Dave Barr

Dave Barr (April 12, 1952 – Nov 8, 2024) was born in Los Angeles, California was an American veteran of the Vietnam War and a motorcyclist best known for being the first double amputee to circumnavigate the globe. He lived in Bodfish, Kern County, California, where he ran a motorcycle tour company. He is also the author of several books and was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2000. Dave Barr was also a keen skydiver; he regularly jumped in Klerksdorp, South Africa (where he spent some years). He was part of a skydiving team called 'Footloose' with three other amputees. While he jumped, he put his artificial legs into a corner of the hangar and hung a sign over it: 'gone skydiving'. At a skydiving event (I believe it was in Pietermaritzburg (South Africa), one of his prosthetic leg came loose and fell several thousand feet into a garden. After informing the public, it was returned to him.

Military service Barr joined the US Marine Corps when he was 17 and served in Vietnam on a helicopter gunship. In 1981 while riding in a military vehicle in southern Angola, his vehicle drove over a land mine and the resulting explosion cost him both of his legs, above the knee on the right and below the knee on the left. Prosthetic legs allowed him to complete his tour of duty. including a Atlantic to Pacific segment across Northern Europe and Siberia. The bike that Barr used for the journey is on display at the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in Pickerington, Ohio.

Barr also set a second world record for riding the so-called 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.

Writing Barr wrote a travelogue, Riding the Edge, in 1995.