Passes & Canyons Blog

This is going to be more the piece I started out to write a week ago, about best rides. I really should have been thinking in terms of best roads. So now that I’ve got my head screwed on straight, let’s go.

One was the Stewart’s Point Skaggs Springs Road in California. The company I was working for sent me out for a month to Sacramento and I was determined to ride while I was out there. My bike was back in Colorado, however, so I went to a dealership there and ended up speaking with the owner, asking if he would agree to sell me a bike now and then buy it back from me a month later, of course for a bit less. He said sure, no problem. Bless his soul.

That put me on a 1984 Honda Nighthawk 550. And every weekend I was there I took off on Friday after work and came back to the motel on Sunday evening. I rode down to Yosemite one weekend and covered as much territory as I could in the time I had.

On one of these trips I headed through the Northern California wine country. I had a map but mostly I was just wandering. I decided to take a road up past this big lake and somewhere along the way I saw there was a road that cut through the hills to the coast. Oh, yeah, I definitely want to go to the coast.

This road was the Stewart’s Point Skaggs Springs Road. I almost lost the trail getting to it, finding myself in a really odd little hill community with not a lot of road signs. But I made the correct turns and was on my way. What a road! This little piece of great asphalt (roads stay nice in California because they don’t suffer the freeze-thaw cycle we get here in Colorado) was the most curvy little thing you can imagine. And in most places it was only one lane wide. Deep in the forest. If not for the road itself you could have believed the nearest civilization was a thousand miles away. It was unreal.

And then it came out right on the coast, on Highway 1.

A few years later when the OFMC made its first trip to California I took John and Bill to this road and while John loved it as much as I did, Bill said it started making him feel motion-sickness with all the constant curves. Sorry Bill. We loved it.

Then there was the Alpine Loop, in Utah, on another OFMC trip. The three of us were in Heber City headed for Salt Lake City and we asked a local what the best way to get there was. We were figuring a loop north and then west or else a different loop west and then north. Nope. This person told us about the Alpine Loop, which took the diagonal–more or less–through the hills and brings you out just south of Salt Lake City.

To get to it we just needed to head west, toward Provo, but then turn north and follow that road up past Sundance, Robert Redford’s place, and just keep going. Wow, what a road!

Once again, this thing was full of twists and turns and at places it, too, was one-lane. Instead of going through cities and riding the interstate we were in the hills away from traffic and congestion and out where it was gorgeous. What a fabulous ride. The road did finally bring us down into Little Cottonwood Canyon, which spills out onto Sandy, Utah. That road was so good we’ve been on it at least twice more since then. And who would have known it was there were it not for that friendly local. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

So that’s a couple. Maybe I’ll remember a few more and revisit this theme again.

Biker Quote for Today

Taking the scenic route all summer long.

I took a short, no-big-deal ride on Sunday, just my monthly run to the wine store that I do on a bike as often as weather permits. But then I started checking to see if I could spot anyone using their phone in their car.

That practice became illegal earlier this year and theoretically there should be fewer people doing it. And also theoretically, you ought to be able to notice a lot more cars with hands-free attachments on their dashboards or windshields. I don’t search extensively; I’ve got a motorcycle to ride after all. But especially when I’m on a multi-lane street and I’m easing past someone it’s not hard to take a quick glance in as you go by them.

What surprised me was how many hands-free mounts I saw. Wow. People really are taking their safe driving seriously. Some at least.

That’s not to say that everyone is. I did see one woman with her phone pressed up to her ear, and another one who was looking into her lap rather than at the road ahead. I actually favor the one with her phone to her ear because at least her eyes were on the road. At that moment. Who knows where they had been a few moments before or after.

Mostly what I saw was people driving their cars. What a concept.

Driving while using your cellphone is not specifically a motorcycling issue, it’s really a motorcycling, driving, walking, bicycling and whatever else issue. Those people cause crashes. I know this first hand; fortunately I was uninjured by this red-light runner. My car was totaled.

Be smart. Be considerate. Don’t use your phone when you’re driving. And call out any of your friends who still just don’t get it. The life you save may be your own.

Biker Quote for Today

You own a car, not the road.