December 30, 2004

Daytona Biketoberfest 2004!

Everyone

This was one of the best ever, at least for me. After weathering four hurricaines and, essentially, just sitting in my mobile home expecting the roof to blow off at any time during three of those, I was ready for a break.

Besides, multi-day events like Biketoberfest free me from concerns about mowing the lawn, getting a tune-up for my van and fixing that roof leak in the master bath. It seems most of the things I 'need to do' are all done in preparation for things I really want to do.

Again this year, my brother and I rented a campsite at Nova in Port Orange. Actually, we've camped there several times before, but this year, everything seemed to fall together better than in years past. The weather promised to be perfect, we had a great little site, both bikes were running perfectly, and we threw in with our new neighbor Ron, who had rented the adjoining site.

For all of us, this promised to be three days of glorious FREEDOM!

For those of you who have not been there, Nova is probably the most biker-friendly campground in the Daytona area. It's heavily treed, has a heated pool (which hardly anybody uses), a permanent food concession building, and most important, several clean and modern restroom and shower facilities. Between Bike Week and this event, the new owners managed to get most of the lanes throughout the campground paved in asphalt, which eliminated the dust problem.

It's located between Nova Road and Clyde Morris Boulevard, which runs north all the way to SR40, which runs east to Ormond Beach. While most riders choose to ride US1 (Ridgewood) into the downtown area, the traffic is so thick that it usually take two cycles of the traffic lights to go one block. I know, there's all kinds of stuff to see and do on Ridgewood, but you can ride 50-60 mph on Morris with traffic lights marking only the major east-west thoroughfares.

So, with that in mind, we started riding up to Ormond on Friday afternoon to check out what was happening at the Broken Spoke Saloon. At the last traffic light before the Broken Spoke, a Buell-mounted rider and passenger pulled into the far right lane, and let it fly just as the light turned green. After being somewhat bottled up in slower traffic, this guy was twisting the throttle as hard as he could, and my brother decided to give chase on his SuperMagna. I was a little late to respond, but after shifting into second, I cranked it hard too, through second, third and into fourth. It was about this time that I noticed a white unmarked cruiser sitting in the median, and backed off as I shifted into fifth. Bro backed out of it too, as the Buell pulled away. Within about a minute or two, a mounted officer passed both of us and, sure enough, he had the Buell pulled over just about the time we reached the Saloon.

Up at the Spoke, we found parking fairly easily, and checked out a manufacturer's show going on in the back. Detroit Chopper was featuring a new model called the Aggressor, and had some really nice looking hard-tail customs complete with S&S 96" engines, 6-speed transmissions, custom exhaust systems and carbon fiber tanks starting at just $19,995, with soft-tail bikes starting at $21, 946. I say 'just because it's really easy to tie up $30,000 or more into one of these barhoppers, and these bikes looked real nice for the money.

Later, we walked over to Smiley's right next door for an all-you-can-eat home-style pork BBQ dinner complete with corn, string beans and red potatoes, BBQ beans and cole slaw for seven bucks. Totally stuffed, we decided to ride back to the campground to just rest and let these huge meals settle for a while.

That's when we got our first look at Peter Herbert's outstanding hand-built custom (pictured above) parked right across the lane from our site. Peter moved from Germany recently, and has set up shop in Port Charlotte where, in just 7 1/2 weeks, he completed work on his creation. Peter fabricated the flowing , organic design from sheet metal and used no body filler to smooth its lines. He prefers the old-school method of using lead, and showed us his processes from a stack of 4x6 prints that traced the progress of his work from start to finish. Very nice.

Later, we volunteered to ride with him over to the Port Hole, a neighborhood bar just across Nova Road. Surprisingly, they had live entertainment, a blues band going on stage at 9:00 without a cover charge, and were still serving dollar drafts. The parking lot was filled with bikes, but none as striking as Peter's creation. We drifted in and out to check out recent arrivals, and hung out to watch reactions to Pete's bike. This went on and on deep into the night, and we ended up closing the place.

Back at the campground on Saturday morning, we woke up to another beautiful central Florida day, & crawled out of the bags in search of coffee, and caught a glimpse of another interesting bike under a blue tarp, with just a yellow wheel sticking out to suggest what it might be. My first guess was that it might be a late 90's Sportster, but later, I was to be proven wrong as soon as the owner emerged from his van and removed the cover.

I was still thinking Sportster when I walked over to take a closer look, but this was something entirely different. The yellow wheel was, in fact, a 17" Marchesini mounted on an inverted Paioli fork, with a 6 pot ISR caliper gripping a single rotor.. The owner, a guy named Art, was just coming back from the showers when he saw me admiring his machine, and as I introduced myself and started asking questions, he cleared up my confusion. This was, in fact, a2000 Confederate America GT, a very limited edition sporter (NOT Sportster), that featured a a 113" S&S engine, a single tube backbone frame which carried its oil supply, a 3" belt drive under a billet aluminum primary cover, a 5-speed Andrews transmission, a Works rear shock, and a stainless steel exhaust system tipped with a carbon fiber can.

The closer I looked, the more I liked it. There was billet aluminum everywhere, and the bike looked so lean and purposeful, In was tempted to ask to ride it just through the campground (yeah, right), but was content with just shooting a few photos. What a bike!

Later that morning, Ron suggested we ride down to the Last Resort, which is south of Dunlawton Avenue on Ridgewood. It's billed as '"the home of ice cold beer & killer women", a reference to Eilleen Warnous, who was reported to hang out there with her girl friend back in the day. They were staging an old school chopper show, and some pretty interesting rides were already pulling in when we got there around noon. But first, I had to check out the original 'Japanese Garden'. I couldn't help laughing out loud, because just as I got close enough to take a few photos, a couple had just handed their camera to a bystander so they could get their picture taken standing in the midst of it. Someone had sure gone to a lot of work, because there were several old Jap bikes hung by chains in the branches of the sturdy old oak, along with a good many more strategically paced around its root system. Quite an attraction!

By this time, things were heating up over at the chopper show, and I do mean heating up. An Evo-engined black chopper with lime green tires was being lined up against a tree, and the builder/rider did a huge burnout to the delight and applause of the audience gathered around him. In one of the smoothest moves I've ever seen, he dismounted, reached into his pocket, and unfurled about a dozen (how should I say this?) name-brand prophylactics while asking for 'contributions' form any of the women for his show.

Enough craziness.

We headed back to the campground to get my van, and set out to buy food and supplies. When we got back with the chicken, pork, beans, salads, and more beer, Ron already had the grill/cooker going strong, so we laid out the meat. We grilled, drank beer, swapped stories and, later, ate our fill before heading back to the Port Hole where we listened to more blues and wound up the day.

On Sunday morning, I wanted to get some photos of Peter's bike, so we wheeled it out into the lane and I started shooting. We got into a discussion how the German equivalent of our DOT probably wouldn't even allow him to license it for street use. It seems they are much more strict about certifications over there, and all this got me thinking.

We've all got it pretty good, not just here in Florida where bike registrations are second only to California, but everywhere. I may be going out on a limb here, but I think we have just entered the 'golden era' of motorcycling in this new millennium. Back in '99 when Suzuki intoduced the Hayabusa, you could buy an honest-to-god 200mph bike for about $10K. Metallugy and CAD/CAM have made this possible, but look at what else is happening. Custom manufacturers have sprung up all over the country and are being spurred on by national TV shows and, amazingly, there's demand for $50,000-up customs. I didn't get to see it, but The Art of the Motorcycle that played at the Guggenheim Museum may hgave done more to bring motorcycling into the mainstream of consumer conciousness than any other single event. Harley-Davidson has become a national icon and they're building more diverse and far better bikes than at any time in their history. When Honda came out with the VTX 1800, I wondered who would build the first 2-litre production motorcycle. Kawasaki provided the answer with the Vulcan 2000 and, later, Triumph trumped them with the Rocket Three. And the Honda Rune, love it or leave it, represents a giant leap in technology for Honda just like when they produced the six cylinder CBX in1978. I could go on and on.

It's here guys. As long as the gas holds out, we're in for a damn good time.