Passes & Canyons Blog

OK, now this is my idea of a group ride.

On Saturday I went on “Roy’s Mystery Ride,” apparently a traditional thing for the Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Riders Club (RMMRC), my first with the group. There were a number of things I liked very much about this ride.

First off, each rider was sent off individually, spaced a minute apart or more, so there was never a pack. I don’t like riding in a pack. The OFMC rides in a pack and I’ve never been thrilled with that since we grew to more than three or four guys.

The way it worked, each rider was given a sheet of directions (see photo). You follow the directions step by step until you reach the end. The focus of this ride was observation, so you weren’t just looking for the next turn, you were also looking for some odd stuff along the way.

Effectively, what this meant for a single rider was that you had to stop and consult the directions frequently. I was able to retain two or three–at most four–items ahead and then I had to stop again and look at the sheet. This resulted in a lot of leap-frogging as one rider would pass another who was stopped to look at the sheet, and even a small congregation at one particular spot where you needed to park and look off in the distance for the particular point of interest. So we were sort of a group but also very separate.

The ride itself was really fun. We went down so many roads I had never been on, through some beautiful country, and I loved it. Basically, we did a lot of miles through the Black Forest area each of I-25 between Denver and Colorado Springs. This is mostly up on the Palmer Divide and I had no idea there was that much forest east of I-25. I want to look at a satellite photo of this area to really get an appreciation of how extensive it is. It’s like being in the mountains but you’re not in the mountains.

Think about it this way: We’ve all been down I-25 between Denver and Colorado Springs. And we’ve all been down CO 83 between them, too. Now go another set of roads to the east. They exist and they are sweet. Who knew?

The ride started at the pretty new Performance Cycle location ultimately ended up at the new BMW of Denver location. BMW of Denver just opened in their new location on Oct. 1 and they were having a blow-out intro on Saturday: food, band, showing the place off.

Once everyone had arrived and had time to get a bite to eat, Roy called us all together to hand out the door prizes. As it turned out, there were more prizes than there were participants. That meant everyone got something, and all the prizes were of greater value than the $10 registration fee we had each paid to participate. What’s not to like about something like that?

So far I’m definitely liking being a member of this group.

Biker Quote for Today

It’s ride o’clock somewhere.

At my second meeting tonight of the the Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Riders Club (RMMRC) the discussion was about ride planning and the rides the group has planned for next year. This is a group that does some serious rides but sometimes they get even more serious.

Specifically, the word is that Roy, the group’s safety coordinator, has a professional background in tour planning and he is organizing a 35-day ride to Nova Scotia. Ooooh my goodness! I could do that. Of course there are all kinds of considerations.

Several of the folks were very clear that, hey, they’re not retired, and there is no way they can take that kind of time. Nevertheless, Sean and Sara plan to go; he’ll trailer the bike to Ontario so as to make good time and she’ll fly out and meet him, and then fly home. And other people have similar ideas to take part in at least some of that ride.

Someone else mentioned how a trip like that could be very costly. By the time you figure motels, food, and gas–not to mention any other incidental expenses–this will not be inexpensive. I mean, motels alone, if you figure sharing a room and each paying $50 per night, would be $1,750. Costs will vary depending on how high your standards are for accommodations. Mine are fairly low; I would prefer to do something like that and spend most nights camping. Then you might get down to around $600-$700 for accommodations, figuring at least a few nights in motels.

So we’ll see. The idea of doing something like that is very tempting but this sort of thing may be the true test for me as to what sort of involvement I’m going to have with this group. Spending 35 days with a possibly sizeable group in a fairly structured situation may not be what I’m up for. Now, if I could get several of these guys together to do a less formal four person ride or something like that, that would really get my attention. Especially if they like to camp, too.

But I’m not ruling anything out just yet. I’ll play it all by ear.

So because ride planning was the topic of discussion, Sara went over a slide presentation about the elements to consider if you are interested in planning a ride for the group. Or for any group. The RMMRC has a page on their website with some good info on ride planning. The presentation she used can be found there. Considerations such as, is this a day trip or a multi-day trip? Is the destination what’s important or is the ride itself the most important? (Heck, it’s always the ride, isn’t it?)

And of course, food. Noting that for her, food is always one of the very most important parts of the ride, she said she’s planning a food-day ride for next year. I’ll be interested to learn more about that one.

In the meantime, I’ll be joining the group on a ride for the first time on Saturday. More about that after it happens.

Biker Quote for Today

And then God said “Let there be beautiful, passionate, irresistable, crazy women who take no crap.” So he created biker chicks.

Judy and I just got back from a 10-day road trip (nope, by car) and we spent a lot of time in the boonies. The car has the serious dirt to confirm it.

And you know what? A lot of these way-out-there spots we were in we saw people on motorcycles.

For instance, we were up at the Gates of Lodore, which is in Dinosaur National Monument, up at the far northeast corner of the monument almost to Wyoming. The road to get there is not paved.

That didn’t discourage four guys from Colorado Springs who came rolling into the campground our second day there.

Leading the way was a guy on a KLR 650. Judy made note as he went by that he must be really tall because his knees were sticking way out to the side. The other three were on various Beemers, one of them so loaded you might have thought the guy was going around the world. They were a couple adventure-type bikes and what I took to be a GS 850.

So of course I had to go over and talk with them.

Judy was right. The guy on the KLR must have been 6-foot-4 at least and sitting on the bike with his feet on the ground he looked like I would look sitting on a scooter.

He told me that in the beginning they all had KLRs but one by one the other guys went to Beemers. He stuck with the KLR because it was light and he had no problem going lots of places where the other guys didn’t want to go. So he’ll sometimes take off and meet up with them again later, much as I like to do when I ride with the OFMC on my V-Strom and they don’t want to take their Harleys (and Indian) off pavement.

These guys had left Colorado Springs two days before and had spent one night at one guy’s condo in Frisco. The second night two of them got a motel in Meeker while the other two camped at Maybell. I’m guessing the heavily loaded guy was one of the campers.

The group was headed to the Flaming Gorge and I had not realized there were roads going through on up to Dutch John. Sort of. The road out of Maybell, CO 318, is paved to the state line and then Browns Park Road is gravel. You have to follow that all the way up into Wyoming to WY 373 coming down from Rock Springs along the east side of Flaming Gorge. Then go south to Dutch John on what becomes U.S. 191 once it gets into Utah. Probably about 30 miles on gravel.

And then they’d head home after a couple days at the gorge. Life is good when you and your buddies have motorcycles.

Biker Quote for Today

Never let your free spirit get trapped in a cage.