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The Carolinas’ Full Throttle Magazine
Charlotte CBA Fall Swap Meet & Bike Show
By: Lincoln Infield Photos By: Lincoln, Maggie, & Ms. Cat obert “Bubba” Morgan, CBA Member and Swap Meet Staff, said it right on Saturday November 14th, in regard to the CBA swap meet, “you don’t realize how much you will miss something until you don’t get to do it.” He was spot on. The Charlotte CBA Fall Swap Meet is usually the second of the year for Swap Meet coordinator Rick Nail and the CBA crew that puts it all together. The Spring edition got cancelled at the very onset of the pandemic restrictions. Determined that this event would happen, the Swap Meet crew added “peaceful protest” to the event name. The motorcycle gods approved and provided a sunny 65˚ November day for the 48th Annual event. We arrived at the Rowan County Fair Grounds to find the parking lot jammed with motorcycles and the midway as full of vendors as I have ever seen it. I love these swap meet events. I usually don’t have anything in particular that I’m shopping for but enjoy looking over the piles of parts and random biker type stuff for a deal or something unique for the office wall. There was everything from crusty project bikes, shovel and panhead engines waiting to be a project and all the parts in between. Hell, I even saw some golf cleats. Ya never know what your gonna see! The two buildings were also full of swap meet set ups. I always check inside for new patches, stickers, rings or leathers that I might need. As always with this event, it’s not just a swap meet , but a family reunion of sorts, too. It’s hard to make it a few feet without running into one of your chums, so it may take you all day to make your way around the whole show! The Swap Meet features a 2 day bike show that is housed in one of the permanent buildings on site. This year’s bike show brought in some real beauties. I saw Flatheads, Panheads, A Knucklehead, Shovelheads, CB’s, Indians and more. The bikes ranged from rat to stock to radical and all of them were an eyeful! Three of the bikes in the show have been featured in the Carolinas’ Full Throttle Magazine including Luke Heafner’s Shovelhead Dracula chopper, The Rebel Spirit’s
Boogie Nights CB 750 Chopper and Mike Morgan’s “HarleyDavidson and the Marlboro Man” Black Death 3 replica. That final assembly was handled by the guys at Jaybird’s Custom Cycles. The rest of the bikes were stunners as well, I’m glad that I didn’t have to choose a winner! One cool side note of the day was when Luke Heafner hooked me up to shoot some photos of Diane Baldwin on his Dracula chopper. The back story there is that Luke built the chopper around a tank that came off of Click Baldwin’s (Carolina Harley-Davidson) first chopper. Click passed away in 2008 and Diane recently gave family friend, Luke Heafner, the tank for a world class build. Luke really came through and the bike is killer! It was a pleasure to meet Diane and an honor to be able to take the photos. Check out the February 2020 issue to read our interview of Luke as he was mid build on the Dracula bike.
Diane Baldwin Sits On Luke Heafner’s Dracula Chopper
