A Visit From A Brother I Haven't Seen In 20 Years

Back in 1988 I made my way over to Germany for my second overseas tour in the Army. Little did I know that it would be some the best years of my life. I was stationed on a great post (Giebelstadt Army Airfield) doing a job I loved (Crewchief on Hueys) and I bought my first Harley. Buying that bike led to me meeting some of the best people I have ever known. I was proud to become a member of the Stray Dogs MC and even though I left Germany I still proudly display my patch. One of the main people who made these years so great was John Millar of Millar Machine. Between John and his great wife Jacque us Wurzburg Stray Dogs were made to feel at home even though we were a thousand miles away. As usual when we leave duty stations we tend to lose contact with people, especially in the pre-internet age. A few years ago I managed to find a way to get back in touch with John and Jacque. That was a good day for sure, because we've managed to stay in touch since then and because of that John ended up stopping by and spending the night with us this weekend. John had to go up north to take care of some family business and his route home led him right by my house. He got here Saturday afternoon and we spent a little while catching up before Allison and I took John to the Bright Star restaurant in Bessemer for a good dinner.

After that we came back to the house where we spent more time talking ans then drank a few cold Fat Tires while watching "Preppers" and making fun of them. Finally it was time to go to sleep so we retired for the evening and got a good nights sleep. Next morning it was time for breakfast and some more talk about the old days and about what we each have been doing in the bike world. It's great to know that John still has the 1987 Lowrider that he had in Germany, it's been repainted, but has managed to roll up 180,000 miles. Don't tell me that Evos are not good motors! Eventually John had to get on the road so we said our good byes and John headed to the house. It was great to see someone so good after 20 years. I highly recommend it ;-) Hopefully it won't be 20 more years before we get to visit again and maybe next time Jacque will be with him.

Saying Good-Bye to a great friend.

Back in the old days outside Claire's Pub in Illeshiem, Germany (the Stray Dogs clubhouse more or less).

John sitting at my kitchen table looking at a frame of old pics I had on the wall.

Laughing at the "preppers".

The old pics I have on the wall from back "in the day".

John on the left playing pool with "Earl".


If you ever have the chance to catch up with old friends DO IT! It is worth every minute of it. Can't wait for the next time!

More Old Pics From Germany 1988-1992

I've been getting plenty of encouragement to post more old pics so here we go. All of these are from my days with the Stray Dogs MC. My Brothers & Sisters in the Club were all great people. Most of us were military, some were local riders and some were American civilians working for the Army. We all loved our bikes and rode the hell out of them. It was nothing for us to decide we need to ride a 100 miles just to get a specific brand of beer. There was a party somewhere EVERY weekend that it wasn't snowing and we went as many as we could get to. Basically the host club would set up a huge Fest Tent with food and a bar inside, usually they had a band at night as well. We would all show up and put up tents all around and commence to party. Our Club was known for us getting hammered, then one of use would ride our bikes into the bar tent with a Brother on the back to get us some more beer. The beer was sold in huge beer steins too. None of these pansy little cans you see these days. These were great times, I wish there were more parties like the BMR. It really reminds me of how it was back in Germany. Enjoy the pics, let me know if you like em and if ya do I'll keep digging em out.

My Sporty and Horse on his Shovel getting ready to head out for a party. We were outside the barracks here and I'm sure we were waiting for my g'friend to get ready since I see her helmet hanging from the rear of the bike.

Ingo wrapped in the Club flag for some drunken reason. The black band was in memory of a Brother who was an Apache pilot that was killed on a training flight. We kept the band on for a year in honor of Les R.I.P. brother.

John waiting around outside Claire's Pub waiting for everyone to arrive so we could ride out as a Club.

Me and Rosie the Pres' ol' Lady. She was great to hang out with. Yep, that's a bottle of Boone's farm in my hand and some more beer steins on the table. I have no idea who's Bud that was, must have been some FNG hangaround.

John, Horse, Horse's evil EX and then I can't remember who was on the end. Give me a break it was 22 years ago. That's longer that some of you bastards have been alive!

Our local crew hanging out in John's garage. The Club was based out of Bad Windshiem, but a bunch of us were stationed up around Wurzburg so we hung out together when we weren't with the main crew. The rest of these pics are Moochie's , but she said I could use them. Yeah, that scrawny little bastard near the left is me. That was a lot of beers ago.

Earl relaxing outside John's garage.

A dog's gonna piss on the wall you know!

At a party. You can see one of the beer steins we drank out of hanging from John's belt.

More Pics from Germany...Some Bikes and The Morning after!

Here are some more pics from back in the day. I think I may make Fridays the day for my vintage posts. If I don't find anything else cool to post at least I can have something up at least once a week.

Anyway these pics were taken at a rally somewhere in Germany that I was too hung over to remember. We would go for a nice long ride on Saturday and then ride in and set up at the fest grounds to party all night and then somehow find the strength to strap our crap to our bikes and then take a nice long ride home. It was a great time. I saw all kinds of cool bikes from vintage chops to VW trikes and even modern crotch rockets. You didn't see the attitudes there that you see here in the states. I sure do miss those times.


Nice VW trike, also it was OK for 2 guys to ride together over there. No one thought you were any less of a man, just because your bike was down or something. Dig the cool springer and the cheap hubcaps, build what ya can and ride the hell out of it.



Another trike, looks like he used a girder on this one and actually had some nice rims on the back.



A couple of beautiful Panheads. I'd love to have either one of these today.



One of the large tents I was talking about before. I felt sorry for the folks who had to walk around and clean up after these events. Drunks tend to be messy .



Another shot of the carnage, we were lucky we had pitched our tents in the woods off to the side of the tent so we were not rudely awakened by that bright ass sunlight.

Hope you enjoy these pics, I know I sure as hell enjoyed the events and happenings when I took them.

Party Pictures from Germany 1989-1991

Back in the day when I was stationed in Germany I rode with the Stray Dogs MC. It was a great group of folks who were mostly military like me, but we had enough locals to keep the club grounded with all the craziness of us G.I's getting transferred all the time. I'll post some club pics later but for now I want to put up some shots from the parties we went to. One thing I loved about Germany was that there were clubs in damn near every town and that meant that every weekend there was a big party somewhere fairly close. The club hosting the party would put up a huge Fest tent and have a band, a bar and food to buy right there in the tent. Some parties/tents were small like a couple of these shots show and some were huge like you'll see in another post. No matter what though the beer flowed, it was cheap and the we had a blast.

This was one of the bigger tents, you can see the edge of the stage has a wooden wall, that wall ran around two sides of the tent and enclosed the stage on the short end and the bar/food on the long side of the tent. Sometimes the band was Rockabilly like this one and sometimes it was pure Metal. Ya never knew til ya got there what you were going to hear.



Another picture from the same party, you can see that it got kinda muddy with the bikes running around. We would pull in, put up our personal tents then hit the bar for Beer. Some parties we would get crazy and we would ride our bikes through the tent with someone on the back to hold the beers till we got back to our club enclave.



A local club's colors. Some clubs were big and active and you would see them everywhere (we tried to be like that). Others were kinda small and you would run into them once in a while. It was always a good time though.



This pic is from the IceRun. It was a party held over News Years and you HAD to ride in to be able to party there. It was fun dodging the snow/ice to get to the place. The tent was small because not that many folks had the intestinal fortitude to ride in. We all got a certificate for making it though. This one was fun because the band asked me to ride my bike in the tent when they played "Born to Be Wild". I was trashed, but I somehow made it without falling over. By the way, back in those days the old songs were not as played out as they are today. It was still cool back then.


Another pic from the IceRun. Looking at the back of the tent.



When the whole club went on a run a hang around usually brought a van with all the food and other crap we might want, but wouldn't put on our bikes. It seems we had quite the spread at this party.