Passes & Canyons Blog

Riders set to try out some Victory motorcycles.

There was one major theme to my weekend and that was motorcycles. I started off Saturday morning running over to Grand Prix Motorsports to test ride some Victory bikes and from there headed over to Fay Myers Motorcycle World for the Civilian Top Gun competition. When I got there I discovered that they also had the trucks in from KTM and there were KTM bikes to be test ridden. So I did. I’ll have reports on test rides later.

Then on Sunday I went to my ABATE meeting and there were some interesting bits of news coming out of that as well.

On both days I rode my Concours and I have to tell you, it’s weird how I now find myself having to refamiliarize myself with my different bikes when I have been riding one of the others lately. The Concours has been my standard for years but now the pegs seem so high and the bike seems so heavy, it’s just bizarre. After awhile I do adjust, however.

So I got down to Grand Prix just as one ride was going out so I had about half an hour to hang around and get signed up and decide what bike I wanted to ride. I ended up choosing the Victory Boardwalk. The group came back and I claimed the Boardwalk and off we went. When we got back I sat on the bike a few moments while I made notes about my impressions and when I looked around all the bikes had already been claimed for the next ride. I had a lot to do that day so I was not inclined to stick around so I left having just ridden the one.

I got over to Fay Myers just in time to find that the competition was halted for lunch. I ran into Dom Chang, who writes for Examiner.com as the Colorado Motorcycle Travel Examiner, and he was there covering the Top Gun event. Here’s the link if you want to see his video and article.

So I strolled around a little and saw these semis with KTM on the side. Sure enough, they were doing demo rides. Now, I had never ridden a KTM before so I jumped at this opportunity. They only had two models on hand, the Adventure and the more off-road oriented version of the Adventure, with taller suspension and other modes. I only opted to ride the basic Adventure because the other is the kind of bike you’d ride through the Sahara and I’m really not interested in that kind of thing.

After the ride I watched the Top Gun competition for awhile and chatted with Dom and then took off.

Then there were two interesting things that came up at ABATE. First off, someone made the point that if you’re going to run a poker run you legally have to have a gaming license. ABATE does, but how many of these other organizations that hold one run a year–and they are proliferating in number–who do have a gaming license? I guess the state just turns a blind eye.

The other thing is the MOST program. This is the riding training program funded by the $2 we each pay each year when we renew our motorcycle plates. It was the subject of much controversy last year but the legislature voted to extend the program with revisions. Well, now the changes have been made and even the people who formerly supported it are saying that if this is the way it’s going to be run let’s just get rid of it. Terry Howard, the ABATE State Coordinator, reported that at Saturday’s state board meeting the vote was in favor of repealing the $2 fee and then if the state can’t come up the money to keep it going, let it die. There’s more to it than that but that’s it in a nutshell. A pretty amazing turnaround.

Biker Quote for Today

If we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we’re going.

Tags: Colorado MOST program

This entry was posted on Monday, September 23rd, 2013 at 11:51 am and is filed under ABATE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.