American Iron Horse

American Iron Horse
"Ride to Luckenbach"
July 31, 2005

Wife Terri, son Brian and myself made a Sunday excursion to Luckenbach as part of the San Antonio American Iron Horse Customer Appreciation day. While I've got a BMW R1100RT and Brian has a V-Star 650, we did buy sunglasses and a baseball cap so we figured we could tag along and partake in the activities. Tag along is about the best I could do. These iron horses are 1800cc and somewhere between Blanco and Luckenbach I attempted follow a couple of those behemoths around a slow (65 - 70) cager but was unable to keep up and ended up dropping back behind the cage with my wife yelling at me not to try it again. I've got 90bhp, but full fairing and 2up with hard cases loaded is a disadvantage over those 1800cc monsters. Click GPS map at right or any images below for high resolution. Warning: these high res images load very slow on a modem.

First stop was Iron Horse Saloon in Blanco, about 1 mile up 163 off US 281. About 5 minutes after stopping, the American Iron Horse chase truck drove up, parked, and the driver yelled "cold beer anyone?!". About 10 seconds later the local sheriff drove up and parked across the street, staring at us. He saw a lot of Ozark water bottles taken out of the truck before he drove off. Next stop was Luckenbach, as luck would have it I and 4 others bikers got stuck at the intersection of 281 and 1623 in Blanco. The sheriff was there giving a cager a ticket so we didn't attempt to run the light. As a result we missed the turnoff from 1623 to 1888 and got to Luckenbach after riding up to Stonewall and 290 along that 1623.

At Luckenbach, we bought a "pulled pork" sandwich, curly fries and sausage on a stick. Somehow got two sausages when we paid for one so we can't complain too much about the food. I can say that it was definitely better than Harry-On-The-Loop BBQ in Willow city, but that is not saying much. The highlight of the trip was a sign in the men's room "Harley Riders - We can trailer your bike. Call 1-800-SLOCAGE". I got the joke about trailering the Harley, but it took a while before I got the slow cagers phone#. A really cute bikerchick walked up to Brian. Turned out she was actually the equivalent of the local liquor agent. She asked son Brian to chuck his beer can because he didn't buy it from her. Seems brian got it from the Iron Horse chase truck which was contrary to luckenbach rules. I thought she would card him, but she didn't.

Took a bunch of pictures and again was the last to leave and never caught up with the group till we hit Buddy's Tavern in Johnson City. I am pretty sure I was hitting 75-80 trying to catch up. I did manage to pass the chase truck, but never caught the group. Buddy's was alright, with longneck's like Shiner Bock for $1 a bottle, pretty good. A peach stand across the road caught Terri's eye and I was out $16 for a bushel of hopefully Texas peaches.

The ride ended at Shade Tree, a saloon/dance hall near Spring Branch (see map above). What appeared to be a full 1# hamburger was the highlight of Shade Tree. Took a while to cook but was worth it. Humongous Burger was only $5 which made up for the Shiner Bock being $2.50 a bottle.

Really nice trip all the way and really fine folks at American Iron Horse. Before we left their ride chaplain gave a sermon. Not just a prayer. He talked about the faith and patience of Job and got all worked up. Really good speech and while he was talking about Job, I got to thinking that at upwards of $30,000 a bike it might require the Patience of Job to sell a bunch in sleepy San Antonio. I once saw David Robinson driving a hummer, but I think the Spurs would put a quick stop to any players riding this behemoth of a bike.