What I See: Saturday At The Bash....

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Saturday At The Bash....

was a great day. It started out too early (since I went to bed after 2) with me waking up at 7:30 wanting to ride with Butters over to "Wheels Through Time". I also wanted to see how our Canadian friend was doing. It turns out that it rained that morning, but the tree kept Justin dry. Also, by the time I got up he was back in his room asleep. It seems he got Butters to help him carry his mattress back to its proper home. With the rain the early morning departure was pushed back since no one really wanted to ride those curvy roads in the wet. We took the extra time to eat and wait for a few others to get up, this had us heading out around 9:00 or so. The ride over was incredible! We took 129 and a few other roads through Bryson City and Cherokee to finally ride down that big hill into Maggie Valley. Finally arriving at the promised land we parked our bikes and went in the museum. If you have never been there you are missing out! I have been to quite a few car and bike museums and none of them compare to this one. That's saying a lot since I live 30 minutes from Barber's. The difference is the atmosphere and the people at '"Wheels Through Time". Dale, his son Matt and all the other folks are beyond friendly here. I saw these guys go out of their way to help a couple of folks who had mechanical issues. One guy lost an axle nut and another had a flat tire. I saw Dale walk over to a museum bike and pull the rear axle nut off to help my friend and when we were touring the shop with Matt here comes Dale with another of our guys (from the second group to ride over) carrying his flat tire and a new tube. Dale set him up on the tire machine and let him do his thing. You just don't find that kind of care at most museums.

Anyway, back to the story. We hooked up with Matt inside the museum and he gave us the grand tour.I'm sure they treat just about everyone this way, but we sure felt special having Matt hang out with us and tell us stories behind bikes and start a bunch of bikes up for us. I'll do a separate post just on the museum itself next week and give you more details. Let's just say I took 499 pictures this weekend and at least half of them were at the museum. I'll be posting about this visit for awhile.

After leaving the museum we went down the road for some food at a pretty decent BBQ place, Sophia our waitress seemed to know some of the same people Butters does in Ashville, NC and she did a damn good job of dealing with our smelly asses. Our bellies full we left there, got gas and headed back. The ride back was even better than the ride out. We took 28 back and that is one fun road. It's like the Dragon without the super tight 180's. Very fun road that we really enjoyed riding down. Tune in tomorrow for the finale of this ride and some more pics.

The mountains in this area are beautiful! This was taken in Maggie Valley

Every chopper ride needs a lawn mower like this!

Matt starting the Thor race bike. The sound of these machines is just incredible.

Matt starting his latest race bike with the help of one of our Bastards. This is the bike Matt recently raced up in Ohio.

This hillclimber has been sitting on the dirt hill in the museum for 10 years. As part of their 30 bike in 30 days event they got it down and got it running the day we arrived. What a Beast!

One of only 3 1970 XR-750's jumped by Evel and it is in the museum. I don't know about you, but Evel Knievel is one of the biggest reasons I ever got into bikes.

Dale riding an original Knucklehead trike built for military use during WWII. It seems they made a few for the US Army and one for Canada. This is the Canadian prototype. All I did was ask Dale about it and he told me the story, then jumped on, pulled out and rode it around the parking lot. Ya gotta love being able to see them in action.