Passes & Canyons Blog

After our stupid joke Bill and I bought a round for the group in a bar in Medicine Bow.

If you ride in a group it’s the generally accepted practice that you are responsible for making sure the guy behind you is still there. And if he’s not you slow down to let him catch up, and if he still doesn’t show maybe you stop and wait. And if he still doesn’t show you go back.

My friend Jungle always says that if you stop you should wait five minutes before going back. If the guy behind is OK, five minutes won’t matter. If he’s dead it won’t matter either.

Now, that’s not to say that the OFMC has always followed this rule. I was heading west on I-70 behind Brett and Randy one time when I had a flat just east of Rifle. I pulled over but I couldn’t get off the bike because the road sloped away and if I put out my kickstand the bike was going to fall to the right. Fine, I’ll just wait here until they come back for me.

Well, they didn’t. After awhile I started waving at any bikers passing on the highway, hoping someone would stop to give me a hand. Several did pass, and seemed like they wanted to stop, but they were going fast and by the time they could have stopped they would have been a quarter mile down the road. But finally a couple did stop, and they started hoofing it back to where I was.

Just at that time a guy in a pick-up came along and he stopped. Do you need help? You bet I do. He helped me hoist the bike up onto the center stand, which is amazingly hard to do when you have a flat tire–not sure why. So by the time the biker couple got there all I could say was thanks a whole lot but I don’t need you any more. But thank you so much.

It turns out that Brett and Randy noticed I was not behind them so they pulled off at Rifle. But the exit goes downhill, to where you can’t see the vehicles passing by above on the highway. After sitting there a few minutes they decided I must have just gone on past them on the highway so they took off again. Wrong. Once I was finally able to rejoin the whole group the next day neither of them said one word, like “Oops” or “Sorry” or anything. Jungle told me, “You need new friends.”

Which brings me back to Bill and Ken’s really bad practical joke.

We were up in Wyoming one time coming down a highway in the middle of nowhere, me riding sweep and Bill just in front of me. We got to a fork and I don’t know how we knew this but we knew that if we took the fork to the right it would rejoin this same road a little further along. The other guys were going to the left. Presumably, considering when this was, Bill must have pulled over at the fork and when I pulled up next to him he suggested that we take this other road and ride fast and be waiting for them up ahead. A fun surprise.

So we peeled off and we got to where the roads rejoined and we sat and waited. And waited. And waited. Oops, you don’t suppose they noticed we weren’t there and are looking for us? Bill headed back on the road they were coming on while I sat at the intersection in case someone came the other way. And of course that’s what it was. They were looking all over for us, riding back the way we had all come and getting very concerned.

Considering how unorganized we were back then, the ploy might have worked except that just a quarter mile past the fork there was a rest area and the group pulled off. It was not hard to realize we were not there. Where are those guys? When did you see them last? They found out when Bill got all the way back to that spot.

They were not happy. They wouldn’t let us live that one down for a long time. What in the world made us think this would be a clever trick?

I do think that after my flat by Rifle everyone in the group really came to understand that you are responsible for keeping an eye on the guy behind you, so we’re not unteachable.

Biker Quote for Today

100 reasons not to date a biker: 20. We smell like leather and gasoline.

Those scuff marks show you exactly where Friggs’s face would have been ripped open.

The OFMC has never been as thoroughly safety-minded as the RMMRC but we’re human, we’re interested in preserving our own skins. So for 35 years we have ridden safely, with the worst crash being the one Friggs had in 2018 down in New Mexico. Very uncharacteristically, he had chosen that day to ride without his jacket but after going down his jeans were torn, his shirt was torn, and otherwise he was barely bruised. Amazingly.

The one thing that was badly damaged was his helmet. If you ever think a helmet is unneeded, just take a look at a helmet that has been through a serious crash. Then think about what that head underneath would have been like without it.

Now sure, everyone has dropped their bike in a parking lot or that sort of thing. Nobody’s gotten hurt. In all these years no one other than Friggs has ever gone down, which probably makes us one heck of a fortunate bunch. But we have had some close calls.

Probably the closest, the one that most likely could have led to death, was Dennis up in the Black Hills in 2014. We were staying several days in Hill City, doing day rides, and we were out on one of the many great roads up there and stopped at an intersection of two highways. We did whatever needed doing and were getting geared up and back on the bikes.

We were on one side of the road but needed to go the other way so I pulled out across the road onto the shoulder on the other side, facing the other direction. Dennis was the next to get ready. Now, you have to understand, Dennis is short. He had all the other guys between him and the road so he couldn’t really see up the road. There were also all these Harleys making a heck of a racket so he couldn’t hear anything either. He started across the road to join me.

What Dennis could not see, but all the rest of us did, was the semi coming right toward him. I know I was screaming but what good does that do? He couldn’t hear me. The others were screaming, too, and then there was the screeching of the brakes on that big truck. Did I mention that Dennis is also hard of hearing?

He got about halfway across the road and looked to his left and saw this truck screeching up toward him. His heart must have stopped for a moment. Fortunately the trucker was able to stop in time but for a moment it looked like the worst was about to happen. We didn’t ever want to see something like that again.

But then apparently it happened again, and this time it was me. I say “apparently” because I was totally oblivious to it all. I knew nothing until the guys told me later.

This was in 2023 up in the far northwest corner of Wyoming. I was leading and we were looking for a place for lunch. We came up on a restaurant but I couldn’t tell if it was open until I was past it. The other guys pulled over. I pulled over to turn around and go back. What they tell me is that as I pulled back onto the highway there was a car coming fast that I pulled right in front of. And that guy braked really hard. Yikes! I don’t see how that could have happened. It’s not like I don’t look both ways before pulling out, you know. But I got to the parking lot and Bill and Dennis both started yelling wildly and I had to ask what they were so excited about. Really? That happened? Big oops.

Then later on this same trip Bill had his moment but it was not of his doing. We were now in Idaho cruising down this highway with me in the lead, then Bill, then Dennis. A car passed me going the other way and then turned left right in front of Bill. You know the story. Fortunately, Bill avoided crashing into the guy. I’m convinced that it had to do with Dennis’s lights.

Dennis wants to be seen, so he has super bright lights that I say can be seen from space. Well, Bill’s stock headlight is really not very bright at all. I ride in front of him a lot and I know this. My suspicion is that the guy in the car absolutely saw Dennis’s lights but did not see Bill’s weak beam at all. He had plenty of time to turn in front of Dennis. Only problem is that Bill was there. I told Bill he needs brighter lights but he pooh-poohed that. Fine, it’s your life.

Other than that we’ve had the usual close calls. Like this year when we were heading into Buena Vista and a car going the other way decided to pass someone on a blind curve–just as I was coming around the curve from the other direction. Bill and I both pulled onto the shoulder to get out of that idiot’s way.

That kind of stuff is routine, unfortunately. But all in all it’s pretty amazing how well we’ve done over the years. We do care about our own skin.

Biker Quote for Today

You might be a Yuppie biker if you wear a full-face helmet; you wear a helmet; you wear earplugs. (Who the heck compiled this list? I’m sorry I have to take exception.)

Years later John and Bill, in the center, were still riding those Shadows with no windshields.

Revisiting the OFMC’s California trip the other day got me to thinking about how jerry-rigged the whole thing was even then. Yes, we did have good rainsuits, probably the first thing we learned early on that we needed. But what about things like a throttle lock or cruise control?

We rode a lot of days on that trip where we covered many miles and as I would imagine you know, holding onto that throttle grip for that long can get pretty dang tiring. But if you read that post you may be saying, What? How did Bill ride 35 miles hands-free if you didn’t have throttle locks?

Well, John is pretty inventive. What he rigged out for the two of them–I was OK just holding onto the grip–was a string tied to the handlebar with a Popsicle stick on the other end. They would get up to speed and insert that Popsicle stick between the grip and the float, wedging it in tightly enough that it would stay. It didn’t always stay put but hey, you just grab it and stick it back in. They covered a lot of miles like that.

And these long days were even longer than they might have been. Right from the start I have always insisted on having a windshield on my bikes. Those guys were just the opposite. Neither of them had windshields on their Shadows.

Now, John had had one on his Virago up until the time he and I spent a night out in Laramie doing some heavy drinking and he then went down on a patch of gravel making the turn into our motel. He got a little road rash was all, but his windshield was busted and rather than replace it he just took it off and rode without. Then he got the Shadow and it didn’t come with one and he never put one on.

OK, so fine, to each his own. But on this trip, when we were covering so many miles, I naturally wanted to run a little fast. But guess what? They didn’t like the buffeting they got from the wind so they didn’t want to go fast. In fact, much of the time they wouldn’t even go the speed limit. It’s a long ride across Utah and Nevada if you don’t even go the speed limit.

Neither of these guys ever got windshields until they each moved on to their first Harleys, which came with fairings. Then they wondered how they had ever done without them. I had wondered that for a long time before that. At least we all had gotten throttle locks eventually on the older bikes but windshields? Nope.

So that’s the low tech and the no tech. The high tech–at least relatively speaking–was, as I mentioned before, heated gear. It didn’t matter how cold they got on this trip while we were along the coast. And it didn’t matter how cold they got any other time, whether we were on the trip or just doing a day ride. And we did one day ride where we got surprised by an unexpected snow storm. They never got heated gear, despite complaining about being so cold and hearing me rave about my electric vest. And then later my heated gloves. OK guys, your choice.

Of course, now I’m the one who doesn’t have an actual cruise control on either of my bikes. And the throttle lock on my V-Strom really doesn’t work very well. But retrofitting them with cruise control would be a real job and costly, if they even make units that would work on those bikes. That’s what I’ve got my eyes set on with the next bike I get. Whatever I get, assuming I ever buy another bike, I really, really want cruise control.

Biker Quote for Today

Why motorcycles are better than women: Your motorcycle won’t leave you for another rider.