Round and Round We Go

Barber - Part 3

About 11 am it was time for the parade lap where you can ride your bike around the track.  About 10 of us from the show joined about 50 other bikes to do a couple laps.  We had to follow behind a motorcycle cop keeping the pace so we couldn't go too fast, but it was still a lot of fun.  If you dropped back a bit, you could go pretty fast for awhile until you caught up to the pace bike.  In one sharp corner I dragged my toe on the ground.  I need to learn to keep my toes up.

We took our bikes back to the show and spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out, chatting and watching the races.  One of my favorite memories of the afternoon was seeing about 10 people all sitting around Jason from Dime City while he told the story of his recent trip to Bonneville while he sat on Troybilt's bike, Willow.

As the sun set and the festivities wrapped up for the day, a group of us left Barber and had a blast riding the back roads back to Kanticoy's place.  We spent the rest of the night sharing stories, beers and some awesome BBQ.

A little later the guys from Dime City showed up along with Mark Wilsmore of the Ace Cafe in London.  It was pretty cool to have some cafe racer scene celebrities hanging out at the party.  We all got together for a group shot at one point to commemorate the event.

The next morning I slept in until 7 when the rooster started crowing.  After some much needed coffee some of the guys helped me get Nixon back in the trailer and we headed back to the festival.  I spent the morning walking around the huge swapmeet area with CCRider and some of the other guys.  Around noon I said goodbye to as many people as I could find on my way back to the truck and headed back home.  It was a truly great time and I can't wait to do it again next year.

(Thanks to Kioskguy and Mothgils for the photos)

The Queue

Barber - Part 2

I woke up around 6:00 shortly after it got light outside.  I find it hard to sleep late when I'm camping.  Besides, I had to get some caffeine in me and fix my bike before the show.  I chatted with some other early risers and messed around with my bike for awhile.  I put a new spark plug in the side that wasn't firing and it fired right up and ran fine.  At about 7:30 xulf13 wanted to take his repaired bike for a test ride so Fix and I went for a morning ride with him.  I needed to check my bike too.

We rode for about 30 minutes, stopping to get some gas and chat with a Harley rider who was asking us about our bikes.  On the ride I noticed that my engine wanted to race up to about 5000 rpms from idle.  There wasn't much I could do to fix that before the show since we had to leave Kanticoy's by 8:30, so I decided to just live with it for now since it was running fine, except at stoplights.

When it was time to go to the show, about 12 of us all fired up our bikes and headed out.  That was a sight to see and hear.  On the way, several bikes broke down (not unexpected) and then we ended up stuck in traffic waiting to get into the festival for about an hour.  My bike kept revving up so I ended up pushing it most of the way as we waited in the traffic.  We finally made it to the spot where the cafe racer show was and I got to take my leather jacket and helmet off and cool down for awhile in the shade.

I put my bike in line with some others, next to CCRider's awesome 450 and hung out, checking out the other bikes and talking to the builders.

Some close-ups of Nixon

(Thanks to Kioskguy and Mothgils for the photos)

A Pilgrimage

Barber - Part 1

A couple weeks ago I made what will hopefully be a yearly trip to Birmingham for the Barber Vintage Motorcycle Festival.  If you like old bikes, you have to go to this.  There is a giant swapmeet, vintage bike races, dirt bike races, several bike shows, auctions, blah blah blah.  You could spend three full days there and not see it all.  This year the motorcycle forum I am on, DoTheTon.com got together with Dime City Cyles out of Florida and the producers of Cafe Racer TV to put on a cafe bike show.  Since Nixon is nearly finished (they're never really finished are they?) I decided to enter my bike.  To save you the suspense, I didn't win anything, but I had a great time.

A couple days before the show, I had to do some last minute work and apply the brushed finish to Nixon's tank.  This took several evenings of sanding to get it to a point I was happy with.  I didn't have time to rebuild the carburetors or seal the tank, so that will had to wait.

Friday afternoon I put the tank back on, loaded it in the trailer of my Dad's truck and headed off to Birmingham.

Kanticoy, one of the DTT members was gracious enough to let some of us from the forum camp out in his yard a few miles from Barber Motorsports Park.  When I arrived it was dark and as always happens and any vintage motorcycle get-together, there were several bikes being worked on by flashlight.  One of the members, xulf13, had taken a spill riding The Dragon on his way to Birmingham the day before.  He had already gotten a new set of forks and was replacing his front end.  Kanticoy helped me unload my bike from the trailer but when I tried to fire it up to park it with the rest of the bikes, it would only run on one cylinder.  I decided to wait until morning to diagnose this problem and just pushed it over there.  I set up my tent and had a few beers with some of the other forum members I was meeting in person for the first time and some I had met on our trip to Tennessee in July.