This morning thunder and lightning woke us up before dawn. Let me rephrase that. Woke me up. Mike can sleep through an earthquake! Another strong storm came through but once again we avoided riding in rain. The storm blew over Marysville before 8am, which was perfect for our plan to ride to the AMA museum. A fellow associate, Steve MacMinn has been threatening to join us for the last few days and last night he called from Ft. Worth Indiana and said he was coming our way on his 1965 CB450 “Black Bomber” that he had just finished assembling. The Black Bomber was the “next best thing” from Honda and although they did not sell very well when they first came out the engine was hailed as the most technologically advanced engine ever built by Mechanics Illustrated in 1965.

We saw doing the District Service Manager thing in St. Louis where he had initially hoped to join us but the bike was still not ready to ride. We also got a call while we were in Indianapolis and Steve said that he had just put 20 miles on his Bomber after replacing a gear in the transmission and it held oil and still ran so it must be ready!

We did not hear from Steve before we shut off the lights so he either was running late or he did not make it. I figured we’d hear one way or the other soon enough!

We rode to Pickerington Ohio from Marysville (only about 30 miles) and rode up to the AMA offices to see another CB77 Superhawk rolled out in front of the Museum just for us!

As soon as we rolled up the usual crowd of people came over to talk to us about the bikes. “I had one of those” and “They seemed so much bigger back then” are phrases that becoming very familiar to us.

We met with Mark Mederski, Executive Director of the AMA Hall of Fame Museum who owns six of these great bikes himself.

We also were introduced to Grant Parsons, Senior Editor of the American Motorcyclist Magazine and did a brief interview with him. (see www.amadirectlink.com) Grant rode a  Single cylinder 22 hp Royal Enfield 1300 miles last year so he can directly relate to our ride!

After we chatted with Mark and Grant, they had to leave for meetings (that darn work stuff just gets in the way!!) and Mike and I looked around in the museum. They are featuring Harley Davidson currently and have a great display of old Harleys including the Board Track racers.

Also on display was a rendition of the original Harley Davidson shop where the first H-D was created.

Downstairs of the museum is a replica of the first gas powered motorcycle, a Diamler.  I got to test out the saddle on this machine and I have decided that the Superhawk seat is just fine thank you very much!

There was a very nice BSA display that had some great examples to view as well as some great displays of all sorts of racing, street and off-road motorcycles.

Also on the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame wall was a picture Mr. Honda himself. One of the primary reasons that we are on this ride in the first place.

While we were at the museum Steve gave a call and he was on his way to meet us there. We waited and he came up on his bike but had a couple of small problems. He had a broken speedometer cable and also had a crack in the exhaust system.

Steve told us that he had been pulled over by the police the night before which is something we have been dying to do (great photo opportunity, huh?) since the beginning of the trip! Turns out the officer thought that Steve was not using his turn signals on the bike. Steve happily told the guy that his bike did not have such a new fangled thing (They’ll never catch on, I’m sure that they are just a fad)! “Well, then be sure to use your hand signals more clearly” was the officer’s response.

Steve knows many people in the area as he was a District Service Manager in the area for many years and he took us to a good friends house near the museum. We met Rich Gerhold and his wife Cheryl. Rich is a motorcycle nut like us and showed us his basement, which was filled with on going projects. I did not have my camera at the time but there were at least 8 or 9 projects in the works!  I did get a shot or two of Rich’s garage though, he had a couple a CBX’s in there and we got to see a very nice example of the mighty six cylinder statement by Honda.

Steve got a speedo cable from Rich and we then proceeded South to Lancaster where Steve knew of a welder. We could not get a hold the guy there so we rode on with Steve’s pipe cracked. We made it to Athens Ohio and decided to pull off as the skies were about to open up and we didn't want to spoil our record of good luck!

Today we rode a measly 115 miles but made it over our third major milestone of 3000 miles today! We are now at 3099 miles. According to our estimates, the trip will now end with a total of just about 4300 miles (unless we decided to take some more stops to make the trip a bit longer!). Tomorrow, we ride to the boarder of West Virgina and Virgina if all goes to plan. 

Till next time..