Born To Be

A quarter of a million people descended on a small town this past week. Authorities there tallied eighty-four arrests in one day. 

The governor of South Dakota welcomed the visitors. All just another part of the weird world of 2020. The annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally went on as scheduled with very little social distance and very few masks in evidence. As one participant who rode up from Arizona put it, "I don't  want to die, but I don’t want to be cooped up all my life either.” The guy was from Arizona, home to one of the most recent and severe spikes in COVID-19 cases. Health officials in the Grand Canyon State have recently announced that infections have begun to trend down. This could be a matter of strapping all those with the virus to a motorcycle and sending them to Sturgis. 

A store owner told a reporter who was there to take in all the wonder of bikers being "encouraged to wear masks," “People are tired of being at home, you know. This is what this rally started about is freedom.”

Freedom from the restrictions put there by "the man." Like Marlon Brando in The Wild One, when he was asked what he was rebelling against, he said, "Whattya got?" Probably something to do with those eighty-four arrests, many of which were for driving under the influence, and some controlled substances. But that's all a part of freedom, isn't it? I don't expect that anyone was cited for using too much common sense. Perhaps they were inspired by Peter Fonda in Wild Angels: "We wanna be free! We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. We wanna be free to ride!" It should be noted that both Mister Brando and Mister Fonda did not live to see a global pandemic, and they were actors.

Eventually, of course, the rally will end, and all those rough and tumble bikers will toss a leg over their hogs and head on back to wherever they came from, having spent a good long while exercising their freedoms, and carrying with them whatever diseases they may have managed to stir up in all that freedom flaunting. With eighty-four arrests. 

Up in Portland, the Secret Police made sixteen arrests during a similar period. 

Ah, Freedom.