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October 2024 - Barbertastic!
The one word I could come up with to describe our trip to the Barber Vintage Motorcycle Festival in early October – Barbertastic! Ok, not a real word, but you get the idea. Outside of avid motorcyclists, few know the world’s largest and best motorcycle museum is just to our west in Leeds, AL (a NE suburb to Birmingham). On nearly 1000 acres of bucolic rolling countryside resides a pristine museum and motorsports racetrack, along with plenty of room for RV’s, tent camping etc. The second weekend in Oct, Barber hosts a rally for all things vintage motorcycle… swap meet, track racing, woods trials, vendor displays and demo rides. You-name-it and it’s there! Our Barber hosts didn’t pick the early October timeframe by accident – as usual, the weather was perfectly sunny and dry with cool mornings and warm afternoons.
Five riders and one guest attended… Dave came to Atlanta from his home near Wilmington to meet Larry and Mel and the three rode pleasant backroads (via Cartersville, Centre and Gadsden) on Thurs morning to arrive at the start for choice tent camping spots. BobK rode over early Friday morning and Dan and his daughter came early Sat morning. All five tents, plus a shade tent, fire pit, four bikes and an SUV fit in our 40’ x 40’ allotment!
It was a tremendously fun weekend. The Barber team has really perfected their craft in hosting this event for around 60K – 70K thousand folks. The shuttles running on the road which surrounds the track ran continuously, making it easy to get to the numerous events on the very large property. Dave and Larry were able to score some demo rides. All found the “fan zone” attractions exciting – not least was the Wall of Death carnival-stye attraction. We learned how physical sidecar racing is for the “monkey”. And BobK, Larry and Dave even sprung for the “parade lap” on the track – very fun!
A big part of the attraction is the multitude of motorcycles from our youth. All the bikes you grew up with were represented in every color and condition imaginable. Rather than the “big bikes” (think Harley’s and BMW’s) we commonly see on the roads today, the most common bikes at Barber were the small Japanese bikes which fueled the explosive motorcycle growth in the late 60’s and 70’s… Honda Trail 70’s and all kinds of street/trail bikes, generally 250cc and below. And yes, you could get a (factory!) psychedelic paint job in the 70's...
Also present in great abundance were the British and European bikes which preceded the “Japanese invasion”.
OK, enough words, here’s some pics to better tell the story…