Sturgis Bike Week: Final days

Sturgis Bike Week has been a lot of fun this year.  Sometimes I can kind of tell when it's a little down--not necessarily that we have less help or anything, it's just that some years seem better than others.  This year, in my opinion (even though we were missing some key people like my brother and Mom), was a great year.  Dad even said this year was "pivotal."  I don't know how much it changed exactly, but it has helped us to stretch our ministry in ways we haven't before.  Some people had to take on new roles to compensate for the lack of people, and everyone had to take on a little more responsibility than in previous years.

That said, I did enjoy this year a whole bunch.  I've had a lot of fun and a lot of work and a lot of memories to take back home with me.

But first, to catch everyone up.  Yesterday morning started out a little more difficult than usual as we had to set a lot more up than usual.  After the rain from the night before, we had to take down more than usual to keep everything from getting wet.  As a result, we all had to get up a little extra early to get the Kidz Zone open in time.  Dad had addressed us the night before, saying that we really needed to finish strong, even if a lot of the equipment had been put away already.  So we lugged it out again (only to be put away the last time in a few hours).  But I think it was good.  We had a pretty busy day, even though clouds threatened to turn nasty a few times.

We had something of a makeshift show at the end.  Dad didn't have much of a script, but it turned out working well without much of a script.  A lot of it was thanking people for all their help--we'd thank a group, then bring out a puppet or character for the kids to say goodbye to.  Dad even mentioned me.  He was going to have me wave at the audience through the puppet windows, but I suggested just throwing a thumbs up to the kids without showing anything else to kind of keep the mystery of the sound man who controls everything but is not seen except behind the closed curtains...I thought it was kind of cool!  We also gave away the Mp3 Player that the kids had been competing for all week.

It was getting chilly by the time we finished and the rain looked again like it might come down on us, so we started tearing down the whole setup as soon as we could.  The next hour or two were very busy--lots of work, whether folding and rolling up bounce houses or hauling bins or stacking supplies into a tightly-crammed trailer.  We were all very glad when it was over.  We had still managed to avoid the rain, so none of the equipment was put away wet.

After all that we went to Pizza Ranch in Rapid City to celebrate.  We know the manager there--he had been coming to help out since he was around twelve, so we thought it would be a good place to go (and, oh yeah, he gave out a few free buffet tickets)...

We had a great time, but when we finished it was time to say goodbye to a lot of friends.  We were still staying in Sturgis while the others stayed in Rapid City for the night.

The next morning we got up and packed all our stuff up from the church and got it put away.  We also cleaned up a little--vacuumed a little and stuff.  After that, Dad preached at the same church we were staying at (which made things a little more convenient).  We had lunch at Taco John's, then walked around in downtown Sturgis one last time.  When we were done with that we took the RV to the church in Rapid City, where we are staying tonight.  We had a look at some of T-shirts on sale at some of the stores, but they were all still too expensive, so most of us just went without a shirt this year.

We grabbed some pizza before going back to the church, which is where I am now, blogging away...

We plan on getting up pretty early tomorrow, then heading back home.  Ought to be sleeping in my own bed tomorrow night.  Pretty strange thought.

It's been a great year.  I hope next year will go great like it has this time around!


Hopefully I will be going to get my motorcycle sometime around the end of this month...I'll give more  details on that as I get them!  Thanks for staying with the blog for Sturgis Bike Week, 2012!