Limited to 1972 and older and 350cc and smaller machines, SBBA is a vintage small-bore ride spread out over six days and 800 miles. Those numbers may not sound particularly ambitious, but by themselves they don’t tell the story. A test of endurance for both rider and machine, SBBA is a deep dive into the core of what motorcycling’s all about — camaraderie and adventure.
Beginnings
2023 witnessed SBBA’s fourth run, with 23 riders piloting their small-bore bikes on a tour that swept them across Colorado’s Western Slope, starting and ending in Palisade, epicenter of Colorado’s peach industry.
Launched in 2020 by Coloradans Ben Foster and Todd Wallis, SBBA was spawned by a shared interest in small bikes. An avid bicyclist, Ben, an IT specialist at the University of Denver, had discovered mopeds following a repetitive motion injury that limited his bicycling. A few years and more than a few Lambretta, Vespa and Allstate scooters followed, but when Ben decided the scooter scene wasn’t his thing he started looking for something else to ride, ending up with a Sears Allstate, nee Puch, 2-stroke “twingle.” Todd, an insurance claims specialist who works the salvage end of wrecked vehicles, discovered small-bore fun after getting a Sears Allstate in the late 1980s.
In late 2019, after rebuilding his Puch twin, Ben ended up with a stash of extra parts he wanted to let loose. “Todd’s name kept popping up on the Puch pages,” Ben says, “so I reached out and said, ‘I don’t know you, but do you want this shelf-load of parts?’ We met at a bar, and I gave him a couple milk crates of parts, and the next thing I know he’s talking about all these rides he’s been on, and he’s got all these ideas spewing out like vomit, all these things he wants to do.” Todd’s recollection of that first meeting pretty much mirrors Ben’s. “I’m chattering away like I’m on speed and I’m telling him all these ideas I have for rides. I’ve been on a bunch of rides, including the Moto Giro and the Moto Melee, and I told him I wanted to do Pikes Peak.” More talking followed. “I’m pretty OCD and task-oriented,” Ben says, “and I’m like, the way you’re thinking nothing’s going to happen, you’re not putting these ideas together in a logical way.” The seed was planted.
When they met again a few weeks later, Ben had the ride Todd talked about worked out, and laid it out for him. “People are always saying to me let’s do this or that, and if it catches my eye I’ll latch onto it … it was Todd’s passion that lit the fire under it,” Ben says. “Ben’s an administrative guru,” Todd says, “but looking at his route, from experience I could see issues and I told him there are things you’re not considering. They’re old bikes, they’re going to break down. The roads you’ve chosen are too big, we’ve gotta get on smaller roads. So he tweaked it.”
“We had never ridden together,” Ben recalls, “so the first time we did that spring, we were still getting to know each other as individuals and riders, much less running a group.” “When you get involved in a project, you start to align and take different roles,” Todd continues. “I’m well connected [in the category] and Ben’s not, but he’s very, very good at the behind the scenes stuff, happy to sit behind his computer for hours, not seeing or talking to anyone.” It was, as it turns out, a perfect pairing of talents.
Round one
The first SBBA was Labor Day weekend 2020. Ten riders joined in for the approximately 800-mile run, which didn’t go exactly as planned, thanks to wild fires in the Front Range. “The fires forced us to change the route at the last minute, and thanks to Ben’s quick thinking we made it work. It wasn’t the route we wanted, but it worked, and it was a hell of a lot of fun,” Todd says. Ben remembers it a little differently. “We were building a new route and making new hotel reservations on the fly,” Ben says, “and that was our first experience. When we got to the end I was like, I’m never doing this again. But everyone’s saying what an awesome ride it was, and I’m thinking, what ride were you on? It was terrible, the logistics were all f&@#ed-up. But we had people joining our Facebook pages wanting to know when we were doing it again and where were we going, and I’m thinking, the first ride was a mess, but people are saying it’s great, and Todd’s saying it really wasn’t as bad as you think it was. So okay, we’ll give it another shot. It took me a couple of months to recuperate and get back to Todd, and he talked me into a second ride, which was exponentially better.”
Rinse and repeat
The second ride drew 20 riders, and the third 25. Ben and Todd had found a rhythm, and the ride kept getting better. The 2023 SBBA, as ever starting the week before Labor Day weekend, counted 23 riders, with enhanced sag support that included two pickup trucks hauling four support bikes, plus a travel trailer towed behind a third truck hauling riders’ luggage, and tools and fuel to help riders when their bikes broke down, which happened with some regularity; all four support bikes were pressed into service, and there were, unsurprisingly, a few mechanicals along the way, including at least three bikes struggling with wheel bearing failure. The NAPA store in Gunnison wasn’t sure whether to hate us or just feel sorry for us.
From the outset, SBBA has been about both the group and the individual. Participants are encouraged to ride the route as they chose, solo or with other riders. The only real rule is to stay ahead of the sag trucks. If the sag somehow passes you, you’re on your own. The route itself is tightly constructed, with detailed route sheets to aid in navigating the backroads the ride follows as much as possible. Ride instructions for several of the legs cautioned riders to either A) follow a route sheet or B) follow someone with a route sheet — or get lost. Which a few riders did, albeit only briefly. I’d never used a route roller before, and I was glad I had one after getting separated from the group on Day 1 heading to Hotchkiss.
The bikes
Not by planning, I was riding probably the slowest bike in the group, a circa-1968 Wards Riverside 250 single. Wearing a vintage Benelli Leoncino gas tank and seat swapped in by SBBA mechanical support stalwart Joshua Jones, it no longer wears any evidence of its Wards showroom origins. I’d bought the bike from Jonesy (his nickname and the name of his shop, Jonesy’s, in Colorado Springs) early last spring, thinking it might be the perfect bike for SBBA. Except for that slow bit, it was; my only mechanical was a snapped bolt for the swing-out kick start lever, leaving me to roll-start for the rest of the ride. I substituted a GPS speedo for the stock unit in my Wards, which worked great, except when it didn’t, occasionally losing its signal. Next year, I’m going analog.
Italian bikes are a favorite at SBBA, with 15 on hand for 2023 including multiple Aermacchis (particularly Harley-badged models), two Motobis, three Ducati singles, a Benelli 250SS, and another Riverside in support that got pressed into service several times. Early ’70s Hondas are popular, and there were a few surprises, including Bob Herman’s beautiful and just-restored 1966 200cc Bultaco El Tigre. The Sears Allstates on hand seemed a natural given the event’s Puch origins, among them brothers’ Rich and Steve Hawthorne’s matching red 1968 Allstate 250s. Robin Ward’s 1966 175cc Aermacchi laid claim as the smallest displacement for the 2023 ride, just edging out Bob Herman’s Bultaco and Julien Pearl’s 1968 Motobi 200 “Egg.” The smallest so far was the 1971 125cc 2-stroke Suzuki Stinger Burt Richmond rode in 2022. Famous faces on hand for 2023 included Tim Parker of Laverda fame on a 1967 Harley-badged Aermacchi 250 and Moto Melee co-founder Harley Welch on his deceptively quick 1967 Motobi 250 Egg.
Reverse is forward
Although it featured multiple add-ons, including a diversion into Marble, Colorado, whose quarries are famous for providing the marble used in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the 2023 ride was effectively the 2022 ride in reverse. Even so, “it was a totally different ride,” Ben opines. “Slumgullion Pass, for instance, when you approach it from North Creek it’s a long steady climb, but when you approach it from Lake City it’s like straight up, and it’s sharp turns the whole way up to the summit. They’re completely different experiences, it’s almost like you’re not on the same road.”
The roads Ben and Todd choose are, as much as possible, far from the madding crowd. Although concessions are made for expediency (you can’t always get to from one small B-road to the next without a few miles of major two-lane), the goal is to stay on back roads as much as possible. It’s a goal well met, as this year’s ride showed, especially the first few days as we worked our way from Palisade to Grand Mesa, then to Gunnison over 11,530-foot Slumgullion Pass (our highest ascent) and Creede before joining Colorado Route 160, which took us over 10,856-foot Wolf Creek Pass to Pagosa Springs. From there it was back roads again, bending through the Southern Ute Reservation before rejoining 160, then exiting at Mesa Verde National Park for an evening stop at the park’s Far View Lodge timed to coincide with the August 30 Blue Moon, a celestial event that happens but once every two or three years.
From Mesa Verda the route pushed north on Colorado 145 to Delores, making stops at Commando king Matt Rambow’s Colorado Norton Works and then Vincent guru Sam Manganaro’s Vincent Works. That these two internationally renowned shops ended up in the middle of nowhere just miles from each other is a quirk of fate, and the two couldn’t be more different, the surgically clean CNW contrasted against the seemingly helter-skelter nature of Manganaro’s digs. There’s method to both operations; Rambow relishes a tightly controlled environment, while Manganaro flourishes in a hyper-relaxed state of controlled chaos. And both do some of the most exacting and fantastic work of anyone in the industry.
Starting out from Naturita, the last day’s ride swept riders down Dolores River Canyon on Colorado Route 141, the red hue of the Wingate Sandstone that defines the canyon walls radiating in the morning sun. With almost no four-wheeled traffic, this last stretch of open road was a fitting finale to a week of two-wheeled adventure. We made one final stop in Gateway, pausing for a group photo in front of the Palisade buttress before riding through Unaweep Canyon and the final miles back to Palisade, ending with a farewell banquet at The Ordinary Fellow winery, where awards were handed out for appropriately dubious points of notoriety, including the aptly named Janky Repair Award, which went to Bob Herman for all the improvised repairs he had to make to his Bultaco along the way.
The bikes may be small, but the adventure, living up to its billing, is big. Find out more and look for details for the 2024 ride at the SBBA Facebook page. MC
