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Huntington Beach, Calif. - A perfect February afternoon in HB. This meet just keeps getting better. I rolled in at 1:40 and there were already 30 bikes in the lot. The official count is 150 bikes, 55 more than last month's record.
I thought that I had come prepared with 56 spoke tags. In the past we have never had more than 40 vintage bikes that qualified for Bike of the Month. Today I ran out of tags. There were many bikes that qualified and didn't get tagged. I'm sorry if your bike didn't get in the running, bring it back and get here early. I promise to have more tags next month.
The Bike of the Month vote was very close. Dave Roberts of Huntington Beach won by one vote with his 1952 Triumph 6T. This beautifully restored custom Triumph was built by Dave's father in 1964. Dave resurrected it from 40 years storage two years ago. There's more about this bike on the Bike of the Month page.
One vote behind was Frank Colver of Costa Mesa with his awesome 1938 350cc Single, AJS Flat Tracker. It was ironic that Frank's bike had the #56 race number and I had 56 bike tags made up. Things have a way of just working out. Frank has owned this bike for eight years. It came from New Zealand, where Frank believes that it was built and raced in the early 1960's.
Third place went to Rick Haas of Lake Forest with his totally original 1980 Honda CB-X six cylinder bike. This inline beast was hard to miss, but finding out it was all original just added to the package.
Those were three of the 150 bikes. There was also an awsome Vincent Black Shadow, two nearly perfect Yamaha RD400's, several BSA's, a Harley Davidson Single, several more Harley's, Jimmy's 1970 Aermacchi 350 single, a 1931 Indian 101 Scout, an early 80's Suzuki Drag Bike, a few Arials, a Simplex Servi Car and if you didn't stay until 4:30, you missed the 1967 BMW R60/2 with the '52 sidecar.
Oh yeah, and we were visited by a rough looking gang of Mods on their scooters. Obviously they weren't intimidated by the Honda Trail 70 packed with the 175cc engine. If you didn't look down, you may have missed that one. I don't think we can pidgeon hole our group. If it has two wheels and an engine, bring it on.
What a great day. A special thanks again to Debbie & Tom Hopkins for helping with the voting ballots.
Thanks to everyone for showing up and making this another great event. I'll see you again on March 13, 2011.
Keep On Ridin',
Joe Kagerer
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