Magical Mystery Tour
Magical mystery tour
UP FRONT
David Edwards
IT’S JUST LIKE THE ISLE OF MAN TT, but without the seasickness and the two weeks of bad British food.
It’s the Isle of Vashon TT, a one-day IoM in microcosm, except instead of racing there’s a poker run, and instead of three hours’ plowing across the Irish Sea aboard a heaving ferry, Vashon-goers only have to contend with a 15-minute milk run across Washington state’s Puget Sound. No Dramamine needed.
You are forgiven if you’ve never heard of the Isle of Vashon TT, now in its 16th year. The organizing club, Seattle-based Vintage Motorcycle Enthusiasts, sorta likes it that way. “It’s almost like a secret society,” says Oregon restoration ace Kenny Dreer. “The VME never advertises the TT; you almost need a personal invitation from a club member.”
Not quite, says Jody Heintzman, editor of the club’s bi-monthly newsletter, where the TT’s date is announced each year, “but we would like to keep it pretty much an old-bike event.” Seems that when the VME widely publicized the event back in the Eighties, thousands of riders of all stripes queued up for the ferry ride to the tiny island just offshore from Tacoma. Best known for its many antique shops, the summer Strawberry Festival and Point Robinson’s preserved 1915 lighthouse, the 5 x 15-mile island, population 9000, didn’t take kindly to a few boneheads smoking their rear tires down to the cords, one-wheeling it out of corners or restlessly rapping their open exhausts.
“We’re not trying to be exclusive or elitist,” explains club PR man Cris Matthews, “but it’s turned into a logistics exercise. The island is small and the only way to get there is on the ferry system. One year we had over 2000 motorcycles; that’s a lot of bikes on a small island, roaming around on little bitty roads. Throw in a few squids and it’s easy to overstay our welcome.”
Depite its current sub-rosa nature, the TT drew 875 entries this year, with another couple of hundred riders making the crossing but not taking part in the poker run. A stroll down the island’s Main Street marshalling point showed mostly older iron, but also a goodly smattering of modern repli-racers and custom Hogs, all happily coexisting.
“We don’t preclude anybody from signing up,” says Matthews, who notes that club members own everything from an old Harley Silent Gray Fellow to a new Bimota Vdue. “We encourage the restoration-and most especially the use-of old motorcycles, regardless of brand or country of origin, but you don’t have to own an old bike to be a member, just an enthusiast.” Matthews adds that the VME’s 500-plus membership runs the gamut “from guys who look like they just crawled out from under a rock to investment types in three-piece suits. It’s quite a cross-section.” Heintzman seconds that: “We’re pretty loose, we like it that way, we want people to have fun.”
Members can take part in runs almost every weekend during the riding season, but Vashon is the club’s flagship event and main money raiser. Part of the $12 poker-run fee is earmarked by the VME (7521 126th Ave. NE, Kirkland, WA 98033) for its pet project, a building fund for the embryonic Pacific Northwest Motorcycle Museum. The TT route loops entrants through the island’s thick forests and pastoral countryside for 30-plus miles, an approximation of the Isle of Man’s course length, before depositing them onto a dirt road for a final jog into the Vashon Sportsman’s Club, your basic 1930s log cabin built for fisherman and hunters. Field games are held for the particularly energetic and there’s an informal concours, open to “anything old and interesting,” says Heintzman, though trailerqueens are barely tolerated. “We give extra points for dirt on the inside of fenders,” he notes.
The Vashon High School wrestling squad is on hand, raising money through the sale of hamburgers and corn on the cob. The VME has a good relationship with the King County Sheriff and even donates a portion of the event’s earnings to a local food bank. All very Americana.
My discovery of the TT was by happy accident. Six months ago, tired of patching my timeworn, 40,000mile Norton 850, I shipped it off to Dreer’s Vintage Rebuilds shop (see “England Swings,” CW, March, 1998) for a complete makeover. I wanted to keep the 6-gallon Interstate gas tank, but add a Fastback fiberglass tailsection and the leftside uppipes from the 1969-70 S model to make sort of a Commando Sport Scrambler. I also told Kenny I wanted a little more power and a bunch more brakes. He responded with an 880 kit and a triple-disc setup, both items soon to be offered in the company catalog.
Anyway, with massaged motor back in powdercoated frame, it was time to position the handlebar and rearsets, and work out the shape of the seat, so I hopped the Saturday shuttle up to Portland International. Upholstery pro and frequent Dreer co-conspirator Don Weber met us at the shop with his foam and glue and carving tools. Ninety minutes (and a meditative brewski) later, we’d zeroed-in on the shape. All that’s left is the final contouring and my choice of leather or buffalo hide (!) for a cover.
Over dinner that night, Kenny suggested we get up at o’dark early Sunday morning and blast his pickup the 150 miles north into Washington for the Vashon TT. After a few hours on the island, we had just enough time to get me back to the airport for the flight home. Too short a stay, but enough to know I’d like to come back next year, maybe with my SS880 Norton. I’ve already circled the second Sunday in September on my ’99 calender-in pencil, though.
“We have been known to change dates, just to fool people,” laughs Heintzman.
