Passes & Canyons Blog

Ride Your Motorcycle to Work Day has arrived again and once again I’m not riding my bike to work. That’s not to say I’m not riding, I am. However, since I don’t have a job at the moment I would not have one to ride to. Last year I had a job but I worked at home two days a week and one of those was Wednesday, the day this event is always held. The year before that I was also out of work. And I think the year before that I had a job but I was on vacation, off on the OFMC summer trip. Some day I will ride my bike to work on this day, but who knows when that will be.

Nevertheless, as I said, that doesn’t mean I’m not riding. In fact, once again it is the week of the OFMC trip and on this particular day you’ll find me scooting around Taos. Yesterday we cruised on down from South Fork, the little town on the east side of Wolf Creek Pass, and tomorrow we head off for Ignacio. There are eight in the group this year. After I get home I’ll tell you more about the trip and include some pictures.

Meanwhile, I hope you ride (or rode, depending on the time of day you read this) to work today. Let’s amaze people with how numerous we are.

Biker Quote for Today

Work to ride and ride to work.

Have you ever seen a 1957 Aermacchi Chimera? How about a 1953 Moto Guzzi Galleto? Or a 1956 Moto Rumi Formichino Little Ant? Have you ever heard of those bikes?

If you want to see some cool motorcycles and get out of the heat of summer, I strongly recommend hitting the Arvada Center for their Summer of Cycles exhibit.

Rather than talk about them I’ll just show you some pictures. The exhibit runs through September 7, it’s free, and the Arvada Center is open 9-6 M-F, 9-5 Saturday, and 1-5 Sunday.

This next one is the 1956 Moto Rumi I mentioned above.

Here’s the 1957 Aermacchi Chimera (Dream)

This one is a 1958 Cushman Eagle.

There are a lot of others, too, including a 1998 Boss Hoss with a 350 cubic inch Chevrolet engine, 1999 Harley-Davidson MT500 built for the British military, and a 2006 Harley-Davidson VRXSE Screamin’ Eagel Destroyer, which is set up for drag-racing.

All in all, a pretty good show. Definitely worth more than the admission!

Biker Quote for Today

Park the latest Ducati, Harley, Honda, or BMW on a street corner in any city or town in the world and a crowd will gather. — Thomas Krens

Continuing with the theme I kicked off two days ago, today I’m going to discuss a couple more differences between the European way of doing things and our way. In this case the topics are bike paths and parking.

We all know bike paths, they’re for use by bicycles and pedestrians. Don’t dare try to ride your motorcycle or even your scooter on them because if you do you risk being cited and you’ll definitely have the bicyclists and walkers screaming at you. I’m not saying that’s wrong but, just to give you a basis of comparison, let me tell you how they do it in Europe.

The biggest difference between bike paths here and there is that in Europe, anything on two wheels can use them, and they are not for pedestrians. What are the ramifications of this? Well, for starters, the bike path becomes a real transportation corridor. Pedestrians stick to their own walkways and traffic on the bike path can really move. With far more people on two wheels over there, this large segment of the traffic is removed from the dangers of the four-wheelers and those four-wheelers don’t get honked off that someone on a bicycle is slowing them down. Of course, the two-wheelers still can and do use the streets when necessary.

Of course, bicycles, scooters, and motorcycles are all allowed to park wherever they can find space. That means sidewalks, medians, bike racks, whatever. I don’t know about you but I got a ticket for parking my CB750 on the sidewalk in Lodo a few years ago. Now you do see scooters parking on the sidewalks a lot but I’m still not sure if motorcycles can get away with it.

My intent here is not to advocate for changing the way we use bike paths in this country, but I do want to point out possible alternatives. If the price of gas keeps soaring it seems very likely that more and more people will be taking to two wheels and if that happens we may need to reconsider the way we do some things. And it never hurts to look at the choices made by others who had to face these issues sooner than we have had to. We can learn from their experience.

Biker Quote for Today

Ride till you can’t.

Of course you assume that people do some things differently in other countries but it can surprise you when you see just what it is they do differently, and how it’s different. We experienced that a number of times in our recent two-week trip to France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

The one theme that seemed to run along with each of these realizations was the thought that “Gosh that makes a lot of sense. Too bad they would never allow that in the U.S.”

Take lane-splitting, for instance. Lane-splitting is where scooters and motorcycles slip past slow-moving or stopped cars, running down the dividers between the lanes of traffic. While it has been officially endorsed and declared legal in California, most other states forbid it or are silent on the subject.

But have you ever seen it in action? Our best chance to observe it was in Paris, where two-wheelers, primarily scooters, abound by the thousands. First the light would turn red and vehicles would begin to stop. Then a scooter would come up and pull right down the middle to the front. The longer the red the more scooters would line up between lanes, and at the turn of the green they would sprint forward leaving the cars behind and racing in a pack on down the street.

Of course there are several reasons why lane-splitting might not work as well in this country as it does in Europe. For one thing, it puts more of a burden on the drivers of all vehicles to pay attention and look out for other vehicles. It would also require a recognition by the drivers of the big behemoths that smaller vehicles have their right to a place on the road as well. Pretty unthinkable, both of those.

But it’s working in California and if it can work in that car-crazed state you would think it could work anywhere. All it would take is some open-mindedness in our legislatures. I mean, think of the benefits: Commuters on two wheels burn less gas, cause less pollution, cause less congestion, and get to work faster. The more these benefits grow, the more people will want to enjoy them, so the more will ride rather than drive. It becomes a virtuous circle, the opposite of a vicious circle.

With gas at $4 now and likely to keep going higher the time to try to change some laws is now. Write your legislator. Let’s get a movement started across the country!

Biker Quote for Today

There are two types of people in this world, people who ride motorcycles and people who wish they could ride motorcycles.

If you’ve been to Europe in the last 10 years you’ve probably seen these things, but if you haven’t you’re going to do a double-take.

This little baby, a BMW you will notice, is called the C1 CityScooter. It was first released in 2000 and was built by a specialty manufacturer in Italy. There were two models, one a little bigger than the other. Sales apparently didn’t hit BMW’s targets so 2002 was the last year they were produced, but you still see a lot of them on the streets. The stats are as follows:

• Dry Weight – 375 pounds
• Gas Mileage – 80 per gallon
• Engine Size – 125cc or 176cc

ABS, heated grips, and a lot more were available as accessories.

According to the article about this bike on Wikipedia, France has a helmet law but some countries consider it dangerous to have a seat belt and a helmet, C1 riders are exempt from the helmet law. That confirms my suspicion because in two weeks over there I never saw anyone on any kind of motorized two-wheeler not wearing a helmet, except one person in a C1. On the other hand, Sweden does require helmets but allows you not to use the seat belt.

The C1 never made it to the U.S., just another example of how when it comes to motorcycling, Europe is like another country. Or 12. I’ll have more to tell you about in upcoming posts. Stay tuned!

Biker Quote for Today

Two wheels? Lets ride!

Hey, this is just a quick note to let you know that I’ve got a ton of interesting things to discuss in the next few posts. We just got home tonight from two weeks in Europe and, you know, it’s like a whole other country. We were in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands and the whole concept of motorcycling over there is very different than over here.

I’m not going to get into all this just now, it’s late and we’re jet-lagged. Stay tuned!

Biker Quote for Today

The higher the price of gas, the more you’re going to see motorcycles on the road. At least in that regard, high gas prices are a good thing.