Modern Vespa

When I ride to and from Deadwood on my famous early morning 'Coffee & Scone' runs, I pass by a single, lonely, military grave set out in a pasture about forty yards off of the roadway.

It's the 1874 grave of Pvt. James King, who died of disease near this spot when with the Custer Expedition to the Black Hills that year, two years before George Custer and his 7th Calvary met their end at the Little Bighorn up in Montana.

Being a US. Calvary soldier, it's poetically fitting that King's grave is now situated in a private horse pasture.

Just them?

278 US soldiers, civilians, and Indian scouts were killed at the Little Bighorn. Not the entire 7th Cavalry was wiped out, only those under the command of Custer, along with an estimated 60-100 Lakota and Cheyenne warriors.

My intention in posting this was simply a respectful mention of this particular cavalry soldiers resting place, which in his time was a remote and lonely spot in the western north American frontier.

Now, not a stone throw away from that spot, runs a two lane blacktop and a housing development close enough to his grave to hear the dogs barking in their back yards.

It's all quite surreal.

So was Vanilla Sky.

Is that the same GTS you were planning to sell ?

This sounds fishy. How did you find the road?

I ride that road at least four times per week throughout the riding season, fifty miles up to Deadwood, then fifty miles back. I've been aware of this grave for thirty-one years.

The road is named 'Nemo Road' for the tiny village of Nemo, South Dakota that it leads to, located about seventeen miles northwest of Rapid City, SD.

Not so much a plan, but a possibility at the time I said it. Fortunately, that notion has passed and I'll be keeping the Vespa for the foreseeable future.