Bike night memories

[BillnOroville]

Started on cleaning up my garage and tossed or packed up stuff like these. Not sure they belong in the trash just yet.

Many places across America have towns small and large where businesses that participated in what’s called BIKE NIGHT. My hometown is one of them. Events were held usually once a month and at some business place that was typically a food establishment.

The picture below represents most of my success of trophy winnings from about 2011 to 2016 where sponsor (A local Wonderer’s Bike club) would have attendees judge and sponsors judge on varios things and hand out about 8 trophies during the evening.

Some places were Arby's, Feather Falls Casino, Dennies, Lube oil place and a favorite burger place.

Now granted most bikes were Harley Davidsons but I rode bikes that offered up something different like old vintage smaller bikes and unusual newer bikes and often won a trophy for the “ODD DUCK” mainly to give to the non-Harley riders like me.

ODD DUCK awards were on 1977 Yamaha RD400 (many old Harley rider had one when young), 1987 VFR400R, Yamaha FZ-09 and a 1988 Super Magna V-4 750.
Other trophies were for a low mile 1979 CB650, an HD 883R, and my clean 1989 Hawk GT.

Lack of sponsors or interest or the club got tires of doing it, not sure why they stopped. Really miss them as it offered me a chance to see other modded bikes (Like Choppers), stock bikes (Rune comes to mind) and rare bikes (Ariel Square 4 , knew about it never saw one).

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[6]

Very cool Bill!
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We used to have bike nights in Savannah. We went to a bunch. Eventually they ended up drawing a "different" crowd than the normal bike enthusiast.

Lots of lowered, neon'ed, turboed, street drag bikes started showing up.

Betting and racing started, and with that fights and animosity. Apparently a lot of local gang members took pride in having the fastest bike around.

We just liked bikes and racing. I've done my share of street racing, but usually late at night and places with turns. Watching unskilled riders hit 170 mph on main streets at 9:00 pm wasn't much fun.

There was a dude we knew, not a gang member but just a guy from the neighborhood who managed to avoid the whole gang thing, loved his "drag" bike. His 17 year old brother (who had no business on that bike) got killed on it racing a dude from bike night.

That was when we (rpm as a shop) stopped going.

Not to put a wet blanket on your bike night stories...

If we had something like that here I would be at every single one!

Congratulations on all the success sir! You keep a hell of a clean motorcycle!!!!!

[harpo]

BillnOroville you had a 1987 VFR400R! Heck ya they had better give an Odd Duck to such a rare, cool bike.

[BillnOroville]

BillnOroville you had a 1987 VFR400R! Heck ya they had better give an Odd Duck to such a rare, cool bike.

Yeah, it marked the rarest bike I ever owned. So Cool.
I got it in the Bay Area, It ran and actually had a California title and registration but was pretty rough for the 2600 I paid for it. I scrubbed it more than any bike I ever bought used. The carbs were the first 4 cylinder I ever took apart. Adjusting valves were different too. I emailed bike brakers in the UK to get some missing parts but was successful with everything. The gas tank was good and original paint but color scheme was not a match but nobody seemed to notice. It ran good but one cylinder needed more warm up than the others but once warmed up would redline at 14k. Had restriction washers still in the intake which I removed and it had MPH speedometer change form Km. After 1500 or so miles I decided to sell for 2k more. Sold in 1 day. A gal in San Francisco rented a truck and came and got it and never rode it before loading it. I missed it but moved on.

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