Nearly 80 antique motorcycles made their way into Hot Springs late Wednesday afternoon as part of the Cross Country Chase "Secrets of the Ozarks" competition -- a five-day motorcycle endurance run covering 1,340 miles.
Kicking off Monday in Cape Girardeau, Mo., the chase started with 79 riders who came from all parts of the country with their bikes -- manufactured between 1930 and 1960 -- to compete in a grinding test of endurance, speed, navigation and knowledge.
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After completing the 295-mile Stage 1 on the first full day Tuesday as bikers rolled up to Chateau on the Lake Resort Spa in Branson, Mo., the 210-mile Stage 2 brought the riders to the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa as Wednesday's final checkpoint.
The chase, sponsored by Motorcycle Cannonball and Powered by Law Tigers, was to "prove to see the who's who of the Antique Motorcycle World," according to a news release.
Cross Country Chase owner and promoter Jason Sims said the race, which dates back to 2010, is generally a cross-country endurance race that spans from coast to coast.
"With everything going on with the pandemic and everything, we just wanted to get motorcycles back out on the road," he said Wednesday shortly after arriving. "So we decided to put together this little mini-event and we're dubbing it the Cross Country Chase 'Secrets of the Ozarks' mini chase. It's probably a half to a third of the amount of time that we usually do one of these events. We actually started with 79 riders on Day 1. I think we lost a couple last night from catastrophic failures and it looks like we'll probably have maybe 74 or 75 show up here in Hot Springs tonight."
Sims, from Sturgis, S.D., has been riding motorcycles since the age of 5 when his grandfather put him on a Honda 70s XL70 minibike. He is educated in pre-1950 American motorcycles with a minor in flatheads and an occasional Japanese extracurricular, he said.
As the endeavor is designed to be challenging, the riders and their machines often have to endure fatigue, exhaustion, heat, elevations and other elements as riders navigate the course of the chase completely on their own with no support crews. As Wednesday's temperatures reached well into the '90s, rider No. 58 Jim Wilson noted it wasn't easy but he made it through.
Wilson, 66, from Glenview, Ill. just out of Chicago, road a 1960 Harley-Davidson FLH in the competition. Wilson said he has ridden everything from a Rupp minibike in his early teens to his 2016 Roadglide Ultra that he owns today. The 1960 panhead he was driving was that of his best friend's brother who could not make it to the competition this year.
"We're sweating a lot," he said. "Yeah, the bikes -- this one -- tends to overheat a little bit, but we've been able to maintain it and keep going. Everything's been good. We're happy to be here. Hopefully the city will invite us back next year."
Sims said he felt everyone was handling the heat pretty well so far.
"Yeah, you know, they really are," he said. "This event is based on a few different things; one of them is endurance. Well, part of the endurance part of it is putting up with weather such as -- you know, we went through rain this morning and now it's kind of hot and the humidity's really high. A lot of these riders aren't really used to this, so it's really testing these guys on the endurance part of this challenge."
Rider No. 15, Cecil "Big C" Frost, from Montevallo, Ala., said he and his 1947 Harley-Davidson ServiCar G held up really well in the chase.
"I'm getting good speeds; the roads are spectacular," he said. "We have a course master with the chase (who) works year-round to develop these routes for us and he picks just the best roads -- and Arkansas is right there."
The competition has riders, Sims said, from nearly every state in the country -- everywhere from Washington, California, the tip of Florida all the way up to Maine. He noted that Hot Springs was actually one of their first stops back in 2010 during the first event and praised all the Spa City has to offer.
"It was actually one of our days off, so we were here for two days during that time and the town kept us -- they were really, really good to us," he said. "So when I put this whole event together, I wanted to make sure that we came back to Hot Springs, Ark.
"Today was unreal. So, really, I think that the Ozarks are one of the most untapped resources in America for people that like to cruise and do scenic byways -- especially motorcyclists -- this is like motorcycle heaven down here. So a lot of people don't really know about it so I'm trying to expose this area to people to show them how beautiful this place is and probably one of the best motorcycle areas in the nation," Sims said.
While not an actual competitor, Matt King, from Milwaukee, Wis., rode the route as a chase bike to photograph the event. King carries the photographer, who faces backward, on the back of his newer model bike to capture the vintage bikes for the website along with social media and motorcycle magazines covering the event.
"You know, we're carrying a lot more gear and camera equipment and passenger and stuff so, yeah -- he's got his hands full and I have my hands full too," King said. "When you have a passenger on the back that's swinging around back and forth, so yeah. It's been fun, it's been hot, it's been beautiful roads, though.
"We follow the entire course. We try to photograph every single bike, and they get split into different groups and packs, and so we try to stay with them. And some of them will pass and then we'll catch up so, we spend the whole day out on the road -- probably longer. We probably spend more time out on the road than some of the guys because they can just ride straight through, you know. They may stop for lunch and gas but we're sitting around waiting for people to catch up to us."
The chase had its last stop back in Cape Girardeau where it concluded.
