Passes & Canyons Blog

Judy and I went on the Randy Run on Sunday. After doing the Broken Wings series on Randy and Joan there’s no way I was going to miss it.

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile you know that going on poker runs and such is not something I’ve done much of. My first poker run turned out to be one without motorcycles, due to cold, snowy weather. This was only my second.

The weather was great but I still couldn’t really do it right. We had a conflict. We had tickets to yesterday’s Colorado Rockies game, which they won, for their 11th win in a row. We weren’t going to miss that.

So we gathered at the appointed time and place, greeted folks and chatted a bit, but then in order to get to the game we took off ahead of the group. We barely had time to get to the final destination and then head straight for the ballgame.

The route was nice, down some roads neither of us had ever been on, and we were taking our time and enjoying ourselves. Suddenly I saw in my mirror that a horde of bikes was racing up behind us. I pulled over and waved them around and the Randy Run group, with Randy and Joan in the lead, roared on by. I jumped in behind them and found that I needed to really crank it to keep up with them.

Arriving at the final stop, I heard the guy we parked next to laughing about how they should call it the “Randy Race,” not the “Randy Run.”

So for me, the jury is still out on doing poker runs and all. The truth was, we were having a very nice time riding the route, taking our time and enjoying the scenery. Once we joined up with the group I don’t even remember the roads we took or the countryside we went through. I was just riding to keep up.

I’m going to have to try this at least once more, and try to do the whole thing, without any competing commitments.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Inaugural Motomarathon event now in progress

Biker Quote for Today

If you ride for the rush don’t rush for the ride!

How hard is it to go on after losing a leg in a crash when all you did wrong was to take your eyes off the oncoming car for an instant to check the cross traffic? That was essentially the question I asked Randy and Joan Savely while speaking with them for the series of articles I just posted on Examiner.com.

What I seem to be doing with some regularity lately is working on a story for Examiner and then giving you the background here. That’s definitely the case now.

I met Randy when I joined ABATE earlier this year. I’m in District 10 and Randy is the district rep, which is to say, he runs the meetings. It didn’t take me long to notice that Randy was missing his left leg from the knee down.

One reason I like going on poker runs, going to ABATE meetings, and getting involved in other motorcycle-related activities is that every time I go somewhere I come home with new story ideas. That’s a good thing considering that I write a minimum of five articles every week, frequently more. I smelled a story in Randy.

First, let me make it clear that this is definitely their story, Randy and Joan’s, not just his. When I first proposed the story idea it was Joan who replied that the two of them would be happy to speak with me. Up until then I had been thinking solely of Randy, but it soon became very clear to me that this was indeed their story.

What I hadn’t counted on was how powerfully their story would hit me. I met with them two weeks ago today, expecting to spend less than an hour in the interview. Going on two hours I finally said we ought to stop because there was only so much that a reader will read.

The next day Judy and I left on vacation for a week and on the drive to Utah it was practically the only thing I could speak of. And this was after spending hours telling her about it the night before. The lead sentences quickly formed in my mind and they made it into the story unaltered, even though I never wrote the rest of it until 10 days later:

When everything finally came to a stop, Randy Savely sat up, thinking, “Well, I’m alive.”
A couple moments later he noticed his boot laying in the middle of the intersection.
“That boot don’t come off,” he thought. Then he turned to the driver who had hit him and asked for his belt to use as a tourniquet on his leg.

For two weeks now this story has haunted me (not in a bad way) and has been in my mind almost constantly. Not out of some fear that it could happen to me, that’s not it at all. Probably a lot of it is Randy. Can you imagine having your leg removed by a car and having the presence of mind to put a tourniquet on yourself?

A funny thing there: I asked Randy if he was wearing a helmet and whether he had any head injuries. No and no. But he told me that he really believes in chaps more than helmets because it was the fact that he was wearing chaps that enabled him to tend to his own needs. They covered up the fact that his foot was gone, whereas seeing a bloody stump may well have shaken him up enough to go into shock.

I could go on and on. As I said, this story has haunted me for two weeks. But I won’t. Go read it yourself. It’s not that I’m such a great writer, it’s that their story is an incredible story. I just can’t tell you how fortunate I feel to have had the opportunity to tell it.

Recent from the National Motorcycle Examiner
Broken wings: When a biker goes down hard

Biker Quote for Today

Live every day as though it was your last, but ride to make sure it’s not!

The oil rigs are gone! Motels have vacancies! You can visit Rifle, CO, again!

Judy and I are on vacation in Utah at this moment, so we came through western Colorado the other day and I have to tell you it’s like night and day. A year ago I was advising that anyone considering coming to Colorado to ride not even think about spending a night in the area around Rifle. With gas prices over $4 a gallon, a drive along I-70 at night was like Christmas, with lighted drilling rigs dotting the landscape everywhere you looked. Of course, all those drilling crews had to sleep somewhere, and there was not a motel room available closer than Grand Junction.

What a difference a year makes. First off, we only saw two rigs along the way. The landscape is now dotted with what I take to be pumping stations, where the wells have been drilled and now the machinery is just doing its thing, extracting the oil or gas. You don’t need a lot of people to manage those.

Even more telling are the parking lots of the motels. They’re empty. We stopped at a rest area in Rulison and I asked the fellow tending the tourist center and he confirmed my assumption.

“They’ve all gone back to Oklahoma and Texas,” he said. He told me that at the height of the boom, a new La Quinta was built in Rifle and it was full immmediately. They built an addition and it was full immediately. They built another addition and it was full immediately. Then work was begun on a new Ramada Inn and another motel and work on both has been suspended.

On another note, it appears that Loveland Pass has reopened. I reported last week that it was closed, and the notice from CDOT said they would send word when it reopened. Searching their website it appeared that perhaps the pass was open again, although the main notice page had not been updated with that information.

With that in mind I was all eyes as we came past the turn-off to the pass the other day, and yes we saw traffic on that road. In fact, what we saw was three motorcycles coming down the pass. So now Colorado is truly open for the season.

Recent from the National Motocycle Examiner

Biker Quote for Today
Sometimes the fastest way to get there is to stop for the night.

Would you like to be able to ride your motorcycle to work and find convenient, free parking by the curb? With a little luck we will have that here in Denver this summer. And you can probably make it happen in your town, too. Here’s what you can do.

Denver is fortunate in that we have a mayor who “gets it” and is willing to consider new ideas. He created an agency called Greenprint Denver that is charged with helping Denverites reduce pollution, congestion, and burning of motor fuel.

But you don’t need that degree of commitment; all you really need is a Public Works Department that is open to trying something new. In brief, here’s what needs to happen.

1. Identify unused or under-used spaces on city blocks
2. Have the traffic engineers and parking specialists select the ones they feel would be best suited to motorcycle parking
3. Get the program approved
4. Have crews stripe, sign, and otherwise prepare the spaces to be designated

Presto, you’re in business.

I’ll elaborate further. The spaces you’re looking for are called “end-caps” and they are generally spaces at the ends of blocks that are not long enough for cars. So they sit there empty but they could easily accommodate one or more motorcycles or scooters.

Because they’re sitting there empty, converting the end-caps to motorcycle parking would not cut city revenue as converting a metered space would do. So if your city wants to encourage motorcycle commuting, the only costs would be the time spent devising the program and then the striping and signing.

What more can you ask for? It’s green and it’s cheap. And it’s a way for your city to show that it has the concerns of its citizenry at heart. Your city councilperson might be interested in having themselves portrayed in that manner. Maybe if you sent them an email.

But really, I would start with the Public Works Department. They may already be thinking along these lines and your inquiry may be a helpful boost to get the idea in motion. I got involved in this because a reader of my Examiner.com site wrote urging me to lobby for dedicated parking. I started writing about it and several people stepped up to contribute to the effort and then I discovered that the city was already looking into it. So I don’t claim any influence in this at all, I just lucked into a great news story that no one else was covering.

What I have seen as I have delved into this story, however, is that it’s something that could easily be replicated just about anywhere. I really do think all you need to do is start talking to the right people and you can probably make it happen.

If you do, I’d love to hear from you about your efforts and problems and successes and whatever else. Get on it!

Biker Quote for Today

He who rides and keeps the beaten track studies the fences chiefly. — Henry David Thoreau

Does your town or city make a point to make dedicated motorcycle parking available? So many people talk about going “green” and riding a bike is certainly greener than driving a car, so shouldn’t cities be promoting motorcycle usage?

Before I get into this discussion I want to make it clear here what my purpose is. If your city does actively promote motorcycle commuting by mandating dedicated parking I want to hear from you. I’m looking for examples we can use to promote the same thing here.

This is an issue that a reader posted on my Examiner.com site, and which I have chosen to pursue. He suggested that we try to start a grassroots movement to have the city designate dedicated motorcycle parking on every block. I posted his remarks and called for reader response.

Another reader immediately took the initiative and contacted his state representative about getting a bill introduced in the legislature. In Colorado, however, legislators are restricted to introducing no more than five bills per session and everyone had already committed themselves for this year. Time to think about next year, but too late this year.

I also contacted the staff of a city councilwoman I have known for a long time asking how you would go about working for an ordinance to be enacted. I got a reply directing me to an agency set up by the mayor with the express purpose of working for green initiatives. I contacted those folks and got some good information about what the city is already considering, which includes designating the “end-cap” areas at the end of the block that are too small for cars as motorcycle parking. So there’s hope.

My point here is that the readership of my Examiner.com page is more local, while the readership of this blog is more widespread. If any of you have ideas or experience you can offer to give us a hand we would all very much appreciate it. We’re not experienced activists, we’re just some folks who think we have a good idea that we want to try to promote. Thanks in advance for anything you can offer.

Biker Quote for Today

Bikes don’t leak oil, they mark their territory.

Colorado is studying a proposal to charge a fee for every vehicle mile driven/ridden. How likely is this to happen?

The short answer is that it won’t happen any time soon. Republicans in the legislature are working to remove this particular option from the study, and Democrats don’t appear to be strongly committed to it.

The long answer is that some day, years in the future, it might.

Let’s face it, as hybrid and electric cars gain popularity, they will not be paying their fair share for upkeep of the roads solely from purchase of gasoline. Plus, even today we don’t have the money to maintain roads adequately. Obviously something has to give.

Clearly, if we go the vehicle miles traveled (VMT) route it must be set up so that Hummers, RVs, and semis pay more than motorcycles. That is an absolute. Our bikes don’t do anything near the damage to the road bed that the big boys do.

But why not just charge a fee determined by the weight of the vehicle. As with the gas tax, we’d pay less and the big boys would pay more. The inequity there, of course, is that it would be unfair to those who have big vehicles but don’t drive them much. Think of your grandmother. She’d pay as much as someone driving the same vehicle but putting 10 times as many miles on theirs. Still, I’m sure we could work something out to make it equitable.

VMT, on the other hand, would be a real issue. First, you’d have to put GPS units on every vehicle. That might not be hard with new ones but are we really going to retrofit ALL old vehicles? Unlikely. Second, I’m willing to bet that there are folks out there with the technical and mechanical ability to jimmy the GPS so it doesn’t report the actual miles driven. A new cottage industry just waiting to be born!

I don’t think VMT is the answer. Still, I’m not sure I go along with the guys trying to get it removed from the study. It may have merit down the road, some day.

Biker Quote for Today

Less talk, more riding.