The Motorcyclepedia Museum makes a worthwhile side trip

The town of Newburgh, New York is hosting the Motorcycle Cannonball Run this year as a starting point. The endurance run is ridden on pre-1930 motorcycles. A new museum, called the Motorcyclepedia Museum is also located in Newburgh and fits right in with that theme.

Gerald and Ted Doering, father and son, combined their respective collections of motorcycles and founded the Motorcyclepedia Museum.

Gerald's first motorcycle was a 1929 Indian Scout that he bought at the age of 17. “I rode it around town for a couple of years,” he said. “I never registered it, I didn’t even have a driver’s license. I paid $75 for it, and finally sold it for $100. My dad thought that was pretty good, so he loaned me a little more money to buy a ’36 Sport Scout.”

Gerald began racing the new Scout locally in the 1930s. Some tracks began adding right turns, jumps, and hills to begin a new phenomenon. “It was called TT racing,” Gerald said, adding “It was based on something they did on the Isle of Man; maybe you’ve heard of it.”

Since he didn't consider himself good enough at racing to make a career out of it, Gerald became an electrician and eventually started his own electrical contracting business. He kept collecting motorcycles over the years.

Gerald bought Ted a Triumph Cub to ride to school and Ted soon became enamored of the two-wheeled world as well. In `969 Ted opened up a chopper shop on the family farm. “We did metalwork, we built hard-tails and twisted iron,” Ted said. “My dad could lace and true wheels, so he built a lot of chopper wheels.”

Ted also began to collect motorcycles and eventually the pair had a total of 400-500 machines between them. They renovated a 80,000 square foot warehouse and put 350 motorcycles on display. Everything from an almost-complete Indian time line of motorcycles and several Ed Roth Choppers can be viewed at the museum.

It would make an interesting side trip to check out the collection when in the New York area. More information about the museum can be found at http://motorcyclepediamuseum.org/

[Motorcycle USA]