2021 Sturgis Trip - Statistics

        Total Trip


Total Days 14
Days on the Road 12
Total Miles 3100
Average Miles/Day 258
Low Mileage Day 90
High Mileage Day 353

        Gas and Mileage


Total Gas Stops 24
Total Gallons 105.631
Total Gas Cost $365.78
Average Miles/Gallon 29.72
Average Cost/Gallon $3.46
Low Cost/Gallon $3.029 - Dupree, SD
High Cost/Gallon $3.899 - Sheridan, WY

        General


Total States Visited 6
Total National Parks Visited 1
Total National Monuments Visited 1
Lowest Temperature 56.6°
Highest Temperature 106.4° *
Lowest Elevation 19'
Highest Elevation 6,430'
Days with Rain .25
Nights in Motels 6
Average Cost/Night $151.74
Low Cost Night $139.03
High Cost Night $249.28
Wireless Connections 6
Wired Connections 0
Telephone Connections 0

* - High temperature probably occurred when we stopped on one of the really hot days

Web Statistics


I don't usually look at the website statistics since I don't share the links with anyone and don't usually complete all of the pages until after we returned home. These pages are really for our own good anyway so I'm not that concerned with  how many people view or follow our pages anyway. That being said I did take a screenshot of the Sturgis 2021 statistics.

Final Thoughts and Future Plans


This was the trip that we were supposed to take last year before the pandemic appeared. We actually had reservations in Surgis but were able to cancel them. We made reservations for this year for the same place as last year within a couple of weeks after last year's rally. Of course the big thing on everyone's mind was still the pandemic but everyone in our group were fully vaccinated so we didn't get overly concerned. We were careful and didn't spend time in crowded bars or other indoor spaces. It was probably a good idea because we saw very few people with masks - although there were a few.

Several changes this year. We still logged our rides via GPS and posted them to our website. Two years ago on our last trip we had problems with the Garmin GPS device we were using because of the WNRO (Week Number Rollover Bug). My logger can detect whether we are using the Garmin GPS that we have used in the past and the Globalsat GPS that is similar to the Garmin. So we used the globalsat and I think it's an improvement. It seemed to get a fix much quicker and with more satellites. I'll probably stick with it in the future.

Another issue is with the software we use for creating the Google maps and geocoding our pictures. The software is RoboGEO and is no longer being supported or updated. RoboGEO creates it's maps using Google Maps API V2. Unfortunately Google has moved it's API from V2 to V3 and V2 maps are no longer supported. We have almost 200 Google maps on our site from previous trips and I spent many hours last year first writing the code to make our maps work with V3 and then converting all the maps on our site to V3. I don't actually have the exact same functionality but the maps work fine. So every night I have to create the maps with RoboGEO and then convert them to V3. I have a template now so that makes the process a little easier. My next job is to do a short writeup of the process I use every night so I don't have to remember it every year. We also had a slight problem with geocoding some pictures. RoboGEO looks at the time of the EXIF data on a picture and then geocodes it to the latitude and longitude at the same time. I couldn't figure out why some pictures could not be geocoded until I realized that the time on the camera was off by about 15 minutes so, if the pictures were taken in the last 15 minutes of a ride, they could not be geocoded. I must remember in the future to check the time on the camera at the start of a trip.

We didn't use the XM radio on this trip. Since we only use the radio for these trips and they have raised the price for an annual subscription to an exorbitant amount, we didn't renew that radio. Instead I used Audacity software to record 7 and 8 hour sessions from streaming sessions on the XM/Sirius streaming website. Most of the recordings were from the 60s channel or the classic vinyl channel. I uploaded those to my phone and purchased a RAM mount to mount my phone on the bike. Then I added an FM transmitter that would plug into the phone and transmit the audio output from my phone to an FM channel that we could listen to on the built in radio on the bike. This seemed to work fine and I'm sure we will use this same technique in the future. The only minor issue is when we are near an area where the same channel we are using is being broadcast over the air. This doesn't really happen very often and it only happens for a very short period of time.

We did have more rain than in the last trip. We had just a few minutes on the ride to Mandan but not enough to even put on rain gear. Then on the way home we got rain at Lookout Pass which is the border between Montana and Idaho which lasted about 20 or 30 miles. Then we got a little more near the end of the ride that day. We did have to put on rain gear but the rain actually helped to clean off about 90% of the bugs the bike had acquired.

As an aside we definitely saw way more trikes than 21 years ago and way more helmets. When Linda and I were here with Jason 21 years ago, we felt like we were the only ones wearing helmets.

The only problem with the bike was the bad tank of gas that I mentioned in the day 11 writeup. Linda claims that the reason the motorcycle always works so well is because we buy Honda roadside assistance insurance. We do this every couple of years and it only costs $70. for two years. If that's all it takes to not have any problems on the road, I'm okay with that.

No real thoughts about next years trip but we have lots of time to think about that.

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