Passes & Canyons Blog

My V-Strom when it first arrived and became mine.

Item of note: Suzuki is doing a demo days event this weekend, Friday and Saturday, August 11 and 12, at Fay Myers Motorcycle World.

That demo days thing is of more interest than usual for me because for the first time in a very long time I’m giving thought to buying a motorcycle. And for the first time ever I’m considering selling a motorcycle. Or two. For someone who still owns and rides every motorcycle he has ever owned, this is unusual.

This all has to do with where I see the future going. I know that at some point I’m going to decide to sell my 1999 Kawasaki Concours because it is just so big and heavy. But it’s a great highway bike.

I really like my 2006 Suzuki V-Strom 650, and it does well on the highway, but having just been out for 10 days on the Concours it really brought home to me just how much better the Kawi is as a highway bike. Plus, I bought the V-Strom to be more comfortable off the pavement–and it is–but the truth is that I don’t really go off the pavement all that often.

Lately I had been seeing mentions of this latest Suzuki V-Strom 800DE. It occurred to me that maybe I ought to sell both the V-Strom 650 and the Concours and buy one of these larger V-Stroms that presumably would fill the niches both of the other bikes fill.

On the recent OFMC trip I mentioned this thinking to Bill and Dennis and they both responded enthusiastically. Both of them are the type who like to trade up for something new now and then just because, and they have a hard time understanding my preference for keeping the same bikes year after year. Plus, as Dennis pointed out, this new bike would presumably have cruise control, which would be so much better than my current throttle locks.

So I started reading more on the 800DE but what I read made me less, not more, interested in it. One thing I read said it was the most dirt-ready of any V-Strom ever, and since I’ve found that I just don’t get off the pavement all that much that was kind of a negative. Plus, the seat height is considerably higher than on my current V-Strom, which is already high for my short legs.

Still interested in the idea of a single bike replacing these two, I turned my thoughts to other bikes that might fill that bill. I looked around and came up with a couple possible choices but then on Tuesday I needed to go to Fay Myers to get a battery for my Honda. I talked about how a guy at Batteries Plus tested the one I have and said it was fine, just needed to be charged, and how Roy came over and checked it out and said he disagreed with that guy. When I tried to start that bike Tuesday it barely responded and I concluded Roy was the correct one.

Of course while I was at Fay Myers I looked at bikes. I hadn’t really thought about a used bike but they had a Honda Africa Twin that had all the extras already on it and that got me to thinking about going the used route: lower cost, extras already in place.

I climbed on the new V-Strom 800DE and found I could not get it off the side stand because of the seat height. So that settles that one point. Then I noticed a new regular V-Strom right next to it and sat on it. I instantly liked this bike. Is there anywhere within reasonable distance, I asked, where I could take a test ride on this bike? Yes, right here, on Friday and Saturday, was the reply. Oh my gosh!

How would the 2023 V-Strom be different from the 2006, I asked. It would be lighter(!), perhaps a little more powerful, and have upgraded electronics (i.e., cruise control and more). This is sounding better and better.

So that’s where it sits. I will definitely be over at Fay Myers on Friday, looking to do some test riding. But I’ve also looked at Craigslist, Motorado, and Cycle Trader to see what is available used. And there are a lot of nice-looking used bikes out there, many with all the gear already on them. Who knows, I may soon do the unthinkable and do some motorcycle trading.

Biker Quote for Today

“Two of the most important things to me; my wife & my bike.” — Anonymous

A sign we saw in a restroom at Alpine Junction.

It was cool in the morning as we left Kemmerer and a very pleasant ride past Fossil Butte National Monument, north through Cokeville on US 30, on north into the Star Valley, and a stop for gas at Alpine Junction.

That’s a really nice road leading up to the Star Valley and it was freshly paved with almost no traffic. Sweet! Getting into the Star Valley it was startling to see how development has discovered this once undiscovered place. It’s down the road a bit from Jackson so I guess it was inevitable; maybe the question is why it took so long.

We split off from US 89 at Alpine Junction, riding past the enormous Palisades Reservoir and down to the little town of Irwin to stop for lunch. I was leading and as we came up on this place I couldn’t tell if it was a motel or restaurant, or both, or whether it was open. By the time I saw there was a restaurant and it was open I was past the turn for the parking lot so I motioned for Bill and Dennis to pull in and made a turn just ahead to come back. What happened next is hearsay for me because I was totally unaware of any of it.

They tell me that as I was preparing to come back–and I know I looked both ways–that I pulled right out in front of a guy coming the other direction. And then nearly stopped right in front of him as he braked and blew his horn. For me what happened was that I looked both ways and maybe I saw this guy but he seemed to be far enough away and/or not moving so fast that it was not an issue. Then, I had failed to downshift when I pulled off to turn around so as I started moving the bike faltered till I quickly downshifted. And then I pulled in at the restaurant.

Bill and Dennis were beside themselves and I was totally oblivious. Oops.

After lunch we rode on to Idaho Falls, me leading, and all I knew for sure was that we wanted US 20 west and that meant going through town. I just followed the signs but our route was the epicenter of a major road construction project. And it was blazing hot. We crept through town until I was no longer seeing signs for US 20. Apparently I missed a turn in among all this chaos. I pulled into a gas station/convenience store and we went inside. After all that heat it took me 10 minutes in the cool to begin to feel like a human being again.

Dennis has GPS so we decided he would lead us out of town and to US 20. We took some country lanes and wandered a bit, all in the right direction, and then finally regained US 20. Then it was a scorching hot ride to Arco, our destination for the day.

The next day we were headed for Missoula, Montana. We took US 93 up to Challis and then north through Salmon. We gained some altitude so it was a little cooler but not as much as I had expected. But a nice road. One spectacular canyon coming down into Salmon. We had lunch and moved on.

The next town of any size was Darby and that was where we had the same experience as coming up the Star Valley. The entire 50 miles or so from Darby to Missoula is like the Colorado Front Range was 40 years ago: open spaces quickly turning into one unbroken city. The highway was four lanes and packed. In 10 years they’ll probably be expanding to six lanes and it won’t be enough.

Missoula itself astonished me. That town must be four times the size it was the last time I was there, less than 10 years ago, and it must be more than 10 times as large as it was the first time I was there, about 50 years ago. It was just mind-boggling. At least we didn’t have to go far into town to get to our motel but once there, to get across the road to the McDonald’s or other fast-food places meant either walk a tenth of a mile to the nearest traffic signal or risk your life crossing directly. Crazy.

Oh, and it was 104 degrees coming into Missoula.

Biker Quote for Today

Sometimes I look back on my life and I’m seriously impressed I am still alive.

Taking a break at the Flaming Gorge.

The OFMC, at this point consisting of Bill, Dennis, and me, took off on our yearly trip two Fridays ago, planning a longer trip than usual and thus an extra day to do the extra miles.

We headed out from Golden up Clear Creek Canyon, got on I-70 near Idaho Springs, and continued west on the slab. I was on my Kawasaki Concours, Bill on his Harley, and Dennis on his BMW. An uneventful ride to Vail, where we stopped for lunch at McDonald’s. That raised a question: Why does a place like that send a guy to clean the bathrooms during the lunch rush? Wouldn’t his efforts be more useful on the line at that point, and you know of all those customers there have to be quite a few wishing to use the restroom. Do these people ever think about these things?

Glenwood Canyon seemed especially beautiful in this very green summer. At Rifle we got gas, then turned north to Meeker. We got behind a truck and at a clear spot with no oncoming traffic I figured Bill would pass but there was a double yellow line and he didn’t. Then there was a dense stream of oncoming traffic and I was sure we were coming to construction. We did, but got there just as the tail end of the line started moving, so we didn’t have to stop. It was quite a few miles of gravel and dirt, and slow going.

We got to Meeker and typically for Bill, he rolled right past the motel. Dennis and I did not. My mantra on these trips is “never let Bill lead” but on a straight shot like this he could hardly go wrong . . . until he did.

Bill has friends who now live in Meeker and they said there were “doin’s” in the town park, come on down for free food and music. So we did. Bill and Dagney seemed quite nice and agreed to ride with us the next day to breakfast in Rangeley. They showed up the next morning on their Harleys and we had a really nice early morning cruise.

The place we went for breakfast turned out to have one cook and one waitress/cashier/drink preparer and the place was packed. It was 45 minutes before she was able to bring us water and ask for our orders. Everyone knows at this point how hard it is to get people to hire. We finally rolled out of there about 11 a.m.

We picked up US 40 at Dinosaur and went west to Vernal, Utah. Hot as blazes. It got a bit cooler as we gained elevation heading north toward the Flaming Gorge. That’s always a nice ride. Got a late lunch at Mountainview, Wyoming, passed under I-80, and rode another 45 minutes to Kemmerer, our stop for the night.

We learned from our waitress at dinner that there was a bluegrass festival going on in town that whole weekend, including right at that moment, but we were at a place just south of town and none of us was inclined to ride into town. Too bad, it would have been fun. Instead we spent a long time talking with a guy from Texas who had ridden his Harley-Davidson Pan America up to the Arctic Circle in Canada, then did a circuit through Alaska, and was now headed back home. Some people are more hard-core than us.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker when you can identify bugs by taste.