Smokey Mountain Smoke Out One

Here's the chopper show in Pigeon Forge 2000

The scene of the crime

The bike show judging was supposed to happen at eight O’clock sharp, potential entrants were coming to me and asking where the sign-up sheet was. Trouble is, I didn’t know!

My woman, Trina, had been getting a tattoo by a local artist, so we arrived at the scene of the show (or thereabouts) around 7:15. There was no sign of Hammer and I was pretty sure he had the sign-up sheet; I continued to make lame excuses until about five after eight when Hammer made his fashionably late entrance.

There were to be four judges, all staff members of THE HORSE BC, Hammer, Kat, Edge and myself. We decided it would be better to hold the actual show in a parking lot adjacent to the motel lot. As the bikes were rode into the lot, it became clear that this was going to be one tough contest. I have never seen so many QUALITY chops in one place before. I had been scoping the bikes out as they came in slowly during the day, but several more had arrived at the last minute. The bikes began lining up for our inspection, ‘Mad Dog’ Rob Moore, of Shadetree racing fame (See THE HORSE BC #7) had entered his ratted-out TC88 and came roaring into the parking lot at his customary full throttle. He had a dead battery, so I’m assuming someone push started him over in the other lot. It was then I realized that there were no real classes for the show, we couldn’t do a ‘best rat’, ‘best resto’ etc. There was just the first, second and third prizes! Oh well, it was going to have to be the three bikes that impressed us the most then.

Somebody had brought a really expensive-looking chop to the show, this bike looked like someone had spent a LOT of time and money on it, there was engineering excellence all over it. The trouble was, they had made the mistake of trailering it there. A couple of riders from Jersey, John and Rudy, were absolutely MERCILESS when it came to heckling this bike and it’s builder, it didn’t help that it couldn’t be started because of an apparent dead battery. We knew that this bike could not be considered in a show like this, people had ridden in from all over on their chops, and riding was IS what it’s all about.

The Milkman was there on his great-looking Triumph chop, I was a little disappointed there wasn’t more British Iron in attendance, but considering the quality of the bikes that were there, I couldn’t complain.

There was a REALLY clean Panhead there; the ONLY flaw was that it was very nearly stock. Black was definitely the ‘in’ colour there, the vast majority of bikes were either flat black or gloss black (including, mine, Hammer and Edge’s).

We dutifully walked up and down the lines of bikes, making notes, this was going to be tough, eventually Hammer motioned for us to walk to a more secluded part of the parking lot, to tally the votes.

Just when we thought we had it figured out, another two bikes thundered into the lot, someone came up to us and told us we HAD to check these out.

Well, they were late, but what the hell, there’s no point in being in charge if you can’t bend your own rules a little.

And I’m glad we did, one of the late entrants was a really nice and well-executed shovel, this threw a wrench into our collective works, and we had to reassess how we were going to vote for show winners.

All this time, the Joisey boys kept up their chorus; “At least he RODE it” was their overly loud comments when the latecomers arrived.

Eventually, after another huddle, we decided on the top three, it was a hard decision; nearly all of them deserved some kind of award.

Debra on her award-winning Buell

Matt's amazing rigid Evo

Nice black rigid shovel

Lots of engineering in this evo!

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