We had been travelling with Claude and Roly for a month, taking in Davenport swap meet, then on to Sturgis to do the Sturgis Antique Club run.  Well, while we were at Sturgis, Rocky Halter (Rocky's Indian’s Ohio) suggested we do Max’s run.  Max had said it would be the last time he rides it.

(2 weeks later)

After a bit of shuffling with bikes, Rocky dropped off a fat boy Harley (which belonged to Mississippi Dave) at Bob Kift’s place in Vegas for us.  We carried on our trip for another couple of weeks with Claude, got back to Canada for only 4 days, then drove down to buffalo, left our truck at a friends place on the Indian Reserve, flew to Vegas, stayed at Bob’s place over night, rode the strip that night on the fat boy, then rode to Death Valley in the morning where we met up with Red Fred, Rocky (Ricky’s Indians). Tony Watson, Jim Mosher, Mike Thomas (Kiwi Indians), Mat Blake (Iron Horse Coral) and many others.

Had a ball for 5 days. Max has loads of stories to tell, he’s always interesting to listen to.  Great to ride with one of the real Indian legends.  We have spent time with him a few times at Doc Batsleer’s place in Daytona, Doc and Maria have a party every Daytona, people like Max, Bobby Hill and Truman (of the wrecking crew), Butch Baer, Ed Kretz jnr and many other Indian greats turn up, plus loads of us mere mortals

While at Death Valley, Rocky offered us his spare bike, a BMW 650 single sort of off-road thing.  It was great fun. In fact I rode it most of the time while Anna preferred the Harley.  The deal with the fat boy was that we had to deliver it back to Mississippi (bummer).  We got lucky when rocky asked if we would mind riding the BMW back as well to Ohio as he was taking Red Fred’s bike back to Ohio in the trailer and was tight for room.  As you can imagine it was quite a hard decision for us to make!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had made plans to meet Mississippi Dave at his place a couple of weeks after the run and ride to the Barber Museum in Alabama for the antique races.  So we had quite a bit of time to do the 2500 or so miles back to Dave’s.  We just zig zagged our way back via New Mexico.  We popped into visit with Mike Breeding and his lovely wife, they have a fantastic self designed and built pueblo in the mountains of New Mexico.  It’s one of the most amazing areas we have visited.  We stayed the night with Jim Mosher, who also has a real cool pueblo. (check out Jim’s carb kits).  He has a lovely collection of bikes.

We headed across the reserve, just north east of Jim’s place.  The scenery is breathtaking.  While riding the 100 miles across the reservation, we hit a hail stone storm (big as golf balls), it was freezing.  We pulled into the only gas station for 100 miles, Anna was shaking with cold.  I told her to go in side and get a coffee, the 3 women behind the counter looked in amazement at the idiot that had been on a bike in such weather.  Anna asked for a coffee, the lady replied "sorry we don’t do hot drinks".  Anna nearly fainted.  The woman just burst out laughing, and said, "not only do we have coffee but we also double as a Laundromat, go and press your face

against one of the tumble dryers and warm up, I will bring the coffee".  We spent the next hour or more answering questions about England.

I had great trouble getting Anna to leave the warmth of that place.  We rode quite a bit of route 66, mainly because it runs along side the new highway, so why not.  It’s amazing how many times you hit route 66 when crossing the states.  There is still some neat stuff to see on the route, loads of old gas stations and motels.  Kind of sad too.

We got to Mississippi in time to leave for the Barber Museum.  We lost the fat boy to a friend called Wally, who flew in to do the Barber Run, so we borrowed another Harley from a friend, Jamie Paine, again from Mississippi.  The racing at the Barber was fantastic, I would recommend the museum.  It’s very modern, not any real memorabilia, but a fantastic collection.  The racetrack, which you can watch from the museum, is also amazing.  We got pit passes from Doc Batsleer, which was real nice of him.  I got to ride my first Cushman around the pits, another ambition fulfilled.  (sadman). 

Well that’s about it.  I will try to do some thing for you on the other runs that we’ve done in the last year or two.

  Eddie Baines