Passes & Canyons Blog

I do a lot of motorcycle writing that you never see here on this blog. In addition to maintaining the Passes and Canyons website and writing this blog, I also write 3-4 times each week for Examiner.com, as the National Motorcycle Examiner.

While I do on occasion write about the same subject both here and there, for the most part I don’t. And even when I do, I generally do two different posts, rather than a copy and paste. The point is, the two have different audiences. I figure you folks reading this blog are confirmed biker types, whereas the folks reading my stuff on Examiner.com may be newbies or confirmed bikers, or they may not ride at all. What makes sense in one place doesn’t necessarily make sense in the other.

That said, there have been a number of pieces I’ve written for Examiner.com that you might find worth reading. Here then is a listing of articles and links to them. I hope you find something that piques your interest.

Only a biker knows . . .
You’ve no doubt noticed that I include a “Biker Quote for Today” at the end of each of these blog posts. I don’t do it on Examiner.com, but periodically I collect the quotes I’ve used here and present a bunch of them at once.

DNC riders: The best one-day motorcycle ride from Denver
In a group effort for the Democratic National Convention last summer, all Denver Examiners were asked to put together recommendations in their topic for the convention delegates and the press.

What cagers don’t know about motorcycling
This was an educational piece for the non-biker readership.

The ignorance we’re up against
A discussion of how clueless non-bikers are about what we do.

Best motorcycle bars in the Denver area
Another joint Examiner effort, this time a “best of” listing.

Underwater motorcycles, motorcycles that fly
Passing along some interesting items I ran across about a submarine motorcycle and one that sprouts wings and flies.

The new styles in helmets: fruit, pots, tires
An amusing report about the frantic efforts of Nigerian motorcycle taxi drivers when they realized the government was serious about enforcing a new helmet law.

If you love motorcycles you want to see Jay Leno’s Garage
Passing along a link to a terrific site, at least if you’re the kind of guy who is interested in motorcycles.

Who will fold first, Chrysler or Harley?
A disturbing analysis of Harley’s future.

So there you have it. Take a look. I certainly think there’s a lot worth reading there, but then I’m biased.

Biker Quote for Today

What does it mean to you? For me, it’s something I just do.

I wondered for a long time if I was going to manage to get in more miles on my bikes last year than on my car. Well, it’s January 1, 2009 and I have the answer: Not quite.

My total overall mileage was 9,810 miles. That splits almost equally between two wheels and four wheels, but four wheels ended up with a 132-mile edge. Car: 4,971. Bikes: 4,839.

How does that compare with what I set as goals a year ago? In that regard I’m looking really good. Here’s what I said: “For 2008 I’m going to shoot for 2,500 again on the Kawi, I’ll really push and try to also log 1,000 miles on the Honda, and I will try this time to keep the car to under 11,000.”

In fact, I put 2,265 miles on the Concours and 2,574 miles on the Honda. Clearly I was wildly successful keeping the car under 11,000 considering I only drove it 4,971 miles. Being out of work much of the year made that easy.

So, what about 2009? What goals am I setting?

Well, I’m working again, and this time the job is much closer to home, only 4 miles away. That means that even if I ride a bike much of the time it won’t come out to that many miles. My previous job was 23 miles away.

I’m going to set 5,000 as the low goal for the car, the idea with it being to keep the number down. For the Kawi I’ll shoot for 2,000, and then 1,500 for the CB750. I’ll definitely be taking the Kawi on the OFMC trip this year, so 2,000 should be easy. I’ll need to choose the Honda deliberately on numerous occasions to make 1,500 with it.

I know these aren’t big numbers but hey, I just don’t drive that much. Did you drive less than 10,000 miles last year? I don’t think many people do.

So, have a good year riding and, as always, keep the rubber side down.

Biker Quote for Today

If you ride like there’s no tomorrow, there won’t be.

We all know people who are fanatics about their Harley. And most of them have very strong feelings about the company that makes their beloved machines.

Well, here’s the perfect gift.

How about a framed, personalized Harley-Davidson stock certificate? They’ll be an owner of the company, and hey, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Harley pays dividends. Right now they’re paying $1.32 a year per share. Your loved one can look forward to padding his wallet with that cash!

The place to go to make this happen is Oneshare.com. You can pick the frame, the matte, the engraving–heck you can even pick the stock. It doesn’t have to be Harley-Davidson.

You pay the price for the share, a $39 transfer fee, and whatever the frame, matte, and engraving you select costs. Figure around $104 for a Harley share right now, or higher if you want to get fancy.

So, just wanted to pass that along as a gift idea–doesn’t have to be Christmas, could be birthday or any other–that you probably hadn’t thought of. You’re welcome.

Biker Quote for Today

Ride like you own the road…and…someday the road will own you.

What’s the strangest thing you ever hit, or almost hit, while riding your bike? I love this thread on the Adventure Riders forum, and I’m here today with another batch of tales. Read and cringe.

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my garage door – when my ex partner put it down on me as i rode through it…

was really happy that day

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A buzzard
A Cow
A dead brown christmas tree (in August)

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I was hauling a friend on the back to get his bike and hit a concrete block in the middle of the road at about 70 mph. Shoulda seen it and all that but things happen fast. This was back in the sixties and we were not wearing helmets. The bike did a sorta flip thing and when we hit the road I landed on top of him. Here we were sliding down route 92 out of tampa at probably 65 or so and he keep yelling “get off get off.” I swear I tried my best to roll off of him but we end up getting into the median first and doing some ground gymnastics before coming to a stop.Cars stopped and we both got up and picked up the bike. Straightened the forks a little, got back on the bike and went to the hospital. He didn’t want to go but, man, he really had to. When they got done with him he looked like a mummy but other than a ton of pavement rash was okay. Bad day but he still kids me about wanting to ride him out to keep from sliding on the road myself.

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I had a close encounter with a hawk. I was riding down I-70 towards the lake of the Ozarks from St. Louis on my brand new R1100 and a hawk took flight from the median.

Damn thing hit my windshield dead center, broke through it, hit me square in the center if my helmet and knocked me onto the highway doing 70 mph. I was AGATT and glad of it. First thing that hit was my head on the pavement and I rolled I don’t know how many times before ending flat on my back and sliding off the highway.

Good thing too, an 18 wheeler ran over the bike shortly after I cleared it.

I was only bruised and sore for a month, nothing broke, nothing cut.

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Birds, yeah, birds.
Two bird stories:
1) Had a bird hit me in the chest one time and I just about dumped the bike getting off the road gasping for air. Not good.
2) Following a friend, Richard, and his wife, Miriam, up rt192 here in Pa. They were on their sidecar rig. I saw a big bird up ahead coming in from the right and darned if it didn’t hit them. Man, feathers instantly all over the place. Richard weaved back and forth a little and then pulled off the right side of the road. He jumped off the rig and ran to the sidecar. I pulled over thinking maybe his wife Miriam was hurt, got off and ran up to the rig. To my surprise Richard was laughing pretty hard and so was she. Then Miriam held up a tube of lipstick with feathers all over it. She was just fixing to put on some lipstick when the bird hit and like I said feathers were all over the place. No damage except to the bird….kinda goofy.

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A motorboat.
Night on I95 in VA. Came over a rise and there it was. Across both lanes.
How do you say SWERVE?
Missed it(!) somehow.
A couple hundred yards ahead is a car with an empty boat trailer in tow parked on the shoulder and two guys standing there apparently trying to figure out what to do next.

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A few nights ago I was riding around midtown in Manhattan. Bitterly cold, below freezing, Friday night, me with under 300 miles on my bike…perfect night for ride! Anyway, I made a left onto a side street from 5th avenue…I had the green light but noticed that there were about 3 cars in front of me, most of them honking, some yelling in unrecognizable accents…so I stood up to see what the hell was going on. Turns out some yahoo in an escalade thought it might be a good idea to stop in the middle of the street, with a green light, and just go ahead and start pissing. So he uh, zips up, and gets back in his blinged out land monster just before the light turned red. A few cars managed to get through, but I missed the light, and as I was waiting for the next one I look down and low and behold I am standing in some beefed out Jersey boy’s pee.

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I hit everything from bugs to dump trucks. I’m glad I was young when I T-boned an LTD and ran into the rear of a dumptruck.

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I was on a KLX 650 w/ my brother on a tiger in Dinosaur Nat’l Park, Yampa River bench road. an eagle hears us coming and lifts off but isn’t gaining enough elevation so it drops the HUGE rabbit that it was feasting on from about 15 feet into the air right (almost) into my windshield. A dead HUGE rabbit falling from the sky! My little bro laughed and laughed. I could see the look in the Golden Eagle’s eye!

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OK. Enough fun for now. You’ll find the other flying object posts here:
Motorcycles and Flying Objects
More Flying Object Tales
Latest Tales of Flying Object Encounters

Biker Quote for Today

Who cares? I’m riding…….

I had this song in my head and I’ve never known or been able to understand all of the words in the lyrics. So I had this sudden thought that there are probably quite a few people just like me out there, and that it could be a real service to print the lyrics.

Not that anyone who is interested can’t look them up on umpteen websites, but until now I never had. So if you have wondered but never bothered to look, and you’re here now, I just saved you the trouble.

Here they are, the words to “Born to Be Wild” by Steppenwolf.

Words and music by Mars Bonfire
© MCA Music (BMI)

BORN TO BE WILD

Get your motor runnin’
Head out on the highway
Lookin’ for adventure
And whatever comes our way
Yeah Darlin’ go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder
Racin’ with the wind
And the feelin’ that I’m under
Yeah Darlin’ go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

Like a true nature’s child
We were born, born to be wild
We can climb so high
I never wanna die

Born to be wild
Born to be wild

By the way, if I’m violating any copyright restrictions by printing this I’ll gladly take this down. But considering the number of other sites out there with these lyrics posted I can’t believe it’s a terribly serious offense.

Biker Quote for Today

I like smoke and lightning, heavy metal thunder

OK, non-TV-watching guy that I am, I watched the first two episodes of Sons of Anarchy, this motorcycle gang series on FX. Not that that makes me some all-knowing and wise person in regard to the show, but I wanted to give my impressions. If you’ve seen the show I’d love to hear what you have to say about it, too.

First off, it’s pretty violent. Especially the first episode; the second episode not so much. Still not something my wife would want to see.

Secondly, it’s pretty cynical. Paid off cops and other officials are just par for the course.

Third–and this is interesting–it’s all about family. Since I don’t normally watch television I haven’t seen all the Sopranos shows but I suspect it’s like that in a way. They’re all family, and family is what matters. It’s just that in this case, it’s a family of thugs and murder, extortion, and gun-running are family values. It kind of shows up the misnomer of the religious right and how they say they stand for family values. What they really mean is that they are in favor of enforcing their own family values, never mind if you have different values in your family.

That comparison to the Sopranos strikes me as especially relevant here. This is a show about a biker gang, but at least in the first two episodes, the only thing that makes them a biker gang is that they ride motorcycles. Otherwise they might as well be the Sopranos. Yes, it’s a little early but so far motorcycles really haven’t played any sort of role in the show. They could have filmed the same show with all the characters getting around in Honda Accords. It has nothing to do with bikes.

Anyway, the story line is starting to develop and from a detached point of view it’s interesting to see how they’re setting up the characters so you’ll hate them or love them or connect with them in one way or another–whatever it takes to get you to tune in next week. I’m not on the verge of getting caught up in this show but I will watch a few more episodes just to get a good feel for the thing. And if there’s anything worth discussing I’ll come back to this topic. Time will tell.

Biker Quote for Today

Live to Ride, Hope to Live.

I’m probably way behind you on this. The simple fact is that my wife and I don’t watch television. Really. We don’t. I know it’s hard to believe. But for that reason, until today I had never heard of this new motorcycle gang show on this season, Sons of Anarchy. And the word is that the series is based loosely on “Hamlet” (you know, that king of the Danes thing by Shakespeare).

So is it any good? Is it worth watching? Is it worth doing something I’m not accustomed to doing, i.e., turning on the TV? I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. And the really amusing thing in this internet age is that I’ll do so without turning on my television. If you go to the official site, the one in that link above, you can watch any episodes you want on your computer. I really like that because otherwise I would have to catch whatever episode was on and come in in the middle of the story. On the web I can start with the pilot episode and catch up at my own speed.

I’m really curious whether this thing is going to be–or already is–seen as creating another negative stereotype against bikers. Of course, this being American television, you can’t have protagonists who are unadulterated bad guys. So the Sons of Anarchy do bad stuff, like selling smuggled guns to gangs in East LA, but in their own home of Charming, CA, these good bad guys keep the bad bad guys from selling meth on their turf. How do I know all this if I haven’t seen the show? I read it on Wikipedia.

Now, certainly I’ll have something further to say on this once I watch a few of the shows, but if you’re way ahead of me and have been watching it since it premiered, maybe you could give me a feel for it from your perspective. I suspect this is already a much talked about subject among bikers, although my buddies haven’t mentioned it. Could I possibly be ahead of them?

What a concept: me watching television. What’s the world coming to?

Biker Quote for Today

Faster, Faster, Faster, Till the thrill of speed overcomes fear of Death.

Here’s a short video. This took place in Spain. Put it down on your list of things not to do.

Biker Quote for Today

Keep the paint up, and the rubber down!