Passes & Canyons Blog

A section of the RIDE BYND home page.

I didn’t deliberately decide to post twice in a row about motorcycle websites but I take things as they come, so here we are.

In my email this morning I had two messages, one from RIDE BYND and the other from Ride Apart.

I’m familiar with RIDE BYND (pronounced “Ride Beyond”) because of these VANHA magazines I found in the waiting area at Fay Myers when I was having one of my bikes worked on. I wanted to check VANHA out and found that the magazine no longer is printed but they have a site called RIDE BYND. I signed up for their notifications and have by now received about four of these monthly notices. I had never clicked through to actually see what they were doing there so today I decided it was time.

Rather than a print magazine, what RIDE BYND appears to offer is videos, although their home page is divided between “Latest Episodes” and “Latest Videos.” The episodes are often long, more than an hour, and those I checked out focus mainly on individuals doing cool stuff on motorcycles. The videos are generally short, often just showing some cool footage of riding.

Here’s how they describe themselves.

RIDE BYND is more than just a podcast about motorcycles — it’s a celebration of the passion, creativity, and untold stories of the people who ride them. Hosted by the co-founder of VAHNA, Ben Giese dives into deep conversations with athletes, artists, adventurers, industry icons, and trailblazers from all walks of life—exploring the experiences that shape their journeys, both on and off the bike. The motorcycle is our connection. The stories are what take us BYND.

As for Ride Apart, I don’t know how I came to be on their mailing list, but I’ve been getting their emails for a while. It seems to be a general motorcycle-oriented site offering news, reviews, features, makes, models, with photos and videos.

The article that caught my eye this morning was headlined, “If You’re Against Motorcycle Helmet Laws, You’re an Idiot.” Considering my own recent remarks about helmets and helmet laws, I had to check this out.

The article is written by Jonathon Klein and, to extract just a bit, his main argument is, “But here’s the real truth, humans are inherently stupid animals, and we do all manner of dumb things all the freakin’ time. We can’t leave our phones in a cupholder for a second while driving a potentially idiotic 10,000-pound electric Hummer, for Pete’s sake. Why should we then be entrusted with our own safety? And that’s sorta where I’m at in terms of helmet laws, as I’m very much for them. Not because I like a nanny state or big government, I really don’t. But because I’d rather not see my fellow motorcyclists die a horribly painful death because they were too freakin’ stupid to just wear a full face helmet while out on the road. I mean, the data says it all, they increase your chances of survival in an accident.”

OK. Not a lot of new thought or information added to this long-running dispute.

Another example of what they publish is an article titled, “Despite What Amazon Says, You Shouldn’t Follow a Motorcycle So Freakin’ Closely.” This tells about what is purported to be a page from an Amazon.com delivery driver training manual that says to leave a four-foot distance between your delivery van and a motorcycle ahead of you. OK, yeah, I’ll read to see what that’s all about.

So they have kept up a steady progression of articles I have found interesting enough to click through on. Maybe you would do so as well. Check it out if you’re interested.

Biker Quote for Today

If you go fast enough on your bike you can fast forward your life to the very end.

Home page for the Motorcycle Travel Network website.

I got a big surprise Saturday when my phone pinged with a text. It was from the Motorcycle Travel Network (MTN), a couple from near Toronto asking to spend the night here in mid September.

The MTN was something of a precursor to Air BNB and that kind of thing. Motorcyclists join and if you’re traveling you can find other motorcyclists to stay with for a token “expense” fee. Meet people who share your passion and who can direct you to the best roads and places to go in the area. No one knows local like the locals.

Or you open your home to other bikers and the roles are flipped. Judy and I have done both and we have thoroughly enjoyed both. And met some really nice people.

I’ve been a big fan of the MTN for a long time but they had seemed to fizzle out awhile ago. It was run by a couple and then he died. Time passed and there was little if any activity on the site, but then she decided to reinvigorate it and for a year or two it seemed to be back. Then nothing again.

Well now I see that the situation has changed a bit. It used to be to visit or to host you needed to be a paid member. That was about $40 a year the last I checked. Now, however, if you want to visit you need to be a paying member, but if you only want to host there is no membership fee. That’s why even though I haven’t paid in a long time we are still listed as being hosts.

The way this would work for most people would be to be listed and take guests and then only if you’re going on a trip and want to stay with MTN people, at that time you pay to become a member. If you stay one night with some folks you’ll save much more than you would have spent on one night’s lodging and you’re now good for a year.

We have had so much fun with people who have stayed with us and who we have stayed with. And they’re from all over the world. We’ve had a number of Canadians, some Germans, and others I can’t remember where they were from.

Now we have something to look forward to. You can bet I’ll tell you all about their visit afterward.

Biker Quote for Today

Spending a week on bikes in a foreign world is more than a trip; it’s a way to connect with new place, people, and most of all with yourself.

This is not really sharp because it is a photo of a laptop screen. The image is flopped, or shot from below, not above, but on the left (right in real life) near the top you can see an area where my brain is pushed away from the skull a bit. This is a huge, huge improvement over the scan just before surgery.

I was in to see the results of my latest CT scan on Tuesday and it looked vastly better. And I’m feeling good, so now I can drive again and ride a motorcycle and drink wine and go to the gym, right?

Not so fast. It seems like they could have told me this earlier but apparently it is standard practice for brain surgery patients to refrain from driving and most of these other things for a full 12 weeks after surgery. 12 weeks! Huong, who removed the staples from my head, said she knows when you’re living it 12 weeks seems like a long time. But just think, she said, about not following protocol and having bad things result that you’ll live with for a whole lot longer.

OK. But that throws a whole of things I had in mind out the window.

For starters, all these many years I have always made it my practice to ride all my bikes at least once every calendar month. The only time I have not done so was for two months following my heart surgery. Now it looks as though brain surgery will do the same, causing me to miss two entire months of riding. It’s also going to make it a lot harder to keep coming up with topics for this blog because mostly what I write about is riding.

I had a lot of specific plans. Next week the RMMRC is doing a day ride up to the newly re-opened Bucksnort Saloon. I had been counting on that being my first post-surgery ride. Nope.

Then the following week I had every intention of going to Cheyenne for a Yamaha demo days event up there so I could test ride a Tracer 9. If I liked it as much as I expect I would then have come home and done a little shopping and gone to buy one. Now I’m wondering if I’ll just end up waiting for next year’s demo events and do all this at that time.

Also, Nick from Chicago wants to come out and ride the Million Dollar Highway. I was going to plan that ride for the two of us and then post it on the RMMRC site for anyone else in the group to join us. That would have happened in September. What I figure I’ll do is go ahead and map out the ride and then post that on the site, with the understanding that I will not be along to be the leader, which whoever posts the ride generally is. Someone else will need to lead. And I’ll hook Nick up with them so he’ll have that group to go with.

Plus, I was planning on just doing a bunch of riding on my own to make up for lost time. Judy said it was like when she broke her arm when she was a teenager. She missed the entire summer season at the local swimming pool. Why couldn’t she have broken her arm in November instead of June!

So now, in six weeks I’ll go back for my ninth–and this time maybe really final–CT scan, and then I’ll see the doctor in four more weeks. Then I can resume a normal life? I sure hope so.

There is one small step forward. Huang said it would be OK for me to drink maybe half a glass of wine at dinner now. Not a whole glass, just half. Consider it done.

Biker Quote for Today

My helmet has many stories to tell of me banging it walking out of doorways.

The Shoei that saved my head. You can see scrapes that would have been chunks out of my face without it.

I remain to this day a believer that it should be up to the rider to decide whether or not to wear a helmet. That said, I truly believe that anyone who rides without a helmet is a fool. I know I’m not the only one who holds both those beliefs.

My recent crash just emphasizes that second point.

Sure, for many years riding with the OFMC, when it was mostly just John, Bill, and me, we all rode much of the time without helmets. We always carried them because we sometimes were in states where they were required. Plus, if it rains a helmet is a very nice thing to have and in winter it helps keep your head warm.

Even that first helmet was nothing to brag about. It was a used Bieffe that I bought at a yard sale for $25. But I figure it had not been in a crash because it was not scraped the way my Shoei was (above).

But as we all three gradually moved more and more toward wearing them I was the one who held out the longest.

I went 37 years with no crashes. And then I had a crash. A bad one. It was not at all my fault. I was stopped at a red light waiting to make a left turn and a drunk drove straight into me. I went down hard, hard enough that I ultimately needed a bit of brain surgery. Imagine what shape my head and my brain would be in today if I had not had that helmet on.

So now as I’m out and about (Judy still doing all the driving) when I see bikers without helmets I cringe. In so many cases it is Harley riders. I totally get it. I understand the desire to ride without that helmet. And hey, I know it just won’t happen to you. Just like it didn’t happen to me–until it did.

A couple years ago I was at an intersection when I heard the sound of a crash. I turned to see a car stopped in a peculiar angle and a Harley on  the ground. I ran over to help and the rider was bleeding like a stuck pig from his ear, which was half torn off. His lobe was dangling from a slender piece of skin. And they didn’t even hit each other. They both made evasive moves and he went down as he avoided her. But he got hurt pretty badly.

I kind of think it is a situation where you have a lot of people who are just uninformed and have not really taken a hard look at reality. That’s part of why I’ve spent so much time documenting my experience. If you know someone you’d like to persuade to wear a helmet you might direct them to this whole series of posts and once they’ve read about what I’ve gone through ask them if they had ever really considered the potential consequences, in such concrete depiction.

So yeah, for many years I was a fool. A huge fool. But I’ve been a lot of things in my life that I no longer am. Once a fool is not always a fool. At least it doesn’t have to be.

Biker Quote for Today

I started riding to attract women. So far the only women I meet due to riding are orthopedic nurses and they are NOT impressed.

This is a screen shot of part of an email I got from the claims adjuster handling the bills from my crash.

I was at the July RMMRC meeting and we were discussing my recent crash. Tom, who is an attorney, said very authoritatively that if the guy was uninsured then I would be stuck with all the costs, because uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage on your car stays with the car, not with you.

I told him no, he was wrong. I had been told by someone in the emergency room that that sort of coverage goes with the person, not the vehicle. One of the first things I did once I was released from the hospital was to call our agent. He confirmed that the coverage goes with me, not the vehicle, and he urged me to open a claim right away. I did.

The first bill I got was for the ambulance. It was about $1,800. I directed them to Colorado Farm Bureau, giving them the claim number. That was the last I heard of that.

I later got an email from the claims person handling my case. That screen shot above is what she told me about charges they would be covering. Apparently everything else is being covered by Medicare.

It’s important that you understand this situation. As an attorney, Tom has a lot of experience in this sort of thing. But he was wrong. How many thousands of dollars would I have been billed for the ER physician and the ER facility? I know as far as radiology goes, they did three CT scans on me while I was there. We’re talking serious bucks here. All this while suffering the financial loss of my motorcycle and my helmet, about $3,500 worth by my estimate.

If you’ve been following this all along I hope you’re not getting too burned out on hearing about my crash and the aftermath. It has been a real learning experience for me and I’ve been trying to pass what I’ve learned along to you. There’s so much I had no idea of and I suspect most people have no more clue than I did.

So anyway, on Friday I’ll go in for my eighth and, I hope, final CT scan. Then on Tuesday I’ll go in to see what the scan showed and to have these staples removed from my head. Then maybe I’ll be able to turn my attentions to more upbeat topics, such as the new bike I’ll be buying and the new helmet and riding suit that I plan to get. And after that maybe I’ll even be able to start writing about rides I’ve gone on. That’ll sure make me happy.

Biker Quote for Today

Any motorcycle can serve you your whole life if you ride fast enough.

Bill remarked that my doctor ruined my hairdo. John made the obvious comparison to a football.

So I went in to Swedish and they drilled a couple holes in my head to drain the excess fluid that was building up inside my skull and pushing my brain off to the side, where it was not intended to be. Now I’m at home, taking drugs that drain all my energy and leave me laid out on the couch most of each day.

But my latest CT scan looks much better and if the next one, in about 10 days, continues to look better I should be back on the path to normalcy soon. Meanwhile I’m not supposed to drive for three weeks or consume alcohol or exert myself more than just a little. This puts a big load on Judy but as she said, if it had been her I would do it. This is what being married is all about sometimes. I just can’t imagine someone in this condition having no one to care for them.

I had wondered about the surgery. Would they cut two little V-shaped patches and pull the skin back to drill? Apparently not. It makes sense. They seem to have made one long slit and pulled the skin back enough at each end to drill. Then when it was time to seal me up they just used staples. The skin around your skull is custom fitted and snug so imagine trying to get that all back smoothly using needle and thread. Staples make more sense, plus it’s a whole lot easier to push the skin back together with your fingers and then, ka-chunk. And apparently there are not a lot of nerve endings up there because they did it without any anesthesia and it really didn’t hurt much. Who knew?

Biker Quote for Today

Loud pipes are loud pipes.