I spywith my little eye
lots of cool stuff inside! ••••••• Welcome to the Carriage House ••••••• By: Charlie Oxford
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WWW.AHRMA.ORG
I retired in 2016 after 35 years in the utility business. We sold out in Florida and moved up on the lake. I am a lifetime Florida boy r h ea age t and part of the deal for me n i v A modern skin with a to move North had to be a large climate-controlled workshop. I initially had plans to purchase five acres close by to build on and maybe put in a small area to ride/test run a bike. Two turns and two jumps would have been sufficient, but logistics, time and expenditure didn’t make sense, so I built my shop on the home property. The plans call it a carriage house. Thirty by forty, footprint, slightly “L” shaped, with two garage doors, office, bathroom and an upstairs area within the steep pitch roof trusses, gave me room for wood working and a painting booth. Both of these areas remain a work in progress. In the shop side, I have a drill press area, with a Craftsman bench model from the 40s Grandpa Anderson had in His Brooklyn, NY, basement. There’s a welding area with a Lincoln 225, oxygen and acetylene. I ran air lines along one wall to my glass bead blaster, 50’ retractable airline reel and welding station, supported
AMERICAN HISTORIC RACING MOTORCYCLE ASSOCIATION
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I had a shop built in 2017/2018 while building our new house in North Georgia on Lake Lanier. We call it “Bad Company” Vintage Motocross Racing Team Northern Headquarters. In the 1990s, I got into sprucing up antiques, hand water pumps, coke machines, coolers, and Fry visible gas pumps. Mancave kinda stuff. I was living in Florida and working out of a 10x20-foot shed behind my house. I would disassemble, clean every part, and then contract things out I didn’t have the tools to do. I restored a couple of Vendo 23 Coke machines and seven Fry gas pumps from the 1910s. It was a great hobby. I raced dirt bikes in the early ‘70s and have always had a passion for the sport. My Dad bought me a 1972 Yamaha LT-2 for my 13th birthday. I attended the Florida Winter series in Tallahassee. I wanted to be “Pierre Karsmakers,” and raced around North Florida and South Georgia a few times on my ’76 YZ-125C. I became a participant again in 2004 when I spruced up a 1976 Yamaha YZ125X. Woody Graves was running a vintage motocross series in Florida at that time and my racing career started once again. The Florida Vintage Motocross series ran a 12-race schedule every year, then add on two to four AHRMA events annually. I didn’t miss an event for seven seasons. My bike collection grew and room to work on stuff was always a challenge.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021
