Passes & Canyons Blog

Yeah, we can at least dream about this kind of riding in the next few months.

The new legislative session will begin shortly after the first of the year and there will for sure be two bills of interest to motorcyclists on the docket. This bill would create a new classification of motor vehicles, removing autocycles, such as the Polaris Slingshot, from some rules applying to cars, some rules applying to motorcycles, and removing things such as autocycle crash statistics from being merged with motorcycle crash statistics.

The Motorcycle Operator Safety Training (MOST) program will also be coming up because when it was created the Colorado Sunset Law required that it be periodically renewed. The Department of Regulatory Agencies has conducted a sunset review and is recommended it be continued for another five years.

ABATE of Colorado, as well as other interested parties, will be watching those bills. According to Stump, ABATE’s legislative liaison, the language of the autocycle bill is not exactly what ABATE would prefer but it is good and it may be able to be improved in committee.

MOST is something ABATE would like to see either abolished or revised to take it back to its original intent. Again, revisions are possible in committee.

Because I am interested in these and other legislative matters concerning motorcycles, I recently allowed myself to be elected the ABATE District 10 Legislative Affairs representative. The following are some excerpts from the letter Stump sent each of us about what we’ll be doing this year.

The emphasis this year is getting as many ABATE members legislatively active as possible. We’re going to have a very busy schedule down at the Capitol and we need a lot of help.

I’ll be sending out weekly updates on legislative issues. It will be your job to get this information to your district members. More important, I’ll be sending out “Action Alerts”, when I need you to contact your legislators. Sometimes I’ll send out talking points and sometimes I’ll send out a form letter, depending on where the bill is in the process and how much time we have to take action. A personal letter from talking points is more influential than a form letter, but sometimes we might only have 1-2 days to contact them. In such case, a phone call to your legislator, which is probably even faster than sending an e-mail, might be more appropriate.

Besides waiting for an “Action Alert” and a specific reason to contact your legislators, there is a lot more you can do to help our “cause”. Everyone should be contacting both their Senator and Representative and introducing themselves, mentioning you’re a constituent and an ABATE member. You might even explain a little about ABATE. Also congratulate them on winning their election, if appropriate, especially if they’re new.

Lastly, you can all help out by coming to the Capitol. Set up a time with your legislators and have a face-to-face with them. It’s the best way to introduce yourself. Or you can just come to the Capitol without an appointment, but chances are you’ll wind up talking to an aide rather than the legislator. Either way, you get to express your concerns as a constituent. Try it; you just might have some fun!

I was down at the capital a lot last session so this won’t be much of a change, I’ll just be operating in a more official capacity. And of course I’ll keep you up to date right here.

Biker Quote for Today

The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.

Get out an ride while there’s no snow on the road!

I took the V-Strom out for a first ride of December on Sunday. It would have been a crime not to take advantage of such a nice day.

So how warm was it really? We have thermometers outside our windows in the front of the house and in the back. Our house faces south, so in the front there is sun, while in the back there is shade. The difference in the two readings can be 4 or 5 degrees. The thermometer in the rear said 52.

OK, so how warmly do I need to dress? This is the winter guessing game that I play again and again. It’s easier when it’s only 30 degrees–I put on all the warmest gear I have. At 52 it gets tricky.

I opted for just jeans, no long underwear; my winter gloves, not to be confused with my heated gloves; and a sweatshirt and my electric vest. No scarf. I wavered on the electric vest, wondering if I really needed it, but decided it wouldn’t hurt to have it just in case. But 52 is pretty warm.

However, the wind chill at 60 miles an hour knocks that perceived temperature right down 10 or 15 degrees. Within a mile I had flipped on the vest and with my legs getting chilly I was wondering if omitting the long underwear had been a mistake. Plus, my hands were getting pretty chilly.

I got over it though. It didn’t take long and I wasn’t minding the cool legs and my hands didn’t feel so chilly. It was a really nice, sunny day, and I was glad to be out on the bike. Of course the fact that the electric vest was keeping my core nice and toasty made a huge difference. But after awhile I even cracked my visor so I’d get some breeze on my face. It felt good.

Didn’t see a lot of other folks out on bikes, just one guy on a sportbike on Parker Road. Come on now, you’re telling me you weren’t driven to get out on such a nice day? It’s only going to get colder, at least for this next week.

I didn’t go a long way; I’ve got this shoulder that was hurting me pretty bad because of some strain I put on it doing some work on my driveway earlier in the day. That was another project that needed to be done on a warm day and it was actually my first priority. I’d go for a ride afterward. But that meant when I got on the bike I was hurting.

Still, I got out, and it was nice. I suspect next time I get out on a bike it’s not going to be so nice. But in that case I won’t need to play the guessing game.

Biker Quote for Today

When life gets you down, remember, it’s only one down and the rest is up.

The “Bernie’s Colorado Journeys” website.

I did a radio interview today. Bernie Jwaszewski had contacted me and wanted to talk about the website for the benefit of people interested in touring Colorado. Bernie does a podcast/radio broadcast called “Bernie’s Colorado Journeys” on KCMJ.org or at 93.9 FM.

Seems Bernie has been into touring for a long time but just last year got himself a Harley trike. That opened up a whole new world for him, as you might well imagine. So he is interested in the best motorcycle roads in Colorado. Bernie, you came to the right place.

So we talked about the Passes & Canyons: Motorcycle Touring in Colorado website.

First off he asked about myself and why I built the site. That was easy: it combined my interests in writing, motorcycling, and tech. And then we went through each of the tabs at the top of each page that go to the main pages on the site, discussing each as we went along.

What was interesting for me was to have a chance to see the site at least partially through someone else’s eyes. For instance, Bernie looked at the page for motorcycle-accessible campgrounds along the Peak-to-Peak Highway and he came to the conclusion that Cold Spring Campground would not be suitable for someone pulling a camper. No, no, no, I assured him. The campground has pull-through sites but I just don’t go into that because the website is about motorcycles. I also mentioned that the campground pages are very dated and it is my intention in 2017 to update all of them.

That was the other point of interest for me. Time and again we would discuss this section or that page and I would add that my intentions are to expand this or update that or redo this–it just comes down to time to do it all. Hopefully I will find that time once I am no longer working for the National Park Service (hello end of January). But the updates and revisions I want to do could probably keep me busy for a solid month.

And then there are the other states in the region. When I first started building the site it was my intent to then do the same for other states in the west. When you figure I’ve had this site up for 11 years now and still have a ton of work that I don’t have time to do, it’s not hard to see why that plan has never gotten off the ground. But I haven’t given up on it. I’m thinking that maybe I’ll do a Kickstarter campaign to raise funding and then just go off for a month to two months and do an entire state all at once. Ride and shoot pictures and gather information during the day and build pages in a motel room in the evening. Get up the next morning and do it again. We’ll see.

So I’ll be interested to see what Bernie does with the interview. I mean, I’m sure he’ll want to do some editing, so it will be interesting to see what he focuses on. Also, just a note, he has also spoken with Steve Farson, who wrote the book The Complete Guide to Motorcycling Colorado. Steve’s book is very good and I’ll be interested to listen to Bernie’s podcast with him, too.

And one other thing: I’m interested to explore Bernie’s site. Who knows, maybe he has found some places in this state that I’ve never seen. You never know.

Biker Quote for Today

A cold hamburger can be reheated quite nicely by strapping it to an exhaust pipe and riding forty miles.