Passes & Canyons Blog

Riding as a group comes with certain responsibilities toward your other riders.

When you’re riding with a group on motorcycles there will always be someone in the lead and someone at the back, riding “sweep,” whether you think about it that way or not.

It’s a really good thing if the leader knows where he or she is going. Unless you’re using GPS, however, that is not always possible. For instance, when we were with Willie and Jungle’s group going to Banff this summer, there was one point where I was in the lead because the group had had to split up, with Jungle back in Cranbrook, BC, with a broken down bike.

We pulled into Radium Hot Springs, our destination for the day, and at an intersection neither Judy nor I noted that the highway we were following took the right turn. We went straight, as did all those behind us.

We quickly realized our error and turned around, motioning for the others to follow but for some reason they stayed put at the turnaround. Apparently they expected us to come back to tell them, yes, this is the correct way to go. Eventually everyone found their way to the motel but that’s the kind of problem you can have when the leader doesn’t know the route exactly.

Generally, however, everyone has GPS these days and as long as everyone knows the destination, they can get there. It’s just that sometimes you have to stop to pull out the phone and check the GPS.

Riding sweep is entirely different. Theoretically, each rider is responsible for making sure they do not lose sight of the rider behind them. If you do, you slow down until they show up and if they don’t show up you stop. If they still don’t show up, you go back. This ripples through the ranks up to the leader.

Unless the sweep is the one suffering problems, their general responsibility is to stop and assist anyone ahead who has problems. If the sweep has problems then the first rider in front of them should notice and come back.

That’s where it can get sticky. At least in the group I ride with, not everyone is paying all that much attention. They should, but the truth is, some do not. I like to ride sweep mainly because that way I don’t have anyone behind me crowding me or target fixating on my rear. We do have at least one person who will do that.

But I have been the one who has had problems, or the one who has stopped for another reason, and had the guys in front of me just keep on riding. When I finally have rejoined the group it’s generally, “Where were you?” to which I reply “Well, where in the heck were YOU?!”

It can be a fine line, though, between going your own speed and dropping way back and dropping back so far that the folks ahead of you start slowing down wondering about you. This is something about which Friggs has aggravated the rest of us at times. For instance, on this year’s OFMC trip, I was riding sweep but Friggs was going so slow for so long, with the others nowhere to be seen ahead, that I finally just blasted past him. He’s on his own! I have no feelings of guilt over passing him and leaving him behind.

Talking with the other guys later, they agreed that they had had the same annoyance with him at times and done the same thing. Dude, it’s fine to ride your own ride but you really need to at least maintain a minimum of contact with the group. If you’re not going to, say so in advance and we’ll see you when you get there.

Biker Quote for Today

Keep calm and take a back road.

Those scuff marks show you exactly where Friggs’s face would have been ripped open.

The best motorcycle protective gear does you no good at all if you don’t wear it. This is summed up in the term ATGATT: All The Gear, All The Time.

I’ve gotten better about this as the years have passed. I used to frequently ride without a helmet; I never do now. I didn’t always ride with a jacket; now it is seldom I ride without. And I almost never ride with my leather chaps on, even now. So I can hardly ever claim to ride with ALL the gear. But what I do wear I do wear almost all the time.

Friggs is another one who is about on a par with me. He always wears a helmet and almost always wears his jacket. I’m not sure he even owns chaps.

Friggs was not wearing his jacket when he crashed his bike in New Mexico. He was wearing his helmet. That made all the difference.

Take a look at his helmet. See all that scuffing above the visor, and how the top part of the visor is scraped up, too? That would have been his face. And you have to look a little harder but just below the visor, above the “Harley,” and also on the chin portion there is scuffing. That could have been a dislocated jaw, or worse.

This is why I always wear a helmet these days.

As for not wearing his jacket, Friggs got off lucky. His shirt was ripped up and his shoulder was bruised but he came out of it remarkably intact. But we all commented on how, gosh, Friggs almost always wears his jacket. What bad timing on his part to leave it off this particular day.

His pants were also torn up, which chaps would have limited, but hey, we don’t ride with that kind of gear most of the time. We’re just not true, to the core, ATGATT guys. But even more so than before, after seeing this, I will NEVER ride without my helmet.

Biker Quote for Today

A good friend knows all your best stories. A biker friend has lived them all with you.

At the top of Emory Pass, successfully past the chipseal, moments before Friggs (right) crashed his bike.

We all know that anywhere that you have winter, summer is the season for road work. This can mean delays but more importantly, on a motorcycle, it can mean riding through rough conditions that your street bike does not necessarily take well to. One of those conditions is chipseal.

What we’re talking about here is where the basic road surface is in decent shape but there may be cracks, which, left on their own, will cause the road to deteriorate at an accelerating pace. The answer in this case is to coat the road surface with oil or some more sophisticated semi-liquid, sticky substance. Then sand and/or gravel is spread over the stickum and it is left for the weight of vehicles to bear down on the loose stuff and make it adhere to the surface. After a while, when it is deemed that the maximum amount of gravel has adhered, the remaining loose stuff is swept up. Presto, you have an essentially new road surface at minimal expense.

The problem for motorcycles, of course, is that all that loose gravel or sand makes riding very iffy. Plenty of motorcyclists totally avoid riding off the pavement but when you’re on a highway and run into chipseal you have little choice but to ride on the stuff you hate.

For three weeks this summer I was out on my Concours, first, and my V-Strom, second. Would it surprise you if I said we ran into a lot of chipseal? It was almost a daily thing, sort of like the chipseal du jour.

The first chipseal we ran into, on the trip Judy and I took up to British Columbia, came in Montana when we headed north out of Anaconda on U.S. Highway 10A headed to Philipsburg. Here we rode for 15 miles on some of the finest (as in smallest) aggregate I’ve ever encountered as chipseal. It was like plowing through sand, and it had just been laid down that day so it was deep in spots. My Concours hates gravel so it was not at all happy on sand. It’s probably a good thing I had a brand new tire on the back with deep tread. We got through.

Off With The OFMC
My next encounter with chipseal came after Judy and I had split off from the group and were blasting home. We were crossing central Wyoming and the road out of Riverton intersected U.S. 287 a little west of Jeffrey City. There was a chipseal in progress on 287 in both directions from the junction. We were going east.

With only one lane of traffic open on 287, we had to wait until east-bound traffic was allowed through and we then tucked in behind them. This was more of a gravel-sized chipseal, the kind I’m a lot more familiar with, so it was just a matter of staying far enough behind the car in front so that thrown stones were no concern. (I’ve been hit with those in the past.) To our surprise and delight, however, most of the work was to the west of the junction and after less than a mile we were out of the work zone. Big smiles.

The next chipseal showed up after Judy and I got home and I set out with the guys on the OFMC 2018 trip. We were headed north on I-25 out of Las Cruces and turned west on New Mexico 152 to reach Silver City. This took us up over Emory Pass, along the road New Mexicans call “the snake.” This was going to be fun.

Except that after we passed through Hillsboro we came to a chipseal operation in progress. We stopped to wait sitting on new chipseal that had been put down that morning. When we got the go-ahead we had already heard that we would be on this stuff all the way to the top of the pass. And no, it was not any fun at all. I was just glad I was now on my V-Strom, which is better equipped for this sort of thing. The other guys were not so lucky. Mark this road down as one we’ll need to head for again so the guys can have the fun we missed out on this time.

We did get to the top uneventfully, but immediately after, on the run down the other side, Friggs crashed, for no reason he can discern. Go figure. You ride the squirrelly stuff OK and then go down on the smooth pavement.

We ran into more chipseal the next day. Working our way north from Silver City to Gallup, we turned onto New Mexico 32 just east of Cruzville and soon ran into the work zone. They were working our way so what we encountered first was the freshest, i.e., the loosest. This was also the longest stretch of chipseal we encountered–about 30 miles.

Here at least it was not a twisty road. It was the extremely twisty road the day before that made that run so miserable; going straight is easier. In fact, with my V-Strom I felt pretty confident and was hitting almost highway speeds. The other guys lagged behind; they were not going to get up much speed.

You could tell the crews had been working this project for a good while. The further we got the better the packing down got, although we never reached a place where the road had been swept of the remaining loose stuff.

It was after this day that I told the guys that while mapping out this trip I had consulted chipseal.gov to find all the work zones and be sure to visit as many as we could. They agreed I had done my job well.

And that was it. No more chipseal the rest of the trip. Oh, shucks.

Biker Quote for Today

Those voices are telling me to go riding. If I don’t they won’t stop.