Sturgis 2026: Climbing Into A 3-Wheeler Called The Pantydropper Was Not A Good Idea

Sunday morning, I threw some clothes in a bag and headed east, Sturgis-bound.

For hundreds of miles, Wyoming unspooled beneath a great blue sky, the prairie rolling toward the horizon through cattle, sagebrush and long stretches of nothing at all, until the earth began to rise and the plains folded themselves into the dark, pine-covered ridges of Meade County.

Motorcycles seemed to materialize out of thin air.

One became three. Three became 20. Packs merged with packs until the highway itself appeared to be migrating toward Sturgis, chrome flashing in the sun and the low thump of exhaust echoing off rocky bluffs.

I left the interstate for an old highway where limestone walls rose around the road, waterfalls spilled from cliffs and disappeared into the trees, and the air seemed to change as the prairie vanished behind me.

I had crossed into the primal kingdom of the Black Hills.

A crow cawed from somewhere above, and a shiver ran down my back.

Too late to turn back now.

The Pantydropper

For most of the year, Sturgis is a South Dakota town of close to 7,000 people.

Then August comes.

For one week, motorcycles pour in from every direction, transforming the place into a temporary city of chrome, leather and humanity, with Main Street as its pulsing center. I was told about half-million people were there Sunday.

Somewhere near the entrance, a 66-year-old Louisiana man was waiting to show me the ropes.

Manny Myers was sitting in a low-slung, tricked-out trike customized down to the smallest details, his gray beard hanging down his chest in two long braids and not one but three packs of Marlboro Blacks riding in the pocket of his sleeveless orange shirt.

The Pantydropper — the name of this wild beast — was painted with ghost flames and built around a 350 V8 car engine sitting obscenely exposed in front of us.

The name is a nod to the toll, but "You get a free ride," he told me with a smirk, because he knows my aunt.

"It goes zero to 100 in a second," he said.

This was not reassuring.

A Biker, Not An Enthusiast

Manny has been coming to Sturgis for 50 years. His first rally was when he was 16, after hitchhiking from California, but his love affair with motorcycles began more than a decade before that.

He was 5 when his father got a Honda 305 and began taking him for rides.

Manny remembers there wasn't much talking, just his father in front of him, the road rolling beneath them and Mother Nature whispering into his little ear.

One day, Manny looked at his father.

"Dad, are we bikers?"

"No, son," his father told him. "We're enthusiasts."

Five-year-old Manny thought about that for a minute.

"You might be an enthusiast, Dad, but I'm a biker."

Sixty-one years later, not much has changed.

We climbed aboard.

Winding Turns

Manny took the wheel first, steering us away from Sturgis and onto the old highways that twist through the Black Hills.

The Pantydropper was impossible to ignore. The exposed V8 growled in front of us as Manny worked the turns, his two gray braids lifting in the wind and a Marlboro Black burning between his lips.

Motorcycles were everywhere, traveling alone and in packs, and riders waved as they passed.

Manny waved right back.

For a while, I was content to sit beside him and watch the world go by, the road winding between walls of pine and rock as he handled the trike with ease.

Then, without warning, he pulled onto the shoulder and scooched over.

"Your turn."

Huh?

"Drive."

The mini ape-hanger handlebars felt awkward in my hands, and The Pantydropper was harder to steer than I expected, requiring actual muscle to wrestle around the curves.

But it had a windshield and seatbelts, so I hit the gas.

I was terrified, but I didn't want to let my new friend down, and "bikers don't like pussies," he had told me earlier, so there was that.

We passed the Boars Nest, where people crowded an outdoor deck strung with star-spangled bunting and flags.

Then we zipped around another corner and there, rising unexpectedly from the trees, was a 60-foot stone bust of Abraham Lincoln.

The Great Emancipator stared at us solemnly.

The trees became a blur.

Beside me, Manny smoked his cigarette, totally unconcerned that a reporter he had met only hours earlier was now piloting his baby through the Black Hills.

Laughing like little kids, our hair whipping wildly in the wind, I began to understand.

'Ah, Shit'

It was about 4 p.m. when we decided to turn around and head back toward Sturgis, but this time when I hit the throttle nothing happened.

"Ah, shit," Manny said.

Apparently, a wire had come loose.

"Again."

The Pantydropper could still idle, so we began creeping down the highway at 2 mph, and before long a procession of motorcycles and cars stacked up behind us.

Manny considered the problem.

"Hang on."

Then the sprightly senior climbed out of his seat and scrambled onto the front of the trike, one leg on the hood and the other still in the cab, until he was hanging halfway out of the machine.

From there, he began operating the throttle by hand.

His Marlboro Black was still burning from his lips, bobbing above the exposed V8 engine.

Suddenly, we were hurtling angrily down the highway again, The Pantydropper roaring like a demon from Hell with Manny clinging to the front while I steered.

It was going remarkably well.

Until I saw flashing lights.

Busted

A South Dakota state trooper was behind us.

We pulled over.

Manny climbed down from the front of the trike, and the trooper approached.

He looked at both of us with complete horror.

He asked Manny to go sit in the patrol vehicle for a minute, then turned his attention to me.

It slowly dawned on me what was happening.

He appeared to want some reassurance that I knew this strange, double-braided man, that I was OK and that I had willingly climbed aboard.

I assured him I had.

I was, in fact, there voluntarily.

I was a journalist.

The explanation did not make the situation sound any more reasonable. If anything, it seemed to affirm for both of us the peculiar lunacy of a reporter hunting for a good story.

I don't know what Manny said inside the trooper's car, but somehow he talked his way out of a ticket and came back with an idea.

We rigged a jumper cable to the lever he'd been pulling, creating a makeshift throttle he could operate from inside the trike.

Then we fired up the horses, reins in hand, and off we went, me still steering while Manny worked our homemade throttle, winding our way back through the Black Hills toward the gathering thunder of motorcycles in Sturgis.

Manny was cackling.

Pure joy.

Hell-Raiser To Helper

Having survived our run-in with the law, we crested a hill and spotted a sign advertising $20 steaks.

We pulled in, and he told me what Sturgis was like a half-century ago. 

It was rougher then, with fewer rules and considerably more danger. These days, he considers much of it a tourist trap.

The old outlaw mythology is still everywhere — leather, loud bikes, nearly naked bodies and enough skulls and flames to decorate the gates of Hell — but now it shares Main Street with families on vacation. During the day, little kids weave through the crowds while motorcycles rumble past despite women walking around wearing almost nothing. 

Manny has watched Sturgis go from a place your mother might warn you about to a place where somebody might bring their mother.

Manny has changed, too.

There was a time, he said, when he came to Sturgis mostly to "fight and drink."

Today, the old hell-raiser has become something of a helper. He told me he spends much of his free time trying to make the world a better place, and when he comes to Sturgis now, he isn't looking for the trouble that once drew him here.

He just wants to ride.

He gets up early and cruises the old highways while the rest of the rally is still sleeping off the night, following the roads wherever they take him, much as he did as a little boy riding behind his father in the hills of California. 

His trikes draw attention everywhere they go. People stare from the roadside. Riders turn their heads as they pass. Strangers wave, and Manny waves right back, like the unofficial mayor of Sturgis greeting "the peasants".

Eventually, we climbed back into The Pantydropper and rolled toward town.

We ended up at "The Beach," a little sandpit where bikers gather to do burnouts. One man revved and revved until his tire blew apart.

On purpose.

I climbed out of the death trap, grabbed my things and waved goodbye.

It was getting dark, and Sturgis was just waking up.

"Goodbye, my sister in the wind," Manny called after me.

Then he disappeared.

Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.