Passes & Canyons Blog

By the time I got stopped I almost missed my shot of my Kawi odometer with all 5s showing.

I got out on both bikes yesterday so I have checked off February 2013 in my unbroken string of months that I have ridden each bike ever since I bought them. I lose track of when I bought the Honda CB750 Custom–25 years ago or so–so that’s about 300 consecutive months for that bike. The Kawasaki Concours is at about half that.

Of course every ride lately is a test of heated gear in one way or another. Today the temps were in the 40s so I decided to wear the heated vest but not the heated gloves. After all, one key to seeing how well the heated gloves do is to periodically ride without them.

I took off on the Kawi first. With its full fairing it’s a warmer bike to ride in any conditions. I didn’t feel the need to turn the vest on until the point where I was headed home and was getting chilly. My hands were fine.

The Honda offers a lot less protection so I very soon turned the vest on. Going on a longer ride than I had on the Kawi, my hands eventually were pretty dang chilly. I was wishing I had the electric gloves.

Back home again I wanted to take the Kawi out again just because I noticed that I was only about 3 miles away from the odometer reading 55555.5 (see the photo above). At this point I put on the Gerbings. That warmth on my hands felt really good instantly.

Up till now, when I’ve used these gloves I’ve been interested in determining how long the battery power will last. I’ve been using them at the lowest setting that was comfortable, which has meant that my hands were not toasty warm but they were not cold either. This time I figured I’d just crank them all the way up and see how they feel like that.

In a word: toasty. At full power my hands were not only not cold, they were downright warm. In fact, after awhile I’d have to say they were too warm. I didn’t bother dialing them back because I wasn’t going a long way, but yes indeed, they put out the heat.

Through all of this, of course, I was loving the heat from the vest. I’ve had that vest for many years and have loved it ever since I bought it. I know people who just put their bikes away for the winter because they just don’t like riding in the cold. If I could only get them to understand that it doesn’t have to be that way. Get some heated gear and dress for the weather and you really can ride all year round. Don’t tell me you’re just a fair-weather biker. Come on, don’t tell me that. Get out and ride that thing.

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Riders starting out from the Frontier Club for the 2008 Last Brass Monkey Run.

Yeah, it’s cold and gonna get colder the next couple days, but then we’re supposed to get a little warmer. Just in time for this year’s final organized motorcycle ride, the Last Brass Monkey Run.

The Last Brass Monkey Run is put on each year by ABATE of Colorado and it starts out at a couple spots, The Frontier Club in Aurora and Susie’s in Golden, and comes together at the Grizzly Rose.

Registration at the starting points begins at 9 a.m. and the party at the Grizzly Rose begins at noon. Registration is $10 for ABATE members and $15 for non-members. Plus, if you’re an ABATE member and you renew your membership at the event it only costs you $5 to get in.

Goings-on include food and live music, a chili cook-off, cash prizes, door prizes, 50-50, and of course the chance to catch up with friends and get in your last ride of the year.

Of course, if the weather turns nasty or you just can’t motivate yourself to get on the bike, you can come in your car. What the heck.

So hey! I’ll see you there, right?

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My Honda in the King Soopers parking lot in Aspen Park.

What a gorgeous day Sunday. I rode the Kawi to the ABATE meeting and then in the afternoon I took off on the Honda for a real ride. Time to give that battery a good charge.

It was so nice that the mountains called. I knew as I went up in elevation the temperature was going to drop but I was dressed warmly and had my electric vest on. Upward!

I cruised up through Morrison to Idledale, to Kittredge, and on to Evergreen. Lots of bikes on the road. Lots of bikes parked in Morrison and Evergreen.

And yes, it got cooler. It didn’t take long for me to be glad I had the electric vest on. It was sunny, but with the sun low in the south, the canyon was mostly in shadow. And the higher I went, the lower the mercury dipped.

By the time I reached Evergreen it was getting cloudy. I had wanted to stop but didn’t. You know how you have intentions and yet sometimes you never act on them. That was me. I turned south on Highway 73, the road to where I would meet U.S. 285 at Conifer. Now I was getting cold, especially my hands. I realized the time had come to switch to my winter riding gloves and I wished I had done so already. By the time I reached Conifer I was starting to wonder if my vest had stopped working; I was that cold.

So I cruised on down to Aspen Park and pulled off to get something hot to hold and drink. There’s a Starbucks in the King Soopers there and that was just the ticket. Feeling reasonably warm again, I rolled on back down the hill. By the time I got back to the city it was a comfortable temp again but I kept the vest turned on anyway. Felt good. And yes, it was still working.

The moral of the story, or lesson or whatever: It’s that time of year. I probably won’t be riding into the mountains again until sometime next year. And I really do need to get some electric gloves on my hands, sooner rather than later. Judy said she’d get me some for Christmas, and if I tell her specifically what I want she won’t wait for Christmas. I had forgotten to do that. No more forgetting.

But oh man, what a great day to be out for a ride. After doing all this riding this past summer I haven’t been on the bikes all that much this fall. And now I’ve started a job, for the first time in more than three years. I’m back at the point where when I occasionally go for a ride it hits me that, “Hey, this is really fun! I should do this more!” From here on it’s all about the weather.

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The road down through the middle of the Uncompaghre Plateau.

Kevin Smith and I had plans this summer to head up onto the Uncompaghre Plateau on a couple of his V-Stroms, but thanks to a screw-up by his doctor, Kevin spent much of the summer recovering from that misadventure. (If your doctor tells you a procedure is successful 95 percent of the time, think really hard about what it would mean if you were in the 5 percent.)

So with the Unk Plateau, as the locals call it, beckoning, that was the next destination for Judy and me after we came down off the Grand Mesa on the Land’s End Road. All it took was a short jog north on U.S. 50 and then a left turn onto CO 141 at Whitewater. CO 141 is the road that runs to Gateway and through the Unaweep Canyon, itself a terrific ride, and all paved.

To get up on top of the Unk Plateau you just cruise about 13 miles until you reach the turn-off for the Divide Road. Through a series of switchbacks you climb quickly to the top of the plateau and then the road heads south.

Although the locals all know and are familiar with the Unk, I have the strong impression that most other people in the state have no idea it exists. It’s a large area–more than 60 miles long by about 15 miles wide–and there are no towns and only gravel roads up there. Not surprisingly it’s a favorite for hunting, fishing, and camping. Also for ATVs and dual-sport or dirt bikes.

Unlike the Land’s End Road, I would not even want to take my Honda on the Divide Road. It’s too rough in too many places. This is definitely dual-sport or dirt bike terrain. But if you are riding one of those, the Unk is calling to you. There are hills, canyons, cliffs, lakes all just waiting. Think Grand Mesa, but with a lot fewer people. Heck the Divide Road even goes over a pass, Columbine Pass, as it traverses the plateau north to south.

It’s big enough, too, that we didn’t even cover the entire north-south cruise as we intended because it was getting late in the day. Instead, midway we turned off on a road that headed down to Delta. If we had taken the Divide Road to the end it would have brought us out in Montrose. So there’s plenty more to see. Maybe Kevin and I can get up there next year. On bikes.

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The Lands End Road running off Grand Mesa.

Utterly, utterly spectacular. I’m talking about the Land’s End Road running off Grand Mesa down toward Whitewater. A week ago I had no idea this road existed. Now I’ve been on it.

I have to acknowledge that this is another instance of Judy and me going on roads that would be fabulous on a dual-sport bike but doing so in her Subaru Forester. Because I still don’t have a dual-sport bike. I’m really, really hoping that by next summer that situation is going to have changed. But in the meantime, we drive these roads and I view them from the motorcyclist’s perspective. And oh man, what a perspective this road offers.

You can go either way on the Land’s End Road but I strongly recommend down. I suspect that climbing you just wouldn’t see it the way you do descending. So to do that, you take CO 65 onto Grand Mesa, either coming from I-70 on the north or from Cedaredge on the south, and catch the well-marked turn-off at about the 31 mile marker. That road heads west to the edge of the mesa, runs along the rim a ways, and then reaches the point where it plunges downward. Oh. My. Gosh.

Up to this point the road alternates between good gravel and pavement. Starting down it is all gravel until you get down off the mesa and get near U.S. 50. But it’s good gravel and I would probably be willing to take my Honda CB750 Custom on it. No way would I take my Kawasaki Concours on it. The Connie hates gravel. On a dual-sport or a dirt bike I’d be in heaven.

If you’ve never seen this road you really owe it to yourself. Heck, go there in your car if nothing else. I just can’t believe I’d never even heard of it till now.

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You know the sign that says ‘Pavement ends’? I want to see more of those.

Always a good ride, the Peak-to-Peak is an even better ride in the fall when the aspens turn colors.

It was a beautiful day and we had heard the colors were good up on the Peak-to-Peak Highway, so of course we had to go for a ride on Sunday.

Heading up via Golden Gate Canyon we had the road almost entirely to ourselves. Too good to last, however, as we had every expectation that the crowds looking for fall color would be thick. We weren’t wrong on that count.

The funny thing was, on the way up and then headed north, Judy and I were both struck with how the colors were just not as stunning and intense as we expected. I suspect it has something to do with the lack of moisture. I think I remember something about how in dry years the aspen leaves go pretty much straight from green to brown, and that’s what a lot of them were doing.

Still, there were a few spots with good color, and we could always tell when we approached these because of all the cars and motorcycles pulled off the side of the road. And oh boy, did I mention motorcycles? It was like a rally on the Peak-to-Peak. We saw hundreds of bikes. There were probably as many bikes as there were cars.

So we cruised on up to Estes Park and had lunch. In case we needed the reminder, you really don’t want to go to Estes Park on a day when there are likely to be hordes of tourists. A gorgeous Sunday in the fall is one of those days. We ate our lunch and quickly departed.

Rather than go down the Big Thompson Canyon or some other canyon and then have to take CO 93 through Boulder, we just backtracked on the Peak-to-Peak, on the theory that a road looks completely different going the other way. And boy did it! Something about the change in the light, and possibly the different views north vs. south, but it was a lot prettier going south. It still wasn’t the kind of color we’ve seen up there before, but it was a lot closer to what we had expected.

So the word is that next weekend is going to be the peak on the Peak-to-Peak. My recommendation, if you’re only going one way on that stretch of road, go north to south. And be ready for crowds.

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