Passes & Canyons Blog

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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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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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.

As a freelance writer it is standard procedure to do what you can to use the information you gather in as many different articles for as many different publications as you can. In that way you minimize your costs, maximize your earnings, and make more efficient use of your time, which in this case more than many others, truly is money.

I’ve written here about trying out this board game, American Throttle. I also wrote about it on Examiner.com. I don’t just republish the same piece; I totally rewrite and make it a different piece with a different angle.

I also wrote about it for RumBum.com, where I do a regular column once a week and some other article every other week. That Rum Bum column was supposed to have run yesterday but it didn’t. My editor surprised me greatly by sending me a note saying, “I’m sorry but I can’t run this piece. It doesn’t at all jibe with the mood of the site. (A bunch of guys sitting around playing a board game is pretty much the antithesis of Rum Bum, which is all about living, having cool adventures, etc.)”

Now, I knew she didn’t want a product review sort of piece, so I worked hard to give it a very different slant than I had done here or on Examiner. Nevertheless, it got axed. But you know, I thought I had done a pretty good job with it and I hate to let a good piece of writing disappear without ever being read. So I’m publishing it here, below. Check it out.

Playing the Game

Dennis was on a Fat Boy, Bill chose another Harley, while Dan and I were both riding vintage bikes older than us. We had a heck of a ride planned, starting in Seattle and ending up in Hollister, CA, site of the legendary Hollister “riot” that set the image of motorcycling back for about 50 years, and which spawned the Marlon Brando movie “The Wild One.”

We weren’t taking the direct route, however, straight south. We were doing an abbreviated Four Corners Tour, with stops in New England and Florida before reaching Southern California. Not to mention occasional side trips to Music City, the Middle of Freakin Nowhere, and elsewhere. And being that this was a motorcycle ride, we would hit the big rally locations, including Sturgis, Daytona, Laughlin, and a few more.

“Wow,” you might ask, “That’s one heck of a tour. How long did this take you?”

Oh, about an hour and a half the first time. Second time we made it in about an hour.

Huh?

OK, OK, we weren’t really out on the actual road on real motorcycles, fabulous as a trip like that would be. We were playing this board game, “American Throttle,” that is part trivia game, part poker run, and part a test of your motorcycle knowledge. On a Friday night in November it’s not very likely that you’re going to be out riding, so if you want to get together with your riding buddies it’s nice if whatever you end up doing has at least something to do with motorcycles.

I had acquired this game almost two months earlier and told all the guys about it and said I wanted to get together and play it. Were they interested? Everyone said yes but finding a night when we could all get together took two months. Even then I could only get five, counting myself, and at the last minute Alan called to say he had a plumbing emergency and would not be coming. So four of us played.

Was it a viable winter substitute for actually getting out and going for a ride? Of course not. But it did bring some of us together, and of course the number one topic of conversation was motorcycles. Plus, Bill and Dennis are members of the OFMC, while Dan is someone I met working on a piece about Iron Butt riders, and they had never met each other. So this brought them together for the first time.

As always happens, no ice breakers were needed. All three of these guys ride Harleys and they launched right into it. Dan, being an Iron Butt guy, immediately started probing to see if there were any potential Iron Butt riders in the group. He quickly identified Dennis, as I knew he would. Dennis’s longest one-day ride to date was about 800 miles, and that was on two-lane roads. Dan pointed out that that was hardly different than riding 1,000 miles on the interstate.

Life is often like a game, in that you put pieces into motion and have no way of knowing the outcome. I’ve always enjoyed bringing people together. We’ll see how this game plays out.

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Biker Quote for Today

I was a motorcyclist before I even rode one. I’d buy the magazines and dream.

The game was on Friday night and we played American Throttle, this motorcycle poker run board game that I spoke of last week. We were planning on five but a last-minute plumbing emergency kept Alan at home. The players were me, Bill, Dennis, and Dan.

Part of the fun of the evening was that Bill and Dennis had never met Dan–and vice versa, of course–so it was good to bring them together. Bill and Dennis are long-time OFMC members, while I met Dan back in January of this year working on a piece about Iron Butt riders. As always happens with bikers, familiarity came quickly and easily as talk turned to motorcycles.

I had read the instructions but knew there were a few things that were not stated as clearly as they might have been. We figured we’d work it out as we went along. Perhaps not in the way the guys who created this game intended, but we did.

Besides rolling the die, you move ahead in this game by landing on particular spaces and by correctly answering questions on the two decks of cards, “What the Hell Is That?” (WTHIT) and “Two Wheeler Trivia.” You can put money in the pot to be divided between the player who finishes first and the player with the best poker hand, but we chose not to. It didn’t seem to affect our enjoyment of the game.

Many of the cards were really tough. For instance, I got a WTHIT card with a picture of a stator on it. I’ve heard of stators for years but had never seen one. Suffice it to say I didn’t get that one right. And while all the cards are supposed to relate to motorcycles in some way, some were a bit of a stretch. For instance, 50 of the WTHIT cards were pictures of the various state flags, the idea being that if you’re out touring you’re going to be going to numerous states and might be familiar with their flags. Except for the really easy ones, like Colorado or New Mexico, we mostly shook our heads asking “What the hell is that?”

The trivia cards were much more closely tied to motorcycles so in those cases we mostly just showed our ignorance. Or knowledge. That’s what trivia is all about.

Some of the spaces have you doing silly, crude biker-type things like belching a name. Bill was the first to land on one of these and he impressed us all by doing so successfully. The rest of us either passed and took the penalty or tried and failed. I went to Music City one time and had to sing a song but the guys were all glad that I kept it very short. They were lucky I didn’t know that one very well.

I think it was Bill again, but maybe Dan, who ran into what seemed like an endless loop at one point. He landed on a WTHIT space, answered the question correctly, and moved ahead one space, as directed by the card. The cards tell you to move either one, two, or three spaces ahead and one is the most common. The problem was, moving ahead one space put him on a space that said “Sparks plugs fouled. Go back one space.” That put him back on the WTHIT space. He answered correctly again and moved ahead one space . . . and right back to WTHIT. That happened about six or seven times in a row. Yeah, we all had a good laugh about that. He finally did answer a question correctly and got to move ahead two spaces.

Overall then, what’s the verdict? Well, we definitely had a good time. Part of that, of course, was just getting together with friends but we did have fun playing the game, too. The game made for its share of laughs, as games should. We were a pretty tame lot, with Dennis and Dan both having long drives to get home and Bill needing to work in the morning, so we broke up fairly early, after only two games. As host and not needing to drive, I was the only one of us who had two beers. Can you tell we’re not young kids anymore?

If you like board games and you like motorcycles, American Throttle might be right up your alley. With winter approaching it could be a motorcycle-related activity to get together with your riding buddies. But here’s a hint: Bone up on your state flags before you play.

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Biker Quote for Today

The shortest distance between two points isn’t always the most fun.

It has taken a couple months but I’ve finally managed to pull together a bunch of guys to come over on Friday evening to try out this new board game I’ve got. It’s called American Throttle — The Game, and the box describes it as “The trivia poker run board game for motorcycle enthusiasts.”

I ran across it on an online forum and sent a note to the guys that if they’d like to send me a copy I’d be happy to try it out and write about it. The funny thing was that when they replied affirmatively, and asked for my address, it turned out they live right here in Denver, so David Veal brought the thing to my house himself and we had a chance to meet.

David told me he and his partner, Steve Schader, have had a good bit of success in marketing this thing, and I’m guessing they had a bit of fun creating it. For game pieces you get to choose from cruisers, sportbikes, a cafe racer, some customs, and some vintage bikes. The square board shows a route across the U.S. with stops at some of the major rallies, including Daytona, Sturgis, and Laughlin.

If you land on a “Two Wheel Trivia” space you draw a trivia card and, if you answer correctly, move ahead the additional spaces indicated. Of course the trivia questions have to do–at least to an extent–with motorcycling.

Elsewhere on the board are “What The Hell Is That?” spaces. On these, you draw a card and have to identify the item in the photograph which, again, will be at least somewhat related to bikes.

There’s also a deck of cards, and the point here is that you’re on a poker run. The best poker hand at the end presumably wins something. I haven’t played this yet so I’m not clear on the details but I guess I’d better read the rules before the guys start arriving on Friday.

Should be interesting; hope it’s fun. I’ll let you know.

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Biker Quote for Today

I accept no responsibility for swearing, drinking, motorcycle riding or your pregnant teenage daughter.