Passes & Canyons Blog

The OFMC has grown and then shrunk. We started out as three and we are three again. One of the guys who rode with us for many years was Jason, Bill’s son, but he had young kids and gave up riding, doing the dad thing.

Well, Jason is back. For one things, his kids are older, and both boys are now taller than he is. But more importantly, his former boss gave him his Harley. Sort of.

It’s not an altogether happy story. Jason worked for this guy, Don, and Don treated Jason like a son. Recently Don died. Don’s widow gave the bike to Jason. This is a 2014 Harley Road Glide and to make it official Jason paid one dollar for it and has a bill of sale and the title.

Not that he’s going to start coming on the OFMC trips again, at least yet. He still has limited vacation time and finds it hard family-wise to give over one whole week to the bike trip. But he’ll once again be joining us on day rides, such as the one we did Sunday.

It wasn’t all that much of a ride. As far as I can tell, most of Bill’s riding other than the annual trip is from his place on the west side of town up to Black Hawk to a casino or two for lunch and some gambling. I wasn’t sure what the plan was on Sunday but that turned out to be it. So we gathered, as we do, at the Starbucks near Bill and headed on up Clear Creek Canyon.

We got to Black Hawk but kept going to Central City because Bill had heard that he Century Casino up there was open. That turned out to be incorrect. That didn’t altogether disappoint me because I’ve been laying low pretty much and if there is only one casino open, how likely is it to be packed? Once they all open up it will be different.

Still, things are opening up and people are being less cautious. In our group it was really four members of a family and me. There was Bill, his son Jason, his sister Janice, and Janice’s husband Dennis. They were not socially distancing at all between themselves and my uncertainty resolved immediately when Jason reached out to shake my hand. That was the first hand shake I’ve had in a long time but I hadn’t seen Jason in several years. He extended his hand and I took it.

This ties in with my evolving concept of social distancing. I’m figuring that going forward we need to not unnecessarily expose ourselves to potential infection but in this case it was a group who see each other regularly and who know that none in the group has been sick. Plus, if one of us does get sick we will know to inform the others so they can get tested. It’s not that way with strangers.

The point here, too, is that we’re still planning the 2020 OFMC trip, in about six weeks, and there is no way I’m going to be distanced from Bill and Dennis for this whole trip.

So anyway, with the casino closed we noticed that another one, Dostal Alley, was open in the back serving food and drinks at tables set up in the parking lot. We had lunch. Then we headed up the Peak to Peak to the Golden Gate Canyon road and headed back down. Great day for a ride. Nice to ride with Jason again.

Biker Quote for Today

Why motorcycles are better than men: Motorcycles don’t grow huge beer bellies.

There were ten of us on nine bikes heading out on an RMMRC lunch ride Thursday–the first lunch ride in a long time. And we went at least some places I had never been before. That’s amazing.

We met out at Morrison and headed up along Bear Creek to Evergreen. From there we turned west on CO 73 toward Conifer, but stopped for lunch at the Marshdale Store. This place is at the spot where 73 intersects Turkey Creek Road. It’s a convenience store/gas station and they serve food. There are picnic tables out back in the shade where you can be outside and maintain a distance, which we did.

As an aside, I have to say it’s a bit disconcerting being outside Denver lately. In Denver, any place you go into you must wear a mask. But you get outside the city and very few people are wearing masks. At the Marshdale Store the employees had masks and we all did but almost none of the other customers did.

Anyway, we continued to Conifer and caught US 285 west to Pine Junction and headed south on Pine Valley Road, through Pine to Buffalo Creek, where we turned left (east) onto SW Platte Valley Road, which runs along the Platte. If you stay on this road it turns to gravel and continues along the river but we turned north again on Foxton Road. I know this comes out at 285 just a little west of Conifer. But I knew we weren’t doing that, so I was puzzled. Something about a right turn somewhere.

Well, that right turn is there in that Google Maps aerial photo above, bottom left, just beyond the “S Foxton Rd” identifier. The place where you turn in Running Deer Road and you then make a quick left onto Black Bear Lane, which connects you to Broken Arrow Drive, which you stay on the rest of the way.

We wound our way through this area–which was very, very pretty, with some nice views–and came out onto Pleasant Park Road, there in the upper right quadrant. I had no idea this connection existed.

I had been on Pleasant Park Road numerous times, and I knew it ran from near Conifer down to where it ends at Deer Creek Canyon Road, having become Deer Creek Road along the way. But I had no idea you could turn off Pleasant Park and work your way down to the river. This was a nice ride.

On Deer Creek Canyon Road, of course, you come out at Wadsworth on the west side of Chatfield Reservoir. Then it was time to start scattering as everyone peeled off toward their homes. What a nice day for a lunch ride in the hills. How nice to even be able to do a lunch ride again.

Biker Quote for Today

We know you’re a poser if you only ride on weekends, when you can.

The RMMRC was planning a ride over Guanella Pass last week and I was very much inclined to go. But the day was extremely windy and that dampened my enthusiasm. I’ve been out on days when it was windy in town, and when I got to the high country, especially above timber line, it was howling. That’s not my idea of fun, and I ended up not going.

Well, I haven’t had the opportunity to talk to anyone who did go but the next day I read in the Denver Post that Guanella was not open yet. OK. Did they find that out when they got to Grant? Or when they got near the top? Or did they get over despite it being officially closed? I’m curious to find out.

This tied in very conveniently with a post I was already planning, which was to check out the status of all of the larger Colorado roads that close in winter. Here’s what CDOT, the Colorado Department of Transportation, has to say.

Trail Ridge Road through Rocky Mountain National Park is closed for the season and will remain closed until further notice due to ongoing Covid-19 concerns. To hear updated road status please call the Trail Ridge Status Line at 970-586-1222.

Independence Pass. Closed for the season. (OK, does that mean it closed last fall and is not yet open? Are they not going to open it at all this year? I find that doubtful. CDOT could be more helpful here. But the Post article said it will open on June 1.)

Cottonwood Pass. Same. The Denver Post also says this will open on June 1.

Guanella Pass. Same. The Post says to be opened at a date to be determined.

Mount Evans Highway. To be determined.

Pikes Peak. Is expected to be open to the top as of June 1.

So the bottom line here is, check before you go. Don’t count on things opening up at the time they usually do. But I tell you, once it does open I really want to do Cottonwood Pass. They finally got it paved all the way last year and I have not been on it since they were done. This is number one on my list.

Biker Quote for Today

If the countryside seems boring, stop, get off your bike, and go sit in the ditch long enough to appreciate what was here before the asphalt came.

It was almost hot in Denver Wednesday morning so I selected a mesh jacket, although I left the liner in. I was taking the CB750 and didn’t want to carry the bags so I didn’t have anywhere to put a sweatshirt or anything. It’s a very warm day, right?

Meeting up with the RMMRC there were 10 of us, five Hondas, two Beemers, a Triumph, a Harley, and a Can-Am Spyder. I was sweating standing around waiting to roll. Let’s go to the hills.

Several of the folks reported large numbers of cops out with radar and sure enough we saw a few. A good day to take it easy but that’s not the nature of Bob or Robert, who took turns leading this day. Fortunately no tickets but my 1980 CB has a governor on it and its top speed is 85, and I’ve only hit that speed once in all these years. I had that thing cranked full throttle much of the day.

We went out US 285 to Pine Junction and turned south. Stopped for a break and a snack at Deckers. That was interesting. There were quite a few people around and almost nobody was wearing a mask. The woman clerking the store was, though.

While we were there three guys came in on two big Harleys and a big Beemer. They swung around into their desired position as easy as can be and I said to myself they have got to be motorcycle cops. Almost no one but motorcycle cops handle big bikes that well. I started walking over but before I got there I saw the Colorado State Patrol insignias on their bikes and my question was answered.

We continued on down to Woodland Park and turned west on US 24. At Lake George we turned north to Tarryall Reservoir. We stopped at a parking lot with an outhouse and many of us made use of that facility. When it was my turn I went in and could not believe my eyes. This has got to be, hands down, the nastiest outhouse I have seen in my life. Plus, the door doesn’t close.

I cannot begin to describe the filth but think about this: one of the women in our group used it. She told us she just straddled it and stood above it. But what, did she take her pants completely off? Ponder that one for awhile.

Continuing north we were also gaining altitude and it was getting cool. And I knew we still had to go up Kenosha Pass. I was hoping I wasn’t going to be cursing myself for foolishness. It did get darn chilly but once we got over the top of Kenosha and headed down it warmed up quickly.

We stopped in Bailey for gas and with eight of us now, and six pumps, some of us had to wait. Me. Just before one of us could claim it this young guy on a dirt bike rolled up to one of the pumps. I figured he would fill up quicker than the person on the opposite pump so I waited for him. Well, this guy finished filling his tank and whipped out his cell phone and started fiddling with it. Dude, are you totally clueless? Pull away from the dang pump and let someone else use it! Idiot.

From there it was just a straight shot back down the hill and home. A good day to ride, and the first long ride for me in a while.

Biker Quote for Today

Top 10 signs that a computer is owned by a Harley rider:
10. — The monitor & CPU have been repainted orange and black.

I spoke earlier this week about how the idea that riding motorcycles was a good thing to do to keep your distance from people had gotten shot down. OK, I get it. But I’m not going to let my last such ride go to waste. This ride was on Wednesday of last week.

Figuring that riding motorcycles was a good thing to do while staying away from other people–thank you coronavirus–I intended to go on a ride the RMMRC had planned for Tuesday last week. I managed to let time slip up on me, however, suddenly realized that even if I hurried I was likely to be late. With this group, when they say kick stands up (KSU) at a certain time, they really mean it.

I hustled on down to Performance Cycle and sure enough, there was nobody there. So I just wandered on home; it was a beautiful spring day so it was nice to be out riding even just for a short run. Besides, there was another ride planned for Wednesday.

On Wednesday I did not let time slip by. The meeting place was Sam’s #3 over on Havana and I was there a bit early, playing it safe. But there was not one other soul around. What the heck? I pulled out my phone and checked the notice to be sure I was not mistaken about the date, time, or place. I was not. So I sat there.

Maybe two minutes before KSU Bob and Robert glided up next to me on their matching Gold Wings. OK, it was going to be just the three of us.

Robert was in the lead and he took us on a ride only he could plan out. Which is to say, we headed out east on the prairie and went on some roads I had never been on, and the reason for this route was that he said he likes to periodically go past places he has lived in the past. And apparently Robert has lived in several of these isolated housing developments way out away from anything else out there.

That was fine. We didn’t care where we went, we just wanted to ride.

Eventually we ended up down south at Elbert and kept heading south. Then west to CO 83 and back toward the city. Nothing special about this ride other than it was a great day to be out on a bike. And now it looks like it will be my last pleasure ride for who knows how long. That right there is what will make this ride memorable.

Biker Quote for Today

She loved her brother, I remember back when he was fixing up a ’49 Indian. Told her ‘little sister gonna ride the wind, up around the moon and back again.’ — Emmylou Harris

Per my last post, about how riding motorcycles is the perfect socially distanced pursuit, the RMMRC has taken this concept to heart. Last week alone there were two group rides that were structured and promoted as being coronavirus conscious. Another is planned for this week.

I went on the first ride last week it was really nice. First off, it was a beautiful day, great for a ride. Second, it was my first time on a bike in about two weeks, so I was due. And third, it was a small group, five people, and we just had a good time on some good roads.

Sort of good roads, that is. Actually, sand and gravel were the order of the day. We went into the hills and this was probably the earliest I have gone into the hills after the winter has abated. The main highways were clear and clean. We didn’t stay just on the main highways.

Meeting up at the Phillips 66 station out by Morrison we headed up to Kittredge on Bear Creek Road and then turned south on Myers Gulch Road, which has turned into Parmalee Gulch Road by the time it reaches US 285. And oh man, was there ever a lot of sand and gravel. Mostly on the curves. Bob and Robert, who I call the Go-Fast Boys, were in the lead an even they slowed down. Just too much loose stuff in too many curves.

Hitting 285 we headed west to just past Conifer where we turned off toward the Platte River on Foxton Road. This had me a little puzzled because we were supposedly heading to a park a bit north of Pine. I knew we could get there this way but the last time I was on it the road along the Platte was unpaved. Were these guys on Gold Wings (three of them) really OK on a stretch of gravel? I was on my Concours, which hates gravel, but I figured I could manage.

So we got to what the map tells me is SW Platte River Road and turned west and what do you know, it was paved. In fact, it was paved so long ago that the asphalt was terrible, with a lot of gravel from disintegrated asphalt scattered everywhere. Obviously it has been a very long time since I’ve been on this particular stretch.

But it was paved and as long as there was a solid surface under the loose gravel the Connie did fine. We reached the intersection at Buffalo Creek and turned north toward Pine, cruised through Pine, and then turned off onto Crystal Lake Road, which took us back down to the Platte at a Jefferson County open space park I never knew existed. Nice place.

We parked–a separate space for each bike, no grouping into parking spaces–and each grabbed the food we had brought with us and then we sat spread around two picnic tables, well separated from each other, and ate and chatted in the balmy spring warmth. When we left we took the road on up to Pine Junction and turned east on 285.

Back at Conifer we turned onto Pleasant Park Road, which eventually feeds into Deer Creek Road and then into Deer Creek Canyon Road. This was where we really hit the sand. It wasn’t just in the corners, it was all over the road, all along the road. Then out to Wadsworth at Chatfield Reservoir, and on home from there. By the way, coming east on C-470 it finally looks like that long-term expansion project is finally nearing an end. That will be a relief–that has been such a huge mess for about three years.

And that was my beautiful ride on Tuesday. What did you do?

Biker Quote for Today

Why bikes are better than women: You can share your motorcycle with your friends.

With a predicted high of 70 on Saturday it was inevitable that the RMMRC was going to get a ride together. I probably would have been inclined to go but when Judy said she wanted to go that totally decided it.

This was going to be a different type of ride than we typically do. In the summer of course we tend to head for the hills. In winter, however, you pretty much have to stay on the plains, but you can still get hills going southeast toward the Palmer Divide. On Saturday we headed northeast, to Fort Morgan.

When I first thought about it I figured it could be nice, we might do some riding along the Platte River. Then, thinking more about it, I realized that was not likely. If you look at a map you’ll see that although the south fork of the South Platte comes right through Denver, from here it heads north all the way to Greeley, where it joins the north fork of the South Platte and then flows east. And after awhile it turns north toward Nebraska where it meets the North Platte.

All of this means you would have to ride pretty far to do much riding along the Platte. So what did we have to look forward to riding to Fort Morgan? A lot of straight roads across the prairie. Section line roads requiring a lot of zig-zagging in order to go northeast. Of course I-76 goes that way as a diagonal but nobody wants to ride the interstate.

So that’s what we did. There were eight of us on seven bikes and we saw a lot of prairie we had mostly never seen before. And which, frankly, I don’t have a lot of interest in seeing again any time soon. I mean, it was nice once, but once was enough.

We got into Fort Morgan, made a stop at the local museum–which was actually a pretty nice one–and then headed over for lunch at a local Mexican place.

And then it was back to Denver and we just got on the superslab. A couple of us got off at Barr Lake in order to skip the slab through town but at that point, as Judy said, we were just covering miles because we were getting tired of being in the saddle.

Yeah, there’s a reason we don’t generally ride to the northeast.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker if you refer to your bike as if it had a legal first name.

I was embarrassed a couple weeks ago when riding with some folks from the RMMRC. I had told Robert, who was leading, that the road north out of Daniels Park was paved all the way now. So he led the way along that road, turned left at the T intersection as I intended, and we soon found ourselves on gravel.

Mind you, it was very good gravel, probably drowned in magnesium chloride, making it practically paved, and we kept going. But I had been certain it was paved and I could not have been more wrong. How the heck did I make that mistake? Who knows.

So I studied an online map to see what the deal is down there and I found that if we had gone right at that T then we would have been able to get all the way back up to the city on paved roads. Yesterday was a gorgeous, warm early March day so I had to ride and it made sense to head down that way to cement this route into my memory.

I headed south on Quebec down, down, and further down to the south. Quebec became Monarch Boulevard and eventually I reached Castle Pines Parkway. I turned west until I reached Daniels Park and then followed the road we took that day that bent north and then I reached the T intersection. This is North Daniels Park Road and Grig’s Road. This time I turned right.

On a side note, while coming north through Daniels Park I passed a herd of bison. I didn’t know they had bison at Daniels Park.

I knew from the map that Grig’s Road was going to do some serious bending, and it did. It turns out that it has to jog around a good-sized arroyo. Homes backing onto that arroyo must have a really nice view and setting.

Heading straight south momentarily, I reached a roundabout, as expected, and turned due east again. This was Daniels Gate Road and it made a couple curves, then bent northeast and intersected . . . Monarch Boulevard. So I had made a loop.

OK. I really, truly have a clear idea of that area now.

Biker Quote for Today

An expert is a person who has made every mistake possible in a very narrow field ~ Neils Bohr