Passes & Canyons Blog

Riding your motorcycle to DIA was not something the planners ever even considered.

I took Judy to the airport early on Tuesday and as I drove home I thought about one of my first visits to Denver International Airport when it was just new.

I actually had been out there even before it was completed. One day I led John and Bill on our bikes riding out on the then under construction Pena Boulevard, going past areas where it was posted to stay out, this being a Sunday with no one to stop us. It was the first any of us had had the chance to see what was taking shape way out there northeast of the city.

But then the airport opened so we decided one day to ride out there again and see this new creation now functioning. If you were around back then you may recall that initially they set things up a bit differently than they are today. That’s because this bright idea about controlling traffic turned out to be a really bad idea and they quickly revamped things.

That is to say, it was set up so that all road traffic to DIA had to stop at a row of toll booths about a mile from the terminal. You were issued tickets and as you exited you handed over your ticket and paid for any time you were there beyond half an hour. Everybody did this, every time. What a waste of time. Now you drive in and drop off or pick up your passenger(s) and there’s no stopping. You only pay something if you park. Who had that dumb idea in the first place?

But it was worse if you were on a motorcycle. Apparently they figured that no one on a motorcycle would ever drop someone off or pick someone up. So when you pulled up to the toll booths there were signs saying “No Motorcycles.” I’m not sure we noticed those signs this day but either way, we pulled up to the toll booth and I don’t remember if we got one ticket for all of us or one apiece or what. Whatever, we drove on in, made the loop past the terminal, and then headed out.

That’s when we really hit trouble.

At the exit toll booth they didn’t know what to do with us. The equipment was not set up to deal with motorcycles, so either the weight or the mass of one bike was not enough to alert the machines that someone was there seeking to exit. Plus, the system was set up so when you picked up your ticket on entry a photo was made of your license plate and the person at the exit booth confirmed that this was the same vehicle.

So when one bike wasn’t enough, they had us pull all three bikes up to increase the mass. That worked but then they had to confirm that this “one vehicle”–really three–was the same “one vehicle” that had come through the entry gate. What a total mess! What a fiasco!

Needless to say, this whole procedure did not last very long. Somebody with authority realized how idiotic it was and the toll booths were eliminated.

And you have to wonder, what might have been different if they had included motorcyclists in the planning process. Surely there would have been extreme protest over the “no motorcycles” part of the plan. And maybe that would have triggered some other thinking about the necessity of inconveniencing every single person coming out there. Isn’t it amazing how generally smart people can have such stupid ideas?

Biker Quote for Today

She told me to whisper something sexy in her ear, so I said, “I ride a Harley.”