Passes & Canyons Blog

I hope you all have good holidays. I know I’m not working today.

Biker Quote for Today

The journey is what makes a biker; the destination is just a bonus.

Taking a holiday today. I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving.

But yeah, I’ll put in a quote.

Biker Quote for Today

Two wheels, endless possibilities.

From time to time I go all meta on this blog, which is to say, instead of writing about motorcycles on the blog I write about the blog. “Meta” basically means self-referential. I learned the term when I was writing software user guides and there was this constant mention of “metadata.” Metadata, it turns out, is data about the data. Self-referential.

I’ve done this a few times, particularly a number of years ago when someone hacked the site and played all kind of mischief.

This time it’s not damage but a curious situation. Apparently somebody in China has a bot (I assume it’s a bot, no one would do this in person) has gone through the entire site–especially this blog–visiting every single page.

I first noticed it about a month ago when I went to check my visitor statistics and found that the number had shot through the roof. In the previous month there were a reported 1,537 visitors and then the next month that number stood at 8,351. I gasped and drilled down. And what I found is like what you see above in that screen shot: thousands and thousands of one-page visits all from one source in Beijing.

The way I figure it, some company in China is scraping all my content, probably for use in training an artificial intelligence tool. Intellectual theft as it were. Everything here is copyrighted but nobody is asking my permission or paying me for it.

I had figured that this was a one-shot affair but it seems to be continuing. Yesterday’s traffic was more than 50 percent from this bot. It’s not like it’s costing me something out of pocket but it screws up my stats. I have kept stats on this site ever since I launched it and now my traffic numbers are just garbage. I don’t see that there’s a thing in the world I can do about it so I just hope they get what they want and then leave for good and let me get back to normal.

Biker Quote for Today

Ride now; beer later.

OK, I’m being lazy again this Christmas Day, just as I was at Thanksgiving this year. No full blown blog post; just best wishes to all for the season. I’ll be back on the job next week.

Biker Quote for Today

You might be a Yuppie biker if you really believe that there are bikes that come customized from the factory.

I was on the Adventure Rider forum and ran across an interesting post. Apparently it was in reply to a previous post but there was no link so I did not see what exactly the discussion was, but just the reply was of note. Here is the full post. (I hope I’m not violating some kind of copyright law putting this in here.)

Section 42-4-1101 Colorado Revised Statutes state that exceeding a posted speed sign is “prima facie evidence” and subsection (4) thereof states in part:

“prima facie evidence” means evidence which is sufficient proof that the speed was not reasonable or prudent under the conditions then existing, and which will remain sufficient proof of such fact, unless contradicted and overcome by evidence bearing upon the question of whether or not the speed was reasonable and prudent under the conditions then existing.(emphasis added)

Note too that section (7) states that any “city or town” may adopt “absolute speed limits” and (8)(b) makes 75 absolute everywhere in the state.

And yes, I’ve seen people get off on that (the ones I know of were usually in the category of being in traffic all of which was flowing faster than the posted limit. But if it’s just you vs the cop, good luck!

Oh, and yes, it’s illegal for cops to speed without using their emergency signals unless in “actual pursuit” but only “so long as such pursuit is being made to obtain verification of or evidence of the guilt of the suspected violator.” So if he is just cruising at 70 in a 65 it must be “reasonable and prudent” to do so, eh? I know one guy who got off because he got the cop to admit that he had been cruising at 80 in a 65 when he passed the “speeder” who was doing 75. “Officer, did you know you were driving in excess of the absolute maximum speed in this state? (embarrassed) “Yes.” Did you believe you were driving, nonetheless, at a reasonable and prudent speed?” “Yes”. Speeder found not guilty.

So what makes this particularly interesting to me is that I was once on a jury and we had a case where this was exactly the defendant’s argument.

This was in Adams County and the bust happened up on North Federal in the Federal Heights area. It was late at night, around 3 a.m. as I recall, and this guy was going higher than the posted speed. He got pulled over and cited both for speeding and for . . . I can’t remember, either an open container of some alcoholic beverage or for drunk driving. Probably open container.

I’m not sure why he contested the alcohol charge because that was pretty cut and dried, and we convicted him on it.

On the speeding charge, however, he made the plea that the letter of the law–taken literally–meant that going faster than the posted speed limit was not technically speeding if he was going a reasonable and prudent speed. He argued that at 3 a.m. there was no other traffic at all and the road was in good shape, he had plenty of visibility, all driving conditions were good, and so his going a little over the posted speed was in fact reasonable and prudent. There was absolutely no danger to him or to anyone else.

This was a novel concept that none of us on the jury had ever heard of but because this reading of the law was not contested by the prosecution we figured we had to accept that it was valid. And we acquitted him on the speeding charge.

So there you go. It’s good to know the law. Especially if you’re getting on the wrong side of it.

Biker Quote for Today

What kind of sound does a motorcycle of a pirate usually make? It goes like “Ruuum rum rum rummmmm.”

Just a quick note here today to wish you all a good Thanksgiving. Eat your fill of your turkey, tofurkey, turducken, or whatever–I intend to do the same.

Biker Quote for Today

100 reasons not to date a biker: 52. No shave November applies all year.