Day 21 - October 22 - Hamilton, AL to Bremen, GA - 214 miles

     I was out of the Key West Inn in Hamilton pretty early. Breakfast at the Huddle House next door left me caffeine-deprived. My short-term goal for the day was the "Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum" in Birmingham (actually Leeds), Alabama.

    Now some readers may know that I put a lot of trust in Garmin and Google Maps to get me to various places, tell me distances, etc., etc. My experience is that generally, I can put "Starbucks" into either my bike-mounted Garmin StreetPilot 2820 or my BlackBerry Bold and get a reasonably-accurate result. Hard to believe, I know, but both sent me to a street corner in Birmingham, Alabama, behind the Social Security Administration building there. If this blog were destined for a more youthful audience, I'd spell out what I was saying, but you know: "WTF??"

   I gave up, went across Birmingham, and stopped at a McDonald's where everyone seemed to be angry, and the manager was reading out a list of failures of the staff while customers waited: "DJ - Your score is 30...what happened?...Jimmy, you got a 49...why'd you go down?..." Woh. Coffee was OK. Sun was out. It was a very nice day outside that place and soon I was too.

    On to Leeds, and the Barber Museum. Candidly, I had never heard of this place until Roy Bertolotto told me about it. Roy's the President of Yankee Beemers (my motorcycle club). The satirical motto of the club is: "Ride to Eat...Eat to Ride." Anyway, long before I started this trek, I asked for advice from Roy. He told me that I should not miss the Barber Museum in Birmingham, AL.

    Finally, about seven months after I heard about it, and I was there:

Fail me for my lust to see gorgeous motorcycles, but I can't tell you how this place came into existence, nor who financed it but there are motorcycles here such as you've never seen before:

Five floors of them...old to new, simple to exotic, pristine condition, achingly beautiful. Here are just a few of the 750 (!) motorcycles on display (and 700+ are in storage, rotating into and out of the collection):

(I'm a former Navy guy, but where did the Navy expect to use this nice machine?) 

I love digital photography. I made about 100 photos here of things I thought were interesting (I'm breathing hard as I write this). I could have made many more. Time to calm down.

    When I arrived at the Barber Museum, I saw that there was a circle outside where visitors' motorcycles were parked. I spoke with Dan Smothers who is a member of the security staff and a former deputy sheriff. I asked if my bike would be OK there with my luggage, etc. left on it. Dan (who is about 2 inches taller than me) said: " I don't think it will be a problem. We've never had a theft from a motorcycle here, and won't." Serious guy. He also told me there was a gear room inside for my helmet, gloves and tank bag. Very, very nice, and motorcycle-friendly.

     Here's the circle outside the museum:

Of course, I parked next to another BMW RT (albeit a 2010 model) from Missouri. Note the parking signs between the two bikes.

   As I made it through the collection ("Start at the top and work your way down") I ran into Dan again. He said that the museum might be expanding, so that more of the motorcycles (and Lotus cars...the largest collection in the world) might be displayed. Stupid me didn't take a photo, but there is a road course for cars and motorcycles which is on the property in which 20 identical Porsches were taking driving instruction as I watched.

    I learned also that next Fall (2011) there will be a BMW rally at the Barber location. Start making plans now, you Beemerfolks!

    Now the scary part (but only briefly scary). I'd left Leeds, and was headed East at 72mph. As the shadows grew longer, I suddenly felt the need to get my sunglasses off, and the clear glasses on. I got off the Interstate, stopped, made the switch, and got back on. Within 30 seconds I was involved in a major slowdown, and in short order was stopped completely on the road. For 30 minutes I and a whole bunch of other people waited while multiple ambulances arrived at a crash scene 50 yards in front of us (but they didn't leave right away-a clue as we used to say), fire trucks arrived, Alabama State Troopers arrived. Finally, our side was let through. Bad stuff for sure.  I was now into the hours of near-darkness, a time when motorcyclists know that deer are can be on the road. Choosing speed over caution, I zoomed (don't ask me how fast) the 19 miles to Bremen, GA to stop for the night.