Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Canby, Minnesota, mechanic, fabricator, motorcyclist, pilot and former professional race-car driver, Mark Kallhoff, has set his sights on perhaps his most rewarding venture yet–a motorcycle-trike built for disabled men and women seeking the thrill and freedom of the open road. I did a Locals in Motion piece on him and his vehicle and we needed some photos. While Canby is a neat little town a stone’s throw from the South Dakota border, high resolution digital cameras are in short supply there.

With the deadline pending and nothing sharp enough to do his Liberator Trike justice, I hopped on the ever trusty–OK, mostly trusty–1975 Honda CB750 and pointed ‘er West. It’s 177 miles or so, if Mapquest is for real, and I reckoned I could make it there in under three hours.

This is why I’m not a mathematician. I always get the tip on dinner right, but estimating driving times and miles engages some more primitive, less accurate section of the brain. One seventy-seven in under three hours is not “about 50 miles per hour” as Neander-lobe had calculated, but 59 miles per hour. Try averaging that for the first 40 miles out of South Minneapolis and highway 212 with its traffic signals.

Still, Neander-lobe is all speed, power, go-go-go, and despite its math shortcomings, it knew that a lot of flat, open country lies between Minneapolis and South Dakota. Eventually the distance from the city would grow so great that even the most ambitious McMansion-ite would refuse to commute any further. Traffic would back off and the roads would become as they were of old–rural pathways infrequently traveled by farmers for an errand in town after a long day in the fields.

And so it was. Time squandered sweltering at stop lights returned in a rush of wind and blurry fields as the old CB stretched its legs as it has seldom done. Though she is 32 years old and a little out of tune, the old girl can still cross a country mile and we ate up scores of them. Any heat a temper can take on in heavy traffic blows right out your helmet at speed on a country road.

Without any compromising statements as to velocity, let us say my arrival estimate was not far off.

But this wasn’t about ordinary two-wheeled fun. The point of this journey was to photograph an important vehicle: a motorcycle for disabled riders. Builder Kallhoff, who knows plenty about mechanics and driving and motorcycles and fabrication, answered a friend’s dream of riding a motorcycle after a farm accident left him a paraplegic.

What could be more liberating to a person who typically travels by wheelchair than to settle in behind a set of handlebars, twist a throttle and blur the world in the open air? Kallhoff built his friend a low-slung trike with a car-derived drivetrain out back and motorcycle front end. The friend, Dudley, loves it, and Kallhoff realized he had only scratched the surface of a vast unmet need.

And so Liberator Trikes, LLC, was born.

I met Mark at his Canby shop, saw the trike and snapped enough high-res pics to annoy the most patient newspaper layout editor. He also fired it up and we took a ride–a removable passenger perch drops right in behind the driver’s seat.

The smallblock Chevy purrs and is dead smooth. He leaned over and gestured at the speedometer en route and we were doing 70–or the speed limit, whichever is lower. Felt like 45.

He bought me a burger for making the trek, then I pointed the CB back at the big city and we tore up rural landscape into Gainsborough confetti. Only the patter of little bug-splats tarnished the experience–so much so I had to wheel into an isolated gas station and squeegee the faceshield to keep the road in view. There were so many insect wings stuck to my jacket I probably could have flown if I stuck my arms out.

Anyway, the ride is done, the pics are clicked. Left at 2:30, rode 354 miles, got home at 10:15, and shot photos, had dinner and talked for a couple hours in between.

The open road is its own reward.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Motorcycle tales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.