Passes & Canyons Blog

The OFMC headed out on our annual summer trip recently and this year we stayed mostly in Colorado. Whenever we’re in Colorado I always have my thoughts focused on additional information I can pick up to add to the www.motorcyclecolorado.com website. One major category of interest is my Biker-Friendly Motels and Hotels page.

I’m always divided on what to include on that page. Should I only list places that I would recommend? Or should I list any place I have information about and spell out the bad with the good? After all, warning someone away from a bad place is at least as helpful as pointing them to a good place.

That dilemma arose on this last trip because of a bad experience we had in Gunnison, at the Super 8. Now, the Super 8 in Gunnison seems to do very good business with bikers. There were 6 of us there and there were 31 with another group, as well as several other smaller groups. And when we were checking in the lady at the desk made a point to offer us rags to use to clean our bikes. All in all I would have to classify them as biker-friendly.

In our case, though, they were not guest-friendly. I’ll just lay the thing out chronologically.

We make our plans for the trip well in advance, so it was several months ago that I called to arrange for one room with three beds and another with two beds. I spoke to some guy who spoke clear, normal English. Then one of our guys decided he would not be with us in Gunnison so I called back to change that to one room with three beds plus a rollaway. The woman I spoke to was not a native English speaker and communicating with her was hard but we got the job done.

Then, a few days before we were set to leave, I was told two more guys would be with us in Gunnison after all, so I called and arranged for a second room with two beds. Again I got the woman who I had trouble communicating with but we got it handled.

On the day we were headed to Gunnison we discussed the arrangements and someone suggested that maybe we should just switch to three rooms with two beds each so no one would need to sleep on a rollaway. We knew it would cost a bit more but it sounded like a good idea. So when we got there I asked if that would be possible, but it was the same woman I had spoken with on the phone and if anything, communicating face to face was harder than on the phone. Beyond getting the absolute basics nailed down I gave up trying to understand anything else she was telling me.

Well, it turned out that the other things she was telling me were that since we wanted to make this change she would need to just delete our previous reservation for one of the rooms and create a new reservation for the two. And apparently the prices had gone up in the interim and we would have to pay the higher price. When we’re on the trip we each pay for rooms and even it out in the end, so I had already paid for one and left the desk when this came to Bill’s attention. He argued that that was inappropriate but she wouldn’t budge. We suspect, frankly, that they use corporate Super 8 software and she just didn’t know how to override its defaults, so she did the only thing she could do, which was to cancel and rebook.

So here we were at the Super 8 paying, with tax, $108 for one room and $135 apiece for two other, identical rooms. Now, I don’t know about you, but $135 for a room at the Super 8 strikes me as pretty dang pricey. Especially when there was another motel right next door with vacancies running, per their website, $45 to $110 per night. Bill went ahead and paid but none of us were happy about it. Of course if we had just canceled it all and gone next door they could have stuck us with the late cancellation fee.

And then later we noticed they had a sign out front that said “Special Walk-In Rates.” So like, $135 a night is less–or is it more–than their normal rate? We did qualify for the walk-in rate, didn’t we?

I hoped the next morning to find someone else at the desk who I could talk with who spoke better English but no dice. Same woman. I mean, she personally was a very nice person, smiling and friendly, but charging us the higher price just seems wrong. Add to that the fact that there were comparable but cheaper places close at hand, I can only conclude that there is no reason to stay at the Super 8 in Gunnison. Even if they are biker-friendly.

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OK, I’m going to shill a bit here but it’s a product I use and believe in and I’ll make it worth your while to read this.

I was contacted the other day by a fellow working with Microsoft to market their Streets & Trips application. He offered me a free 2011 version and also offered to provide free copies to a few of the folks who read this blog.

Now, the fact is, I’ve been using Streets & Trips ever since I starting building the www.MotorcycleColorado.com website back in 2005. Every map on the site was created using Streets & Trips. And when I got a new computer I bought a new version of the application because the old version wouldn’t run on the 64-bit processor in the new machine.

That’s all to say, I like it, it’s easy to use, and it does everything I need it to do. In fact, it does a lot I don’t even use it for. I don’t have a GPS unit but if you do you can use Streets & Trips to generate files for your GPS. Don’t ask me to explain what it does or how because, as I said, it’s not a feature I use, but it’s there. And honestly, the 2011 version is not a lot different from the 2009 version I’ve been running. But if you don’t have any version, getting your hands on the latest could be very cool.

So here’s the deal. As part of this marketing campaign, Microsoft is running a “Cruisin’ the National Parks Trivia Sweepstakes” through the end of this month. Visit the site, answer the trivia question put up each week, and you could wina $50 Visa gift card. On that same page there’s a button to “like” Streets & Trips on Facebook and for everyone who does Microsoft will be giving $1 to the National Parks Foundation.

And here’s your chance to pick up a free copy of the software. Leave a comment at the bottom of this blog post telling about the most amazing thing you’ve seen riding your motorcycle through a national park. Three of the best stories will be selected and you’ll get a copy. When posting your comment be sure to leave your valid email address because I’ll need to contact you to tell you you’ve won and get mailing info to provide to Microsoft so they can send it to you. Ready? Set? Go!

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This looks like it could be an interesting event. Tomorrow (Friday, Aug. 5) from 5:30 to 9 p.m., Erico Motorsports is hosting “The Art of the Ducati.” For this event, Carlos Guerrero, a local “Graffiti Artist” (that’s with their caps, so I hope that means he’s an artist dealing in murals, not some tagger) will be creating a multi-media piece that includes the bodywork from a Ducati Monster. The piece he creates will be auctioned off, with proceeds going to Ronald McDonald House.

This is all part of the RINO (River North Art District) First Friday series of events. Music will be provided by Canyon Station, a band that includes John Beldock, the co-proprietor with Tai Beldock, of Erico.

Figuring that the more the merrier, Sqream, Denver’s scooter club, which has received a lot of support from Erico, will be there as well celebrating their 7th anniversary and “doing a scooter crawl of the River North First Friday Art Walk.”

Sounds like it could be a good time. Erico is at 2855 Walnut St., in downtown Denver, north of where Broadway cuts diagonally toward the river.

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I’ve ridden motorcycle trikes before and I’ve never cared much for them. They don’t lean and they’re too much like driving a car for my taste. So I’ve been very interested for a long time in trying out the Piaggio MP3 scooter, which has three wheels but is not at all the same as a trike in its handling.

With abundant thanks to Tai Beldock at Erico Motorsports, I can now report that I have ridden an MP3 and it really is everything I expected it to be.

The difference with an MP3 is what Piaggio calls its “parallelogram suspension.” What they’re saying is that whether you’re leaning into a turn, one wheel’s going into a pothole, or whatever, those two front wheels remain parallel to each other. It’s like having one wheel in front in terms of handling, but two wheels in terms of stability.

That’s not to say that, trike-like, the MP3 won’t fall over; it will. Remember, it handles just like a two-wheeled motorcycle. If you come up to a stop on a regular bike and don’t put your feet down you’d better have exceptionally good balance. Same with the MP3, except that the MP3 has a button you can push at below 5 mph that will lock the fork and keep you upright. The lock disengages as soon as you start rolling again. Still, I found it easier to just treat it like any other bike and put my feet down.

Thanks to the elements I had a good chance to test the MP3’s stability. Going up and down Lookout Mountain there was gravel in many of the curves and having three wheels was very comforting. Later it rained heavily and splashing through puddles and turning on rain-slicked streets the MP3 again felt very secure.

This scoot–and it is a scooter, no gear-shifting going on here–comes in three engine sizes, 250cc, 400cc, and 500cc. While the 250 will theoretically run at interstate speeds, when I tried it I felt best in the right-hand lane. The bigger models do go faster, though not much. The main thing the bigger engines offer is increased acceleration and carrying capacity.

Now, I’m not about to go adding a scooter to my garage any time soon, but presumably decades in the future these big bikes I ride now are going to be a bit much for me. A lot of guys I know say they figure someday they’ll have a trike. Not me. Come that time I’d rather move down to something lighter, whether it’s a motorcycle or a scooter. And the MP3, or whatever like it is on the market at that point, would definitely be an option I would consider. Meanwhile, for anyone today who finds the stability of three wheels appealing, the MP3 is definitely something I would suggest looking at.

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