Passes & Canyons Blog

These are the roads the OFMC took this year that we had never been on before.

The OFMC has been doing its thing for more than 30 years now in that time we have ridden most every road in the state, not counting the eastern plains–we don’t go out there all that much. So it was very interesting this year that we ended up on four different stretches of road we had never been on in a group before.

I mean, I personally had been on them all before, although not all on a motorcycle. But the OFMC had never ridden these roads. They’re indicated in the map above in colors. Unfortunately, to get them all on the map I had to zoom out so far that you can’t actually see the roads but if you look at your own map it should be pretty easy to figure out.

That yellow line across the upper right is U.S. 24 over Wilkerson Pass and across the south end of South Park. We actually ended up doing part of it twice on this trip. I guess the time for this one had really come.

In doing part of that a second time we had to get there and that is where that intersecting blue line comes in. That is Teller County Road 1 coming up from Cripple Creek. I had only just been on that road a week earlier with Judy in the car and before that I wasn’t really even aware of it.

Later that same day we went over Cottonwood Pass from Buena Vista to Gunnison, in green. This road was just paved so this was a real treat. It was also very interesting to see how the “improvements” resulted in many of the curves being straightened out. I knew this was going to be the case because Judy and I saw the same thing on the Sea to Sky Highway up in British Columbia, where they worked on the road in order to hold the Winter Olympics at Whistler.

Finally, there was that line in red, CO 69 coming up out of Walsenburg to just east of Cotopaxi in the Arkansas River Valley. This isn’t scenic like a mountain pass but it was pretty and it was a new road for the OFMC. Heck, I’ll gladly go down boring roads if I’ve never been on them before.

That’s the worst thing about living in Colorado for so long. There is hardly a road within 500 miles I haven’t ridden more than once. OK, I guess I’ll just suck it up and continue living the torture of riding all these familiar gorgeous roads we have in this state.

Biker Quote for Today

Why motorcycles are better than women: You don’t have to be jealous of the guy that works on your motorcycle.

Just as we were setting off on our trip the zipper broke on these pants.

I’ve written before about the Rev’It! Vapor 2 riding pants I bought in November 2018, and I continue to like them a lot.

That said, I need to do an update of that review because there have been problems.

When Bill and Dennis and I met up a few weeks ago to head out on the 2020 OFMC trip we got together, as we often do, at the King Soopers in Conifer. As per usual, I went in the store to use the restroom one last time. As I zipped the pants up, however, the zipper just came right off.

Generally with zippers, there is something at the top that stops the zipper. However, in this case, something somehow got broken so right up at the top of the teeth there is now a gap between two teeth and the piece that joins the two sides of teeth just came right off. You can see this in the photo above, and on the right, two teeth from the top, you can see the gap.

I thought I might be able to get the zipper pull back on the teeth and then seal off the top but that was an exercise in futility. However, it was not all that big a deal because of that flap you see behind the zipper. This is intended to keep water out, I assume, but it also means I was not walking around with my pants open, just with the zipper unzipped. I could still fasten it at the top with that buckle.

So anyway, when I got home I contacted Rev’It! to see if it could be repaired. It’s more than a year since I bought them so I didn’t expect any warranty type of response but I hoped maybe I could send them to them and, for a small fee, they would repair and return.

Nah. All they could offer was a couple shops I can contact, one in California and the other in Washington, that might be able to do the job. I guess if I’m shipping them to one of those places it’s not any different than shipping them to Rev’It!. What I’d really prefer, though, would be if I can find some place locally where I don’t have to ship at all. If anyone has any recommendations I’d be happy to hear them.

Meanwhile, as I say, it’s not that big a deal–the pants still work just fine, and I do still like them a lot. But I did want to pass along this note about the problem in case you’re looking at buying some riding pants.

Update
OK, just since I wrote this earlier today I decided to take the pants to a dry cleaners that advertised repairs and alterations to see if they could fix the zipper. I went to Washington Park Cleaners, at 529 E Ohio Ave., and I want to mention them specifically because the lady who helped me was wonderful, and she seemed embarrassed to charge me the $5 I gave her for her efforts. And we got the zipper fixed! Yahoo! Here’s a photo of the zipper now. That shiny brass piece at the top on the right side makes all the difference.

I didn’t have to send them anywhere, I just went to a local shop.

Biker Quote for Today

Top 10 signs that a computer is owned by a Harley rider: 04. — There is a Skoal can mounted in the CD-ROM drive.