Passes & Canyons Blog

I have several Google alerts set to bring me articles mentioning motorcycles, bikers, and such, and today I got one about an event I’ve never heard of. Just wondering if you have.

From WYMT, a TV station in eastern Kentucky, there was a story, “National Motorcycle Ride Day.” I’ve never heard of National Motorcycle Ride Day.

Apparently this day is designated on the second Saturday of October each year. Well, we missed it this year, that’s for sure. It’s described as encouraging “motorcyclists in the USA and the world to get out and on their motorcycles for a united day of riding.”

OK, I’m all for that. But where did this come from and who made this designation? Here’s the answer:

National Motorcycle Ride Day was submitted in August 2015 by Chad Geer, and the Registrar at National Day Calendar declared National Motorcycle Ride Day to be celebrated annually on the second Saturday in October.

OK, so it seems that anybody who wants to declare a day to celebrate/commemorate something, all they have to do is fill out the form at this “National Day Calendar” and presto, you got it!

Of course, you then have to somehow publicize it and get the word out or you’re going to be having your very own, one-person celebration.

Is there more to this? Here:

National Motorcycle Ride Day was founded in 2015 by Chad Geer of Dunlop Tire N.A. The month of October signifies the beginning of fall and also the end of the riding season for a lot of bikers. It is also the month the pneumatic tire was developed by John B. Dunlop. Without this development in tire technology motorcycles would not be able to function.

OK, well, cool. Chad, you have my best wishes on making this into something. Hey, at least WYMT did a story, and that got distributed nationally. It’s a start.

Biker Quote for Today

Reasons not to date a motorcyclist: The garage is decorated nicer than the house.

Three times over two days recently I observed some interesting people on motorcycles.

I was up in the hills and had no intention of coming down on I-70 but a wrong turn left me doing exactly that. I was in no hurry and so I kept to the right lane, where I got passed by a couple guys in a bigger hurry than me. They were something to see.

These two guys were obviously traveling because their bikes–Harleys or something similar–were totally loaded with gear. But I’m not talking big bags on the sides and a big top bag. No, they had all their individual items bungeed on all over the back ends of their bikes. And they had a lot of gear.

They were barreling along the interstate and neither of them had a riding jacket on. Both were wearing sleeveless t-shirts, although they were wearing helmets. And on top of each helmet was a GoPro camera.

Yeah, they were an interesting sight.

Further along the way home on this same ride, I was coming east through town on Hampden and it was rush hour. Or crawl hour, more appropriately. I was aware of the traffic around me so it was with some surprise that I glanced in the mirror at one point to see there was another bike right behind me in my lane. Where did that guy come from?

I barely had time to wonder if perhaps he lane-split his way up behind me when the traffic came to a complete stop and he blasted on ahead, going up the middle. Question answered. Lane-splitting is not legal in Colorado but that obviously did not bother him.

Then the next day I was once again on Hampden, this time headed east near Kennedy Golf Course, when I came to a stop at a red light. In front in the left-hand lane was a guy on a sportbike. A big pick-up was in front of me, first in line, and to our right a small orange pick-up, with a riding lawnmower in the bed, pulled up first in line.

But this was no ordinary pick-up. This one had no hood because the engine stood up about a foot above where the hood would have been. And this guy was revving his engine, clearly planning to blast away as soon as the light changed.

The light did change and whether there had been some communication between them or what, both the bike and the orange pick-up rocketed away. Most likely, the biker decided it would be fun to shut down this orange guy, whose intentions were clear.

I quickly lost sight of them both because of the guy in front of me, but as we neared Havana, where the road curves hard to the left, I caught sight of the bike going about 70, screaming around the curve with no orange guy anywhere to be seen. I’d say the biker definitely shut down that orange guy. Just having fun, you know.

Biker Quote for Today

If you can park it and not turn around to admire it before walking away you bought the wrong one.

This could be interesting. It’s coming up really soon so this is pretty late but I’m passing it along. I did something similar some years ago, riding motorcycle lead for a bicycle race out in Deer Trail.

We still need many more motos for the Boulder Ironman Triathlon on June 10th. Please Please Please if you are available or know another moto who is interested please let me know. As of now, you need to be able to carry a passenger, I am checking to see if there are any positions that don’t require a passenger. If you have already said you are available I also sent an email with some signup info. If you have any questions please let me know. I’m currently travelling back to CO from CA over the next few days so might be a bit slow responding.

For those of you who have also responded about being available for other tris, I am working through the process and will notify you if you are needed for a particular event. I can definitively say that I will use anyone who can also do the 70.3 tri on Saturday 8/4/2018.

Date: Sunday 6/10/2018
Event: Ironman Boulder Triathlon
Location: Boulder Reservoir
ShowUp Time: 5:30a
Moto Reimbursement: $130
Info: http://ironman.com/triathlon/events/americas/ironman/boulder.aspx
# Motos: 19 – officials, pro spotters, media, sweep

Thanks,

DaleE@daleeva.com
303-499-5437

Biker Quote for Today

Sell your bike she said. Rode away I did.

If you’re a regular reader here you know that something has gone wrong. Ever since April 2006 I have posted regularly, with the exception of a short hiatus in December last year while my Mom was dying. Now it has been two weeks.

That photo to the right should give you a pretty good idea where I’ve been. It was shot in the cardiac ICU at Porter Adventist Hospital. I had quadruple bypass surgery with complete aorta replacement thrown in.

Needless to say, I’m a bit out of commission. I have three motorcycle-related posts already prepped that I’ll be putting up in the next week and a half. After that I’ll be taking another hiatus, although to the extent that I’m able, perhaps when something presents itself in my email, I will have an occasional post. Also, because the writer in me never shuts down, I may put up a couple posts here now and then that have nothing to do with motorcycles, but rather chronicle a motorcyclist’s battle back to the bike. (I kind of like that. That’s going to be my theme: The Battle Back to the Bike.)

I understand if you are here for motorcycles and are not particularly interested in some guy’s recovery from surgery. You don’t have to read them. Check back later and we’ll definitely be all motorcycles, all the time. For now I’m just going to do what I’m able to do.

This came in my email the other day.

DENVER CASTING SEARCH
EXPERIENCED MOTORCYCLISTS WANTED
FOR PHOTOGRAPHY CAMPAIGN
DATES: Multiple dates for each rider between April 10th & May 24th.
PAY: $500 dollars per riding day.
USAGE: Unlimited, all media.
RIDER TEST: Must be available March 31st &/or April 1st for riding test.
Rider test is in Denver, requires 1 hour of unpaid time.
TO SUBMIT: Email the following ASAP to CastingDirectorLA@gmail.com
• Submit a one minute of horizontal cell phone video of you
talking about yourself, your occupation, your motorcycle
riding experience, any x-country you have ridden, how often
you ride, tell us about the bike you own.
• Submit two freshly shot photos of yourself –
one close up of your face & one head-to-toe shot.
• Submit your name, location (city), height, weight,
cell phone number and email address.
RIDERS MUST BE FULLY LICENSED FOR A MINIMUM OF 2 YEARS
ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS JANUARY 31 – FEBRUARY 23, 2018

That’s all pretty self-explanatory. If you’re interested you need to submit your letter of interest by February 23. Could be fun. Could be long, hard days. But what the heck, it’s something different and if you actually get selected the pay looks pretty good. You can bet I’ll send my submission. Why wouldn’t I?

Biker Quote for Today

Motorcycles: Helping guys pick up chicks since 1907.

I never miss a post. I have a schedule and I stick with it. But not today.

I’ve been dealing with a hard drive crash and what a mess that is.

Should be back on schedule on Monday. The weather is nice; go ride.

OK, Examiner finally did it. After eight years, first as the Denver Motorcycle Examiner and then as the National Motorcycle Examiner, I have written about riding motorcycles for Examiner.com but that association has ended. They’ve ticked me off for the last time.

Just so you’ll know, Examiner.com is a crowd-sourced website for news and features and whatever else you might want to write on just about any topic. Headquartered in Denver, in the very beginning they went looking for writers and they found me. I don’t even remember any more but I was approximately the 179th writer, or “Examiner,” they signed up. There have since been tens of thousands of Examiners that have come and gone, and “gone” applies to the vast majority of that number.

It was slow in the beginning, and the pay was chickenfeed, but things grew and the money started getting to be pretty darn good. Good enough that when I left a regular job at First Data Corporation I told Judy I was not going to look for another one, I was going to be the National Motorcycle Examiner full-time.

After awhile they started “adjusting” the pay scheme. Frequently. And every time they made an adjustment it meant exactly one thing: the writers were going to make less money. But I stuck with it. I developed other freelance markets and they became my primary income so the Examiner income was just supplemental to that, and every dollar was welcome.

Then they really made me angry. They wanted to improve the quality of the writing on their site, and I’ll be the first to say it needed improving. Far too many of the Examiners were people who had no clue about spelling, grammar, punctuation, or how to craft a sentence to make sense. So they set up reviewers to look at your work and grade you on how good you did. The problem was, the people they hired were not exactly English majors; they were just whatever low-paid people they could bring on who they gave a list of so-called grammatical rules to judge by. Many of the people who needed to improve resented getting low grades and they left. I would consider that a good thing. But they also used their rules to grade my writing and they were totally off base.

It is said that a beginner needs to learn the rules of whatever trade they’re engaging in. A master knows the rules but then deliberately breaks them for a very specific purpose. That’s what makes them a master. Pardon my immodesty but I consider myself a master. I have earned my living as a writer for more 40 years and I’ve done very nicely, thank you. To have some kid tell me my work was unacceptable because I violated some of these so-called rules was too much for me. I cut back to the absolute minimum they require for you to continue to get paid for the page-views your stuff gets. Like about once a month, versus the three times a week I had been putting up.

That little bout of quality control soon faded but now, more than two years later, they have brought it back with a vengeance, and this time your piece gets reviewed before it gets published. And sometimes even after. Having been around so long, the technology they used when the site was new has changed and my early stuff is in technology that is not compatible with what is currently used. So they recently unpublished the first six months or so of my stuff. I have been selectively going through and republishing articles that have continued relevance, and labeling them as such.

Imagine my surprise to find that one of these “redo” pieces I recently put up again has been unpublished. And while the note on why left matters totally unclear, it appears part of the reason was that “it had already been unpublished” so what scam are you trying to pull putting something back up that has been deemed unfit?

Last straw. There is no National Motorcycle Examiner any more. I’m through with those fools. But for those of you who are interested, I did put up one final “Only a biker knows” piece with one more batch of 20 biker quotes. They have all come from this blog but the one immediately below will never join the others on Examiner.

Meanwhile, I just checked and they have not allowed that last 20 quotes to be published because:

Newsworthy
This article is not newsworthy. (Duh! I never claimed it was.)
Note from the reviewer:
This article is too fragmented. Please refrain from using more than 3 one-sentence paragraphs whenever possible. (OK, it’s a bulleted list. What do you expect?)

Can you see why I’m through with Examiner?

Biker Quote for Today

Merely rolling a bike out in anticipation of a ride feels liberating. — Clement Salvadori

Boy, that one blew up and over in a hurry.

The word hit the street: FBI Admits All Registered Motorcycle Owners Are On Classified Gang List.

Holy smoke, there’s some serious idiocy going on here if that’s true. And for those not detail-oriented, it seemed to be true because the story seemed to have been published by the Washington Post. Presumably an FBI spokesman named Darrin Cornia told a reporter that, “the FBI has been collecting and compiling Department of Motor Vehicles and Drivers License Division records for the purpose of adding those that own motorcycles to a classified gang list since 1994.”

O-o-o-o-o-o K-k-k-k-k-k.

Here’s where we get to the attention to detail part. This supposed Washington Post story was actually published on a spoof website with the url of “washingtonpost.com.co.” Notice that little “.co” after the “.com”? That’s your giveaway. Totally fake.

And it hit Snopes.com right away. If you’re not familiar with Snopes.com you should be. It is the number one place to go to check out whether outrageous stories are true. Snopes very quickly reported that it was false and that “The National Report, where the story originated, is a ‘satire’ site whose disclaimer states that ‘all news articles contained within National Report are fiction, and presumably fake news. Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental.'”

That didn’t stop a lot of people from having fun with the whole thing. Jerry Pokorny passed this along: My affiliation is the “Sons of Arthritis.” What’s yours? Gang sign is bent fingers (age related).

So sorry to disappoint many of you. I guess you’ll have to go out and form your own OFMC. Not us, we’ve got the OFMC. We’re a bunch of stud bikers. You know we are, we’ve been telling people that for more than 25 years.

Yeah, we bad.

Biker Quote for Today

A bike is like sex: It’s better to have it.