When is a week not a week? When it’s the week of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Then a week is about 10 days.

There’s a plan afloat in the city of Sturgis to acknowledge what bikers from around the world have known for years — there’s a lot going on in Sturgis several days before the official Monday start of the giant biker bash.

Sturgis Rally Department Head Brenda Vasknetz is asking the Sturgis City Council to extend the official run of the annual motorcycle rally to 10 days, beginning with the 70th Sturgis Rally in 2010. It would start on Friday, Aug. 6, 2010, and end on Aug. 15. No changes are planned for the 2009 rally, however. The dates are still Aug. 3 to 9.

“We want to recognize this as a 10-day event,” Vasknetz told the Rapid City Journal.

Traditionally, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally starts on the first Monday of August and ends on the following Sunday. But as the Sturgis rally has grown in scope over the last 18 years, vendors began setting up well in advance of rally week. And people start showing up earlier as well.

In recent years some of the campgrounds began adding big-name concerts on the weekend before the rally, which brings in even more bikers.For instance, George Thorogood plays at the Buffalo Chip this year on Sunday, Aug. 2, the eve of the rally.

In fact, you could stand in downtown Sturgis on the Saturday before the rally, and you’d be hard-pressed to convince anybody that the thing hasn’t started yet. The only clue is an occasional car wading through the bike traffic on Main Street. The city doesn’t close Main Street to cars until Monday morning.

However, Vasknetz said not all rallygoers are aware of everything going on the weekend before the official start. Extending the official dates, she argued, could help vendor sales, improve sales tax revenue and help visitors get more out of the rally.

I always thought the stretching of the rally was due in part to its own success. A lot of people who like to ride the Black Hills but don’t necessarily like the crush and crowds of Sturgis. They come the Wednesday before the rally, do their riding, have a beer in Custer, play some blackjack in Deadwood or check out the winding, relatively uncrowded roads of the Black Hills. When the rally starts, they buy a T-shirt, catch a concert and head home about midweek. Some riders, although not many, arrive midweek, then hang around after the rally is over.

After the rally becomes a 10-day event, the early bird bikers will start showing up a full week before the official rally start … and by 2020 we’ll be calling it Sturgis Rally Month.