Dave Barr was born this day in Los Angeles, California.
Dave joined the US Marine Corp at 17 and served on a gunship during the Vietnam war, earning 57 air medals along the way. Discharged from the military in 1972, he bought his first motorcycle, a 1961 Harley-Davidson Panhead, which he rode coast-to-coast. When he got back, Barr purchased a new HD FX 1200cc Shovelhead.
Barr later returned to the military, serving two years with the Israeli Parachute Regiment and one year in the Rhodesian Light Infantry. In 1981, in southern Angola, his vehicle drove over an anti-tank mine. He lost both legs, above the knee on the right and below the knee on the left. He spent nine months in a Pretoria military hospital, undergoing 20 operations, including four to remove his legs in stages, skin grafts, and agonizing physical therapy to learn to walk again.
Barr mustered out in December 1982 and returned to his family home in West Covina, California. He took the Super Glide out of storage and refitted it to accommodate his new life. He added an electric start and an overload spring to the brake pedal so he could ride with his artificial right foot resting on it. On his first ride a casual thought occurred to him, and it put his life on a new course that would take him around the world and to some of its most extreme and challenging environments.
Barr, with his Shovelhead, became the first double amputee to circumnavigate the globe. Seven years later he rode the Super Glide out of Johannesburg, South Africa, on a 9,000-mile transcontinental ride to raise funds for the Leonard Cheshire Foundation, an international charity that assists disabled people. In September 1990, nine months after completing the African ride, Barr again left Johannesburg on the 18-year-old shovelhead, he turned north and kept going. Riding six of the world’s continents (he couldn’t find a way to get the bike to Antarctica) Barr logged 83,000 miles (including a 13,000 mile Atlantic to Pacific segment across Northern Europe and Siberia) through the world’s most dangerous and unforgiving regions during what turned out to be a 3½-year trip.
Not satisfied with all that, he set a second world record for riding the Southern Cross. In just 45 days during 1996, he completed the first motorcycle journey ever between the four extreme geographical corners of the Australian continent.
Dave Barr was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2000, not only for his world record setting exploits, but also for the charity work he had done for the disabled along the way. Now that’s a true American hero.
