Passes & Canyons Blog

I was going to ride my CB750 yesterday, but it wouldn’t start. This is just like what happened a few weeks ago. The battery was dead.

The problem is, this is a new battery. I just bought it back in October. It worked fine then, it worked fine in November, it worked fine in December, it worked fine in January, it worked fine in February . . . and then in March it was dead. I put it on a trickle charge but after two days when that didn’t do any good I took it to a shop and they put it on a charge. A few hours later I took it home, put it in, and the bike fired right up. And now it’s dead again.

OK, I’m good at troubleshooting so here’s what I’m looking at. If anyone has any thoughts they’d like to offer please do.

It could be that the battery is defective. One sure way to confirm or refute that would be to buy another one and see if the problem arises again. That would confirm that it is not the battery. The problem with that is the expense, and if it turns out the battery is not the problem then I’ve got two batteries and still have a problem.

It could be a short. This is what I would expect if a second battery did the same thing, and if it is then that’s going to be a pain to track down. But I don’t think it’s a short. If it was a short I suspect the entire battery would be dead, but as it is, there’s enough juice to turn the light on and if it were a short I would expect it to have no power at all.

It could be that there’s a problem with my charger. The last time I let it charge for two days and still got no response at all when I pushed the starter button. A two-hour charge at the shop got me going. This wouldn’t explain why it went dead again but it would explain why two days of charging did nothing. Do I have two problems? There is definitely electricity coming out of the outlet I plug into–I checked that. How do you check a charger to see if it’s working?

It could be the starter. I wondered about that the first time but once I got the battery charged it fired up with no problem, so I don’t think that’s it.

It could be the fusible link, too, but I checked that and it’s fine. Plus, as with the starter, that was a non-issue last time.

This is all complicated by the fact that the shop I bought the battery from has since closed its doors. I can’t just take the battery in and ask them to test it and give me a new one if it’s defective. This is really a pain. Yesterday was a gorgeous day and I wanted to ride. Bah.

Biker Quote for Today

A good mechanic will let you watch without charging you for it.

Have you ever had a problem on the road? Or have you gone out to start the bike and it wouldn’t, and it’s not the battery?

At times like this it can get expensive. Having your bike hauled somewhere to be worked on can easily cost you $100. Unless you’ve had the foresight to sign up for MoTow.

MoTow Roadside Assistance is offered by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) for the piddling fee of $25 per year. You have problems, you call for assistance, and they have “people who know how to tow motorcycles” available to help you out 24/7. The service covers all your bikes and it doesn’t matter what you ride.

Now, maybe you have a pretty new bike and don’t generally have mechanical problems. Good for you. On my old bike, my 1980 CB750 Custom, it can get dicey at times. There have been a couple times that bike has just quit on me. But the MoTow guy has showed up quickly and hauled the bike to the shop. Not a dime out of my pocket (not counting my annual membership).

It doesn’t have to be a problem on the road. A buddy of mine called just yesterday hoping I would have some great idea to get his bike running so he wouldn’t have to spend a bunch on it. He has a newer, more dependable bike, but it seems he left it parked all winter, never fired it up, and didn’t put in gas stabilizer. Bad decision. I’m no miracle worker. But he has MoTow so he called and got the bike hauled to the shop. He’ll have to pay for the carb cleaning himself. That one use of his MoTow membership will pay for his membership for three years.

There is a catch here. MoTow is only available to AMA members. AMA membership is $39 a year. So that’s not quite such a savings, right?

Well, you get a lot more from AMA than just access to MoTow. You get a monthly magazine, American Motorcyclist, which has a lot of good reading, but that’s not really the important thing. What you get with AMA membership is representation in government. We all know the limitations non-bikers continually try to put on us and it’s not pixies who fight those battles to protect our rights. It’s the AMA.

Here in Denver they recently passed an ordinance that allows the police to ticket bikers whose exhaust pipes are not OEM. The idea is to fight noise but it is so wrong in its implementation. It basically says that it doesn’t matter how quiet your bike is, you can get a ticket if it is not an OEM muffler and pipes. Never mind that while the cop is writing you a ticket, a really loud car or truck may pass by, ignored by the cops. The ordinance is clearly discrimination against motorcyclists. And the AMA is on the case. They haven’t gotten it changed yet but they’re still working on it.

I could talk a whole lot more about what the AMA does, I’m a real believer in the organization. But I’ll save that for another time. Right now, just think about the fix you might find yourself in if your bike breaks down on you and how good it would feel in that case to know that help from MoTow is just a phone call away.

Biker Quote for Today

A friend is someone who’ll get out of bed at 2 am to drive his pickup to the middle of nowhere to get you when you’re broken down.

Do you ever spend an extended period of time away from home? And more importantly, from your bike(s)? For example, your job sends you somewhere for weeks or even months. Sure, that doesn’t happen to most of us but it does happen to some, and it did happen to me once.

So what do you do to feed your motorcycle need while away? I’ve mentioned this before in passing but want to spend a little more time on it today.

Certainly, if you are just gone for a week or a few days you ought to take advantage of the opportunity to ride somewhere new. That’s getting easier and easier thanks to there being more places that rent motorcycles. I did that when my company sent me to Nashville for a day, and I stayed over the weekend and rented a Harley.

But as we all know, motorcycle rentals don’t come cheap. You can pay that high price for a day or two, or even a week perhaps, but there gets to be a limit to how much you can justify spending.

Here’s a better alternative, and it’s what I did when my company sent me to Sacramento for a month. I bought a bike in Sacramento with the agreement that the dealer would buy it back from me for a specified price when it was time for me to go home.

Think about the options this opens up. Most rental companies have a fairly limited selection. But what if you walk into a dealership and make your selection from all the used bikes they have for sale? And if one dealer doesn’t have anything you’re interested in, move on to another. You ought to be able to find exactly the bike you want at a price you can manage.

So how does the repurchase arrangement work? First of all, both parties agree up front that if you drop the bike or bring it back in any condition different than when you took it, except with a few more miles on it, then the whole thing is up for reconsideration. You have to understand that there is a possibility that you will have acquired a new bike, or that the repurchase price will be less than you originally agreed upon.

The other key is finding a dealer to agree to this. Not all of them will. I got lucky that the first place I walked into, when I asked to speak with the manager and told him what I wanted to do, he was willing. He told me that not all dealerships would do this.

The key was, he rides and is a motorcycle lover himself. So when I presented myself as someone who just had to have a bike to ride while I was out there, he understood. Of course he wasn’t just being altruistic. I paid full price for the bike and if anything had happened to it he would have had a sale. As it was, he got a nice chunk of cash and put the bike back on the floor for the same price it was listed at before.

And my benefit was that I had a bike to ride for a month at a fraction of what I would have paid for a rental. As I recall, he made $400 off the bike for the four weeks I had it. I’d call that a bargain. And because I only had it for four weeks I could ride with just the dealer tag and didn’t have to get plates on it. Of course I contacted my insurance agent and had it insured.

As I said, I got lucky because the first place I tried I found someone who was willing to do this. If I was going to do it again I would call the local dealers in advance and see who might be willing. I’d be prepared to give all the reasons why it would benefit them, in case they were reluctant. And who knows, maybe you wouldn’t find anyone. But it doesn’t hurt to try it, and boy did I love having that bike for that month.

Biker Quote for Today

Every day is a good day to ride! Some are better than others.

How hardcore are you anyway? Hardcore enough to do the Big Dog?

First let me tell you what the Big Dog Ride is. OK, first of all it’s for BMW riders, so that lets a bunch of us out. What they say on their website is this:

The BIG DOG RIDE is a BMW “Invitational Ride” for owners of BMW G/S and GS model motorcycles. It is neither a race nor a rally. It is an annual gathering of a fraternity of BMW aficionados of G/S and GS styled motorcycles that mutually appreciate riding their motorcycles with like minded philosophers in the best environment for on and off-road riding in the world, the Rocky Mountains of North America.

Then there’s this:

Each year an entrant can expect to ride between 800-1,200 miles on the BIG DOG RIDE over some of the highest, toughest mountain passes in the Rocky Mountain range, sometimes reaching 14,000 feet above sea level. Rain, snow and sleet can be encountered in August, as well as 100-degree heat. The BIG DOG RIDE has been to Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Montana. Riders often make numerous crossings of the Continental Divide, sometimes fording swollen streams, and riding over snow fields and shale cliffs. It is not unusual for a rider to be in a single-track path no wider than 24 inches, with a drop-off of 1,000 feet on one side and a sheer rock cliff on the other.

And then this:

The BIG DOG RIDE is not for the meek, mild or poseur GS rider. It has rightfully earned the description as being the “highest, toughest BMW motorcycle event in the world.” It is dangerous, and fun. BIG DOG riders can be heard laughing from mountain tops at the start of the event to the finish, as well as from and to their homes, often as far away as Vermont, Florida, Canada and California.

Here’s where the name comes from:

On the second ride one of the errant participants found himself stuck on a snowfield. He had to disassemble his motorcycle to turn it around, then with the help of several others; they pushed, pulled and dragged both rider and BMW back up and over the pass he had come down. The “helpers” were likened to the big Saint Bernard dogs of the Alps famous for rendering assistance to stranded hikers and skiers. After several more mishaps where riders had to be helped by their fellow entrants as they pushed their personal riding envelopes past points of explosion, all the riders came to be known as “BIG DOGS.” The event in the third year was called the BMW GS BIG DOG RIDE, and that’s the name that has remained.

OK. I could go on quoting their website but you can go there yourself and read and see it all. This year’s event is Aug. 14-17. Any Big Dogs out there?

Biker Quote for Today

You start the game of life with a full pot of luck and an empty pot of experience. The object is to fill the pot of experience before you empty the pot of luck.

Not a lot to say today, I just decided I wanted to post this photo. It’s available elsewhere on the website, but it’s a page that I don’t think many people visit, so it’s likely that not many people have seen it. I just think it’s cool, and I shot it, so here it is.

Biker Quote for Today

Always back your bike into the curb, and sit where you can see it.

Now this is kind of amusing. I periodically surf through some online motorcycle forums, reading posts of interest, responding when I have something to add, and sometimes searching for people asking something along the lines of “We’re coming to Colorado. Anyone got suggestions as to what roads we should ride?” When I find those, of course I make some suggestions and I post links to the appropriate pages on my own website.

Well, recently I logged in to one forum I visit and got a message telling me I was banned until March 29. What in the world? I wasn’t aware of having violated any rules or anything. Being banned I couldn’t get in to check for messages, to see why I was banned. So I clicked on a “Contact us” link and sent the guy an email asking what it was all about. Sometime later, receiving no reply, I sent another query. Still no response.

So March 29 arrived and I logged in and, sure enough, there was a private message waiting for me. Here’s what it said:

You have received an infraction at Motorcycle Rider Info.

Reason: Spam
——-
A signature link is cool. Even mentioning site is nice if done right. But a post full of self serving links is plain old spam.
——-

This infraction is worth 50 point(s) and may result in restricted access until it expires. Serious infractions will never expire.

I was a bit annoyed. The message included the text of the so-called spam. Here’s what I had posted:

The intro to this thread is “Recommend places in your area that others would want to see and ride their motorcycles to” so that’s just what I’ll do.

In a word: Colorado.

Make that “Colorado!!!”

OK, I’ll be more specific.

Trail Ridge Road
http://www.motorcyclecolorado.com/trail_ridge_road.htm

Mount Evans
http://www.motorcyclecolorado.com/mount_evans.htm

Red Mountain Pass
http://www.motorcyclecolorado.com/red_mountain_pass.htm

Glenwood Canyon
http://www.motorcyclecolorado.com/glenwood_canyon.htm

Monarch Pass
http://www.motorcyclecolorado.com/monarch_pass.htm

That should get you going.

Now, you’ll notice that, as I said in the post, the theme of the thread was “Recommend places in your area that others would want to see and ride their motorcycles to.” Funny, I thought that was exactly what I did. I guess maybe if I had added a sentence or two about each of those rides he might not have been so offended, but I figured that all you had to do was follow the link and get the full scoop.

Obviously I like to invite people to come to this site. I didn’t do all the work and take all the time I have just to look at it myself and admire my handiwork. I set out to make something really useful for people who are planning trips to Colorado on their bikes. And many of you have thanked me for my efforts, which I truly appreciate.

I’m guessing that the guy running the forum thinks I’m just trying to get people to visit so I can make money. I do, after all, have Google ads on the site. But I’ve got news for anyone who thinks I’m getting rich off Google. In the 2-1/2 half years this site has been up, I have not even made enough off the ads to pay for my web hosting. If I was in this thing to make money I would have moved on to greener pastures long ago.

And it’s not as if this guy isn’t out to make some money. He has all sorts of ads all over his site. He even has a message posted urging people to direct others to his site, although he does take care to ask that they not get carried away and cross the line into spam. The really funny thing is that, without having seen this message previously, I had already posted a link to his site on this blog. Back in February I made this post, pointing out a few forums I like to visit. His is the fourth one on the list.

So when I finally found out what my offense was I wrote him a note saying I was sorry if I offended him but that I disagreed about my post being spam. Again, I’ve heard nothing back from him.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he’s a bad guy. A little overzealous perhaps, may have shot from the hip without really analyzing the situation, who knows. I just thought it was a bit ironic, and I thought you might find it an interesting story.

Biker Quote for Today

Never be ashamed to unlearn an old habit.

Note

The spam bastards are hitting this post so I’m turning comments off here only for awhile.