Stone Bicycle Coalition

Tag: 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

  • 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

  • A Bike for CD — One More Out the Door

    Today a refurbed white KHS hybrid rolled out of The Quarry and into the hands of a rider we’ll call CD.

    Why this one mattered

    CD has been on our waitlist since April. His existing bike needs repairs he can’t afford — and where he lives in Rapid City, a broken bike isn’t a hobby problem. It’s a commute problem. It’s getting to work. It’s getting groceries. It’s the difference between independence and being stuck.

    That’s the gap the Stone Bicycle Coalition exists to close.

    The bike

    A refurbed KHS flat-bar hybrid — aluminum frame, 700c wheels, mechanical rim brakes. White and clean. A no-frills, ride-ready workhorse, inspected and tuned by our volunteer crew at The Quarry.

    [Photo: SBC-002 — the white KHS side profile, before handoff]

    It’s exactly the kind of bike the wait list keeps asking for: simple, lightweight, low-maintenance, the kind you can park outside the job site and trust to be there at the end of the shift.

    The gift

    We didn’t charge a thing.

    Bike out the door. Lock included so it stays his. No invoice, no sponsorship ask, no fine print. That’s the whole point.

    How to keep this happening

    Every bike we hand out is bankrolled by someone — a donated bike, a sponsored refurb, a check written to the Coalition. Three ways you can put the next one on the road:

    • Donate a bike or parts. Old bike in the garage? Box of cassettes you’ll never use? Drop it at The Quarry. We refurb it; somebody rides it.
    • Sponsor the next rider. $150 covers the parts, tubes, brake pads, and shop time to send another bike out the door the way CD’s went today.
    • Chip in any amount. Locks, helmets, lights, tubes — the small stuff adds up. Every dollar stays in Rapid City.

    Reach us at info@stonebicyclecoalition.com or stonebicyclecoalition.com. We’ll get you connected.

    One bike out the door today. More to come.

    — Stone Bicycle Coalition