Barber Motorsports Park and Museum, Leeds, AL

If you haven't gone, you really should go. I made a quick trip over last week. A friend was doing a track day Saturday. I rode over Friday morning, and we saw the museum Friday afternoon.

I had two docents come out and ask me about the WR. Plenty of folks ride to the museum on touring bikes, not so many on 250 cc thumpers.



They always have a few bikes sitting outside in the parking area. Here is an HD thumper.



I'd see this HD thumper a little later in the tour. A mid-90s Marine bike with a Rotax 650 cc single powerplant. Specs, like appearances, are very similar to a KLR.



The collections of bikes are impressive. Here are a few. The great-grandaddy of the WR250X, a 1968 Yamaha DT-1.



They had it among a collection of scramblers. Those were kick-a$$ bikes and a nice combination of off-road and on-road ability.

One of Gary Egan's distance record setting bikes.



Nice little collection of history's bikes: a GTS1000 (funky suspension), a Yamaha R7 (never competitive but led to the R6 and R1), a Laverda (out of business), an Aprilia RS250 (2 stroke), a ZRX1100, and an R1100GS.



Saturday morning I got to demo an R6 on the Barber track for about 15 minutes courtesy of Yamaha and NESBA. Unfortunately with each crash, the control riders dropped the pace 10 - 20 mph. There three crashes in four sessions, so top speed on the front straight was barely 90 mph. In comparison, 2 years ago I was hitting almost 140 on my (then) 6 year old 600. Apparently 17 bikes have been totaled in 1 year. I hope they continue to offer the program because I got to experience an R6 in its proper environment.

Demo bikes all lined up:


I watched my buddy ride a few sessions before heading back home. A nice overnight trip.

i was there just a cpl weeks after i bought my bike back in march. you said not many show up there on 250cc bikes......i bet even fewer show up there via the powerline trail that runs next to it
we ended up there right before they cut off all the lights that evening so i have yet to ever go inside to see the museum. it's on my to do list though.

in this pic using the flash,my camera picked up the pollen that was in the breeze out there...it was falling like snow that evening.

That's about 4 hours by slab from Memphis. I might have to chart it by another route and make a weekend of it. One of the guys from work brought photos in from the museum this past summer and talked about it for days.

I go everytime I visit my family so about once a year. His collection used to be in a little place downtown before this was built and believe it or not the new place cannot display the whole collection of about nine hundred bikes. Nice collection of Lotus cars as well including 3 Lotus F1 cars. If you are a geared head you want to alot at least 4 hours. If you try to squeeze it in you will be bummed.

malibu_dan wrote:

That's about 4 hours by slab from Memphis. I might have to chart it by another route and make a weekend of it. One of the guys from work brought photos in from the museum this past summer and talked about it for days.

There's no "best" way to get over there. It's pretty flat anywhere near the rivers. There are some fun roads east of Holly Springs, MS, and there are some fun roads northwest of B'ham, but lots of low key cruising in between.