Old-bike fan makes his first trek to Mid-Ohio's vintage motorcycle Mecca

The two-stroke vintage motocross bikes barking out that burnt blue hue was a vivid callback to the action I’d watched countless times as a kid. At this very moment, I desperately wanted in, and that’s when it clicked: This is the place to lose yourself in a cloud of exhaust and find out what you really want from this sport of ours.

It was an "aha" moment that likely played out hundreds of times across the American Motorcyclist Association’s (AMA) 2021 Vintage Motorcycle Days (VMD) event held this past weekend at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington. As someone who has only ever thrown a leg over old bikes but had never been to VMD, I relented to years of offers from my dad and agreed it was finally time to make the trek. We piloted his van across Pennsylvania for a half-day drive that added up to nearly 1,000 miles by the time we got home.

VMD has been held consistently since the early 1990s and the common consensus from folks I spoke with was that they’ve been coming for 20-plus years and nothing but an act of God was going to get in the way of that.

"Everything about this is what people had," said swap meet seller and two-decade-long attendee Tim Parsons of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The emphasis was his and you didn’t have to walk very far to be completely immersed in nostalgia. For every brightly colored throwback race bike there was a family out for a ride on 50 cc mopeds, taking in the wide array of wild, wonderful and weird events across some 380 acres. VMD truly has something for everyone. Highlights included demo rides from Honda and Royal Enfield, the Old Bike Barn Crossroads, the Lap for History around the 2.4-mile road circuit and the Wall of Death, among plenty of other kid-friendly offerings.

Just about every type of two-wheel competition can be found on Mid-Ohio’s sprawling grounds, too. Well, except for hill climbing, and that’s just because they couldn’t find one steep enough, joked AMA CEO Rob Dingman.

"This event is bigger than it has ever been," he said, adding that the "bursting-at-the-seams" attendance was undoubtedly driven by "pent-up demand from last year." Asked about the financial effects of cancelling the 2020 event, Dingman said that all proceeds from VMD go toward keeping the AMA Hall of Fame Museum in operation at the AMA’s headquarters about 50 miles away in Pickerington. If you’re already bound for Mid-Ohio, the museum is worth the detour.

Wheeling and dealing

The sprawling swap meet arguably draws in half the headcount during VMD with plenty of international customers in years past. Sales happen fast… or not at all. People rationalize $1,000 for that rare rolling chassis without a motor. Pit bike riders stalk the grounds like vultures as they scour for relative steals before the event opens to the public. Things get flipped and found for sale at a 50 percent markup a day later. Prices get slashed as time wears on because no seller wants to haul it back home; don’t look so shocked when piles of parts previously up for sale start turning up in trash cans.

Nothing I had my eye on truly fit the bill enough to buy, but plenty of other folks were spending fast and loose. My dad had a four-figure weekend by the time we packed up to leave, selling his finished KTM tribute build to a guy in the early stages of making that same '70s Guennady Moisseev racer himself. In the end, you’re either scouring for that bucket-list bike or, as one customer described it, picking up 50-year-old exhaust pipes to put in the "bucket of broken dreams" back home. Watching breakers push unloved non-runners into a scrap pile destined to be parted out for eBay, it was hard not to agree with the pessimistic slaughterhouse sentiment. It’s no wonder they call these old bikes "survivors."

Whether you flew in under the checkered flag on a pristine and precise road bike or spectated from the stands, there was arguably no better way to prime the crowd to celebrate the bikes and visionaries of an era long gone than the "On Any Sunday" tie-in theme of this year’s VMD. Late director Bruce Brown’s landmark film marked its 50th anniversary this year and a Friday night screening was made possible in part by Todd Huffman of Gathr Films, who procured the theatrical screening rights.

"Bruce, rest in peace, would have wanted all these people to see it on the big screen," he said. The showing was preceded by a few comments from this year's VMD Grand Marshal, flat tracker and movie star Dave Aldana, now 72 but an invincible 19-year-old around the time the film was made.

"You don’t know how fast you can go until you fall down," Aldana, who was "humbled" to serve as the event’s grand marshal, told me when asked about lessons learned over the past five decades. An hour later, I was letting it all hang out on my girlfriend’s little scooter while ripping around the cyclone oval track in the campground’s compound of Mad Max misfits. Did I have any business bumping bars on borrowed wheels? Hell no. Was that going to stop me from being swallowed up by this dust bowl of bands, bonfires, burnouts and beers? Hell no.

An extended family

The roads inside the facility flow like blood through the veins. You really have to see it yourself to grasp the sheer number of motorcyclists buzzing about from attraction to attraction on motorcycles that range from old to older, rare to mundane. Come nightfall, you either sleep outside or rest comfortably inside a $20,000 toy hauler. My options were limited to the former, which I can tell you is indeed tolerable, in case you’re considering roughing it yourself next year.

It’s the show-stopper vintage bikes that we’re all here for. But time takes a toll on these machines and they become increasingly temperamental and decreasingly willing to get going under their own power. As longtime friends and swap meet sellers Tim Ervin and Chris Bednas said — and as I know all too well — it’s about "three hours of wrenching for one hour of riding." That’s a hard sell to folks who’d rather walk out of a showroom with 2021’s latest, but what did you learn from that? How to open your wallet?

It all raises the burning question: Why vintage? Why fight with these machines when most rides manufactured this side of the millennium are going to start when you hit that button? Because these bikes have style and soul and can literally be pushed and kicked back to life if you invest enough time and effort into getting to know how they come apart and go back together. The same simply can’t be said for factory-sealed computer chips and batteries with a finite lifespan. As North Carolina resident and racer Frank Roland said beside the yellow 1981 YZ465 he’d campaign that weekend, "I enjoy tinkering and working on them and it keeps me in the sport." Amen, Frank.

The camaraderie found in the road racing paddocks and every other corner of the event to get these things fired up speaks to the family-like atmosphere among attendees. We broke bread on the final night with nearly everyone and anyone, swapping war stories, seeking advice and letting late-comer low-ball offers down easy. Three full days and nights with actual family who’d traveled from Indiana plus the new friends who’ve joined the extended ranks is the real reason for coming out here. A lot of laughs, YZinger joy rides and the realization that if you want it bad enough, you’ll be dropping the clutch at the gate drop soon enough: You can find it all far from home at a place called "Mid-Ohio."