Passes & Canyons Blog

For the first time in more than 20 years on motorcycles I rode more miles than I drove last year. In fact, nearly double. I’m pretty amazed.

Every year on January 1 I check my odometers on all my vehicles to see how many miles I covered on each. This year I rode my Kawasaki Concours 10,004 miles. Not surprisingly, that’s also the first time I’ve ridden more than 10,000 miles on a bike in a year. In 2009 I rode the Kawi 5,016 miles.

My car, on the other hand, racked up only 5,581 miles. That compares with 8,660 miles in 2009.

I didn’t do much on my Honda CB750 Custom, partly because it spent too much of the year in the shop. Mileage for 2010 was only 662 miles, compared to 1,037 the year before.

Altogether that puts my bike mileage at 10,666 or a bit less than double the car. Double the car would be 11,162, so that’s about 500 shy.

I’m happy to say that a lot of those miles came from the fact that I took a lot more trips this past year. I went out to the Laughlin River Run, I went to the Sturgis Rally, and of course I went on the annual OFMC trip.

But all those miles also mean I rode more at home. I made it a point to use the bikes for transportation as much as possible, even when it would have been more convenient to drive my car. And I’ll continue doing that, too. I like being on the bike more. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Riding the dang thing!?

Oh, and by the way, those figures actually don’t even represent all the miles I rode this past year. They do not include the four days I spent doing the EagleRider media tour in California, the dual-sporting I did on other people’s V-Stroms, or the week I got around exclusively on a scooter. So if you add those miles I did ride more than double the miles I drove in 2010.

I don’t know about you but I kind of like the sound of that.

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Along with a lot of other people I was surprised a few months ago to open the latest issue of Cycle World magazine and find that Mark Hoyer was suddenly the editor. What happened to David Edwards? Edwards had been the editor for years and now, without a word, he was gone.

That latter fact suggested that there were issues and conflicts. Usually when a long-time editor leaves a magazine he or she does a farewell column and introduces their successor. Not so in this case. Even when I was Senior Editor for the Sentinel newspapers and left unexpectedly in a hurry–my decision, but not a happy one–I had the chance to run a farewell column. Not so David Edwards.

Figuring that the folks at the big motorcycle magazines must know each other, I asked Donya Carlson, the Senior Managing Editor for Rider magazine, what she knew about Edwards’ departure. (Donya and I were among the group who spent four days riding California on the EagleRider media tour in October.) She said she didn’t know anything, and that they were as curious as anyone else.

Of course I also wondered where he would go. It’s got to be damn hard to find a job anywhere comparable to being the editorial honcho at one of the country’s premier moto mags. On that last question, and the reason for this post, is that there is now at least a kernel of an answer.

I’m not sure if this is in the magazine, but yesterday on the Motorcyclist magazine website I discovered an article, “The Bob Dylan Motorcycle Crash,” written by none other than David Edwards. So presumably Edwards is doing some freelancing. Good for him for getting a piece published; I know how tough that can be. He at least has better contacts than I do.

So anyway, it’s none of my business or of yours, but we can’t help but be curious. What in the world happened that he was gone that suddenly? I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.

And good luck David on making your comeback. For your sake, I hope to see your byline again somewhere on at least a semi-regular basis.

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I picked up some new work the other day and I’d love to tell you where to go to read what I’m writing, but at the moment I don’t even know myself.

Just to bring anyone up to speed who isn’t familiar with what I do, I’m a writer and a rider and I’ve made it my job to combine the two. In addition to this blog, I write for Examiner.com, RumBum.com, do occasional pieces for CycleConnections.com, and have various other outfits that sometimes will hire me to do a piece.

My dance card is not full, however, so I’m always looking for another gig, and this time I decided to check out Elance. That as in E for online and lance, for freelance. It’s a digital meeting place for freelancers and the people who need freelance work done.

An there it was, a gig posting titled “Motorcycle Articles Needed.” I put in a bid and the next day got an email from Michael A. saying “You’re exactly the guy I’m looking for.”

Michael has hired me to write eight pieces for him, with complete freedom to choose my own subject matter, provided that I somehow draw into the discussion some of the brands and models sold by the dealership Michael does work for. Which is to say, this is more or less advertising copy, though only in the sense that many websites where the focus is on selling want honest to goodness content to draw readers to the site. I’ve done some of that before.

At this point I have no idea where this stuff will appear, whether I’ll be identified as the writer, or even how it will be used. There is likely to be more of this work in the future, though, so I’m sure I’ll learn all this eventually. It’ll be interesting to see.

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Midnight bugs taste just as bad as noon time bugs.

I never heard the term “bucket list” before that movie came out, but I’m very familiar with the idea of setting goals. A long, long time ago I read somewhere that a study of college students showed that 10 years later, those who left school with clear-cut goals in mind had accomplished far more than those who did not.

Basically, if you set goals and review your progress toward those goals periodically you are much more apt to take the steps necessary to accomplish them. On the other hand, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

So we get to bucket lists, the things we want to do before we kick the bucket. I wanted to do a column for Rum Bum about the motorcycling bucket list I would set for myself. But the truth of the matter is that I’m generally not much of a goal setter. I decided I’d take a look at what other motorcyclists include on their lists.

Maybe I’m blessed, or maybe it’s just that I’m a doer, not a wisher, but I was interested to find that many of the things a lot of riders have on their bucket lists are things I’ve already done. One that showed up repeatedly in my search was riding the Going to the Sun Highway up through Glacier National Park. Yup, I’ve done that. The Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon–I’ve been all those places more than once. Pacific Coast Highway through Big Sur? You bet.

Beyond roads, there were other experiences: Ride in a sidecar–done that twice. Attend a Moto GP event–twice. Go to the Sturgis rally–twice.

Of course there were plenty of bucket list items I haven’t done, and it was interesting to see what other people yearn for. Riding the Blue Ridge highway and riding the Tail of the Dragon are two I haven’t done because they’re out east and I’m in the west. But they’re on my agenda. I’ll get there some day.

Another, as one fellow put it: Touch my wheel in every state and province. I can only tally up 18 states and 1 province so far so that’s another I would put on my list.

One that a surprising number of people listed, and which I have no interest in at all, is to ride an Iron Butt event. My attitude is “good for you guys” but doing 1,000 miles in one day just doesn’t sound like any fun at all. The occasional times when I’ve covered 500 miles in a day have been absolutely plenty for me, thank you. But hey, different strokes for different folks.

There was one guy, however, who had an item on his list that I think every one of us can agree with: Lotto. Win it. Buy any motorcycle I want.

I’m with you dude. Now all I have to do is start buying tickets.

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I got this video in an email from Jerry Pokorny, along with this note:

Would you believe I was the “stunt double” rider for this guy?

No, I didn’t think you would believe that one………………………………………..

YOU GOTTA WATCH THIS GUY – HE IS CERTIFIABLY CRAZY!

Jerry’s right, you’ve got to see this.

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By technical definitions, we are no longer in a recession. By the anecdotal definition of millions of people still out of work, that’s hogwash. The reality is demonstrated by the status of the motorcycle market.

A report in the Financial Times last week says that U.S. motorcycle sales were down by more than 14 percent in the third quarter of 2010, compared to 2009. That makes it the 15th consecutive quarter in which the numbers have declined.

An interesting–and logical–note in the article says sales are off more in the U.S., primarily because we buy them more for recreation, while people in other countries buy them for transportation. You’ve got to get to work but you can do without that toy for the moment.

And here’s something I didn’t know. “Some Japanese bike makers did not produce 2010 models.” They were apparently so backed up with leftover models from 2009 that they quit building them. I wish the article said who. This was definitely news to me.

Even if new bikes aren’t selling, you’d better believe those of us who have bikes continue to ride them. This is demonstrated by another statistic, the sale of motorcycle tires. The article says tire sales (or “tyre” sales, since this is a British publication) were up 7.7 percent January through September. And to the producers, that translates into the likelihood that “replacement demand is building” for bikes.

I don’t have any conclusions to bring to all this. It was just some information I found interesting and felt was worth passing along.

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You’ve got to love coincidence. It came through for me this time.

Last summer my wife and I were going camping in the mountains. We were headed out US 285, getting near Bailey, when we saw a guy going the other way in a motorcycle sidecar rig. Not unusual, except that in this case, he was controlling it from the sidecar, not the bike. What the heck?

So almost as a throwaway, I put up a short note on Examiner.com saying, “Do you know this person? I want to meet him.” I figured maybe someone would respond, but I doubted it.

Fast forward a year. I was taking off one day this summer on my 1980 Honda CB750 Custom and it died on me about a mile from home. This was a day when the bike gave me trouble twice, and I wrote about it here. Almost as soon as I got the bike rolled out of traffic another guy stopped to offer assistance. This was Roger. Roger was very helpful, giving me a ride home to get a gas can and then helping me get it started when adding gas was not quite enough. I gave Roger my card, along with a big thank-you.

Imagine my surprise about two months later when I received an email from Roger. He had been to my Examiner page and had read the piece about the guy driving from the sidecar, and he had just run into him at a gas station. Roger got the guy’s contact information and forwarded it to me. How cool is that!

So I called the guy, Glyn McDowell, and went up to meet him at his home. He showed me his rig, took me for a ride, and let me drive it. Like they say, it’s dirty work but someone has to do it.

I wrote a piece for RumBum.com about Glyn and his rig and you can read it there. And this all happened because of a throwaway piece that I never expected to result in anything. I hope you go to RumBum and read the piece. It’s a pretty interesting rig.

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Ever since March 2009 I have been committed to making my living as a freelance motorcycle journalist, and I’ve done fairly well at it. At least I’m keeping my head above water. But if you’re going to be all motorcycles all the time, I figure you really ought to be riding a lot more than you’re driving your car. And in that department I hadn’t been quite making it.

Well now I am. I always check my mileage on all three of my vehicles every January 1, and I decided it was time to see where I’m at this far into 2010. Yahoo! So far this year I’ve put more miles on my Kawasaki Concours than I have on my car. Add in the mileage I’ve put on my Honda CB750 Custom and the numbers are even better.

Altogether I’ve covered 8,135 miles this year and 3,893 of those are on the Connie. The car has only gone 3,735 miles in the same time. The Honda has clocked 507 miles. I guess it’s the one I’ll ride today.

And the numbers are going to get even better. The OFMC is leaving on our summer trip on Friday, so that will add somewhere close to another 2,000 miles to the Kawi. Heck, I’ve never gone through a set of tires in one year but this might be the year.

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