Barber Motor Museum

Day: 32 – 33
Date: 03/05 – 04/05
City: Birmingham, Alabama
Miles ridden: 98
Cumulative miles: 1844

The internet didn’t work last night, so when we finally we got it working, Sigrid and Val booked a hotel that was 8 miles from the museum. The ‘8 miles’ must be as the crow flies.

A bit into our travel, it started to rain, so we gave our raingear a good test, it seems to work well. When we arrived in Birmingham, Sigrid called Garmin to see what our options with the broken unit are. The customer service representative suggested that we do a software update and deleted our own data, but the unit was still not finding satellites. So he offered to send us a refurbished unit for 350 US$ and when we sent our unit back we would get our money back. That was a fair deal. So we gave Garmin the address of our hotel and are hoping that the unit arrives before tomorrow at 15:00.  At night we watched the recorded video from our ride on ‘the tail of the dragon road’ and went to bed a bit earlier than normal.

Next morning we set off to visit the Barber Motor Museum, as always taking the Diddles and the Wombat with us.

It was stunning! Not only are all the bikes in top condition, there was also facts and some additional background information about each bike. In the centre there were multi-story shelves filled with motorbikes, on this picture it looks as though they are toys!


The age of motorbikes ranges from the first invented (Maybach-Daimler Reitwagen)

to the modern bikes (i.e. Morbidelli’s V8 bike).

Val found as well a Christmas tree that she would like to have for here next Christmas.

There were all kind of bikes, just to mention some: Harleys ,Indians, electric bikes and some other exotic ones.

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At the outside of the museum is a race track, which was in realy nice condition. We could only see a bit of it from the museum, but below is a map which showed the whole circuit.

We stayed in the museum from morning to late after noon, but I guess I could go there again and still find bikes that I haven’t seen. It was a really worthwhile detour to see the museum.

When we came back to the hotel, I picked up the GPS from the hotel counter. I was over the moon, but it turned out that the ‘new’ GPS also had an intermittent fault, but more to that later. The hotel had a pool that we decided to try and it was great. Since the weather was relatively hot, it was a relief to get into the pool. The next stage will be the long way to flag staff with 2 national parks in it and the enchanted circle (if possible). We started to plan in the evening to get a rough idea of how it would work, and it looks like we we can do all that and not have too many long riding days. The planning took a while, we booked accommodation for the next day, but the rest of the day is still flexible.

6 comments

  1. Wow, guess those bikes at Barber Motor Museum were a bit of an early birthday gift for you, sistah?! Happy birthday from me too, not sure of time difference but I think it should be 17 May pm for you at the moment, here 18 May am and I am at work (just don’t tell anyone!) Hugs & kisses! Andrea xoxoxo

  2. Hi Sigi, Hi Bjoern, breathtaking your trip is and follow your diary with excitement. Best wishes and lots of Love from Klaus, Conni, Alli and Me …HAPPY B-DAY SIGI….!!!!
    PS: Wer vor der Kurve nicht bremst, war auf der Geraden zu langsam
    C-ya

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