Passes & Canyons Blog

Our route.

It strikes me as odd realizing this but I’m pretty sure that with all the various Motorcycle Travel Network guests we have hosted, I had never before gone riding with any of them. Until this past weekend.

Carolyn called about mid-week to ask if we were able to host her for two or three days beginning either Friday or Saturday. She was in Spearfish, SD, at the time and headed our way to go on to Colorado Springs for a Women on Wheels event there. And she also asked if it would be possible for us to go for a ride with her, showing her some of our favorite places to ride. OK, it’s a plan!

She got in on Saturday later in the day and on Sunday, with Judy not joining us, we headed out, her on her 950cc Star cruiser and me on my Concours. We went out Hampden/US 285 to C-470 and north. I wavered all this time as to whether we should go up Clear Creek Canyon or something else. I figured she would enjoy Clear Creek but I wondered how busy it was. This was, after all, the Fourth of July weekend.

So we got to US 6, Clear Creek Canyon, and made the turn. We had gone about 100 yards and came to a stop and it was clear that traffic ahead of us was not even moving. We quickly did a U-turn and headed back, turned north again, and took the Golden Gate Canyon road up to the Peak to Peak Highway. I was afraid it might be busy, too, but it was fine.

Originally my plan was to go to Estes Park for lunch before heading back but thinking about the holiday I decided instead to turn east down the South St. Vrain to Lyons. While that’s a very scenic canyon, there was very little traffic. All the traffic, we could see when we reached Lyons, was going up to Estes via the North St. Vrain. And coming down it, too. Terrible, terrible traffic.

So from Lyons we headed south on US 36 to Boulder, crossed through Boulder on Broadway, and continued south and back to Golden. Then I got the idea to go up Lookout Mountain. Carolyn is sort of from Ohio, sort of from South Carolina, and the tight turns on the Lookout Mountain road were a bit challenging for her but, with the exception of the first one, she managed to stay on her side of the line.

We enjoyed the view from up at Buffalo Bill’s grave and then continued on that road over to I-70/US 40. No reason to get on I-70 with US 40 right there so we rode it down to where the road down to Morrison crosses under the interstate and took that road to Morrison. Then east to pick up C-470, US 285/Hampden, and home. Total 171 miles and a really nice ride up in the cool on a very hot day.

Biker Quote for Today

Forget glass slippers, this princess wears motorcycle boots.

Bob (left) and Will, the other students in my ERC.

I took the Experienced Rider Course (ERC) once before. In fact, it was the first rider training course I ever took. Since then I’ve also taken the Beginning Rider Course twice, a dirtbike riding course, and I did the Rider Coach Training course, although I never worked as a Rider Coach. Here’s a tip: it never hurts to take a riding course–you always learn something new and improve existing skills.

The primary focus of this ERC I did on Friday was tight maneuvering. That wasn’t all, of course. The overall point is to learn to be a better rider everywhere. But if you can handle a big bike in tight quarters, handling that same bike in the wide open spaces is just that much easier. And sometimes that extra bit of control can make all the difference.

So I’ll get right to it. The number one thing I got out of this course was understanding what it takes to make a big bike make a really tight turn. Maybe you’ve seen these riders doing circles on big baggers that you couldn’t even dream of doing on a little 250. How the heck do they do that?

Don’t think I’m going to claim that I can do that now. But I am a little closer.

Bob, the instructor, talked about counter-weighting. If you need to lean the bike way over you also need to move your body the other direction to balance that out. Counter-weighting. To do this you put your weight on the outside peg and lean way back.

But the thing that got me was his instruction to keep your inside arm straight. Think about that. You’re turning left, you’ve got that left grip tucked in close to your body, and yet you need to keep your arm straight. If that’s not going to keep your weight off to the other side nothing will.

Fact is, I wasn’t sure it was even possible. I mean, OK, let’s say you’re riding a sport bike with little clip-ons. That seems doable. But my CB750 has a steer-horn handlebar that is 31 inches from tip to tip, and sitting upright in the saddle with the wheel turned as far as it can go the grip is about five inches from my stomach. I’m supposed to keep that arm straight?!

Guess what? It can be done. I couldn’t go it right off, but we went around again and again and I kept pushing myself and after awhile it happened. I’ve never made tighter turns with that bike in my life. I admit that the thought of putting weight on my outside peg never crossed my mind, though I suspect that happened naturally.

Most of the rest of the course was a refresh. We practiced techniques I know but maybe was a little rusty with. But then, I’ve taken this course before, as well as others. If you haven’t ever taken a riding course there’s probably a ton of stuff you’ve never learned. I don’t care if you’ve been riding 40 years I bet you’d learn something new. And you’ll be a better rider.

Is there any reason in the world that that would not be a good thing?

Biker Quote for Today

I hate being sexy but I’m a biker, so I can’t help it.

Bob sets up cones on the course for the next exercise.

I’ve always been a big proponent of rider training and that led to an offer for me to take another course at no charge. The assumed quid pro quo was that I would then write about it. Well, of course I would, I write about just about everything in my life that involves motorcycles.

So on Friday I went up to Thornton to BLACK B.A.G. for the ERC, or perhaps it is now considered the BRC2. I’m not totally clear on this but I believe the Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s old Experienced Rider Course has been totally revised and what had been the ERC is now considered the Beginning Rider Course 2. Doesn’t matter.

There were three in my class: me, Bob, and Will. Bob rode dirt bikes as a kid but hadn’t ridden anything after about age 25 until in November he bought a Kawasaki KLR 650. He took the BRC then and was back now for the ERC/BRC2. Will is a National Guardsman who needed rider training certification in order to be allowed to ride his V-Max on base.

The instructor is also Bob. And Bob is a good instructor. He inserts enough humor to keep things fun and he has developed effective techniques for eliciting participation from the students. Participation requires attention and thinking, and those enhance learning.

Knowing I was going to be doing tight maneuvers and, who knows, might even drop the bike at some point, it was easy for me to decide which bike to take. Both the Concours and V-Strom are tall bikes with big gas tanks up high. I rode my CB750 because it is lower and has a much lower center of gravity.

What I didn’t think about until I got there was that this was sort of a homecoming. I lived up on the north side of town, in unincorporated Adams County,for 17 years before moving to southeast Denver 21 years ago. When I bought my first motorcycle ever, my 1980 Honda CB750 Custom, this was where I lived. I learned to ride on that bike and when it came time to get my motorcycle accreditation on my drivers license I went to the Motor Vehicle office in this very shopping center where BLACK B.A.G. now operates. I took, and passed (on my second try), the riding skills test on this very motorcycle that I was there on for training on Friday. This is where it all started.

There’s no question I’m a much better rider now that way back then. A lot of that is simply experience, but there’s a good bit of it that is due to all the rider training courses I’ve taken over the years. We talked, for instance, about making U-turns on narrow roads. My buddies in the OFMC universally do Y-turns, jockeying back and forth, while I slip the clutch, ride the rear brake, and easily ride the U-turn at walking speed. I learned that in these classes.

So what did I get out of this latest one? I’ll get into that in my next post.

Biker Quote for Today

Some take drugs, some drink bottles. I solve my problems by twisting throttles.