After nearly thirty-six hours awake the previous day, a full night of sleep felt like a luxury. When we stepped outside that morning the temperature was hovering around sixty degrees, the kind of morning that reminds you why riders spend all winter waiting for spring.
Hotel coffee and breakfast held us over until the next stop. Before heading out for the morning we stopped at a car wash to rinse the road grime off the bikes and grabbed coffee at a small shop nearby. The baristas were friendly, in the easy unhurried way you tend to find in small southern towns. While waiting for our drinks I had a strange realization: something about the way southern women talk and carry themselves reminds me of my aunt and grandmother. I couldn’t quite explain why this experience was different than others, but the familiarity stuck with me.
Not long after we stepped outside, the town cop rolled into the lot and started chatting with us. Two guys on loaded BMW motorcycles tend to stand out in a small village like this. Instead of suspicion we got curiosity. He asked where we were from, where we were headed, and offered a few road recommendations before heading off on patrol.
Moments like that are one of the quiet perks of motorcycle travel. The bike itself becomes an introduction.
Leaving Moulton, Alabama we headed south on route 33 .The road cut through the Black Warrior National Forest and finally gave us our first taste of elevation and curves. Nothing dramatic, five hundred feet at best, but after months of winter and straight highways the last few days, it felt like a mountain pass.
Before reaching our main destination for the day we made a stop that every northern rider eventually makes when traveling south.
Buc-ee’s.
The newly built one outside of Birmingham in the town of Leeds, AL, looked like a small airport terminal disguised as a gas station. For someone from the Northeast it feels less like a fuel stop and more like a roadside attraction. Clean bathrooms, endless snacks, and enough gas pumps to refuel a convoy. I highly recommend the brisket sandwich. It might even be the best damn gas station grub you can have.
After stretching our legs and grabbing a few things for the road, we headed toward Barber Motorsports Museum.
Nothing about the place prepares you for the scale of it.
We spent nearly four hours walking through the museum and still didn’t see everything. The basement level was closed that day, which meant an entire floor of motorcycles and cars we’d have to miss.
Even without it, the place was overwhelming.
Some of the highlights for me were the Buell and the Motus bikes, machines that represented ambitious ideas that never quite found their place in the market. I was also drawn to the random BMW “Oilheads” scattered throughout the collection. There were plenty of vintage BMWs, but surprisingly not many K-bikes.
Seeing a Britten in person was something I’d always hoped for. The pink parts of the bike looked almost orange under the lights, which was slightly disappointing but still incredible to witness up close. If you’re not familiar, John Britten was a self-taught engineer from Christchurch, New Zealand who built the radical Britten V1000 in a small workshop during the early 1990s. His handmade machine stunned the racing world, beating major factory teams with homegrown engineering and a fiercely independent spirit.
Other bikes caught my eye as we wandered the floors: a Radd MC2, the strange BMW C2, a Ducati Paso 745, Morbidelli machines, and more beautiful Moto Guzzi’s than I could count.
With so many bikes to look at, I not only found a few new oddballs to dream about, but I was really able to soak in the bikes that have defined my moto-story over the years. Seeing the evolution of specific models and the bikes with such daring designs that provided inspiration to future models even though they never found their own footing. It’s in these “failures” that allow me to reflect back on some of my more decisive choices in life. Even though they all were not perfect, they helped shape the current person I have become.
Eventually the closing announcements echoed through the building and we were pushed back toward the parking lot. This visit not only made an impact but a vow to return as soon as possible.
From Barber we had a little over two hours of riding east to reach our hotel in Tupelo, MS.
Somewhere along that ride the sun began to drop.
Watching a sunset on the open road is always special, but this one had a weight to it I can’t fully explain. The pink of the sky slowly bled into deep blue as the Alabama landscape opened itself up in front of us. The sun would disappear below the horizon only to reveal itself again as the road curved and twisted west.
Each turn of the road brought it back into view.
For a moment it felt like the sun was playing the same game my subconscious often plays when I ride, disappearing just long enough before revealing something again.
Life has a way of working itself out on the road.
Sometimes I leave on a ride looking for answers. Other times the answers seem to find me whether I’m looking for them or not. And this is why I ride. Over the years it has become more than a hobby, it really is a way of life. It has grown into something deeper than the stereotypical throttle therapy so many riders pine about. The need to breath and think on two wheels is as important to me as breathing and sleeping.
By the time we reached Tupelo it was dark. We grabbed dinner at a ramen place and checked into the hotel around nine.
Three miles away sat Elvis Presley’s birthplace.
That would be tomorrow morning’s first stop.
This is part 2 of the Six Days South series. Stay tuned for part 3, Strangers and Motorcycle People.
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