As I boarded my flight for Sturgis’ 70th anniversary, I felt a little lame for not riding there. It’s not as bad as taking a knife to a gunfight, but it is just as bad as trailering your bagger to a motorcycle rally. This whole scenario was even more negatively compounded by the fact that I just ponied up and bought myself a new ’10 Dyna. As I sandwiched myself into the window seat, I was yet again aggravated with the thought of hitting some open road and seeing what the FXDB could do.

What’s my excuse you say? Well, we needed to get yet another jam-packed installment of HOT BIKE in the hopper, as well as the fall issue of Street Chopper finished hours before I could toddle off to the Black Hills to make the scene and report my findings back to our readers.

See, in this magazine game, time is always of the essence and if any of us editors had 48 hours in a day, it would be too little. So, this year I opted to fly the friendly skies for a few hours instead of pounding miles of pavement for days. Yes, I know this decision made complete sense, but it still was a bummer.

While on the small plane headed to Sturgis, I heard many other people telling their individual woes of why they couldn’t throw a leg over their machines and reasoning to anyone within earshot (or to themselves) why they had to hit the skyway instead of the highway.

After I had a stiff drink and whipped my MacBook out for a little in-the-air work, I got to thinking. Maybe all of those “bikers” in cars and pulling trailers I have sneered at from my bike all these years were just like me; behind the eightball and in need of the world to stand still long enough to get some work done before playtime. I guess it doesn’t really matter how you get to your destination as long as you get there.