Mama Tried Motorcycle Show

The Mama Tried Motorcycle Show attracted over 100 bikes to a warehouse in Milwaukee just a few blocks from the Harley Davidson Museum. In fact, there were a couple of bikes at the Mama Tried show that would not have been out of place in Harley's showcase.

Mama Tried is a three day event that brings together bike builders of all types. The bikes are displayed on an upper floor of a warehouse that is a perfect venue for these creations. There are choppers, hill climbers, drag bikes and antique motorcycles. The weekend also includes a night of indoor flat track racing at the BMO Harris Center in downtown Milwaukee. There was ice racing scheduled for Sunday, but the unseasonably warm weather forced its cancellation.

I arrived in Milwaukee shortly after the venue opened late on Sunday morning and found a parking spot several blocks away. The area around the warehouse is becoming gentrified and some of the other former warehouses advertised loft apartments for rent. Locals sat outside nearby restaurants enjoying the sunshine as they waited for a table to open up. Motorcycles were backed up to the curbs, an unlikely site during February in Wisconsin.

Upon entering the big old building I was impressed with the ambience and how it seemed the perfect place to display these heavily modified bikes. I was reminded of the scene in the Discovery Channel's recent history of early years of Harley Davidson and people working on their bikes in an abandoned warehouse.This seemed like just the place you would find people who could earn a living making things with their hands.

The first display I visited featured Harley racing machines. One of them was the new flat tracker based on Harley's XG 750 Street. The new racer will be facing off against an equally new entry from Indian this summer in the America Motorcycle Association's Flat Track race series this summer. Their first head to head meeting will be at the Arizona Mile on 13 May. There were several examples of this bike in the show. One was at the Vance and Hines exhibit as V & H provides the exhaust system for the racing editions of the XG 750.

After spending a few moments imagining the new Harley racebike tearing up the Springfield Mile, I walked into the vendor area. Along with the usual suspects like Vance and Hines and S & S Motors, there were a lot of vendors I had never heard of. They were all there to provide items that promised to make your motorcycle different from anyone else's. Exhausts, pegs, various types of lighting, and engine upgrades were all on offer. One thing I noticed was that most all of the vendors are selling shirts, hats, and other items with the company's name and logo. There is a big market for these and the companies make a good percentage of their profits selling the merch.

But the real attraction of Mama Tried is the ingenuity builders demonstrate when using any of these products. It was a 180 degree turn from what I saw last week at the Chicago Motorcycle Show. In Chicago the manufacturers exhibited bikes that were engineered to within an inch of their lives and then test marketed to a particular demographic. Only after what could be years of development did the bikes see the light of day. These bikes were the product of one person's imagination and his or her determination to bring the motorcycle from dream to reality.

Some of the owners were available to answer questions and talk about their creations. They varied from bikes that used off the shelf parts to some that looked to be made with whatever parts happened to be available at the time. No matter how they were pieced together, there was a story behind each one. One of my favorites was a BMW airhead that had been massaged by Analog Motorcycles.

Mama Tried has only been around for three years , but it already has the feel of an important event for builders and riders. It is an opportunity for builders and potential customers to get together in an informal environment and share ideas. It is through those conversations that imaginations are fired and dreams begin to become reality.