24 Hours.

skibum69 · May 23, 2022

My wee adventure started with an email I got a week ago from one of the Airheads. He was passing on an email about a woman named Jane Taylor who was hitting some locations talking about a book about a trip she and her husband took doing a little book tour. About the same time I caught wind of the Down East rally being hosted by the Riders of Southern Maine club close to where I am. Of course then it popped up that she was going to be there to talk.

That gave me a whiff of a plan to go see what she had to say plus I thought it might be fun to go check out another rally as I've only ever been to multiple CroMags and one MOA National Rally.

Friday afternoon rolled around so I headed over to the Hermit Island campground. I walked into the building and funnily enough Jane was the first person I started talking to. While waiting for her to start I was wandering around when I guy came up to me and asked if I was from Newfoundland. Yes I said and he replied, "hey I'm Red Ant on ridetherock.com, we're coming up to see you." I replied "you're bringing a group up aren't you?" "Yes." Then I asked him how the hell he knew who I was? He said his wife told him. How did she know? Turns out she was talking to Jane and info was passed on.

After a bit Jane got to talking and reading a bit from her book which was good. Then she invited people to stand up and tell a little story if they wanted to. I took a turn to tell the story of my failed Tuktoyaktuk tour and when I was finishing a guy there piped up and said "I know you. I've been following your B&B build thread on ADV, we're coming up to Newfoundland this summer too." One or two other people popped up who knew me from CroMag of from ADV. I have to say I was surprised to bump into so many people who knew me.

I booked out half early as I knew bedtime was coming for an early rise. Back story I had been to an amazing BMW motorcycle collection in 2008 when I went to my first CroMag rally in Brownsfield, Maine. I had always wanted to get back for another visit but the opportunity hadn't come up. The son in law of the owner is an ADV guy and very good friends with my buddy I'm working with down here. I'd known him from CroMags too. Anyway we'd seen each other and I told him I wanted to get back up there and he said sure. As I was asking about a day he said the collection was being opened up on Saturday for the rally crowd so why not come up then he invited me to come up early to help set up. Sure, I'd love to!

That was my early get up as I knew it was a 2 hour run up to his place.

I landed a little before 09:00 and got to talking with John. He showed me around a few things that I'd never seen before which was fun. I knew I planned to stay awhile so I brought street clothes to change into and got comfy for the day.

This was the first thing to catch your eye.

John has raced and won vintage classes on the bike on the left. He's going to be doing more racing on more of them. Interesting that a few of these bikes are mounted over the frame and some are mounted under the frame. The over frame mount gives more ground clearance and aligns the drive shaft straight which gives some advantages.

I helped John roll this custom bad boy out of the shop.

Time to go inside. Have you ever seen anything like this? Most models of most model years.

Just a little bit of history in here.

Here's Dave, super nice man who still cuts and stacks all of his own firewood to heat the whole compound!

Yeah he'll let you sit on the cool machinery. Amazing how good the ergonomics are on the very first motorcycles.

My buddy John was super excited to get up here as he'd been hearing about it for years.

Only 400 and change of these bikes were ever built over 3 years. You can imagine what they're worth today. At one time he had models from all years. There are 3 here.

Lost of custom bits and bobs around.

I so want a sidecar rig! And now I'm dreaming of going sidecar racing!

I stuffed myself into the one on the right. Pretty weird setup laying down on your knees.

These machines are ultra special, only 25 of the 500 motors were made plus maybe 25 spares. These racers won every world cup. This one won the last World Cup in 1974. I think Dave has 4 of the original motors.

Tons of cool bits of history scattered around.

Then there was this rocket. It was crazy fast in its day.

Here's Dave telling stories about being out racing on this machine.

Here's us dreaming about it.

Looks comfy.

Vroom.

There are a few odd and rare examples of other things around.

This is a replica, there are others and a 500 with all of the custom engine tuning.

A couple of old East German rides.

This was a factory test mule where they were developing some new stuff upgrading from the R90 S. John is planning to set this up for racing.

Another bike winning famous races.

A hand built custom motor designed for racing. Took the guy 68 tries to get the angles right for the gears for the cam drive. Not like your daddy's BMW.

Walter Hants is a friend of Daves and he built this bike as his daily driver from a regular R75. The custom work on this is amazing such as a twisted motor mount to fit the drive shaft to the massive rear rim. The custom high exhaust etc. And his race tuned engine good for 100 HP.

Walter is an offroad sidecar racer.

I didn't take a pic of the mad Egli framed race bike behind it that Walter built. No frame tubes running under the motor, it's all top hung from a massive top tube.

I went outside to cover meet and greet and make sure there were pads under everyone stands. One part of meet and greet was to make sure to tell people to sign the guest book just inside the door.

I's say at least 20-30 folks rolled through.

I saw my first pileated woodpecker there too which I was pretty happy about.

Here's the shop where Dave does the tinkering on the bikes. It seems he may have slowed down a little, is that a surprise at 85?H

Plenty of projects.

Ya think?

Then there's the garage.

Custom decals as it wasn't really 40 it was taller on the new ones.

Dave Percival's GT.

Random stuff and I forgot to take pics of the 3 BMW 700 cars that were in a different garage.

You need a motor?

Tucked away gathering dust.

I stayed here until mid afternoon and decided it was time to go look for lunch. John had reminded me that I could hit Ebenezers on my way home. Done!

I ran through Bethel on my way down and it brought back memories as I'd worked 5 seasons out of my 20 years bumming career there.

White Heat is the big trail and back in the day it was known as the longest, widest, steepest trail in the east. I forget the name but the trail on lookers left is an amazing trail on powder days. I've been there a lot!

Our security office used to be in here.

I kept going down the road to this place. I got a job here back in 1987? This was the start of my time in Maine and when the work ran out here they directed me to go look for a job at the ski hill and there dawned my ski bumming career.

Looks almost the same. There was a group just to the right looking at me sitting on my bike taking pics. I remember those days.

Always worth a stop for a pic.

Makes me happy. I.d been trying to gather there for maybe 10 years and a couple of weeks ago was my first time.

They have a few taps and an ok glass selection.

Tons of special bottles in the cooler. You can spend an awful lot of $$ here without half trying.

He was keeping me company.

The tap list is impressive. I haven't seen straight lambics on tap outside of Belgium! I tried them all last time. This time was just a couple of light saison's. There were new beers on outside of this list.

Chris the owner is a big fan of one of my favourite breweries.

More tasty Belgian beer.

Wings and a beer was great by me, I was stoked to get here for the 2nd time. It has been rated #1 beer bar in the world by Rate Beer more than once. I wouldn't necessarily agree but it's still a cool spot.

I figured I'd boot it towards home and as it wasn't far from there I decided to go back to the rally for a bit.

A few folks around.

Fun little rally, they were giving out awards for various things for various people. They were saying they'd lost a few members recently so there was a moment of silence. Seemed like a good group of folks and I had fun chatting with a bunch who had come down from Quebec. Nice to work on my French a bit. They want to come to NL too. Plus more people who knew me came up to say hi.

By the time I rolled out of there it had been about 24 hours from the start of my little jaunt and I have to say I had a great time. Who says and adventure has to take a long time?

regfu · May 23, 2022