Passes & Canyons Blog

Permit me to boast a little bit here, there were some really good numbers on this website last month. For the first time ever, www.motorcyclecolorado.com had more than 15,000 unique visits in one month in May 2012.

What is especially exciting about this (to me, at least) is that this is only the beginning of the season and customarily the numbers continue to rise each month through August, so that record is likely to be beaten, and soon. In fact, just a few days into June, if the entire month goes like these days have it would come out to 18,000 unique visits in June. I’m not going to count on that, but if it’s anything close that suggests it could hit 20,000 by August. Yow! That’s just incredible.

Before this the best month ever on the site was 14,860 visits in August 2011. The exact number in May this year was 15,247. That compares with 11,740 in May of 2011. It’s that kind of growth year after year that continues to blow me away.

So once again, as I have other times when I’ve announced big numbers, I want to thank you–all of you folks who have come to the website and found it useful–for making this possible. I built this site for you and nothing can be more gratifying than to see that you find my efforts valuable.

Note: On a totally different subject, in case you saw my recent post about the EagleRider photo contest in which I have a finalist entry: You may have clicked on that link to go and vote for my picture and had problems. It seems a lot of people are having problems. I learned first off that Facebook, where the contest is in operation, had a server failure and was offline for awhile. But even since they got their operation back up there continue to be problems getting in to vote. I wish I could explain it but I can’t. All I ask is that you try again and perhaps bookmark the URL so you can vote each day through June 29. Here’s that link again: http://www.facebook.com/EagleRider/app_124405271018078

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Biker Quote for Today

A day without a wheelie is like a day without sunshine.

I mentioned recently that I had entered the photo above in a contest EagleRider is having and now, of the 63 photos entered, they have selected 20 for the run-off. My photo is one of those 20 and I would appreciate your votes.

Here’s the scoop. EagleRider, the groundbreaking company that opened up the concept of motorcycle rentals, is celebrating its 20th anniversary. They ran this contest asking people to offer photos for their 20 Years on the Highway contest, with the winner to receive an all-expense-paid trip for two to Los Angeles for the celebration.

The winner will be decided by votes. The way I see it, at this point it becomes a matter of who can work their social network the best. Each person can vote once a day, every day from now until midnight on June 29. To see the finalist photos, go here and scroll through the entries. Whichever one you like the most, click the “Like” link. Of course, I’d be very pleased if you vote for my photo but if you like something else better you really should vote for it.

Then, bookmark the link and go back every day until June 29 and vote again. Please be advised that the page loads a bit slowly, so be patient. Thanks.

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Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re becoming addicted to riding when you almost crash your car in a turn because you were trying to counter-steer and lean rather than turn the wheel.

This just in from the folks at EagleRider. They’re celebrating their 20th anniversary this year and have set up a contest to bring the winner a nice prize and bring themselves some good PR. (I assume you know that EagleRider rents motorcycles; I don’t really need to explain that, do I?)

So in this social media era, of course the first step in entering the contest is to “like” EagleRider on Facebook. When you’ve done that, right below the Like button you’ll see an EagleRider emblem, with text below that reads 20 Years on the Highway. Click that. What they want you to do is enter a photo from one of your rides. Ultimately, one person’s entry will be declared the winner, “voted on by the fans,” and that person will receive an all-expenses paid trip to EagleRider’s 20th anniversary celebration in Los Angeles. They don’t say exactly when that will be. Also, once a week, some random entrant will receive an EagleRider t-shirt.

So what the heck, I went ahead and entered. That photo at top is my entrant. That’s Skyline Drive down by Canon City. And just so you’ll know, apparently you can only enter once. I tried a second time with a different photo and got a message that I had reached the limit on number of entries.

The deadline for entry is May 15. Even if you don’t feel like entering, what’s really kind of interesting is looking at what other people have entered. To do that, look for the little link near the bottom of the page titled “See the entries.”

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May is Motorcycle Awareness Month

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re becoming addicted to riding when you now leave for work early because you are now riding around the town instead of driving directly to work!

If your neighbor came home about a week ago with a new motorcycle, specifically a blue 2007 Yamaha YZF R1, you might be in a position to earn yourself a nice reward. It seems a prospective “buyer” asked to look at one of those at Steele’s Cycles South, 2025 W. Union, and as the sale guy was pulling his hoodie off the “buyer” hopped on and rode away. Good-bye bike.

That’s a picture of the actual bike there. Steele’s has posted a notice on Craigslist and elsewhere that they are offering a “substantial” reward information. The theft occurred on March 15.

According to the notice, the bike (last six of vin # 007178) was taken by “a young Hispanic male about five foot nine, 135 pounds believed to own a late model Yamaha R6 and residing in the Englewood/Littleton area.”

Greg Zick, the salesman who was dealing with the guy, said he had been in previously looking at the bike, so he was pretty pleased to see him show up again. The fellow asked to have the bike turned on so he could hear it run, Zick went to pull off his hoodie, and bingo!

Now, my bet is that that bike will never be seen on the road again. If this guy already has a comparable bike, I’ll bet he figured this would be a good way to get an inexpensive parts bike. Some people are just jerks.

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Biker Quote for Today

Squid: The definition of stupid.

This is a guest post from Rob Lobitz, with www.motorcyclehidxenonlights.com.

I don’t know about you but, for me, one of the great treats of taking a long bike trip through our beautiful state is the meal that comes at or near the end of a long day. My standards aren’t ultra-super high or anything, but when something gets in the way of that meal being served in a reasonably proper way, I can become just a little bit irritable.

Well, one day a few years back me and my biking buddy, Zayne, were taking a longish trip across the state on the way to visit another one of our friends. We’d both been arguing all day about which of the various motorcycle HID kits I should install on my Kawasaki, but then it was time to discuss where we were going to get our dinner a few hours hence. Zayne suggested a place he’d seen the last time he’d made the same trip.

“Why there?” I asked.

“There was like a gazillion cars and bikes in the lot. Looked like it must be really popular. The locals must know it.”

That seemed logical enough to me. So, after a long day of biking in some pretty cool and wet weather, it was nice to get to the place, which I am leaving unnamed for a reason. The warmth and that wonderful diner smell of coffee was such a sensory treat right then.

On the other hand, it should have been a sign when the host who escorted us to our chair had that vacant “I don’t give a @##@$# look” you see at convenience stores and the DMV from time to time, but we ignored that. It was just good to be some place warm and return to our friendly arguing over those motorcycle HID kits.

It took a couple of minutes, but a waitress finally appeared. She seemed friendly enough. I let Zayne order first because I always take forever to make up my mind. He ordered spaghetti — something I would never order in a non-Italian diner but, hey, it was his funeral. I was trying to lose weight, so I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich and the waitress agreed to substitute rice pilaf for the fries. Life didn’t seem so bad.

We talked and talked and we finally resolved the great motorcycle HID kits debate to our mutual satisfaction. It suddenly dawned on us that we’d been talking for at least 35 minutes. No food. We chatted for another 15. Still, no food. Where the heck was our waitress? We then looked around. We saw mostly food-free tables and grim faces.

It was then, we realized why the well-located diner had such a crowded parking lot. Actually not that many hungry diners came in, but the foolish ones who did, like us, waited hours for their food. Hence, the crowded parking lot. It was the restaurant equivalent of a Roach Motel.

It was time to take action. Our waitress was nowhere in sight, so I got up and started a search. A few minutes later, I found her hiding out near the kitchen “Hey, I was just wondering what happened to our order.”

She looked at me blankly and said, “You ordered the chicken sandwich.”

I was dumbfounded. “What does that mean?”

“You ordered the chicken sandwich.” I tried again and got the same answer.

It was obvious to me she was of the opinion that, as a male, I had never cooked a grilled chicken sandwich for myself and would therefore assume that it could take at least an hour to properly prepare rather than, say, 10-15 minutes at the outside. (I might not be Mario Batali, but I can cook a slice of raw chicken long enough to be safe to eat and relatively tasty, also.)

We got our food about half an hour later, a full 90 minutes after entering the diner and, not surprisingly, it was kind of terrible. I almost wished I had ordered the spaghetti, bad as my friend’s pasta looked. At least she wouldn’t have the same stupid excuse.

I respect waiters and waitresses. Theirs is a tough, physically demanding job and I’m usually a very decent 18-20% kind of a tipper. However, for the first and only time in my entire life, I wanted to stiff the waitress on the tip. Not for taking so long but for insulting my intelligence with that idiotic answer about the chicken sandwich. If she had answered even remotely honestly and said the place wasn’t able to handle the number of people it was trying to serve, or some such, I would not have been nearly so ticked off. Clearly, she just didn’t care enough even to come up with a decent lie.

Zayne insisted on leaving 10 percent, figuring the drop would send a strong enough message. I disagreed but was too tired to argue. That was three years ago and I still wish we’d left zero tip.

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Biker Quote for Today

Yep! There’s just something something about about a gal in leather and can ride too!

Let me apologize up front that this post has nothing to do with motorcycles.

I’m a little aggravated this morning. Maybe you noticed–this site was down for 1 hour and 29 minutes. And that’s not the first time recently the site has been down, although that’s the longest time by far. I filed a trouble ticket with my web host and asked what the hell is going on, but have yet to hear anything from them. If they respond as they have in the past I’ll get some message such as “We’re sorry your site was down, it’s back up now.” No shit?

It’s enough to push me a lot farther along the way to going to a new web host. I’ve been growing increasing dissatisfied with NetPivotal for quite awhile now and this may be what pushes me over the edge.

If I do move to a new host, it will make a clean third strike for today. First I went over to my bank, Wells Fargo, to ask about some unexpected charges that showed up on our statements. Seems they have added a bunch of fees, and when I said that was not acceptable the reply was essentially, “Too bad.” Judy has wanted to dump Wells Fargo for a long time so I came home and emailed her a message saying “Let’s do it.” We’ll be moving our accounts to First Bank.

Then I went over to my gym, Bally Fitness. Yesterday the Aurora club moved into a new location and this was my first time there. Their card reader would not accept my card. The manager told me my membership is not valid at the new location, despite my having asked that exact question as soon as they announced they would be making the move. I told him that was all I needed to know and came home and canceled my automatic renewal. When my membership runs out in April I’ll join 24-Hour Fitness.

Don’t anybody mess with me today, I’m on a roll.

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Biker Quote for Today

If I can’t pass at a reasonable speed I do it unreasonably.

I’d like to extend best wishes to everyone celebrating whatever holiday they favor at this time of year. To that end, I’d like to pass along something Alan Baumbach put up on Facebook. I think it says it all.

I have a CHRISTMAS TREE in my living room (not a holiday tree), my kids are getting CHRISTMAS PRESENTS (not holiday gifts) and we will eat CHRISTMAS DINNER(not a holiday meal), and I will attend a CHRISTMAS PARTY (not a holiday party). I will also very cheerfully wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS! (not… happy holidays). By the way, if you want to have a Happy Hannukah , by all means do, I respect that. If you want to have a Blessed Kwanzaa, I also respect that. I will have a Merry Christmas, so I ask YOU to respect that! Repost if you agree!!

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Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re becoming addicted to riding when you wave at motorcycles from your car and wonder why they look at you funny.

I know I’ve mentioned here a few times the motorcycle writing I’ve been doing for Rum Bum since September of 2009. Well, yesterday saw publication of my final piece at Rum Bum. Not because I’m leaving them, but because Rum Bum is shutting down operations. Presumably the website will stay up, and all the pieces I’ve written for them will remain accessible, but it will, as my editor said, be like an abandoned garden.

Perhaps, for me at least, it was time. Starting out I committed to doing two pieces a week for them, one a personal column and the other an article of some sort, a profile, interview, feature, whatever. Now, coming up with more than 100 topics a year, year after year, is a bit tough, especially if you have to have the idea approved by your editor first. I do more than that on Examiner, but I can choose whatever I want to write about on Examiner. And for the columns on Rum Bum I could choose, too. But the articles required Lauren’s OK.

By the middle of this summer I was running out of ideas. In September I told Lauren I could only come up with an article every other week, but I’d continue doing the column weekly. But then even that got harder to do and I wondered how long I’d be able to keep it up.

And then I got the message from Lauren that the whole thing was coming to an end.

I never really understood the deal with Rum Bum. They seem to have some connection with Rum Bum Racing, and seemed to be an attempt to build the Rum Bum brand, but beyond that I never understood their purpose. Or their funding, which now appears to have run out. What I did understand was that I got paid regularly and their checks did not bounce.

So one door closes and another opens. Writing for Examiner I have become acquainted with Mary Baker, aka “Pinky,” who writes as the Shreveport Motorcycle Travel Examiner. Last week I got a note from Mary announcing that she is starting a new motorcycle magazine, Pinky’s Motorcycle Passion, and asking me if I’d like to be a regular writer. Of course I said yes. The first issue is expected to be out in February or March.

I have a few more possibilities shaping up–maybe–and I’ll announce them when and if they happen. As we all know, the only true constant in life is change.

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Biker Quote for Today

If you haven’t crashed, you’re not riding to potential.