Passes & Canyons Blog

Here’s an interesting shot from some years ago in California. Notice the gas prices.

It sure was sweet, wasn’t it, when gas prices dropped so low. Those days are over.

Back when everything was shut down AND Russia and Saudi Arabia were having a price war I watched as gas prices at the pump dropped lower and lower. Holy cow, what a great opportunity to save some money. Only problem was, like everyone else, I wasn’t going much of any place to use the gas I had. And I didn’t need gas. Between my car and three bikes, none of them were anywhere near low. But I really wanted to buy gas.

I finally reached a point where it made sense to fill my Honda. On May 8 I put 3.57 gallons in the Honda, at $1.189 per gallon. Total for the fill: $4.24. Terrific.

Then four days later I filled the Concours. It took 5.38 gallons and I paid $1.339 per gallon: total $7.21. I could get to like this.

I rode the Honda a good bit and filled it again on May 13. This time I paid $1.6999 per gallon. It took 3.35 gallons for a total of $5.69. Still not bad.

By June 14, when I filled the Kawi again I paid $2.269 a gallon. This time it cost $7.96 to put in 3.51 gallons. I don’t like the direction this is heading. And then on June 24 I put 3.09 gallons in the Suzuki and it cost $7.72, at $2.499 per gallon.

Welcome back to the real world. We knew it wouldn’t last but it was nice while it did. And I’m glad I got to buy at least a few gallons really cheap. I mean, $1.189 per gallon? In 2020? No one would have believed that a year ago.

In the meantime, the last time I put gas in my car was February 23. That’s the one I wish had been close to empty on May 8.

Biker Quote for Today

It takes both pistons and cylinders to make a bike run. One is not more important than the other.

There’s nothing more quintessential than an ice cream stop on a motorcycle ride.

Ain’t it grand to be able to do some of the old stuff, like riding out some place for lunch or ice cream. The RMMRC did both yesterday.

There were just five of us who showed at the meeting spot–mostly the hard core regulars, plus a guy, Rick, who I was not familiar with, although everyone else knew him well. The destination was Kiowa, for lunch at Patty Ann’s.

Patty Ann’s is a good place. I first encountered it when I was riding by myself out that way one day and figured I’d stop for lunch. There were a couple folks on motorcycles there so that is always encouraging. I was blown away, though, by how good the food was. I marked this place mentally as one to come back to.

Fast forward just a couple years and I have joined the RMMRC. Surprise: one of the club’s favorite rides in weather when you can’t go into the mountains was Kiowa, to Patty Ann’s.

So we all donned masks and walked in, and we pulled over a second table so we were sitting at least not elbow to elbow with each other. Then about the time we finished the meal Norvin came in. Norvin lives nearby so there was no point in him riding all the way into town just to ride back out.

We headed south to Elbert and past and then Robert led us on some roads I hadn’t been on, on a winding path over to Monument and we stopped again. For ice cream, at a place called the Rock House. Now that was a nice idea. And this was a nice place, with good ice cream they make themselves. Way too many places any more just serve up commercial ice cream, like Dreyer’s, which is good but you end up paying as much for a single scoop as a whole carton costs at the supermarket. I want ice cream that is made right there and that’s what the Rock House serves.

From Monument we continued north on 105 up to Sedalia and then U.S. 285 to the Daniels Park Road. Turning east onto Castle Pines Parkway the group splintered and everyone headed their own directions. Eat to ride, ride to eat is back.

Biker Quote for Today

Owning two bikes is useful because at least one can be raided for parts at any given time.

Up on top of Guanella Pass.

There were nine of us who showed up last week for the first breakfast-then-ride RMMRC outing in quite some time. The decision was made and we headed out for Guanella Pass.

I had missed a previous ride that was supposed to go over Guanella where I learned the next day that the pass was not yet open. These were some of the same folks and they told me that the time before they had gone as far as the barrier and had had to turn back. This time we knew the pass was open.

We crossed town on the newly opened/newly expanded C-470. For years this road was too crowded to bother with, and then for the last four years it has been under construction. Finally it was wide open and a fast run. We’ll see how long that lasts.

The direct way to go would have been out U.S. 285 but we took the nicer, narrow two-lane of the Deer Creek Canyon up to Turkey Creek Road and west to pick up 285 just down from Conifer. Then west on 285 to Grant, and a right turn up Guanella Pass Road (Park County 62 on this side).

It had been quite hot down low but as we climbed it cooled off. I was hoping it wouldn’t be too cold up on top. It was also breezy and I was hoping we would not encounter howling winds up on top. No problem either way; up on top it was calm and just pleasantly cool. Before heading down Robert even removed his jacket and rode in just his shirt. That would have been too chilly for me but I did remove the liner from my jacket, and later was very glad I did.

We stopped up on top and I noticed a much reduced effort at distancing than previous RMMRC rides have entailed. People are relaxing.

Coming up on the Park County side the road was extremely clean and clear. Heading down on the Clear Creek County side there was still a bit of sand on some of the tighter corners near the top. Be alert.

On top the question came up, do we just cruise down to Georgetown and get on I-70 and blast home? I said it was possible to go almost all the way back to Denver on just a very few miles of interstate. You take the lead, they said.

Down we went to Georgetown and through town and on toward Idaho Springs, not on the superslab but on old U.S. 6. At Idaho Springs you have to get on the highway for a few miles but then you can get off at U.S. 6 heading down Clear Creek Canyon, but take a quick right up Floyd Hill on old U.S. 40, which runs alongside I-70 in places and far away from the highway in other places. You do have to get back on I-70 at Evergreen Parkway but you get back off again and at Genesee. Then 40 runs all the way down to Golden.

So approaching the U.S. 6 exit I had six bikes behind me. As I got off I saw several had stayed on the interstate. Guess they just want to get home. But then when I got onto 40 not one bike followed me. Wow, I guess everyone had different plans. Not a problem; I like riding alone. I toodled my way on home, roasting now even without the liner in my jacket, and was glad to walk into the cool house.

Biker Quote for Today

It’s just crazy bein’ here with you, as a bad motorcycle with the devil in the seat, going ninety miles an hour down a dead end street. — Bob Dylan

Yeah, imagine these speed demons keeping up with you on your motorcycle. (Lame? Sure. this seems to be the only bicycle picture I have.)

We were heading down Golden Gate Canyon Sunday when, at some point, we got intertwined with a guy on a bicycle. Dennis was leading, with Janice behind him, followed by Bill, then Jason, then me. The first three passed the bicyclist but the road was twisty and Janice is the least expert rider among us, so she set the pace.

The guy on the bike kept right up with us.

On some of the slower corners it almost looked like he might slip past Bill but didn’t. He was definitely close behind Bill and Jason saw little room to get past him.

Then the road opened up a little and Jason did blast past. And then the guy on the bike was hanging close behind Jason, at times making me wonder if he would pass Jason. I had little doubt that we were in fact slowing him down but again when the road opened up and the motorcycles sped up, rather than affording me a chance to pass the bicycle, that guy sped up and stuck close to Jason’s tail. We were definitely slowing him down.

I figured there was no point–not to mention little opportunity–for me to pass the bicycle so I laid back and gave him plenty of space. He saw this and starting using the full lane rather than sticking to the side of the road. I’m betting he was pleased about that. He would look back periodically to be sure I was still giving him space, and I was, so he enjoyed the use of the full lane all the rest of the way down the canyon.

Welcome to the gang, buddy. Nice riding with you.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker when grabbing a burger takes all day.

Jason’s new bike is a 2014 Harley Road Glide. That’s him on the right.

The OFMC has grown and then shrunk. We started out as three and we are three again. One of the guys who rode with us for many years was Jason, Bill’s son, but he had young kids and gave up riding, doing the dad thing.

Well, Jason is back. For one things, his kids are older, and both boys are now taller than he is. But more importantly, his former boss gave him his Harley. Sort of.

It’s not an altogether happy story. Jason worked for this guy, Don, and Don treated Jason like a son. Recently Don died. Don’s widow gave the bike to Jason. This is a 2014 Harley Road Glide and to make it official Jason paid one dollar for it and has a bill of sale and the title.

Not that he’s going to start coming on the OFMC trips again, at least yet. He still has limited vacation time and finds it hard family-wise to give over one whole week to the bike trip. But he’ll once again be joining us on day rides, such as the one we did Sunday.

It wasn’t all that much of a ride. As far as I can tell, most of Bill’s riding other than the annual trip is from his place on the west side of town up to Black Hawk to a casino or two for lunch and some gambling. I wasn’t sure what the plan was on Sunday but that turned out to be it. So we gathered, as we do, at the Starbucks near Bill and headed on up Clear Creek Canyon.

We got to Black Hawk but kept going to Central City because Bill had heard that he Century Casino up there was open. That turned out to be incorrect. That didn’t altogether disappoint me because I’ve been laying low pretty much and if there is only one casino open, how likely is it to be packed? Once they all open up it will be different.

Still, things are opening up and people are being less cautious. In our group it was really four members of a family and me. There was Bill, his son Jason, his sister Janice, and Janice’s husband Dennis. They were not socially distancing at all between themselves and my uncertainty resolved immediately when Jason reached out to shake my hand. That was the first hand shake I’ve had in a long time but I hadn’t seen Jason in several years. He extended his hand and I took it.

This ties in with my evolving concept of social distancing. I’m figuring that going forward we need to not unnecessarily expose ourselves to potential infection but in this case it was a group who see each other regularly and who know that none in the group has been sick. Plus, if one of us does get sick we will know to inform the others so they can get tested. It’s not that way with strangers.

The point here, too, is that we’re still planning the 2020 OFMC trip, in about six weeks, and there is no way I’m going to be distanced from Bill and Dennis for this whole trip.

So anyway, with the casino closed we noticed that another one, Dostal Alley, was open in the back serving food and drinks at tables set up in the parking lot. We had lunch. Then we headed up the Peak to Peak to the Golden Gate Canyon road and headed back down. Great day for a ride. Nice to ride with Jason again.

Biker Quote for Today

Why motorcycles are better than men: Motorcycles don’t grow huge beer bellies.

Getting ready to head out on a day of riding.

When I got my first bike, my 1980 Honda CB750 Custom, my friend John, who had ridden motorcycles off and on his whole life, gave me a bit of advice: Don’t use the front brake or you’ll go flying over the handlebars.

I was a novice so I believed him but after awhile I learned better. In case anyone out there still believes this you should know that more than half of your braking ability comes from your front brake. Not to use it is absurd. If you shouldn’t use it, why do they put one on the bike?

Sure, you have to use it properly. You don’t want to use it hard on loose gravel because that’s a sure way to go down. I learned that on my own. And then I relearned it. On some bikes you have to use that front brake very judiciously. I was test riding a KTM 1190 Adventure some years ago and that thing had such a terrific front brake that if you were going fast and hit it hard you very well could go over the handlebars. The KTM guys warned us before we went out about not hitting that brake too hard.

But do use the front brake; that’s what it’s there for.

Another practice I had to unlearn was the way I was leaning my bike on curves. Nowadays, for fun, I lean way off the bike even on easy curves just to see how upright I can keep the bike through the curve. But early on, I found it very comfortable to lean the bike way over while I continued sitting pretty much upright. A totally bad idea.

Somewhere along the way I learned about traction and how the more the bike is leaned, the more available traction is used. And the more it is used, the less you have left in case you need to lean even further.

So what do you do? You lean your body to the inside of the curve, out away from the bike, to counterbalance so the bike can be kept as upright as possible. When those racers lean so far out that their knees are gliding along the track surface on their knee pucks it’s pretty clear that their bikes are leaned over really far, too. But think what would happen if they didn’t have the benefit of their counterbalancing lean. Can you say low-side?

There must be other bad practices that I have learned to overcome, although those are the two that come readily to mind. Anyone out there have any of their own to offer?

Biker Quote for Today

Learn to do counter-intuitive things that may some day save your butt.

This year’s Ride to Work Day logo.

I feel like I beat the same dead horse almost every year when I do this post promoting Ride to Work Day. Nobody cares. And yet, I have always thought it was a great idea.

You know, why not, once a year, have a day when everyone who rides motorcycles rides to work or wherever, just to show our numbers to the rest of the world? This year that day is Monday, June 15. A week from now.

For one, think of the shock to the non-riding public to see just how many bikes and riders there are. And if that strikes them then it is at least possible that they will think to themselves, “gosh, there are lots of motorcycles out there, maybe I ought to pay a little more attention when I change lanes to be sure there isn’t one in my blind spot.”

Or, as the official ride to work people say on their site:

Ride your motorcycle or scooter on this day to demonstrate:

• The number of motorcyclists to the general public and to politicians.
• That motorcyclists are from all occupations and all walks of life.
• That motorcyclists can reduce traffic and parking congestion in large cities.
• That motorcycles are for transportation as well as recreation.
• That motorcycling is a social good.

Come on–do it this year. I’ll be out riding somewhere. Join me.

Oh, and a quick, unrelated aside: did you experience that extreme weather that swept through on Saturday? I was at home and I looked at the sky and decided I should cover the bedding plants we had just bought and barely 30 seconds after I did the sky opened up with winds that the weather service said exceeded 80 mph and hail came pounding down. Then it blew right on past in about three minutes.

Can you imagine if you had been on your bike when that hit? If you didn’t get blown over the whole thing would have gone past before you even found a sheltered place to pull over. It was crazy.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker when you know what a grasshopper feels like at 100 miles per hour.

Curves are fun–until you see that gravel directly ahead.

Have you ever seen someone on a motorcycle go down? I only have once, and it was a minor get-off, but it’s an amazing thing to witness.

What’s amazing about it is how quickly it happens. My buddy John and I were up in Laramie, it was late at night, and we were headed back to our motel. We cruised down the main street till we reached the corner to go left to the motel, John in the lead. He started to turn but hit some gravel and he went DOWN! I mean, right NOW! Instantly. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

You might think when something like that happens that you’ll have a moment to react, either to try to keep the bike up or to at least think about getting your leg out of the way so the bike doesn’t come down on it. Forget it. This was literally blink-of-an-eye fast.

Now fortunately, John wasn’t hurt badly. He just had a little road rash on his butt and he broke the windshield on his bike. He was just as amazed as I was.

I was talking about this sort of thing awhile back with Zigy Kaluzny, whose world travels I’ve written about a couple times here. His experience has been the same. As he put it, “There’s no transition. I’ve been down twice. There’s no transition. It’s just astonishing. In Italy once I was cranked over, going around a turn, a nice turn, probably going 55, 60, I don’t know. And next thing I know I’m sliding down the road on my back and I’m watching the motorcycle slide along with me, with the footpegs sparking everywhere.”

Zigy, of course is very much an ATGATT (All The Gear All The Time) kind of guy and he was fine.

“The bike was fine. I got up and rode. It freaked me out for a long time.”

Freaked him out, huh? Well yes, I guess. I don’t know how you have the courage to get back on that thing and just ride off after something like that happens. Fortunately I’ve never had that experience.

And it can happen at slow speeds just as easily as when you’re going fast. Zigy also told me about one time when his wife at that time went down.

“We were coming up to a stop sign. She wanted to move over to my other side, and as she crossed a line of some sand or gravel in the middle, she crossed the gravel and touched the brake and of course she was down in a heartbeat. Luckily I had bought her a pair of armored Dainese pants in Italy. I heard that crack as her helmet hit the ground, and she was fine.”

There’s a saying among motorcyclists, at least those who don’t think of themselves as immortal, that “You dress for the crash, not the ride.” Once you see a rider go down you know exactly what that means.

Biker Quote for Today

Top 10 signs that a computer is owned by a Harley rider: 08. There’s an oil stain on the floor just below the computer.