another roadside attraction

[DRxBMW]

another roadside attraction
If you bricKheads ever get near Maggie Valley,NC be sure to stop in at the Wheels of Time motorcycle museum. Esoteric collection of antique machines and memorabilia.

Lee Hartung was a collector's collector.  Based in Glenview, IL, Hartungs collection rested on 4 acres in the middle of the North Chicago suburb, and was amassed over the 60 years since he purchased the property in the 1940s.  For those fortunate enough to get a glimpse of Lee's collection over the past decades -- they were among a select few to step into a time-warp that told a unique story of 20th century Chicago ---- from Lee's point of view.

http://www.wheelsthroughtime.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=417

http://www.wheelsthroughtime.com/vintage-motorcycles/



The man, the myth, the legend......Mr. Lee Hartung!Lee had an eye for both rarity and originality.  Many of the machines in the collection had never been restored or modified, including the very rare 1948 One-of-a-kind Veritas and the 1951 Sterling Edwards Roadster, as well as a host of motorcycles including original, unrestored examples of a 1912 Harley, 1910 Pope, numerous four-cylinder Hendersons and Indians, a 1910 Excelsior, 1902 Wagner, and even a 1913 Flying Merkel.

[wmax351]

http://www.capteddiericks.com/

Just stopped by while on my way elsewhere a few weeks ago, but plan to go back some other time. Truly amazing collection. 

[DRxBMW]

WORLD's LARGEST HAMBURGER in Clearfield,Pennsylvania

BTDT JO, NOT the burger part but the Pub. Next time you bricK into Pennsylvania, I'll buy you one.



There are countless diners, beaneries, and fast-food franchises in this country where a meal will add an inch or two to your waistline. But the idea of a restaurant whose everyday menu is designed to overwhelm you -- where a meal can be just TOO MUCH -- seems impossible in our double-stuffed land of casual fit superabundance. To operate continuously at a gastro-bypass level takes, for lack of a better word, guts.

Denny's Beer Barrel Pub, "Home of the World's Largest Burgers," is that kind of place.

No giant burger billboards announce its presence, which is far from everything in rural Pennsylvania. Even on the inside, it seems like a typical, dimly lit suds and burger joint with lots of neon beer signs and TV screens filled with sports. But hung on one wall are glass-fronted bulletin boards, packed with Polaroids of mostly young men, each with a giant hamburger before them. On the border of each photo is written the word "FINISHED" or "NO." Most of them have the word "NO."

Grilling a 15-pounder.



"I think it's the enormity; it breaks your spirit," says Denny Liegey of his often-unconquered meat creations. For years Denny served one-half and one-pound hamburgers at the Pub, and then, around 1990 as he recalls, he began creating bigger burgers and selling them as a dare: "If you can eat it, we'll pay for it." The meat increased in weight to two pounds, then three. Then in 1998 Denny introduced "Ye Olde 96er," which is nine pounds altogether, six of it beef. Guinness calls it the "largest hamburger commercially available," and their certificate hangs prominently in the dining room. Competitive eaters have another name for it: "the Holy Grail of the burger world."

"As far as consumption goes, that's pretty close to what a human being can do without harming themselves," Denny says of Ye Olde 96er. Only one person has ever eaten it within the Pub's three-hour time limit, and that was "a little, skinny college girl from Princeton," according to Denny, who just showed up one night, evidently with an appetite. "It stunned the competitive eating world," Denny recalled. "They said, 'You ate the Holy Grail!' And I later heard that her mom was mad at her."

Denny gives us a tour of the kitchen to show how his burger behemoths are made. Special pans had to be developed to preserve the meat's circular shape, and Denny has a contract with a local bakery for his custom-sized buns. The burgers are baked, mostly, at low heat, so that consuming one is like eating a meat loaf. Denny's biggest burger ever -- a 123-pounder that blew away the old world record of 78.5 pounds -- took nine hours to cook. "You can't put a burger on a grill for that many hours; it would be charred," says waitress Stephanie, who obviously has first-hand knowledge of the process.

Not content to rest on his laurels, Denny now promotes the "Belly Buster," a two-person, 15-pound burger made of 11 pounds of meat plus the fixins. We ordered one for ourselves (the big burgers need several hours advance notice), but when Stephanie brought out the foot-high creation, embellished with pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, and onions, and oozing mayo and cheese, we knew that we were way out of our league. "No one has ever been able to eat it," Denny said*. He remembered that a Japanese sumo wrestler had arrived one night -- Denny's is a world bulk-eating pilgrimage site -- and ate half a Belly Buster in only an hour. "Then he just stopped," Denny recalled. "He looked at it for a while, but he never took another bite."

We drove around with ours, uneaten in the back seat, for a day. The Big Mac Museum wouldn't let us carry it inside, so we took it to an after-dark rendezvous with a similarly shaped flying saucer in a town named Mars. The next day, the giant bun made good eats for the crazed carp at the Linesville Spillway.

Despite his success at pushing the digestive envelope of others, Denny is himself a confessed failure at eating his own creations -- even the comparatively puny two-pound "Pub Challenger" is too much for him. He's happy to stay on the serving side of the dinner table, where he and his crack crew challenge all whose egos are often bigger than their stomachs. "We're real good friends with the local EMTs," Denny says, jokingly, although more than a few Beer Barrel Pub customers probably wouldn't mind going out after one last mouthful, and getting a "FINISHED" next to their snapshot.

*[On October 13, 2008, 21-year-old Brad Sciullo of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, did the impossible. He ate an entire Beer Barrel Belly Buster -- 15 pounds of meat, plus 5 pounds of toppings and bun -- in 4 hours and 39 minutes.]

World's Largest Hamburgers

Address:
    1452 Woodland Rd, Clearfield, PA
Directions:
    I-80 exit 120. South on Hwy 879 for 1.5 miles, then take the US 322 exit toward Clearfield/Phillipsburg. Drive straight across US 322 onto Woodland Rd, which bends to the right. Denny's is on the right side.
Admission:
    Free.
Hours:
    10 am - 12 pm most days. (Call to verify)
Phone:
    814-765-7190

[sbeadg]

......that's one way to get Johnny to come east! :2thumbup:

[DRxBMW]

Paper map planning my route to the Hungry Mother BMW gathering in May.

Stumbled upon "foamhedge",worthy of a brief stop to check it out firsthand. 



Created by Fibreglas sculptor Mark Cline of Enchanted Castle Studio - and described by Cline as his greatest achievement - Foamhenge is an enormously popular roadside attraction. "About 15 years ago I walked into a place called Insulated Business Systems where they make these huge 16-foot-tall blocks," Cline told Roadside America when he was in the process of completing the structure. "As soon as I saw them I immediately thought of the idea: 'Foamhenge.' It took a while for the opportunity to present itself, of course."



Cline's creation is an exact replica of the original Stonehenge, but many have said that it's even more photogenic. The giant Styrofoam blocks photograph well - they look like real stone from even a short distance - but this Stonehenge sits not on a remote island, but on top of a bluff amid the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains.

[BrickFlyer]

The funny part about FoamHenge is that it's rated the #2 attraction in the tiny town of Natural Bridge, VA.  I'm guessing the Natural Bridge itself is a bigger attraction . Here'a a link to the google map in case you're on 81 with nothing else to do.  Of course there's plenty to do in Lynchburg...

[DRxBMW]

Older bikes but way Kewl.

http://www.motorcyclecannonball.com/

The 2012 running of the Motorcycle Cannonball, with it's extension to allow bikes built through 1929, is a great boon to we aficionados of the White and Blue roundel.  In the inaugural 2010 run, the limit of 1915 or earlier simply precluded running any kind of a BMW, as the company itself didn’t exist until 1917.



BMW was formed from the preceding Rapp Motoren Werke, based in the Munich suburb of Oberwiesenfeld.  Rapp had been building engines under license from other manufacturers for the German and Austro-Hungarian war effort, and they had developed their own design that they were trying to sell to the authorities.  The name change accompanied the conversion from a private firm to a public stock company, and in 1918 a new logo design was registered that mimicked the round Rapp logo with its black border, but replaced the chess piece with the Bavarian state colors of White and Blue.

    

(It was 11 years later, on the cover of a publicity booklet, that an imaginative marketer dreamed up the idea that the BMW logo represented a spinning propeller against the sky.)
Although the BMW Type III motor was a success – immediately after the war, BMW smashed the altitude record with a Fokker D-VII aircraft and their new engine and special high altitude carburetor – the Allies were not pleased and the terms of the Versailles treaty essentially prevented the Germans from developing new aircraft, so BMW had to find other lines of work.



Among the avenues they followed, BMW began building a small utility engine, the M2B15.  It was successful not only as a stationary engine, used as an agricultural motor and even as a water pump on fire trucks, but the company sold thousands of them to be built into motorcycles.  A nearby company, Bayrische Flugzeug Werke (Bavarian Aircraft Works), had taken up motorcycle production as well, and produced a luxurious but ultimately unsuccessful model called the Helios that employed the M2B15 motor.  In a merger in 1922, BFW became a part of BMW and BMW turned their efforts to producing complete motorcycles. 

Near the end of 1923, BMW introduced their R32 model to the public.  It was a complete redesign that took a modified version of the M2B15, now the M2B33, and placed it crossways in a dual cradle tube framed motorcycle, with a 3 speed unit gearbox and a driveshaft leading to bevel gears, driving the rear wheel. 

Front suspension was by trailing link dual leaf spring.  BMW built their own carburetor, but ignition was via a Robert Bosch magneto or, if optional electric lights were included, by a Bosch mag/dyno.  The engine, like the preceding M2B15, was a 500cc sidevalve boxer twin, making 8.5 hp, which could propel the R32 to 95kmh/55mph. 

Development continued apace, and BMW introduced an OHV model, the R37, in 1925 and began winning a lot of trophies with it.  In 1926, the next generation of bikes were introduced, the R42 (SV) and R47 (OHV).  Two years later, BMW widened their model line with the introduction of the R52 (SV) and R57 (OHV) 500cc models and the R62 (SV) and R63 (OHV) 750cc models. 

read more @ http://tinyurl.com/motobrickcannonballbmw

[DRxBMW]

If your ever moto mayhem near Newburgh,NY,neat old geezer bikes to gaze at.

Orange County Choppers is also close by. (boring)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By DANIEL McDERMON
New York Times

Handlebars
This Family’s Attic Is Full of Motorcycles



FAMILY MATTER Gerald. left, and Ted Doering with a 1947 Indian Chief sidecar rig at their museum, Motorcyclepedia, in Newburgh, N.Y.



NEWBURGH, N.Y. — When it comes to assessing the motivations of a motorcycle collector, it is never clear exactly where to draw the line between a hobby and an obsession.

But it seems quite likely that Gerald A. Doering has crossed it.



http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/12/25/automobiles/motorcyclepedia-museum.html

Evidence to support that conclusion is spread over the 85,000 square feet of Motorcyclepedia, an expansive museum that Mr. Doering, 84, opened this year with his son, Ted, 62. The eclectic collection, assembled over several decades and comprising more than 400 motorcycles, occupies two floors of a former lumber warehouse and showroom in this careworn Hudson River city 65 miles north of Manhattan.

Mr. Doering’s interest in two-wheel vehicles took off with his first motorcycle, a 1929 Indian Scout that he bought locally in 1947.

“Then it’s got a little history to it,” Mr. Doering said.

He was so pleased with the bike, and with motorcycling, that he rode all the way to Miami, seeking a job with a motorcycle dealership that had relocated from Newburgh.

“I got down there without incident,” Mr. Doering said. But the job didn’t work out, and he rode the bike back to Newburgh, where he started an electrical contracting business in the ’50s.

After that, he was loyal to the Indian brand, buying several more.

Indian, which built its first bike in Springfield, Mass., in 1901, went out of business in 1953. The name has been revived several times since; in April the brand was acquired by Polaris, the maker of Victory Motorcycles based in Minnesota.

Mr. Doering just kept adding to his collection. “I started buying 10 years apart, and then five years apart, and then filling in,” he said.

He has Indians from every year but the first, when the company built just three motorcycles. (The display at Motorcyclepedia will eventually include a replica of a 1901 model.)

But there’s more for visitors to marvel over: board-track racers from the 1910s and ’20s, custom cruisers bedazzled with lights and motocross machines from the ’60s and ’70s. One room is filled with a jaw-dropping array of bikes on loan from the Antique Motorcycle Club of America.

Downstairs are dozens of police and military motorcycles, including a 1964 Harley-Davidson that Ted Doering said was in the motorcade in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The bike was later used in the 1991 Oliver Stone film “JFK,” he added.

The interests shared by the father and son reach beyond collecting. In 1971, they started a wholesale parts business, V-Twin Manufacturing. The success of the company, which focuses mainly on older Harley-Davidson models, helped make it possible for them to expand their motorcycle acquisitions.

While Ted Doering’s passion for motorcycles followed a considerably different path from his father’s pursuits, he has contributed a significant creative influence to the museum. As a young man in the 1960s, he began building custom bikes — what would now be called choppers.

“I tried enduros and some of that racing,” he said, referring to off-road competitions, “but I thought building the bikes was more interesting.”

One of Ted Doering’s creations, a 1927 Indian with a sidecar-mounted machine gun, is on display at Motorcyclepedia. It was also seen at the 1967 National Hot Rod and Custom Car Show at the New York Coliseum. In an interview with a newspaper reporter, Ted Doering offered this rationale for the customizing craze: “Just to be different.”

There is far more to be appreciated in the collection. Motorcycle enthusiasts could spend an entire day before visual overload sets in; even visitors with just a casual interest will find plenty to hold their interest for an hour or two.

Among the most fascinating items are motorcycles from long-forgotten American makers: a 4-cylinder Pierce from 1910, a Cleveland motorcycle adapted for military use and bikes from Monarch, Pope, Ace and Thor.

And there are some truly primitive machines as well, including a century-old De Dion Bouton 3-wheeler described as the oldest running motorcycle in America. The Doerings bought it in France in 2005, where it had been stored since 1907, for $40,000.

The condition of the bikes varies greatly. Some look as if they could easily take you back and forth to Bike Week in Florida, while others seem to have been untouched for decades.

“I don’t buy bikes,” Gerald Doering said. “I buy rust.”

The collection also includes machines radically restyled by the legendary customizer Ed Roth, known as Big Daddy — rolling fiberglass sculptures of artistic significance. There is a smattering of European and Japanese bikes, mostly serving as the basis for customs, and a couple of the bikes on display are built entirely from replacement parts that the Doerings’ V-Twin company manufactured.

And then there’s the Wall of Death, a cylindrical carnival attraction in which daredevils raced faster and faster around a steeply banked track, eventually achieving a horizontal position. In earlier times, such novelties provided a thrilling taste of danger for the crowd watching from above.

Along the same lines, there is the Inferno der Motoren, brought from Germany and reassembled on the museum’s lower level, complete with a ticket booth that looks as if it has just been plucked off a midway in Düsseldorf.

The Motorcyclepedia museum isn’t quite a slick commercial enterprise: when I was there I shared the space with just a few other visitors. Some of the displays are works in progress. But the museum, like its contents, is likely to provoke a smile of recognition from anyone who’s ever picked up a wrench or twisted a throttle. It is suffused with affection for the machines and a respect for the riders and engineers who built and rode them.

“You wonder if you go in there at night,” Gerald Doering said, “if you can hear some ghost saying, ‘I want my bike back.’ ”

The breadth of the collection, the rarity of much of what’s there and the sheer improbability of finding such a place full of wonders on a side street in Newburgh, make it worth the trip.