Got back from Born Free – Texas late Sunday night. Been slammed all week, and am just getting around to talking about it here.
Easily the highlight of the rally for me came about through pure dumb luck. My tent got placed right next to the tent for Grit Trade Co, which is owned by Leah Rae Cunningham. Leah is a one-woman operation making very cool custom silver jewelry…rings mostly.
Leah’s 3D print – lost wax investment casting process very similar to mine. It was fun comparing notes about our respective processes. I envy her ability to use castable 3D printer resin, and therefore bypass the need for making RTV molds. (I’ve experimented with that, but because my castings are so large and my need for dimensional precision is so great, I’ve never been able to make it work.)
Speaking of tents, mine looked really fine:
Until the wind got the better of it, and by Saturday afternoon, it looked like this:
One of the legs on the tent frame got completely smoked. I called the guys I got it from, and replacement parts are made of unobtanium. You have to buy the whole frame over again. Ugh. At least I’ll have spare parts in the future.
I missed out on bringing my bobber to Bikes, Blues and BBQ earlier in the month, and I wasn’t going to make that mistake twice. I’d heard good things about those U-Haul bike trailers, and at $14.95/day why not?
Worked great. Rock steady the whole way there and back.
Totally different crowd at Born Free compared to BB&BBQ. Arkansas was bagger-central. Like literally 90% of the bikes there. Baggers as far as the eye could see.
Born Free was all about choppers. Choppers everywhere. All kinds of interesting bikes. Lots of garage built stuff. Sportsters seemed to be the platform of choice, but there were lots of older bikes, too. Lots of Shovels, some Pans, and even quite a few Knuckles. Of course, I am mainly interested in Evos, and there were tons of them! When it comes to looking at cool bikes, Born Free won hands down.
My bobber was right at home. I used it to ride into town a couple of times, and managed to get it good and covered with red Texas dirt riding around the campground.
Nothing particularly interesting about the drive, either heading down, or heading home. Did manage a ferocious tail wind the whole way back to Nebraska, which according to my truck was worth 5MPG. Nice.
It was a total racoon slaughterhouse north of Topeka. It was after midnight by the time I got there, and a bunch of big, country racoons were meandering around the highway. Did not go well for them. I always feel bad killing something for no reason, but it is what it is. My inner Buddhist will have to make his peace with things.
I promised myself coming out of BB&BBQ that I would take more pix, and I did. But there are never enough. Here’s a few highlights:
I’m going to these rallies to get the word out about Omaha Derby Covers. Seems to be working. I’ve gotten lots of good feedback, and the derby covers seem to be very well received. It is very gratifying having people say nice things about your work! 🙂
For sure I’ll be back at Born Free next year!
