The Best Way To Mark A Transition Is To Set Stuff On Fire!

With Barber in the bag, racing came to an end for 2009. For all his hard work Max was rewarded with the Classic Intermediate Championship, which is not too shabby. His bike was well and truly blown up, but thanks to the Carolina boys, he learned that there was a Tr5t lurking in dark recesses of the "Parts Department". The PD, actually called Rusty Rides, is the domain of a certain John French, one of those low key guys with a stack of neat bikes, a ton of parts, and is capable of pelting a bratty kid with a dead fish like no one else. He's helped a good many of us out on numerous occasions. The Tr5t in his possession was described as "having spent a good bit of its life in the bottom of a pond", but the price was right, and since we're generally Brit-bike bottom feeders, we're used to horrors and cruddy piles as starting points. A plan was therefore hatched to head up to Jay's one weekend, pick up the bike, and generally hang out with everyone. As usual, you can't put this many goons in a field on a sunny day with a ton of beer and not expect them to turn into 14 year olds, so we decided the thing to do was to set up a dirty trials course through the "critch" (recipe: take equal parts creek and ditch, then stir) that runs behind Jay's ol' farmhouse. But! introductions, first:

That's Mister French holding the machete, vital for Critch Trials Set-up. Jay, Max and Marcus (walking away) fall under the "usual suspects" heading. Alex and Chad were there, along with a man who goes by many names, but you can call him Pat...because that's his name.

Pat runs a 500 Triumph in vintage road racing, though his poor bike has currently got a rod sticking outta the cases so these days he mostly just hangs out at races stealing our snacks. Also present was all around good guy and current owner of Jay's old Field Pig, Hippy Jim

Niceties outta the way, lets get to some Action! I've seen a lot of action packed dumb things you can do in a field, but only a few of them have been more action packed than Critch Trials. That's why I highly recommend you find the slimiest, likely disease infested-est critch you can and give it a go. Like Max,

Or John, who brought along his Greeves, an excellent Critch Iron

Though this might be a slight dab,

Jay's attempt, you can print these out and make a decent flip book,

As you can see, Max did the important thing and rescued the bike, choosing to leave Jay to his own devices

Alex decided to miss the drop back into the critch altogether, that's probably a 5

Then there was some general purpose tomfoolery in the big field beside the house. Here's Marcus, showing the world that a Bultaco can run

That is, of course, unless its..err...not running

John attacks a woodpile with vicious Villiers Power!

And Chad proves that even a large amount of person can't keep a good bike down...well a BSA single at least.

With all those activities properly taken care of, the only thing left on the agenda was to set the field on fire, which we did

And then with our to-do list squared away, we sat around the mighty fire and drank more beer before calling it a night and trying not to freeze to death sleeping in Jay's wood stove heated front room (apparently the trick to keeping one going while you sleep is to NOT fall asleep). Oh yeah! And Max picked up the bike he'd be running come spring!

Not that it looked like this when he got it. I sadly don't have a pic in as-delivered state. He would have to fully rebuild it in time for the start of the season, which was very exciting, because 2010 was going to be a really busy year for Triumph 5hunnerts. But that's in the future, so for now we'll just bid a fond farewell to 2009.

Barber! A Prequel!!!

What a coinkie-dink. We were just racing at Barber and in our ongoing traipse through time we are also...at Barber 2009. I was still broken, no racing for me, but I was walking (kinda) so I strapped a cane scabbard onto my lil' ol' D3 Bantam, figuring that it weighing in at 12 lbs. (approx.) and seat height of 14 in. (approx.) I was pretty safe on the little bugger and therefore got to ride a powered mochine for the first time in months. That was the perfect plan, because I could get down to the swap meet, to the woods to check trials (which is a perfect task for a slightly broken dude) and watch the racing. Which in the Cross Country world usually means sitting around and drinking beer as you wait for the people you're cheering on to come back around every few minutes. Its an odd spectator sport...just sayin'.

As it was, the racing was....interesting. It had been raining (as usual at a race in 2009) leaving the sighting lap a sloppy hell, with a couple spots so bad they had to cut out a huge chunk of the course. Max didn't make it through the sighting lap. He cooked a big end and was only able to get out of the woods by pulling the plug from the offending cylinder and letting it freewheel. Luckily, George had no interest in a repeat of the slimy suckfest that was Tennessee, so he let Max borrow his Tr5t to beat senseless.

That's the bike in question, parked next to good friend Jason, the beer drinkin'est, BMW ridin'est Latin teacher yer ever gonna meet. Max was a bit nervous about being on a borrowed bike, him not being the take it easy type and him having already broken one bike for the weekend. But he's made of sterner stuff, so lined up for a course that was basically a mile long sprint. Seriously, the first row was coming back around for their next lap before the last row was away.

I've got a buncha photos of ol' Max in this one because we had several people taking pics and because the course was so short he came by about 436 times.

In the end, Max was so happy with the Tr5t, he decided he didn't want to rebuild his 650, but instead wanted a 5 hunnert of his very own.

And the best part is, he didn't break George's bike! So with that, I'll leave you with a retread pic (because I already used this one on the goodbye thread to the old van), but I like it so here ya' go!

Old Bikes and Industrial Geekiousness!

Putting the old stuff on hold again, we recently had a great meeting of the yayhoos at the Barber Vintage Festival. This has always been one of our favorite events because its got pretty much everything; an incredible museum, huge swap meet, trials, Cross Country, road racing, and is kinda central so a pretty wide swath of our group come to play. This year there were contingents from North Carolina, Indianapolis, Texas, Philly, Tennessee, and of course us Florida Folk. It made for a pretty chaotic campsite, mostly fueled by beer and grilled meats. However, it was the first outing for the new van, Shark 10 (no real story there, it was on the windshield when we got it and we kinda decided that was a cool name, so it stayed) and that made it feel a bit more like a real race camp.

But I can't even get to the racing yet! Oh no! This year I was permitted to put Sloss Furnaces on the agenda, so on the Friday before the race Jay, George, Max and I loaded up in my Dad's vehicle to be chauffeured in style to a nerd paradise. Sloss is a relic of Birmingham's industrial past, an almost completely intact iron works that is on the National Register of Historic Places. Effectively they just shut down the cupolas one day then opened it for visitors. Truly incredible. Here's my Pops and Jay, wondering if their tetanus shots are up to date.

Max, getting a proper overview

I prolly coulda spent most of the weekend wandering around this place. Its just cool, cool, cool.
But enough of that! This is a blog about old bikes, for crissakes! And we had a pretty good bunch of us out there. NC was represented by Brian, on the venerable Field Pig who sadly threw his chain just yards into the first lap, Chad on one 'a them BSA single thingies, and Alex, on another BSA single thingie. Here's Chad (3c) and Alex (652) on the line. Chad was in Classic Intermediate and Alex was with me in Premier Intermediate.

Max was up front in Classic Expert and after a loooong break since we last raced (way back at Diamond Dons in the spring) was really ready to be back out on a course. He may have been a little nervous, too, having not really run in anger for months.

You'll notice the other two Florida goons in the background.

George was on his Tr5t, and I was on the Mongrel 20, which was continuing to improve. I'd just had to repair the seat (read: weld the hell out of it), which was a replica item and not up to the job of supporting my capacious arse.

George's bike had given him a bit of a scare, developing a case of Mystery Lack of Any Power Whatsoever, but luckily it had just been a near complete fouling of the 400 supertrapp discs with mud a crud. A quick dip in gas and a disc scrubbing and it was ready to go.
Indy was represented by Sean "I gotta two stroke and don't even care about the other two strokes" Guthrie, on a rather shiny Penton. He was in Novice for his first race, so got to start with us Vintage Coots.

Here's Max, off the line and on to a flying race on a a really good course.

It was about 3 miles long, lots of tight woods, some ups a downs, though nothing nasty except for one short scrabbly bit with a bear of a rock outcrop on top. A lot of fun, but I may have kinda flubbed it a time or two...sad to say (with apologies to any riders stuck behind me). I wasn't alone, though, so I don't feel too bad.
Some decent racing shots, starting with Max, who was really movin'

He was in a duel with Tim Grow and the two of them were cookin'. They came by me and I just stopped and watched them race off through the trees. Good stuff. Far above my pay grade. Next is Alex, your general purpose Flying Bratwurst and my arch-rival in Premier Intermediate.

 Here's Chad, The Attack Brisket, proving there's no weight limit on a little BSA.

He would go on to win Classic Int after the aforementioned Field Pig de-chaining put Brian out, and George tagged his foot, leading to his retirement with a lap in the bag. But not before we got some pics of 'im!

And finally, a couple of me. I had a decent race, but as usual its still a work in progress, so there's things to tweak, mainly clutch longevity and a bit of funky geometry in the bespoke oil tank that causes most of its contents to be pumped out the overflow tube.

I should have another couple shots soon, including some more of Max, who really had a good day. He may have finished 3rd in his class, but he finished 4th overall in the race, proving two things: that's one helluva class, and dude can ride a big ol' Triumph through the woods.