The Road to Barber 2013

I'll leave the other thread about the Barber event, this one will be our adventures there and back again.

If you don't want to read this travelog you can move along now. :mrgreen:

I got into Greensboro late yesterday night. This morning (yes, I'm still on West Coast time but it was still technically morning local time) my dad and I got the rig ready to go. We got his K bike into the trailer and fiddled with a cantankerous turn signal light on the trailer. He'll be driving the truck down to haul the gear and his bike. Also if one of the Nortons craps out they'll have a ride home. Of course that means someone riding the BMW K75 so it's like one of those Top Gear specials when the loser has to drive the "spare" vehicle.



We went up to my brother's today and rode the Nortons back down to my dad's. We went on some fantastic back roads. Honestly if I lived here again I'd have a real problem going to work as I'd just keep riding and riding. Smooth flowing roads wherever you go.


Rusty Gold is there in the foreground. Sadly not making the trip this time. Well, not for a while. It gets a bath in Liquid Wrench every time someone walks by.

The Interstate is phenomenal. The fresh engine is powerful and grunty. I can't imagine anyone back in the day riding a Triumph and then a Norton not choosing the Norton. So much ooomph. Tonight I tightened a few bolts and tweaked the bars a bit. The Interstates have an unusual seating position, the tank pushes you back and then the footpegs are in the same place as the Roadsters. Rearsets would be ideal with those big tanks.




For dinner we went down to Lexington for some world famous bbq. It was pretty good but I wasn't overly impressed. We'll probably have lunch in Asheville tomorrow and have some more bbq. I can't wait to get to Alabama for... more bbq...

Ready to leave.


Stopped for gas around Statesville.


Tightened down the exhaust nut with the bike nice and warm. Didn't need much. Should be good for the rest of the ride. Apparently a BMW wrench works perfectly (with a little help from an old fork tube as a cheater bar). The BMW ones grab a lot more fins. Don't know why anyone uses the Norton style ones.


Stopped for a new battery in Asheville. Can't figure out what's wrong with my brother's bike. Old battery was low so we swapped it out, appears to be charging, but acting like a low battery even with the new one and a full charge.




Lunch in Asheville at Little Pigs. Very yummy.


If you go back to the trip two years ago and most of the stops we made look familiar... it's because they are. We've just about stopped at exactly the same places this time too.


Stopped for the night in Chattanooga after a Cracker Barrel dinner.



375 miles today. Made a lot more stops than planned. Some to check out the bikes. Some to rest our bums. Some to eat. 145 miles to go tomorrow. Will stop by the hotel and then head over to the park to get tickets and check out some stuff.

We headed out and ran into some decent fog through the corner of Georgia you cut through on Interstate 59. And a little chilly. But we made it down to Birmingham by 10am (thanks to the time zone change), dropped stuff off at the hotel and head to Barber. By then it was warming up nicely. The goal for today was to walk the swap meet and then head to the pits.


We started the swap meet but made a diversion to the auction bikes.


They were still rolling bikes in when we got there.



A nice MkIII at the auction.


A Dunstal 850. Someone had marked down MkIII on the description but it wasn't.


This bike was still for sale, I first saw it two years ago. $17k. I guess someone isn't eager to sell. It is nice though.


After the swap meet we took the tram to the pits area and chatted with Matt for a while. Such a nice guy. And such beautiful bikes.


My dad and brother checking out one of the CNW bikes.



Some CNW goodies.


Motorson and Matt looking at motorson's bike.

From CNW we walked down to the pits and to the NYCNorton camp. We ran into Dances with Shrapnel and nyckenny. And they gaggle of Seelys.




We also got to meet Jim Comstock and his "lightly" modified Norton. :mrgreen:



My brother on the left and Jim on the right.


The cockpit of Jim's bike.


As we were leaving a Norton sidecar come to the pits for some help. Where else could you find this kind of Norton brain trust in one place?

For dinner we met up with Kenny and Dances at a Mexican place in nearby Leeds. And then a harrowing ride down Interstate 20 in the dark back to the hotel. Not nearly enough lights on the old bikes for freeway travel. Almost makes one want to hang a lantern off the back. Or a flamethrower.

It's going to be crazy tomorrow. And hot. But we'll suffer through. :mrgreen:

look like fun dave - more BBQ place photos!

mikegray660 said:

look like fun dave - more BBQ place photos!

Click to expand...

Oh, don't you worry!


We parked in the pits across from CNW. It makes a good spot to start from. It's easy to get around the parks on the trams.


We headed to the INOA tent (Turn 6) and dropped off the 2014 Rally posters with Suzie. In all these years I'd never met her. What a sweet person. And some great bikes there.









We wandered back over to the swap meet area and back to the auction bikes ans saw this nice one.

At lunch time we came back to Turn 6 for some food. We got some scraps, it went fast! There were also plenty of Turn 6 gifts being passed out.

After kunch was the AccessNorton meetup at the CNW booth. I did my best to catch everyone's name but I'm going to need some help. It got confusing quickly trying to associate a username with a real name.








I'm going to need some help with all the names. I'll do my best.

The gentleman on the far left had the cafe racer with the alloy tank, Lazzamoto handed out NYC MC caps (very nice of him!), then is Matt Rambow of CNW, then it's leia, CanukNortonNut, motorson, mjfriesen, swooshdave, comnoz on the far right.

We had seen the Formula 750 race earlier to see Jay Springsteen walk away from the field on his Harley. Tim Joyce was second on his Triumph and made a good go of it until they hit lap traffic (or until Jay woke up and decided to really pushed it, depends on who you ask :mrgreen: )


I had see this Norton in that race and caught it in the pits later.

That pretty muched wrapped up the day. We did go back to the vendor area and my dad and brother picked up some safely vests. After the harrowing ride back to the hotel the previous night it was agreed that more visibility was needed.

And then (as promised in the other Barber thread) it was off to Rusty's. Unfortunately we didn't see anyone else there. I probably should have specified an exact time. Kenny and the racing guys weren't going to show up until after 7 which was too late for us.



There was this Norton in the parking lot which I think is owned by Leigh.


And finally the obligatory dinner picture. The food there is just fantasitc. The ribs were absolutely perfect. Rusty even came by to see if everything was ok.

Tomorrow I think we'll hit the museum. It's suppose to be warmer on Sunday and we'll, we're pretty crispy as it is. Some air conditioned interior action might not be a bad idea.

We got out to the track around 8 and it was pretty empty. Not sure if everyone was hung over or what. Maybe they were afraid of the heat or maybe they just saw everything the previous day. We rolled right into the place with no line.

To avoid the heat (and as we'd seen just about everything already) we headed to the museum. Which was plenty cool, perhaps even cold inside.



I'm going to say this again, if you've never been to the Barber Museum and have the slightest interest in motorcycles do anything you can to get there. It is just a fabulous facility and the collection is beyond impressive. I'll try to give you a taste of it but these pictures just don't do justice.





There's a bit of distortion with the panorama shots but it should give you a little idea of the place.











That's a bit of the Nortons that I found. They had some other bikes too...

A few Vincents, including a couple I bet you've never seen (except perhaps in pictures...)

Vincent Coment and HRD.

Gauges on a Black Shadow.

Vincent Personal Watercraft

And a Vincent lawnmower. That one I'd never heard of. Apparently this one was owned by some guy named John Surtees. I think he drove cars or motorcycles or something. :mrgreen:


I counted to green frame Ducati 750SS bikes. I was standing next to this one and some lady was taking a picture of it. I asked her if she knew how much it was worth. She shook her head. I told her you could buy a house with it. The look on her face was priceless.


I don't really trust all the placards they have by the bikes. This Ducati's card said it was porky but then listed the weight at 425 lbs. I thought that was light!


Daytona replica




Manx





There were a couple wacky bikes built by some crazy Brit. This one was a V-12 made from a Kawasaki 6 cylinder bike. Good gawd. What is in the beer there? :mrgreen:


The bottom floor of the museum is normally closed to the public but is open just for the Vintage Festival. They actually let us in their machine room this time. Yeah, they have some nice tools there.


There's also a small (heh) collection of Lotus cars. I think he is trying to collect one of each one made, and he's doing a decent job of it!


As we were riding the elevator I was looking at the posters they have between floors. Too my surprise I spotted a poster I designed back in the mid-90s for the Sounds of the Past racing series. I thought it was pretty neat they had one here.


Statues outside the museum.

We stopped into the swap meet area as we were leaving. It was half empty by the time we got there. We loaded up and head out. We didn't get too far (staying in Rome, GA tonight) and are headed to the Wheels Through Time museum tomorrow. So more pics coming!

Final installment. I hope you've enjoyed this.

We spent the night in Rome, Georgia. From there we headed up through Northern Georgia to North Carolina.


I spotted this bike along the way on top of the sign. My brother thinks it's 1966 BSA Lightning but it has a mix of parts. It's actually in not bad shape considering.


For lunch we stopped outside of Murphy, NC for some... BBQ. We had been to this place two years ago and it was still as good now. The ribs were very nice. Falling off the bone good.


We made it up to Maggie Valley and the museum about 2:30pm.


As we were pulling in this van comes in with a Hi Rider (minus the seat) hanging off the back and a 60s Triumph inside. They were also coming from Barber.

If you don't know anything about this museum it specializes in early American bikes and they like to boast that 99% run. And when I mean early I mean the oldest is a 1903 Indian (that runs!). They have a show on the Velocity Channel called What's in the Barn which follows them as they discover rare bikes around the country.

The museum is just packed with bikes, some cars and a ton of memorabilia. It's a bit cluttered and there are so many bikes it's overwhelming. It's the antithesis of the Barber museum which is so neat and organized. But fascinating nevertheless. Instead of a ton of pictures of individual bikes I'll just give some panoramas to give you a sense of the place.


But first they build a bike each year and raffle it away to raise money for the museum. This year it's a 1937 Harley. And yes we got tickets for it. The cash prize if you don't want the bike is $25k, which would get a new Norton. :mrgreen:





















After taking in the museum we decided instead of staying the night nearby we'd just keep going back to my parent's place. It's was about 200 miles and only about 5pm. It was a long last haul but we made it. In total I took over 400 pictures and we traveled over 1000 miles. The bikes worked great and just kept going.

Swooshdave,
Great Pictures of the event.
So little time to take in all the activities. Barber ran this show… “Top Notch”. I MUST go again next year. So much to see, so little time and with good people and good times. This was a great event. I would recommend this to anyone who likes vintage bikes and racing.
Cheers,
Thomas
CNN

Unfortunately Barber falls on my wedding anniversary. I barely got away this year but next year is the 10th. Going to be tough. But I do have a year to convince the wife that Birmingham would be the perfect place for an anniversary, right?


Here's a map of our routes. While there are a bunch of roads in this area there aren't a lot of direct routes. You can go through Atlanta (which is miserable at best) or Chattanooga. If you have enough time you can take the back roads. We tried to do a balance. The North Carolina mountains are quite lovely. Everywhere the roads were really smooth and nice. Except some of the interstates.


I'm also going to give you at tip as to where to stay. I found out some of the Ducati people were staying in this area so we gave it a shot. By taking the back roads you have a fantastic ride to the park. You also come in from the south of the park and miss all the people coming off the freeway. We will definitely stay here the next time.

Very, very, VERY cool swooshdave !!! Your many pics and trip synopsis was fantastic. Thanks for posting !!!

One or Two bikes there :shock: . Thanks for the pictures .



" If you go back to the trip two years ago and most of the stops we made look familiar... it's because they are. We've just about stopped at exactly the same places this time too. "

Mustve been a little more over to the Right , last time . . Some improvements , or was the stop shorter . :wink:

Had a few thoughts on those stacked racks , British Bikes up to the sky . Maybe theres No Oil in them . :? :x :lol: .

Never mind the food. I suppose you have to eat , but lots of fantastic cycles , Thanks .

Great pix Dave!

I only posted a few pictures here. If you want to see all 121 pictures from Barber you can see them here.

Barber 2013