Passes & Canyons Blog

It’s hard to believe, but we’re leaving on our annual bike trip in less than three weeks, June 15. This is kind of early for us, but we’re going south, to Arizona and New Mexico and Nevada, so it will be warm. There will be nine of us this year in this Old Farts Motorcycle Club excursion.

We’re going to ride the Unaweep Highway, which several of us have been on, but other haven’t, and it’s a good one. Then we’ll head on down through the Monument Valley and on to Fraser, AZ. In case you’ve never been to Fraser, let me tell you about it. It’s an old mining town not far from Sedona, and it sits up on the side of a mountain so steep that the road zig-zags back and forth through town. The front of a building faces the street in one direction and the same street passes by on the back side of the building. There’s no such thing as a cross-street.

From there we’ll head on to Laughlin, NV, where we’ve been a couple times before. It’s a lot like Las Vegas was before it got huge, and it’s on a river just down from a dam and reservoir. Nice place. Then we’ll work our way on home again, spending a couple days in places in Colorado that we’ve passed through but never stopped at.

Less than three weeks! Hot dang!

Common sense prevailed in the Colorado Legislature this season. Attempts to pass a helmet law and allow police to stop and ticket you for not wearing a seat belt were both defeated.

Make no mistake, the two are connected. The nannies who think government has some right to poke its nose into private matters were behind these bills. I won’t argue with people who say not wearing a seat belt is stupidity. It’s just that stupidity is not illegal. The same with helmets. The job of government is to protect us from foreign invaders and polluters poisoning the common air we breathe or water we drink, those sorts of things. Helmets and seat belts don’t fall into that category.

Congratulations to the Colorado Legislature for showing some sense.