Story time: A burnout in a gorilla suit

The fine folks at Baker Drivetrain are the brains behind the burnout competition during the Sturgis Rally and they were kind enough to throw me an invite to their shindig a few years back. The invite did come with a warning that some competitors might take the competition a bit too seriously. After all, you have custom bike builders competing in front of thousands of folks fueled by beer and ego at a bar that takes up a city block in the center of the largest motorcycle rally on the planet. What could go wrong?

I was immediately intrigued by the idea and readily accepted their invitation. As far as taking things too seriously goes, I was in no danger of doing that.

I decided to bring a Sportster to the competition to compete against a bunch of large-displacement Big Twins jammed into really expensive custom bikes. I knew my little Sportster wouldn’t be taken seriously, so to raise my level of unseriousness I decided to wear a gorilla suit as a little extra jab to the situation. I was fully committed to my plan and was determined not to break character — meaning remove my gorilla suit — until I finished the competition.

The competition is actually pretty easy. It's set up like a drag race, two bikes, head to head. The bike's front tire is put into a wheel chock that is staged in front of a drag racing tree. When the lights go green, the riders have to shift through the gears while doing a burnout to see who gets to top gear first. I have done my fair share of drag racing and my fair share of burnouts, so I figured I was well prepared to take on the competition.

In my mind, it was an rpm competition, and I new my 1,200 cc Sporty was capable of more rpms quicker than the big-inch custom bikes were, and to give it a bit more edge I put 80 psi in the rear tire to get it hard as diamond so it would spin up nice. The little café Sportster also had clip-on style handlebars so when the race started I would be leaning way forward with my feet on the ground. So rather than try to swing a leg up to get to the shifter, I just reached down to grab the shifter with my hand once I threw the clutch. After that, my years of clutchless speed shifting during drag racing took over and I just banged through the gears.

As it turns out, I was really good at that and the gorilla suit and I dominated the competition on the Sportster. It was extremely warm in that suit on a South Dakota August night and I was a bit concerned with catching fire in my furry costume while doing burnouts on a rather warm air-cooled Harley, so I was more than ready to take that rig off after my win.

It was indeed a weird and epic night in Sturgis that I celebrated with — you guessed it — a burnout.

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