Passes & Canyons Blog

Taking a holiday today. I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving.

But yeah, I’ll put in a quote.

Biker Quote for Today

Two wheels, endless possibilities.

I wanted to ride Sunday but by the time I got stuff done that needed doing I had missed the window of warmth. The sky had clouded over and the temperature was dropping. So I got on the V-Strom and headed out. I’m no fair-weather rider.

I didn’t turn on the electric vest immediately but by the time I’d gone about two miles I did. Yep, gonna be a chilly one. Hope I don’t regret not having my heated gloves.

I had no idea where I was going. I’ve been heading to the hills as often as I could knowing the weather had to change soon, but this day the clouds over the mountains were looking threatening and I figured that was not a good idea. Instead of west I went south.

I still had no idea where I was going, though. On an impulse, I turned east on Belleview, through the south end of Cherry Creek State Park and it bends south to become Peoria. I went around Centennial Airport and to regain Peoria but hadn’t gone far when I concluded that yeah, it’s darn chilly. Maybe I don’t want to go too far from home. I turned west on Liberty Boulevard, which runs around the south end of the airport and over into the Inverness area.

Stopping to get a quick photo with the airport and mountains in the background I did see the only other biker I would see on this day.

Inverness Parkway took me north to County Line Road and I went west on County Line. Just because I didn’t want to get much further from home didn’t mean I wanted to head home. By now I was used to the cold and finding it brisk but pleasant. Thank you to the electric vest for that. Without it I would have been pretty uncomfortable.

I followed County Line all the way to Broadway and then turned north. What a lot of construction there is at the moment on County Line Road. I guess they’re expanding from two lanes to four in a long stretch of it. That’s probably overdue. Then going north on Broadway I hit a bunch more construction. These guys must be rushing to finish the work before bad weather sets in.

From Broadway I turned east on Belleview and headed back home. Not the longest or most scenic ride ever but it was good to be out on the bike for about an hour and a half. I still have a lot of making up to do from having missed the whole summer and I want to get out as much as I can, even when the weather is not the best. Sunday was one of those days.

Biker Quote for Today

The road is my stage, and my bike is my dance partner.

I need a new helmet. I still have one decent helmet but my best one, a Shoei, gave its life for me on June 29 and needs to be replaced. So while I was at Performance Cycle last week I looked, with the assistance of Stevie, at helmets. I hadn’t planned to but hey, I was there.

According to Stevie the best helmets are made by Shoei and Arai. I was interested to look at the Arai because I know the Shoei but don’t really know anything about the Arai.

The one thing that caught my eye immediately is that they specify whether their helmets are intended for people with rounder heads or people whose heads are more oval in shape. This is fabulous. When I started riding I had two Bieffe helmets and both of them were incredibly uncomfortable. Painful. That was a big part of why, in my early days, I mostly rode without a helmet; wearing the helmet I had hurt.

It was only when I needed a new helmet in the middle of the RMMRC’s Great River Road trip in 2022 that I came to understand. I was talking with a guy in a shop and he explained it to me. If you buy a helmet for a round head it is going to press hard into your forehead. That’s why you need an oval helmet.

Now Stevie, at Performance, was fully aware of this. That’s good in a salesman. And he said the Shoei was actually a compromise between the two extremes, while the Arai was an all-out oval. I tried on the Arai and I was not as pleased as I expected to be with the way it felt. It felt super snug. Stevie checked, having me push the helmet all the way one direction and then inserting his fingers between the helmet and my head and he said the fit was actually quite good. And maybe once I would wear it a while the padding would adjust to the shape of my head and feel good.

But then there is the price. The Arai runs about $200 more than the Shoei, and the Shoei is not cheap. We’re talking $650 and $450 respectively. It would be hard for me to pay that extra $200 for something that doesn’t feel especially comfortable. And maybe my head really is more midway between round and oval.

I think I’m going to get the Shoei. It’s the RF-SR model. Basic but a very good helmet. There’s a limited color selection so I guess I’ll go with white this time (my old one was black) for the increased visibility. And maybe I’ll put a bunch of colorful decals on it.

Biker Quote for Today

Adrenaline is my fuel; adventure is my destination.

With a near-record high temperature and forecasts for snow–finally–in just a couple days I wanted to get into the hills for perhaps the last time this year. And gosh, I never have to decide what bike to ride anymore, it’s always the V-Strom.

The quickest, most direct route is to get on Hampden (also known as US 285) just a couple blocks north of home and heat straight west. But I’ve been that route a thousand times so I often look for something else. I didn’t really know just where I was headed so I went south on Yosemite to Arapahoe and then west. Yeah, I’ve been that route plenty, too, but not as much as Hampden. Then Arapahoe ends at Broadway so I turned south on Broadway.

My thought was to get onto C-470 and go west but when I got to Mineral I realized that if I have ever been on that particular stretch of Mineral it was only once and I have forgotten it. So great! A new road to ride. And no, it did not look at all familiar. With a metropolitan area as large as Denver’s, you can be surprised to find how many roads you’ve never been on. You get to explore in town.

I got past Santa Fe and crossed the Platte and it was all undeveloped and really pretty. I guess this must be floodplain and will never get built on. We can hope. By the time I reached Kipling I was back on a portion of Mineral I have been on. I pushed on west all the way over to C-470 as it comes north now and expected to have to take it north or south but found that Mineral feeds directly into the mouth of a small canyon. Great, I’ll keep going.

Then I recognized it. This is part of Ken Caryl Ranch and we have family living out here. I took the road going south a little past C-470–South Valley Road–and realized I had accidentally done a great job of navigating. As I had been cruising along Mineral I had figured out a tentative route and that included going up Deer Creek Canyon Road. Well, South Valley Road goes south through a beautiful valley with lots of gorgeous rock formations and open space and meets up with Deer Creek Canyon Road. Couldn’t have done better if I’d planned it that way.

I turned up Deer Creek Canyon Road and a lot of other bikers had chosen this same road. No matter whether they were going the same direction I was or the other direction, they all blasted past me. I was just not in a hurry. I was interested in savoring this gorgeous day. Unlike when I’d been up this way last week, this time I did not take the turn onto South Deer Creek Road but kept going on Deer Creek Canyon Road up and over the top and down to South Turkey Creek Road. I went east a short distance till I made the turn onto North Turkey Creek Road, headed toward Evergreen.

Then again, unlike my other ride last week, I did not turn up High Drive but stayed on the Turkey Creek road, all the way up to CR 73, which runs between Conifer and Evergreen. At this point in the day, deep in the canyon there were a lot of places with bright sunshine followed by deep shade. You can’t see a thing in the shaded area so as you approach it you hope there is no sharp turn as soon as you get into what you cannot now see. On top of that, on the right-handers there is a lot of gravel thrown up onto the road by cars that cut the corner a bit too tight. So the real nightmare is plunging into the shadows and finding yourself faced with a sharp right turn and a lot of gravel on the road.

Fortunately that was not the case usually but in at least one spot that was exactly what I encountered, and this particular spot had more gravel than any other place I saw. It’s times like that when you really ought to be taking it easy. I was, but boy did I see a lot of guys–on sportbikes mostly–who were riding pretty aggressively. Not for me, thanks.

So I made it on up to Evergreen and turned down Bear Creek Canyon to Morrison. Then I cut over to US 285 and turned east for home. Wow, did I have a nice ride! And now the weather is already turning colder and we’ll see if this snow arrives as predicted.

Biker Quote for Today

Bikers don’t follow the crowd; they make their own path.

I’ve known ever since that crash occurred on June 29 that I was going to need to buy some new gear. A new helmet at the very least, considering that the one I was wearing had done its job and needed to be retired. To that end, I visited Performance Cycle on Wednesday. My initial intent was to look at riding suits but I ended up looking at a lot more.

I’ve got several particulars I’m looking for in a riding suit. First, I want something highly visible, so black is out. With what’s available in the stores now that seems to narrow it down to gray or gray with some neon yellow trim. OK, I can live with that. Besides, I’m figuring on wearing a high-viz mesh vest over it all so that should be the more important factor.

I also want pants and a jacket that can be connected as one unit, at least as much as possible. Apparently that means zipping them together just in the back. Fine, that will do. And I want something with an inner liner for winter warmth.

Waterproof is another criterion. Here’s where it starts getting tricky. I recently read about how suits that keep you dry can also end up trapping moisture inside and that doesn’t sound good at all. Gore-Tex looks like the answer because it supposedly keeps moisture out but “breathes” so sweat can get out. I need to find that stuff I read before to see what the issue was.

I also want zippers that will not fail. The Rev-It! riding pants I have now have silicone(?) zippers in the vents and one of them has completely failed. It is stuck open–not the best in winter. Also, the main zipper came undone a while ago and it was very hard to get it back together and functional. The Rev-It! pants I looked at no longer use that silicone zipper and I would hope the metal zippers are better. But that would be a reason I might go with a different brand.

All that said, I identified several possibilities: the Klim Carlsbad suit, the Alpinestars Bogota suit, and the Rev-It! Sand 5 H2O. They’re all roughly the same price, around $1,000 total for the two pieces. Now I want to investigate all three to see what reviewers and users have had to say about their plusses and minuses. If you have any experience or recommendations on any of these please pass your thoughts along.

I also looked at helmets, glove liners, and warm base layers. Stevie, the Performance Cycle guy who assisted me, was very helpful and gave me all kinds of things to consider and choose between. I’ll get into those items next time.

Biker Quote for Today

“Riding a motorcycle is a tribute, a tip of the helmet as it were, to our rugged ancestors who challenge us through the dust of centuries, proof that we have succumbed to the safety nets of civilization.” — Foster Kinn

I’ve told at length of the crash I had on June 29 and its aftermath, including that my 1980 Honda CB750 Custom was totaled in the crash. I’ve showed a couple photos of the bike in the yard where it was hauled and some folks have questioned my statement that it had been totaled. It doesn’t really look all that bad. So I figured I’d discuss that.

When I was much younger I took the word “totaled” to mean that a vehicle was beyond repair. Later I came to understand that it really means that while it could be repaired, the expense to do so is more than the vehicle is worth. In short, the latter is why I deemed it totaled.

Before I went to the yard to look at it I spoke with my mechanic and he said I should shoot some pictures and send them to him, and he would be able to tell by looking at it whether it could be repaired. I did so but never heard from him, so I was on my on in making the decision.

First off, salvage yards like that are running a huge racket. By the time I was able to go see it it had been there three days and the charge was $135 per day for storage. There was no way I could get it out of there that day so just to get my own bike back in my possession would have cost me four days storage, $540. Keep in mind I paid $800 for this bike 37 years ago.

Then what about repair? I have no good idea what that would cost but I’m sure the fork would need to be replaced because it was definitely bent badly. I had case guards on the lower portion so the engine was probably fine. And while the right side exhaust pipes were fine, the bike obviously went down on its left side and that pipe was mangled.

Now, I know that my mechanic had an identical bike sitting in his shop for a long time because the owner needed pipes and was finding it absolutely impossible to find any. So I’m looking at paying $540 to get it out of jail, an unknown cost for repair, and a certainty that I’d never find pipes. Add to that the fact that the bike leaks oil and then burns it like a smoke machine sometimes, and my inquiries into fixing that ran into estimates of $3,000 or more. My estimate, based on some searching, was that before the crash I could maybe have sold the bike for $3,000. I didn’t have the work done and boy am I glad I didn’t.

So I declared the bike “totaled.” And I walked away.

Here’s the funny thing. I loved that bike. It was the first bike I ever owned and after 37 years I was still riding it regularly. I thought I’d never part with it. But when the time came it didn’t affect me emotionally at all. It was kind of a relief because that meant I no longer needed to deal with the hassles that came with it.

I had had that very same sort of experience twice before. The first was when Judy and I decided to get married and we bought a house together. I had lived at my old place for 17 years and loved that place. I thought it would tear me up to leave it. But it didn’t. The new house is much nicer and has none of the hassles that old place had. Like pipes freezing every time it got really cold in winter. I’ve never missed it at all.

And then there was the time last year when I parted with my 1999 Kawasaki Concours. I had had that bike for 25 years and loved it. But lately it had been causing me trouble and when I sold it I felt relief.

Apparently it’s OK to love something and to part with it. A very interesting life lesson. I guess it’s called life.

Biker Quote for Today

Life may knock you down, but a bike will always lift you up.