was from "people like me giving them stuff." I told her I'd try to send a copy of my Mom's article. (Another broken promise by the white man.) I donated a few dollars after being pestered by her son for a gift to a fund for his baseball team. I felt gouged but also paid for an Aim T-shirt.

When I left the center I started to drive into the town of Wounded Knee and was confronted by a hand-painted sign on poster board stuck on a rusted metal chair by the side of the road, "Drive Slow Stop Killing Our Children." The town had the depressingly ramshackle look of other Reservation settlements I'd seen. I made a slow U-turn at the first drive and then headed south to pick up Us Highway 18.

I drove old State highways most of the way home; Us 18 across South Dakota, State Road 3 across Iowa, and Us 150 across Illinois. And I ultimately got to use my tent and sleeping bag camping on the banks of the Missouri River at Snake Creek Park in South Dakota, Beeze Lake in Iowa, and Kickapoo State Park in Illinois. Ripping along the two-lane blacktop with the top down and then performing the rituals of setting up and taking down a tent in the great outdoors filtered the vestiges of alienation out of my system. I spent a delightful evening in Hampton, Iowa, taking in a Dixieland concert by a local group on the town square across from the courthouse. The easy grace, friendliness, and middle-American prosperity of the folks in Hampton are Exhibit A to counter the pundits' contention that small town America is dying.

I don't claim that my diminutive spontaneous pilgrimage was in any sense an act of redemption. My ancestor notion he was fighting on the right side of a war. It is hard for me to see things from his point of view, but I accept that he notion his side was in the right. But on the way back home to Indiana, I found myself wondering whether America would try to understand "the other" before we begin someone else war. We no ifs ands or buts didn't in the invasion of Iraq. Do we have a deeper insight of the population we are fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan? I pray, futilely, I know, that our descendants will not need to make pilgrimages to atone for more massacres.

What I sought in Sturgis was not there for me. I am no longer a biker, and felt more like a voyeur than part of that community. I was the other. But I found something else in my spontaneous pilgrimage and drive across the Midwest. I found a bridge and crossed it back into the dark past of my ancestors, who killed and herded the Natives of America into reservations. And I found that I still feel associated to communities like the one in which I grew up; small Midwestern towns and cities with folks amiable enough to invite a stranger in for pizza, where teenagers play in the ole swimming hole, and a band plays in the town square on a Saturday evening. Despite living in cities like London, Chicago and Indianapolis since I was nineteen, small-town middle-America still welcomed me as one of its own. It was not what I sought, but it was what I found on my way back home.

Sturgis Without a Motorcycle, Then Pilgrimage to Wounded Knee

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