Passes & Canyons Blog

It’s entirely different riding with a passenger.

I read somewhere recently that the best passenger a motorcyclist can have is a girlfriend who has never been on a bike before. (This was obviously a guy talking.) The point being that she’ll get on and do exactly what you tell her to do because she doesn’t know to do anything else.

The worst passenger, this writer went on, was your buddy whose bike is broken down and to whom you’re giving a ride back to town. That guy is going to want to do his own leaning and all the things he normally does to control his own bike, but that throws your control efforts way off and makes for a hazardous ride. Backseat driving takes on a whole new meaning on a motorcycle, and it is not for the better.

Riding a motorcycle with a passenger is a whole new ball game for a variety of reasons. First off, you are now responsible for the safety of another person besides yourself. I know that I ride carefully at all times, but when my wife is on behind me I ride even more carefully. If I was responsible for something happening to her I’d never forgive myself. So I do everything in my power to ensure that nothing happens.

Second, adding all that weight makes a huge difference in how the bike handles. It’s a big difference if your 110-pound wife or girlfriend gets on; imagine the difference if your 210-pound buddy gets on.

Novice riders simply should not carry passengers. Until they have some real experience and skills with the bike it’s just too dangerous. I told the story recently how my friend Terry told me not to take some girls riding on his bike and never let me ride the bike again after I did so anyway. He was right to do so. I wasn’t ready.

After I got my own bike I waited awhile before taking a passenger but even then I was ill at ease. What finally made a difference was when the OFMC took its first extended trip and I rode around for days on end with a bunch of gear bungee-strapped on the back. I grew accustomed to the weight and from that point on I was comfortable with a passenger.

Not comfortable with just any passenger, however. We had a friend, Al, who was a super nice guy but not always the most prudent person. Al didn’t ride. (This is all in the past tense; Al died a number of years ago.) One night John and I rode over to Al’s and at some point Al wanted to go for a ride. He climbed on behind me first and I was aghast. Al was not fat, but he was solid muscle, and muscle weighs more than fat. On my 750cc Honda it was just too much and I suggested he ride with John. So Al got on with John, whose 1100cc Shadow was bigger than my CB750, and we took off.

But Al was not content to just sit there quietly on the bike. He was moving around and doing all kinds of stuff that kept throwing John off balance, so before we went more than half a mile John stopped and said “No more, we’re going back. This is too dangerous.”

Another time, John and Bill and I had gone over to Grand Junction to see our friend Christopher. Like Al, Christopher is not known for prudence. He wanted to take us to see the 20-foot dragon he was building so we got on the bikes, with Christopher riding with Bill. Turning in the driveway to the place where the dragon was under construction, Christopher was flailing around in much the way Al had done and he threw Bill’s balance off so badly that they went down. Fortunately, it was at a slow speed and the dirt was soft, so nobody got hurt.

The bottom line here is that, for a capable rider, and a passenger who knows how to be a passenger, riding two-up can be a terrific shared experience. But tell your own Al or Christopher “No” when they ask for a ride.

Biker Quote for Today

There is a delicate ridge one must ride between fear and reason on a motorcycle—lean too far in either direction and there will be consequences. — Lily Brooks-Dalton

This is going to be an Examiner Resurrection with a twist. After putting in this brief Examiner post I’m going to add a bit to the discussion. Look for that below.

Most motorcycles get better gas mileage than most cars.

“When you add it all up, there is no question: If everyone rode motorcycles, the planet would be a greener place.”

That’s Rob Dingman, the president and CEO of the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA), in an Earth Day statement on environmental benefits of commuting and traveling on a motorcycle.

And Dingman adds, “Just as important, more of us would experience the thrill and freedom that motorcycles provide. Riding is not just easy on your bank account and the planet, riding is a fun, and often a social activity that simply makes life more enjoyable.

“Regardless of how you use your motorcycle or scooter — commuting to work, riding down the block, across town, traveling across the country — your choice to ride instead of drive has a positive impact on the environment and results in a more enjoyable, less-congested experience for you as well as your fellow road userS. For motorcyclists, every day is Earth Day.”

The AMA notes that a typical motorcycle generally gets better gas mileage than all but the most fuel-efficient cars, often 50 miles per gallon or more, and that many scooters can deliver nearly twice that. Motorcycles also require less oil and other chemicals to operate. And then there are the growing number of electric motorcycles that are even greener than the gas-powered models.

Other benefits that motorcycles offer, says the AMA, is that:

• Motorcycles take up less space than cars and trucks both during operation, and when parked. They reduce traffic congestion and, in so doing, help increase the efficiency of traffic flow on the road.
• Significantly fewer raw materials are utilized to produce motorcycles and scooters compared to cars and trucks. By some measures, it requires thousands of pounds less metal and plastic per vehicle to produce a motorcycle. The environmental benefits are realized both during production, as well as at the end of the vehicle’s useful life.
• Because motorcycles and scooters are so much more compact and lighter than cars and trucks, they cause far less wear and tear on the highways, reducing the cost and environmental impact of infrastructure repairs. In addition, because of their size, many more motorcycles can be transported from factory to consumer using the same or less energy.

OK, back to 2019. So after I put this piece up on Examiner I did some deeper digging. I wanted real answers to the question of whether bikes really are greener, and what I found was inconclusive. I wrote to Pete terHorst at the AMA for what he had to offer but the information he sent me didn’t seem to resolve my questions. I never did run the piece I envisioned and Pete later put out an AMA release on it rather than let his own efforts go to waste.

The thing that I found was that yes, motorcycles use less gas. However, because we don’t have all the antipollution devices that cars do, we actually put out more emissions. So what’s greener, using less gas and doing less road damage or putting out less emissions? How do you make that kind of determination?

Of course, much of the future appears that it will be powered by electricity. Once you put electric motorcycles into this equation there will be no question. Yes there is environmental damage associated with generating that electricity but if you have an electric bike and a solar panel powering it I don’t think you’ll ever get much greener.

Biker Quote for Today

Caution, twisting the right side hand grip of this vehicle may tend to alter the rotation of the Earth.

I wrote here about my trip to Arizona Bike Week when it happened, but looking at what I wrote I see that what I put up on Examiner was quite different. That makes sense since it would be boring to write essentially the same thing a second time. So here’s what you didn’t read previously.

A rest stop in New Mexico on my way to Arizona Bike Week.

The Pre-Rally is already in full swing but Arizona Bike Week itself doesn’t start until Wednesday. I’m en route and will be there tomorrow, Monday. I’m happy to be able to say that because it wasn’t a sure thing earlier today.

The weather gods seemed to be smiling on me this morning in Denver, with temperatures higher than they had been in a week and clear, sunny skies. I climbed aboard my Kawasaki Concours and took off with my only concern being whether I could keep my hands warm.

That particular question was starting to feel a lot more important by the time I got to Castle Rock, just 20 miles from home down I-25. My finger-tips were very cold but I didn’t have a lot of time to think about them because as I climbed toward the Palmer Divide I noticed that about half the cars coming the other way had snow on them. Then the highway started looking suspiciously wet and I wondered if that moisture was in liquid or solid form.

Then came the fog. I got over the divide and started the descent toward Colorado Springs and it was pea soup. To say that the warm, welcome sun I started out with was nowhere to be seen is an understatement. I tucked in behind a pick-up pulling a trailer that was going about 40 and just crept along. And I was getting a lot colder.

Of course I had my electric vest on, as well as my warmest longjohns and a bunch of other warm clothes. If not for the vest I would have turned back. No way would I ride on in that cold without that warmth. But by the time I got to the south end of Colorado Springs my fingers were screaming in pain from the cold and I pulled off to get a cup of hot cocoa at a convenience store.

With my freezing hands wrapped around the hot cup of cocoa, I questioned people coming in the store as to whether they knew how the weather was on south. No one knew for sure but the presumption was that it should be warmer heading toward Pueblo. I asked a guy where he was coming from that he had snow on his car and he said, “My house. Right here in the neighborhood. We had snow this morning, but I think it’s all done for now.”

With my hands warm again I got back on the bike and pressed on. Sure enough, the farther south I got the warmer it got. It was a little chilly going over Raton Pass but by the time I reached Santa Fe I switched the vest off because it was getting too hot.

Meanwhile, about the time I reached Walsenburg, before reaching the pass, I got hit by the first blast of the powerful crosswinds I was destined to contend with for the next several hours. Almost all the way to Albuquerque the winds played their cat and mouse game, easing off when the road dipped beneath the general landscape and blasting me as soon as I came out in the open again. I’d pass a truck on the downwind side and have to stand the bike up quickly to keep from steering right into it, and as soon as I would pull ahead the wind would blast me toward the median. I took to diving back into the right-hand lane as soon as I got ahead of the truck because while that’s exactly what happened most of the time, other times the blast hit me so hard that if I hadn’t already been leaned in like that it would blow me off the road.

At Albuquerque I turned west on I-40, so now at least, any westerly wind would be blowing in my face rather than from the side. I pressed on to Grants and considered continuing to Gallup. But the sun was at that point where if I had, it would have been setting and I would have been riding right into it the last part of that leg. I opted for Grants. That’s about 530 miles of the 850 from home to Scottsdale, where I’m headed. Another 320 miles tomorrow won’t be bad. Plus, I get to leave the interstate at Holbrook and the last 140 miles will be on two-lane through some mountains I’ve never seen before.

So all right! First bike trip of the year. Yee hah!

Biker Quote for Today

Riding fast is one thing, riding in a hurry is a completely different thing. Never ride in a hurry.