Passes & Canyons Blog

I recently got wind of a concerning situation. It seems the restaurant that houses the Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Museum, in Colorado Springs, has closed. Considering that the museum is in the building and you get to it by walking through the restaurant and then upstairs, you have to wonder what this portends for the museum.

Their website doesn’t say anything at all about it, but their Facebook page does say a little. And what they do say is this:

We are OPEN once again to the public!
Our hours are Thursday, Friday and Saturday 10am – 5pm
19 N. Tejon Street – 2nd floor – Downtown Colorado Springs
THANK YOU for your support and patience as we work thru the closure of the Tejon Eatery. As always, admission is FREE!

The restaurant in question is/was the Tejon Eatery and Bar. In the news article in the Colorado Springs Gazette it said that the restaurant owner said the museum will remain open for now but that doesn’t tell us anything about the future. The two owners, Sam and Kathy Guadagnoli, opened and ran the place but Sam, who was a big motorcycle buff, died in September. The restaurant is said to never have been profitable.

I emailed whoever runs their website asking for further information and I’ll update if I hear anything new.

Later–OK, I did hear back from Pam Wear, Secretary/Treasurer of the museum, and here is what she said:

Hello Ken,
The restaurant closed with no notice in October. Yes, it did affect our operation. We are now open Thursday through Saturday 10 am to 5 pm, and will be adding as the situation evolves.
The Museum has been open since 1992, we will continue. We are actually seeing quite a few visitors!
Thank you!

Biker Quote for Today

You’re the coolest old guy I know. You must pick up a TON of chicks at the nursing home with that bike.

I’ve said numerous times before that if you are going to ride all year round then you have to be opportunistic in the winter. On December 3 the temps were in the 50s and the fierce winds of the last two days had died down. Falling temps were predicted in the days ahead and that was all I needed to get out on all three bikes. I hope it’s not the last time I’ll be able to get out but if it is at least I did get each bike ridden a little this month.

I started out on the V-Strom, in the middle of the day. The V has the least protection from the wind so I wanted to use the warmer part of the day. Wearing my electric vest was a no-brainer and I turned it on right away. I very quickly concluded that another layer on my legs would have been nice.

If you’re going to ride three motorcycles in one day it kind of means you’re not going a long way on any of them. But I don’t just go out and ride around the block. (I did that one time years ago but at that time the run around my block was about six miles long. And the temperature was about 20. But I had to get my ride in for that month.)

So I did a nice little scoot and came on home but then I had other things I needed to do. Maybe I would get to the other two later, maybe not.

Several hours later I could get out again so I took the Concours. It has the best weather protection and at this point I had put on long underwear. It’s always interesting to me how it feels getting on the Connie after being on the V. There’s just a lot more power; it’s an impressive motorcycle. I never notice any shortage of power when I’m on the V but in comparison the Connie makes it seem weak. Whatever.

Another fairly short ride this time because now I was thinking about getting the third in. And it was getting later in the afternoon.

I got home and switched to the CB750 Custom and headed out. Very little wind protection on this bike and it wasn’t long before even the long underwear was feeling like not enough. Pretty quickly the sun went behind a bank of clouds, never to reemerge on this day, and the temperature starting dropping fast.

I took a different route than I have before and was coming up University Boulevard, figuring I’d go east on Yale. But I was thinking Colorado Boulevard, not University, so I was looking for the Colorado and Yale intersection. That meant I blew right on through the University and Yale intersection. No problem, I’d just go on up to Evans.

But then as I was coming up alongside the University of Denver, nearing Evans, I decided to turn east on Harvard. I hadn’t been down through that University Park neighborhood in many years to this would at least be something different. Oh my gosh! We’ve all seen areas where a lot of houses have been scraped off so new, big homes can be built in their places. Also the pop-tops, where they take the basis of the house and enlarge it hugely. Well, this entire neighborhood has been scraped. Not a pop-top in sight and hardly a single original home still standing. Every now and then there would be on old original but I have never seen any area so completely scraped and rebuilt.

And many of these homes are gargantuan. There was one in particular what looked like it extended all the way from the sidewalk in front to the alley in back with zero footage given to yard. Huge!

So that made my ride at least a little more than just an obligatory running of the steeds. It’s all about exploring. You can explore even in the middle of the city you live in if you just turn at a different corner than you typically do.

Biker Quote for Today

Guys on motorcycles are just cyclists too lazy to peddle.

In the beginning, John got a 750 Virago, then I got a CB750 Custom, and then Bill got an 1100 Shadow. The groundwork was laid for the OFMC, which officially launched within a year with our first trip.

That first trip was in 1989. Since then the group grew to as large as 10 but has now dropped back to three core riders and a new fourth who we hope will continue with us. Over the years there have been 13 of us all told. Every year we take at least one long trip, usually of one week.

Bikes have changed, gear has gotten better, and we’ve all gotten a bit grayer and a bit heavier. But every year we still ride.

These are the tales of the OFMC.

Is that dramatic enough? There ought to be some urgent music in the background, some pounding kettle drum building in intensity and pushing the tension to a crescendo. Then an eruption, fireworks, and cataclysm, leading finally to a spreading diminuendo. Now the mood is set. Our story begins.

The first OFMC trip was really just a long weekend. We left on Saturday and got home on Monday. John was a teacher and so was off for the summer and I was in one of my frequent bouts of unemployment. Bill just took a day off work. Let’s go have some fun.

We had no gear. All we took with us was tents and sleeping bags bungeed to the back of our bikes. We had no destination or plans of any sort. We probably headed toward Kremmling just because that was where John’s mother lived and he thought it would be nice to pay her a visit. After the visit we continued west on US 40 till we got to Steamboat Springs where, coming into town, we saw they had a small municipal water park with slides and pools and other cool (as in temperature) things that looked very appealing on this hot day. Just back up the road a short distance we had seen a campground so we agreed to stop here for the night and get in the water.

There wasn’t much to Steamboat at that time. After the water park there was still plenty of daylight and there was a road leading from our campground up into the hills so we decided to explore. Imagine our surprise to come upon a one-block stretch of shops and restaurants, and one multi-story parking garage, all by themselves up on the hill. We didn’t know it then but that was the beginning of the explosion of Steamboat Springs, and was the commercial center of the coming ski area-centered development. But for us it was just this weird area stuck out there in the middle of nothing. We had dinner and then slept down by the river in our tents.

The next day we headed on west to Craig and then John must have had an idea where he wanted to go next. We turned south on CO13 down through Meeker and on to Rifle, turning off before Rifle to go into Rifle Gap State Park. This was the place where Christo had put up his “Valley Curtain,” probably the project that first brought him to most Americans’ attention. We parked in a lot where you have to carry your gear in a ways to the campsites and set up camp. Then it was time to go check out the falls and swim again.

I mentioned we had absolutely no gear, right? Well, we didn’t even have swim suits. At the water park we had just work cut-offs; here at the falls there was no one else around so we just jumped in in our underwear. What’s the real difference between a swimsuit and underwear anyway?

Then we rode into Rifle for dinner. The one thing I really remember about that ride into Rifle and back was that there was a good bit of gravel on the road and I was still really learning to ride. I probably didn’t even have 2,000 miles under my belt at this time. Bill and John had both had scooters when they were kids and were a lot more used to slipping around on loose stuff so took that road a lot faster than I was comfortable going. The ride back in the dark, especially, was for me a bit scary. And my rear end did slide out a bit a couple times. Not my most favorite part of the trip.

The next day was really nothing much. We rode into Rifle for breakfast then jumped on I-70 for home. But we had set the ball in motion that is still rolling.

Biker Quote for Today

Put the fun between your legs.