What is Glemseck 101?
Glemseck is a little hideaway tucked away in a German forest, a biking Woodstock where people go to seek and find the biker lifestyle as it used to be in the good old days.
Glemseck is all about the smell of two-stroke fuel-oil mix, the roar of straight-through exhausts as the bikes are launched down the track in the sprint races while the cows graze happily just a few metres away.
Glemseck is all about men with beards, smiling faces and greasy hands taking apart a carburettor while two tattooed girls push-start an old bike with sidecar loaded with barrels of beer.
But Glemseck is also about the best custom-bike builders around, guys who have spent months and months perfecting the lines and finishing off the final details of their latest two-wheeled creations, getting them ready to be stripped naked and devoured by the eyes of fans from all around Europe before being launched in wild drag races on the ⅛ mile track.
This, in just a few words, is the “Spirit of the 101”. We were there and experienced the spirit together with hordes of Guzzi fans who dropped in for a visit at the Moto Guzzi stand, one of the liveliest and most popular stands at this event, telling us their stories, signing our famous Trip Diary and recording the moment for posterity with an instant photograph at The Clan Photo Portrait facility.
So here is the video story of the 2017 Glemseck 101 for those of you who were there with us and those who wish they were there:
Have we already mentioned that the Glemseck 101 has a special love for Moto Guzzis?
Where else could you be walking around amongst the stands and find yourself enjoying a draught beer drawn using a real Moto Guzzi engine, now that’s what we call style! The guys involved are our Bavarian friends from the Radical Guzzi club (http://radicalguzzi.com/) who arrived at the Glemseck with an amazing and super-quick MGR 1200. This was undoubtedly the fastest machine entered for the Essenza contest, a competition that combines design and performance in a race reserved exclusively for bikes with no more than two cylinders and no more than 1200cc engines, with performance judged on the basis of a timed sprint over the ⅛ mile track and, as regards aesthetics, on the basis of votes awarded by the judges and the fans.
If it wasn’t for the bike’s monstrous torque and excessive tendency to pop wheelies, the Radical Guzzi supercharged, nitrous-fuelled super-guzzi would unquestionably have won the final sprint of the Essenza contest as well, however, they only managed a second place on the day.
Nevertheless, the good news is that yet another Moto Guzzi took third place in the same race, and the first place in the main Essenza contest: the elegant “The Revenge_03” built by the guys from Seven Motors (www.sevenmotors.it). A beautiful creation built around a V11 frame with hand-beaten aluminium body panels, incredible detailing and an engine tweaked by the expert hands of the great Moto Guzzi specialist Bruno Scola.
We come back from this twelfth edition of the Glemseck 101 prouder than ever of our Moto Guzzi and with the certainty that the iconic “Eagle of Mandello” is alive and well and also lives in the “Spirit of the 101”.
