Sunday, July 24, 2016

Lonely Airhead at the Iron Horse Rodeo

Took a short ride last weekend over to the Red Lodge MT. area to meet up with a buddy of mine, Bob Clement. Bob owns "Bobs Motorwerks", a local, nationally known, Airhead BMW Specialist.
Bob has a wrecked BMW R100RT sitting in his shop which is looking for a new home. I'm thinking it might be a good parts bike for my parts stash. The bike has a bent frame / front end. I'm mainly interested in the drive train. I'm thinking having a spare 1000 cc engine / transmission for the side car rig might be a good idea.


I took a "round about" route over towards Red Lodge, going through Belfry MT / Bear Creek MT. Upon entering Belfry, I saw a couple dozen Harley riders in front of the local bar....then met another dozen or so on the road towards Bear Creek.



The clouds were hanging low over the Beartooth Mtns. off in the distance. Red Lodge is at the base of the mountains in the back ground.


Stopping in Bear Creek for a minute, many more riders were at the local watering hole.


                               Must have been the local hardware  / general store in the past.


                                              Stopped on the hill above Red Lodge


Entering town I quickly realized that a Bike Rally was going on....ended up the the annual "Iron Horse Rodeo" was this weekend. A few thousand more bikes in town than usual.


Bob had mentioned that he would be parked downtown....of course I didn't know that 2000 other bikes would be parked downtown too....lol


Quite an assortment of machines about. 99% of them were of the Harley variety. Maybe one out of 50 had something resembling a muffler attached.


Finally met Bob C. on his Gold Wing / sidecar rig going the other direction about 8 miles out of town....I turned around and tried to catch up with him, but to no avail. He turned on a side road and I lost sight of him.
I'll maybe try to get together with him later in the Summer if the wrecked bike is still available.



Decided to head home as the weather was looking dark. Decided to take a "long cut" home through Columbus MT. Saw this Memorial to a fallen couple along the road....coincidentally they lost their lives on July 16th, 2004....this happened to be July 16th, 2016.
I vaguely recall the occurrence. They owned / operated the Napa Auto Parts store in Columbus MT. If I remember correctly, they hit a deer on the road, resulting in the crash.

1 comment:

redlegsrides said...

Nice ride report...how'd it feel to ride the quietest machine in town that day? ;)

Gila Mtns.

Gila Mtns.