Hit the Barber fest this past weekend. VR6 and I rode down from Fayetteville, AR to Birmingham, AL. We left at 7am Thursday and thought momentarily that we'd cheated the weatherman out of his rain day. Sadly, we were mistaken. Just beyond Alma, AR...the rains fell. There's really nothing I enjoy less than a long, cold, wet ride. Finally, in Brinkley, we had to give it up for a while and regroup. We just couldn't safely see what was happening around us. Thankfully, after lunch, it let up a bit and we carried on. The good folks at Gene's Diner must've thought we were halfway to stupid. Near Tupelo, the sun actually came out for about 20 minutes. Yee-haw. At least the storm had broken up. We arrived in Birmingham a good 12 hours later than when we started but we finally had made it. The Friday portion of the event had pretty foul weather but not unbearable. We thoroughly checked out the museum. Here's some pics:
http://rides.webshots.com/album/555066177AvpQKb
If you've never been there, it's amazing. The building itself is really unbelievable and it's literally stacked with mountains of motorcycles. Four floors of display areas and a "basement" garage where they tune bikes & cars. Also, we were allowed access to this because of Saturday's auction. I would do the whole trip again just to see the museum once more. The whole place is 80,000 square feet. That's the track, museum, the land etc... Triumph was there with the demo truck. Weinert was there heading it up. Those guys were very cool to us. I rode an 06 Spint ST and the Scrambler. The Scrambler is a blast! Very light and fun to ride. The ST...well, I wasn't crazy about it but we were just "demoing" them at low speeds. Hard to tell what it's like at decent speeds. We hit the swap meet etc... and headed out around 5pm. On Saturday, we went back bright & early and I finished a little camcorder movie I was recording in the museum (battery went dead on Friday). After that, we hit the vintage and classic bike shows at the Expo area. Some really amazing bikes owned by the public. We saw an Abington "King Dick" up close. Pretty cool. Also, the Vintage Japanese Club was there. They had some really sweet Japanese stuff. I saw some beautiful XS650 Yamahas. We made our way track side and watched parts of three race categories. Antique, vintage 250 class and "super 60's" with 650cc bikes. It was pretty intoxicating. Like everyone else, I want to have a hand at a track day now lol. Some of those guys were haulin' serious arse. It was great viewing. Next, we made our way back to the Triumph truck and I rode a Speed Triple. This was my favorite of the bunch. The ergos were good and it was really fun to ride. I'd love to have one but who knows...maybe. We took in the vendors some more. I picked up some vintage style grips for the TBird. VR6 found the tailight he's been looking for to put on his Bonnie. Went around a bit more and the day was nearly over. So, we headed out for dinner. We got up early Sunday morning and headed back to Fayetteville. It took about 12 hours again but the ride was fairly pleasant with no rain and decent sunshine. It did get COLD after that though. All in all, we got about 1350 miles in roundtrip. Definitely had a blast and will return next year.
[ This message was edited by: YrfuneralMytrial on 2006-10-24 10:41 ]
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