First off, there’s no such thing. By official, that means a formula that includes D.O.T. counts into Sturigs, the amount of trash accumulated over the week and the number of visitors at Mount Rushmore.

But everyone loves to venture a guess. I did earlier in my online column, and my guess was down, quite possibly significantly. That is in contrast to people who actually work the rally, such as the folks out at Black Hills Harley-Davidson on Deadwood Avenue and others say they’re expecting it to be up from last year.

Last year, it was down 18 percent from the previous year. So it could happen without too great a crowd.

All I’m saying is when I stopped by the Common Cents on Mount Rushmore Road kitty corner from Ruby Tuesdays, the bike traffic seemed down significantly.

There were about 20 motorcycles in the lot when I pulled out. That might seem like a lot, but usually, I can barely get out of the lot. Today, I cruised on through.

I’m just saying …

Had an e-mail from a reader waiting for me when I got up this morning that Chuck Berry may not be coming to the Buffalo Chip after all.

And sure enough, when I check their Web site, he’s no longered featured among the many bands scheduled to play over the rally. Buckcherry was there, but no Chuck Berry.

We’ll be checking into it and getting it up online later in the day if it turns out to be true.

The Princeton Review has issued its 2009 rankings of top party schools, and to nobody’s surprise, there isn’t a single South Dakota school on it. The list is developed from a survey of 120,000 college students.
There are a few regional schools, including the University of Colorado in Boulder and not-so-close University of Iowa in Iowa City that regularly make the list.
In some ways, I’m surprised any schools north of the Mason-Dixon line or not located in warm, sunny climes made the list. That being said, there aren’t really that many surprises.
Penn State is this year’s winner, followed by last year’s winner Florida.
In South Dakota, I’m guessing that the competition would be between the state’s two biggest universities: South Dakota State University in Brookings and the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. Locally, I’m guessing that BHSU would be seen as having more partiers, although I believe it has fewer traditional undergraduate students, which generally gives schools the upper hand in the party ranks.
As for the School of Mines, I simply don’t believe that those attending can spare as many brain cells in their pursuit of a college degree. That being said, the course load would certainly be enough to drive many a young person to drink.

Friday afternoons are deadly to Web stats.

Folks are eager to get out of Dodge to enjoy the weekend. Some workers are afforded the ability to leave before 5 p.m., and thus, beginning at 2 p.m. every Friday, I watch as Web traffic at www.rapidcityjournal.com takes a dive.

That is, except for this Friday, when at 2 p.m., the numbers took a surprising leap, launching higher than they have at any point this week. It has been a relatively slow day for news (if you throw out more news on the smoking ban appeal and the 11-year-old being arrested for allegedly stabbing a Rapid City teenager), and I couldn’t for the life of me figure it out.

That is, until I recalled that this is the Friday before, as in before the Rally. Basically, this is the beginning of the last weekend before folks set out on their motorcycles (or pickup trucks pulling huge trailers) toward Sturgis. That means they’re checking out details about our trip. And while they may not be coming to rapidcityjournal.com to do that, they are headed toward sturgisrallydaily.com.

Basically, this is MY official start to the Sturgis rally.

This came in Wednesday morning for Pennington County Weed and Pest, and it simply must be shared.
While the news release contained plenty of important, wortwhile information (basically a warning that mosquitoes that generally carry West Nile virus on the rise), it also contained the following sentence.

“Pennington County crews will be adulticiding between dusk and dawn on selected county roads when conditions are favorable for adult mosquito control.”

Adulticiding? Really?!? Audlticiding?
The term I came up for the practice of ruining perfectly good nouns by trying to turn them into verbs is “verbicide.” It’s pretty common these days, but work such as this must be recognized and given its due.
Hey, I make plenty of typos and mistakes in my copy, but rarely do I treat the English language so brutally with the intent to do harm.
Adulticiding?
Well, I’ll give the word this much. I think I actually know what they’re talking about.

Maybe. Maybe not.
We got a call at the desk this morning of a train derailment out near Wall.
Now, the area in question is generally ripe for such incidents. As one reported noted, the track is a century old and in an area that has been known to have such incidents before.
So news editor Pat Dobbs made a few calls to local law enforcement and ambulance services. Nobody could confirm it, but at least one did note that the train hadn’t left for the day.
Now, the derailment — which was described as four or five cars that had apparently falling off track into a draw — could have been there for awhile, or it could be new. We’re still have messages into DM&E to confirm. As for others who might be slightly affected by a derailment, it doesn’t seem to be ruffling any feathers.
Hopefully, we’ll at least have a little something sometime today — be it new news or, at worst, old news.

In doing a little research — and I emphasize a little — for this morning’s version of The Fives, I was reminded of one of my favorite cheese flicks from my youth — Capricorn One.
You remember it. It’s the one where O.J. Simpson eats the rattlesnake. OK, maybe you don’t remember it from that.
The premise of the movie was much like the rumors that swirled about in the vast reaches of the conspiracy theory crowd, that NASA could have faked something like the missions to the moon.
In Capricorn One, the mission is to Mars. But the message I’m sure spoke loud and clear to what most studies estimate is that 6 percent of the population that might be able to believe that such a hoax could be pulled off.
Nevermind those pieces of rovers and capsules and such that we can see on the moon today.
Anyway, it is a great little bit of history without being historical; a small snapshot of a  small part of our psyche in the post-Watergate meets space age era.

My favorite scanner call in a while came across today for the Hill City. Dispatch noted that they had just got a call from a reporting party that they had a subject that “was … just … not right.”

I could insert some snide comment about Hill City, but working here in the newsroom, the old addage about glass houses comes to mind almost immediately.

12:25

This just in. A bad accident somewhere in the Hills between a logging truck and an SUV. Apparently, at least one person is critically injured. Another has been knocked out.

We’ll have more later in Breaking News.

Got this comment on the story about the shooting down on Pine Ridge.
After two days of dredging through some of the most foul, mean-spirited and down right callous comments I’ve seen in the 2-1/2 years of combing through reader comments on this story and a couple of others — including Mount Rushmore security, the Black Hills aboriginal ownership claims and the questionable tourist shop wine holder — I actually liked seeing this comment.
No, I didn’t pass it through. It’s a bit too snarky. And yes, it was probably a dig at Rapid Reply editors who have had to kill off a huge amount of comments that simply weren’t fit to print.
But I still like it.

Puppies  on 07/15/2009 11:41:47 said:
“I love puppies, I have always loved puppies. They are so cute and cuddly and so full of love. I know a lot of people and almost everyone of those people love puppies like I do. I can’t imagine not loving puppies and that is why I love puppies so much. Floppy ears, cute round eyes, waging tail, I mean what is not to love. You can look for a long time and not find anything as wonderful as puppies, trust me.
I only wish the people in this story had a nice puppy to love, then perhaps this whole incident might could have possible been avoided. More puppies and less shooting each other is how I see it. On the reservation and off the reservation, puppies for everyone. Come on admit it puppies could only help this situation, it is completely and utterly imposible for puppies to hurt this situation, they can only improve it I assure you. If you don’t believe me ask the nearest puppy, he or she will tell you, improvement is in the cards when you include puppies.
Nothing in this story, and for that matter any other story in the paper could have or has changed my love for puppies. They are so awesome everyday of the week. Sunday through Saturday, puppies rock. So lets all get a new puppy today and remember to let the love flow, not that you could not with a puppy. Puppies are love. Love is a puppy.”