Passes & Canyons Blog

It was a nice day to ride to the Colorado Motorcycle Expo.

I went to the Colorado Motorcycle Expo, at the National Western Center, as I frequently do. It seemed to me it just wasn’t as much of a show as it usually is. There didn’t seem to be as many really cool bikes in the display area and whereas I usually shoot a lot of good people pictures, this time the people just didn’t seem as out there as usual. Anyway, here’s what I got.

This was a nice bike, not as gaudy as many of the show bikes.

Can’t you just hear this bike growl?

Now we’re into the real big-time show bikes. Somebody put a lot of time and effort into this.

Another beauty, with detail worth zooming in on.

OK, are you really going to ride down the street with pipes an inch off the ground? I doubt it.

Sometimes being a performer can be a lonely affair. But the show must go on so you just get up there and pretend you’re in front of a stadium full of people.

I’ve been to motorcycle shows around the country and this is really the only one that still harks back to the concept of being a swap meet. You really can buy just about any piece of a motorcycle you happen to be looking for. Although you’ll have more luck finding it if the piece you want goes on a Harley.

Leathers, leathers, boy do we have leathers. And helmets.

The Expo is also very much the place if you want patches, and they’ll sew them on right there while you wait.

Biker Quote for Today

If my bike went as fast as the money I spend on it I’d win every race.

The Halycon 250 made by Janus Motorcycles.

I had never heard of Janus Motorcycles but I got an email the other day from Grant Longenbaugh, the company’s president, complimenting me on this blog. He said he had run across it while they were here in Colorado doing filming for a ride on one of their bikes.

“If you haven’t heard of Janus, we make ultra-lightweight, classic bikes in Goshen Indiana. There are about 1500 of ’em out there, and we’re growing every year!,” he said.

Well, I hadn’t but now I have. So of course I had to check out their website and see what these bikes are all about.

The first thing that is clear from the start with Janus is that this is not a large-scale, cookie-cutter operation. As you can see from that screen shot above, you can pick from 15 different colors for your bike. Does anyone else offer that kind of selection? As for other customization, they offer a wide range of options from seat to mirrors to luggage and more. One bit of humor: On the FAQ page they go through what can and cannot be customized. Here’s one: “Can you buy ‘just’ a frame, tank, etc? Yes, but all frames come with engines attached, and all fuel tanks come with frame and engine attached.”

That reminds me of when I first bought my 1999 Kawasaki Concours and rode it to breakfast with the guys. Leaving the restaurant I told them they needed to look at the new seat I had just bought. (We had recently taken a trip to California and it was a long ride on my CB750.) When I walked them over to the bike I told them, “Yeah, the seat cost one heck of a lot but they threw in all the rest of the bike at no extra charge.”

Janus currently offers three models, the Halycon 450, Halycon 250, and Gryffin 250. The 450 has two cylinders and the 250s each have one. These are retro-looking bikes that definitely have you thinking of early Harleys and others. Which is not to say the technology is old school at all.

At the same time, these are not extremely complex machines either.

Our motorcycles are designed to be simple to understand and work on. We encourage our owners to perform their own routine maintenance and get to know their motorcycles. We believe that knowing your machine deepens the enjoyment of riding. We have an ever-growing YouTube channel of maintenance videos, and if there’s something you don’t know how to do or don’t want to do, we can help you learn, or help you find a local garage that will service our motorcycles.

So anyway, it’s always nice to have new companies coming along to build a wider variety of motorcycles. If this particular style stokes your fires you now have a source.

Biker Quote for Today

Bike may be new, but not my passion for riding.

As promised, here are some shots of some of the show bikes on display at last weekend’s Colorado Motorcycle Expo.

Let’s start out with some of the seven or so mega-trikes (my term). They were the first thing you encountered so it seems like a good place to start. What I’m wondering about these is how you turn effectively. Is there gearing or something that you only rotate the handlebars a little and the wheel turns a lot more. Kind of like a car, I guess, now that I think about it. I’d be curious to know how it works.

Then there were some odd ones. See how low this is? Can you even ride this thing? It seems like you would scrape the bottom on the tiniest bumps.

Then there were the super good-looking show bikes.

Of course there were some really radical bikes. This one was especially cool. But it looks like you’d have a scraping problem with it, too, if you actually wanted to ride it.

And finally, it’s good to see the kids can get in on the action. All you need is a really cool Mom/Dad or maybe Grandpa.

So those are some of the bikes that were on display. Next I’ll focus on the people of the Expo.

Biker Quote for Today

If your grandpa doesn’t have a motorcycle you have two grandmas.

Yeah, you really need to get a bike that fits your size.

The Progressive International Motorcycle Show always features some cool custom bikes on display, just to have eye candy. Here are some of them.

With that expensive paint job you have to wonder if this bike gets ridden.

I hope you’ve got your sunglasses.

Notice that front wheel vs. the rear wheel.

Yeah, you’re definitely going to look over that windshield.

Now we’re going a bit minimalist.

OK, this one leaves me a bit cold but I guess some people would think it’s cool.

Last one. Sorry the image isn’t sharper.

What more is there to say? Here’s the quote of the day.

Motorcycle Quote for Today

100 Reasons not to date a motorcyclist: You’ll have to come rescue us when we run out of gas on the other side of town.

This is a photo Bob Mighell sent me to go with my Examiner article.

I’ve ridden motorcycle trikes a number of times, both those with two wheels up front and one in back and those with one wheel up front and two in back. I haven’t liked any of them because they drive too much like a car. The one exception is the Piaggio MP3 scooter that has two tilting wheels up front. That one handles like a real motorcycle.

That’s what’s really key: the ability to lean into a curve. And that brings me to Tilting Motor Works.

Several years ago I did an article about this company for Examiner.com. I’m going to quote a little from that article:

Motorcycle trikes are getting more and more popular, but at what cost? Sure, you’re on a “bike” and out in the elements, but the dang thing steers like a car. Certainly it is still more fun than a car but is this the best there is?

In a word: No.

Enter Tilting Motor Works, and Bob Mighell.

Bob Mighell is an engineer and a motorcyclist, as well as a sportscar enthuiast. Unlike most of us, when he decided he wanted something better, he was in a position to do something about it.

“I run around on these backcountry roads and I compare how fast I can take the cars through the corners and the bikes through the corners and I thought that the drawback to motorcycles, the limiting factor, is that one single front tire. So whereas I can drift my Porsche 911 around the corners, you don’t want to be drifting motorcycles because if you lose that traction on that front tire she’s all done. And so I thought well, wouldn’t that be cool if I could add another front wheel to a motorcycle and yet still make it handle like a motorcycle.”

And that’s exactly what he did.

What the company offers is a conversion kit to turn a bike–mostly Harleys–into three-wheelers that–I’ve got to say it–tilt. Or lean. Just like on a regular motorcycle. From the website, here’s which bikes you can get this kit for:

The current production unit is designed to fit all models in Harley-Davidson’s Touring line including the Road King, Road Glide, Street Glide and Electra Glide models. We are now also equipped to handle Softails, Dynas, and V-Rods such as the Heritage Softail Classic, the Softail Deluxe, the Fat Boy, and the Super Glide. We can’t yet convert a Tri Glide or a Spyder! :-)

In addition, TMW can now convert the Honda Gold Wing GL1800 and F6B.

So anyway, a few years went by and I didn’t think much about them again until late last year I got a couple promotional emails. One was promoting a “Black Friday Flash Sale” offering five converted bikes at a $10,000 discount if you bought all five.

Then nearer Christmas there was another announcing four dealerships, in Snohomish, WA; Nashua, NH; Springfield, MO; and Greer, SC.

The first email suggested to me they’re not doing so well in the business but the second suggests the opposite. So I decided then that I wanted to put something up here about them because it seems like a really cool product, if you’ve got the cash. And make no mistake, these things aren’t cheap.

So if you’re getting on in years and thinking about hanging up the riding gear, this might be the thing to keep you on the road. I’m just passing the word along.

Biker Quote for Today

Life is a road, the soul is a motorcycle.

A Morgan 3 Wheeler.

There’s a lot of talk these days about what really is or is not a motorcycle. Most of this talk centers around the proliferation of three-wheeled “bikes” that many riders would argue are not motorcycles at all. In addition to the conversions, where someone has taken an actual two-wheeled motorcycle and added a third wheel, these primarily include the Can-Am Spyder and the very new Polaris Slingshot.

Of course the big issue is really in what safety organizations classify as motorcycles because the data they collect are used to establish various legal requirements and if three-wheeler stats influence overall motorcycle stats that does a disservice to everyone. They really need a new vehicle classification and that seems to be in the works, though how soon we’ll see something like that in use is anyone’s guess.

With that too-long lead-in, I want to mention a three-wheeler that I don’t think anyone would call a motorcycle (though I could be wrong about that, state classifications being what they are). This is the Morgan 3 Wheeler.

If you’re like me, you’ve never even heard of this vehicle. But at the place we stayed two nights in Gunnison on this last OFMC trip there were three guys also staying there, one on a Harley, one on one of the new Honda Valkyries, and one in (key word: in) a Morgan 3 Wheeler. They were using Gunnison as their base and taking day rides. And man, was that Morgan an interesting hybrid.

For starters, that is a motorcycle engine sitting right up front. It’s a 1989cc S&S v-twin. Beyond that, though, it looks like an old style Indy race car from the 1930s, except it only has one wheel in the rear. It’s very light and has a lot of power and is supposed to be a lot of fun to drive. But it is emphatically not a motorcycle.

Speaking of the Slingshot, by the way, we saw a couple of those on this trip as well. Because you sit in them, very much like a dune buggy, I would have a hard time considering them motorcycles either. But we did note that, because it’s just body, chassis, and engine, there is no storage space, so those folks had their bags bungeed on the back just like we do on motorcycles.

I welcome this proliferation of new designs. Now it’s up to the regulators to move into the current century and figure out a legitimate way to classify them.

Biker Quote for Today

Nothing like trikes and even less like three-wheeled automobiles, sidecars accentuate the balance and ineffable grace of a single-tracker in approximately the manner and degree that crutches improve the performance of steeplechasers. — Jack Lewis

We met the fellow on this penny and nickel Harley in Oregon.

Everyone who travels on their motorcycle knows you inevitably end up striking up conversations with other bikers along the way, and people not on bikes also talk to you. It works the other way as well. When you ride, but you’re not on your bike just now, you still end up speaking with other riders. At least I do.

This was demonstrated time and again on this recent car trip to Oregon that Judy and I just did.

I’ve already mentioned Sharon, who we met at Crater Lake in Oregon. And we saw her again in Loveland at the Steel Horse Sisterhood event. I have also already mentioned the three young guys who were riding Sportsters from Green Bay out on old Route 66, to San Francisco, to Las Vegas, and were headed home.

There were others.

For instance, we were stopped at the visitor center for John Day Fossil Beds National Monument and there was a singular Harley parked there. That’s it in the photo above. This guy has done up the entire bike in pennies and nickels.

I spoke with him about the bike and he said he wanted something unique. He wanted something no one else had ever done. So he repainted the entire body portions of the bike either a silver or copper color and then coated them with epoxy. Next he epoxyed the coin and stuck them onto the body parts. Then he put a couple more coats of epoxy over it all for good measure.

This is definitely a unique bike. He also made note that every time he rides it at least a few of the coins fall off so he is constantly putting more on to fill the gaps. Anyone ever seen something like that before?

Then there was Bruno from Belgium.

We were heading east out of Nevada and stopped for the night at a motel in Salina, Utah. The motel offered a light breakfast in the morning so we were hanging out around the office eating fruit, yogurt, rolls and coffee. I very thin young guy came walking up barefoot and while I was refilling my coffee he struck up a conversation with Judy. I came back and joined the conversation and it turned out he had ridden in on a BMW. He was from Belgium and was seeing the western U.S.

We talked about where he had been and where he intended to go, we gave him some suggestions from our own experience, and I pointed him to this website because he was heading to Colorado soon. We also told him if he needed a place to stay when he got to Denver we’d be happy to have him.

What was especially interesting about what he was doing was how he came to be on this BMW. Bruno is living at this time in Hong Kong. He has a friend who was riding his BMW all over the U.S. and had left the bike in Austin, Texas, to come to Hong Kong–not sure why. Anyway, Bruno has a little 250cc bike he rides around Hong Kong. He told his friend he could use the 250 around Hong Kong and in exchange he would fly into Austin and pick up the BMW and ride around the U.S. Then he’ll just leave the beemer wherever he ends up when he needs to go back to Hong Kong and the friend can fly back to that spot and resume his own travels.

We met others on bikes but these four were the most interesting encounters. You do meet the nicest people on motorcycles.

Biker Quote for Today

Why are motorcycle dealers closed on Sunday? Because Sunday is for worship . . . Catholics go to church, motorcyclists go ride.

by Matt Wessels

The Vintage movement is in full force and old motorcycles are finding their way back to daylight and backroads in record numbers. This year will mark the 5th annual Vintage Motorcycle Show in Golden, Colorado.

Heritage Square will host the event one last time before they close their doors at the end of 2015, and all of their facilities will be operational for the show. Those facilities include bathrooms, restaurants, and a bar.

Erico Motorsports, GrandPrix Motorsports Indian and Foothills Triumph/BMW will be there showcasing some of the factory retro motos. Last year they had a half-million dollar Vincent show up, by the name of the Black Prince. It might make a re-appearance at this year’s show.

The show (Sunday, June 7) is open to anybody with a vintage motorcycle following the structure of a controlled open floor. To enter, respond to the evite and drop a comment so that Bob can get an idea of how many bikes there will be. Being a part of the show is just as free as attending it. They are taking donations for Hospice care, so bring some stray bills to support a good cause!

Much like the show being a celebration of all that was good and right in the motorcycle world, the Hospice donations are a celebration of good people who make it their life’s work to increase the quality of life for those who can not completely provide it for themselves. The idea was started when a friend was immensely impressed with the Hospice workers who take care of his mom, and wanted to give back.

The VJMC is also giving back by footing the bill for the event and wants all motorcycles from all backgrounds, manufacturers, and styles to attend. This isn’t a profitable endeavor, this is simply two enthusiasts who want to bring like-minded people together and celebrate good bikes, good food, good talk, and good experiences.

If you missed the link up above, go HERE to register for attendance. IT’S FREE!

For any other questions or comments, please reach out to Bob @ superhawk65@gmail.com

Many of the same folks meet at the GB Fish and Chips on the first Thursday of every month for Old Bike Night. There are a few other Old Bike Night meetups around the front range area, but not all necessarily connected with this one.