2nd Annual Barber Vintage Festival – Birmingham, Alabama

People from all over the country started converging on Birmingham, Irondale, Leeds and Trussville on Thursday October 19, for this year’s Vintage Festival that was scheduled to run from October 20-22. Leigh and I went over to Barbers on Friday afternoon to get with Heather Hinton who is now in charge of the media relations for the American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association (AHRMA) to check in, get our photo vests, and get the low- down on what was going on, as well as to find out where we did not want to be standing on Saturday. All of the folks we deal with at Barbers are always very nice and very helpful, and Heather was no exception. Even with all of her duties and all of the people she has to wrangle in, she still took time out of her busy schedule to talk with Leigh and me.

We were so excited about this weekend after talking with Mr. Barber and Jeff Ray a few weeks earlier about all of their plans for this year’s events. They were expecting about four times as many vendors this year from last, and they had an air show planned for Saturday that had them very fired up, and in turn had us fired up, but I think that most of the people working there were a little skeptical since they weren’t quite sure how the air show would take place. That was one of the main things that we were looking forward to. You see, they have these iron sculptures all around the property, and there is this one very large spider at Charlotte’s Web on the track, named appropriately enough, Charlotte, and she was slated for destruction with an assault from the Vintage Planes. Who wouldn’t want to see the bombing of a 30-foot bug? But not everyone attending the weekend’s events knew of these plans, only that there would be an air show.

Brett Collins, Vice President – Motorsports with the Bruno Event Team and one of our friends at Barbers hooked Leigh and I up with a couple of day passes for Saturday for us to take to Lightning Strikes Friday Night Bike Night, and give out as door prizes. Their generosity allowed a few people to attend that may not have been able to go otherwise. Teresa Hall, from the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, was at a couple of the bike nights as well with flyers and information on this weekend’s events.

We have new people that show up for bike night almost every week, and we are usually surprised as to where they came from and how they heard about the bike night. We try to make a point of meeting and talking with each of them. But this Friday we were really surprised. Three men came up to me and told me how they had found the Barber weekend of events by accident on the computer and decided to ride down and check it out. They were from Michigan! They said they were looking for something to get into while they were here and were looking at riding up to Memphis to check out the bar scene when they ended up in Rider’s Harley-Davidson in Trussville, where our “buds” had told them they needed to go to Lightning Strikes and check out the bike night that has been drawing hundreds, so they did. They had a blast and forgot all about heading to Memphis. After checking out all of the pictures that we take and carry up there for everyone to see, and after hanging out with all of us, they decided that they are going to have to ride their bikes back down here earlier next year and party some more with us. They also took cards back to introduce the magazine to the “Yam-Dankies” in Michigan! Thanks guys! Hope you enjoyed the weekend and the southern hospitality, and hope you had a safe trip back home. We look forward to seeing you again next year! And thanks again for including us in your trip.

Friday started the weekend with the Swap Meet/Flea Market, that would have several hundred vendors with all kind of vintage bikes and vintage parts to go on them, as well as memorabilia, and various odds and ends items, and of course Food, all of which would be there through Sunday.

The awesome Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum was open for the weekend to the public, with Sir John Surtees, the only man to hold World Championships on two wheels and on four, on hand for autographs on Friday, an auction on Saturday, and Craig Vetter lecturing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Ed Bargy Racing Services held school in conjunction with the AHRMA events, where they said you could attend school on Friday and road race on Saturday and Sunday! Friday also had the Roadrace registration, tech inspections, practice in the morning and registration and tech for the next day’s events in the afternoon.

Saturday started off a little chilly for the Cross Country Vintage race first thing in the morning, but warmed up quite nicely by the time the Vintage Roadrace got under way at noon. Between the Cross Country race and the Roadrace, the AeroShell Aerobatic Team “wowed” us with a wicked air-show that ultimately ended with a full scale, all out war on Charlotte! It was awesome! We loved it and so did everyone standing in the area where we were, and I’m sure that was also the case for everyone who watched. Most of the people around us were not expecting the bombing, especially from these beautiful old planes, and it was great watching all of their reactions. But in the end, they failed as Charlotte withstood the onslaught of the endless shelling and lives to fight another day! Yeah Charlotte!

The rest of the afternoon was spent watching some really cool racing (it’s still a little weird to me to watch them race the antique bikes), as well as touring the many rows of vendors, and meeting up with a few friends to grab a bite of shrimp from the folks at M & M Seafood Market. We had a wide assortment to choose from, but the shrimp was calling us! Last year there were only a couple of rows of vendors to wander through, but this year there were so many it took a while to make your way around them all. They had all things imaginable and even some stuff you probably never thought of.

We slipped across the street from the vendors through the trees to where the track is, just in time to watch them bring out a couple of the old side car bikes to do an exhibition run. One of them unfortunately didn’t make it around the track, but they had two people in them and the guy in the back would get out of his seat and lean over the bike to help steer it in the corners. It was a lot of fun to watch.

Saturday was also the day for the Vintage Bike Show, which is always a lot of fun. It gives us a chance to step back in time for just a little while! I guess it was too much to ask for a whole weekend of nice weather at the end of October as it rained Saturday night. We were wondering how that might affect the day’s events on Sunday because they were scheduled to not only have the vintage road racing, which is on pavement, but were also scheduled to have the Motocross Race. We had been looking forward to watching them run.

We passed several bikes leaving as we were getting there Sunday morning, so we were really wondering what would be going on when we got there. We decided to come in from the near side this time, to be different from the day before, but it was also the side of the property that the Motocross would run on. That was the first thing we came up on. It was really cool, they were running on a track laid out for them on the ground, in the dirt, which was by now very messy, but they were having a blast flying around with the mud flying around them. That made it easy to spot those racers off the track. It was really neat. The air was still a little damp and there was a slight fog and it almost seemed like you were transported off to Europe somewhere, with people sitting on the sides of the hills watching the racing action. Most of those guys were camping up on the hill from there just through the trees.

We stayed there watching them for a good while, and then it was off to the track to catch some more of the vintage road racing where we met the coolest guy from New York. He was one of the racers who got to talking with us out on the track, first about cameras then about racing. He had to show me his scooter that he gets around the track on and all of the signatures that he has acquired from other racers, which was many, and how long he had been racing. Surprisingly enough, he had only been doing this for a few years. This is made more amazing by the fact that Mr. Bob Treat was 76 years young and kicking butt and taking names! He was a real “treat” to spend time with, and I wish him well in his many years of adventures still to come!

We spent a few hours there at the track, and then rode over to where the vendors were, only to discover that the rain from the night before was just a little too much for most of them, so they had pulled out. They were all set up in the grass, with a dirt drive between them, so it was probably somewhat of a mud drive by Sunday morning that they didn’t want to get stuck in.

It was all fun while it lasted and I am sure that they will be back again next year, probably even bigger. We’ll be there, hope you can make it!

Write-On and Ride-On

Story and photos by Lynn Reynolds and Leigh Lilly - Birmingham, Alabama