Black Hills – Stone Bicycle Coalition

Jokes & Spokes:Comedian Touring South Dakota by Bike

We end up at a lot of comedy shows around here — it’s a scene we love and keep a foot in. Most nights the tour vehicle parked out front is a van. The other night it was a bicycle.

Skyler Bolks is a Sioux Falls comedian, and at six-foot-seven he’s a big presence on a genuinely big bike. He’s a seven-time “Sioux Falls Funniest Comic” who’s worked his way through 36 states, and his humor is Midwest to the bone — the kind that’s sharpest when he’s messing with the crowd. He had the room.

But the part that stuck with us isn’t the act. It’s how he’s getting from town to town.

A thousand miles, stage to stage

Skyler is in the middle of a tour he calls Jokes & Spokes — roughly a thousand miles, pedaling from one town’s stage to the next, all building toward RAGBRAI in July. The bike isn’t a gimmick bolted onto the comedy. It is the tour. Eastern South Dakota at first, and now the wheels have rolled all the way into the Black Hills.

We talked to him after the show, slipped him a Stone Bicycle Coalition sticker, and told him to holler if he needed anything on the Hills end of the trip. What came back wasn’t road-grind complaints. He’s enjoying it — the plains, the small towns, the people and cultures strung between the stages.

That right there is the whole pitch we keep making. A bike turns the in-between miles — the part most people sleep through on the interstate — into the best part of the trip.

Our kind of journey

This is exactly the sort of trip we want more folks dreaming up: pick a direction, load the bike, go find out what’s out there. Skyler just added a microphone. And if a guy can make an honest living riding South Dakota and making people laugh, even better — we’ll be first in line to watch.

So — thanks for the show, Skyler, and good legs the rest of the way to RAGBRAI. What a journey you’re on. Anybody out there cooking up their own version (comedy optional): you know where to find us.

— Stone Bicycle Coalition

June 20, 2026

Three Saturdays on the Grass: The Grasslands Triple Crown

The Black Hills get all the postcards. Ride an hour east and the land opens into something quieter — the National Grassland, where the gravel runs straight at the horizon and you can go a long while without meeting a car. Three prairie towns put on a gravel event out there every summer, and together they make the Grasslands Triple Crown.

[Photo: Wide prairie gravel road running to the horizon, single rider]

These belong to the Oahe Wheelmen and the crews in Lemmon and Wall, backed by the Northern Great Plains Joint Venture and the South Dakota Grasslands Initiative. We’re Rapid City riders, and we’re pointing you east: these are worth the drive.

The hook

Ride all three this summer and a Lemmon artist named Ethan Thom hands you back a metal sculpture — not a medal, not a shirt, a sculpture. That’s the Crown. If you like a little competition, each long route carries three Strava segments that score toward the series; upload your ride after you finish and you’re in it.

[Photo: Last year’s finishers or the Ethan Thom sculpture]

The three

Grassland Gravel — Fort Pierre — Saturday, July 18. 31, 53, or 71 miles. (register)
Thunderhawk Wide Open — Lemmon — Saturday, August 15. 25, 50, or 115 miles of remote Old West country up near the North Dakota line. (register)
Wheelin’ to Wall — Wall — Saturday, September 26. Its 10th year — gravel and pavement, 31 to 64 miles, mass start right in town. (register)

The local read

From the Hills: Wall is the close one — about an hour out I-90, an easy day trip. If you only do one, do that. Fort Pierre is two and a half, three hours east — worth a Friday night over by the river. Lemmon is the haul, three and a half hours north.

And no, you don’t have to race. Every event has a short route; ride the 31 at Fort Pierre at whatever pace gets you to the post-ride meal grinning. The long routes and the segments are there if you want them. Same thing we say about 8 Over 7: pick one, ride it, see how it feels.

A few of us are headed out. Want company for the drive to Fort Pierre or Lemmon — or just want to know what tires to run on grassland gravel? Come find us; we’ll carpool where it makes sense.

Register for all three on BikeReg (links above). Sign up early: prices climb as the dates near, and Fort Pierre stops guaranteeing shirts after July 1.

Three Saturdays, one big stretch of grass. Go find out what’s past the postcard.

— Stone Bicycle Coalition

June 19, 2026

8 Over 7 — One Rider’s Journey

I rolled out of Cheyenne Crossing on May 15 with a loaded bike, a Garmin inReach pinging home, and a route Jason had redrawn — denser, higher, more honest. Three days later I came off Terry Peak with everything I rode in on, seven summits in my legs, and a lot of new respect for He Sapa.

“It’s becoming a classic annual Black Hills dirt tour to iconic peaks and high points. It’s special to me because of the routes and places it takes you. The time invested in perfecting the route. Also the camaraderie of taking on the challenges with like minded riders.”

— Perry Jewett, founder of 8 Over 7

Day	Distance	Climbing	Moving	Max Speed	Start Temp
Day 1 — Spearfish → Hill City	80.11 mi	7,431 ft	9:01:19	38.3 mph	75 °F
Day 2 — High rim → Custer	60.28 mi	5,371 ft	6:21:34	34.9 mph	64 °F
Day 3 — Spine → Terry Peak	33.04 mi	2,448 ft	3:35:52	29.8 mph	43 °F
Total	173.4 mi	15,250 ft	18:58	—	—

~11,300 calories. 8,276 kJ of work. About 19 hours of pedaling spread across three days. Honest climbing came in at 15,250 ft — roughly 2,000 more than the “around 13,000” we’d been quoting. Jason’s denser line was, as advertised, more honest about elevation.

The crew

Perry J., Zach, Garick, Joel, Bryce, Jason, Leif H., Phil J., Logan, Jake R., Chris G., Aaron D., Pat A., Ryan H., Rory S., Jeff B.

Sixteen riders. One route. The camaraderie Perry talks about above is not abstract — it’s what gets you over the next climb when the legs say no.

The ride

Day 1 dropped south through Rochford and Mystic to Sylvan — smooth gravel until it isn’t. Day 2 was the high rim: Bear, Grand View, Odakota, Green, hours above 7,000 feet where the horizon turns from spruce-dark to plains-tan. Day 3 ran the spine north past Crows Nest and Crooks Tower to finish at Terry Peak. Honest, not euphoric — the kind of finish where you know exactly which parts you’d come back for.

Top efforts

Day 1 PR — Lachstring to Cheyenne Crossing — 28:43 (5.14 mi, 10.7 mph, 183 W avg)
Day 2 climb — Reno Gulch — 1:13:53 (6.51 mi @ 3.5%, VAM 299)
Day 3 closer — Terry Peak Summit Rd. — 38:38 (3.14 mi @ 4.8%, VAM 379)

The full per-day breakdown — every effort, every climb, the Garmin and Strava traces — lives at 8over7.com.

Per-day activity data:

Why this matters to the Coalition

Stone Bicycle Coalition exists to make this kind of riding — or any kind of riding — accessible to anyone in Rapid City who wants it. The 8 Over 7 is one end of that spectrum; a kid picking out their first earn-a-bike at the Quarry is the other. Both ride the same roads home.