Slimey Crud Cafe Racer Run
Slimey Crud Cafe Racer Run
LEANINGS
IT STARTED FOUR YEARS AGO AS AN IDEA kicked around at one of our casual monthly Slimey Crud Motorcycle Gang meetings. And by "casual" I mean these meetings are nothing more than a bunch of guys in leather jackets standing around in someone's garage or driveway, alternately gazing at motorcycles and examining the labels of the beer bottles they're holding.
Conversation is deep: "Wow! This Sprecher Black Bavarian is good. Say, is your Norton leaking oil again, or was that spot already there?" And so on.
Anyway, at one of these casual meet ings someone suggested that Madison, Wisconsin, and the surrounding hillswhich extend, roughly, from Detroit to the center of Iowa-were teeming with odd, interesting, beautiful and eccentric bikes, most of which we knew only from rumor or a flash of noise and color pass ing on the highway.
Why not, this same person suggested, lure them out of their lairs with a spring and autumn cafe-racer ride? We could start at, say, Jake's Bar and Grill in the nearby village of Pine Bluff with a ride over curving country roads, across the Wisconsin River and north to a bar called the Sprecher Tap at the little crossroads village of Leland, about 60 miles away.
The two people in the club who actu ally Get Things Done (not me) some how found time to post some clever fliers at bike dealerships and to put a small, cryptic ad in the paper. "SCMG Cafe Run, 12 noon this Sunday. Vin tage limes, spaghetti, pork, rice..."
Big success, by our standards. Prob ably 60 bikes showed up-virtually every Ducati, Norton, BMW, Triumph, Laverda and Harley XLCR we'd ever seen in the area, along with a good helping of new and old Japanese bikes and a few classic old crocks.
That first run was great, but we made two mistakes: 1) We had a prescribed route, and 2) we all left at once. Some people thought they were in a race. Others didn't. A guy with a Ducati 9005S just like mine dogged my back wheel for 30 miles then suddenly de cided he had to stuff me going into a fast corner, nearly taking us both out.
No good. The next year we simply handed out maps showing all the county and state highways between Pine Bluff and Le land and said, "See you there."
Much better. People left in small groups of like-minded riders, going as fast or slow as they pleased over a dozen different routes. No one had that left-be hind feeling. Since then, the event has evolved into simply a nice excuse for a ride combined with a communion of in teresting motorcycles owned by everyone and anyone who has a loose understand ing of the cafe-racer tradition, with accent on cafe. Sunday morning High Mass at the Church of Mutual Admiration.
This fall's ride, which took place yes terday, was all-time. Perfect warm au tumn weather, trees in full color, golden corn shocks in the fields, pumpkins in farmyards and orange leaves swirling across the road in small, benevolent cy clones. I took no official count, but one member who attempted it said there were around 450 motorcycles.
We had riders from Detroit, the Twin Cities, Chicago and small towns all over the Midwest. Couples, old people, col lege kids, guys in full leathers and guys with garage-sale helmets. And I noticed a wonderfully democratic trend: In this cycle-mad crowd, a clean old CB550 is appreciated as much as a genuine bluechip classic. The mood is, "Nice 916, but look at this X-6 Hustler!"
I rode my Norton Commando two years ago, the Ducati 900SS last year, and this year decided to go with my `68 Triumph Trophy 500. I put about 200 miles on the old girl yesterday, and it was simply one of the finest days of riding-and being around other motor cycles-I've ever had.
Peter Egan
So: A late-Sixties Triumph scrambler on a cafe ride?
Yes. And this leads me to a couple of observations on the changing nature of the ride itself, an evolutionary trend, if you will.
That first year we had all kinds of bikes, but the majority, I would say, were serious sportbikes-Ducatis, FZRs, CBRs, etc. But the last few rides have seen an ever-growing number of freshly restored vintage bikes, faded old clas sics, eccentric and oddball survivors, and genuine modified cafe-racers that I'd almost believed had disappeared from our garages and roads.
Follow me down this row, if you please: We got a pair of Bultaco Metral las, one stock, one not; a dead-original BSA Thunderbolt with an oversized touring tank; a Buck Rogers Rocket III; an orange Laverda SFC; a Yoshimura 400F Honda; a Suzuki Water Buffalo; a Ducati 7505S in its original duck-egg green paint; a pair of Earles-fork BMWs; a Honda CL350 scrambler; an eye-watering perfect `67 Bonneville; a Yamaha SRX; and so on.
Want to know what I think is happen ing here? I think people are reconsider ing the wealth of great old bikes we have moldering in the woodwork and saying to themselves, "Wouldn't it be fun to fix that thing up and take it out on the SCMG Cafe Racer Run, where someone can see it and hear it run, or just stand around and admire and enjoy it?"
It's working on me: I've been clean ing up my old Triumph all summer with the subliminal notion of bringing it out for the run. And I'm already be ginning to frame an image of my near ly completed 1964 Ducati Mach 1 rolling down the road in next spring's ride. If nothing else, it's a deadline, a reason to get this stuff done that goes beyond our own personal satisfaction.
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said that creativity seldom exists in iso lation, but feeds off the energy and ex citement of a movement where likeminded people are striving to please one another and show what they can do.
I'd like to think that our little run, started so casually, is turning into one of those centers of energy. Organize one in your own area, keep it going for a few years, and see if I'm not right. Around here, it's the best thing that ever hap pened to motorcycling.
