Passes & Canyons Blog

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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I think I put up something similar to this awhile back, but maybe that was somewhere other than this blog. Anyway, this is different.

Do you ever have people ask you what motorcycling is all about, or what bikers are truly like, or any of those sorts of questions? Well, here’s a place you might refer them to get some answers. It’s a post on a motorcycle insurance blog entitled “Top 49 blogs for Understanding the Biker Culture.” Yeah, these are insurance guys doing this but it’s still kind of an interesting list.

Here are a few representative examples of their list. Please note that I’ve cleaned up their grammar a bit just because I can’t stand putting bad grammar on my blog.

Motorcycle slang — Here are a few slang terms in motorcycle culture.

Biker Language — Here are some more terms you will hear when biking and what they mean.

Culture — Learning how times have changed the culture around motorcycles.

Stereotypes — Look at what some of the stereotypes of bikers are.

Hells Angels — Here are some frequently asked questions about the Hells Angels group.

Now, the first thing you might wonder is just how reliable this information is. Well, some may not be, but you’ll notice that that link on the Hells Angels goes to the Hells Angels website. So I’d guess that’s pretty reliable info. Other sites linked to include familiar ones such as Clutch and Chrome, Biker News Online, Women Riders Now, as well as plenty you’ve probably never heard of.

And their use of the term “biker” is not the narrow usage some prefer, essentially referring to 1%ers, but the broader usage that includes everyone who rides. So Superbike and motocross are included as well as American Legion riders, Vietnam vets, and more. It’s a broad collection.

So there you go. Just thought you might find something of interest.

Update, Aug. 23, 2010:
Hey, this is fun. I received a note from Kristy Osgood, who is connected to this site listing these blogs, informing me that they had added my blog–this blog–to their list. Very cool. Thanks, Kristy.

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I just want to pass this along. If you have older two-stroke motocross bikes and you’re in or near Colorado, there is a movie in production that may want to use your bike. And you might get in the movie yourself.

Here’s the particulars, as passed along to me by Jerry Pokorny, with the British Motorcycle Association of Colorado. It comes from a guy who goes by Whiskyman, but I guess you’d need to reply to Jerry at jerry_pokorny@msn.com.

I have been in communications with the producer of some budget movies who is now filming a production dealing with a human interest angle on a motocross racer theme.

Production is here in Colorado at Thunder Mountain in Lakewood and another site a short distance away so it’s in our backyard.

To help him out, he has asked me to try and help him find two different bikes – as follows:

Early ’90s vintage 2-stroke motocross bike in very clean to mint condition. The bike will mainly be used as static prop and only ridden for 2 laps around the motocross track by a professional stunt double in the production so it won’t be harmed in any way. It will be used in 2 scenes to be shot in Early June. No limit on displacement or brand was specified so let me know what you have in your collection that you would be willing to make available for a couple of days. The producer is going to offer the owner of the bike a small walk-on part related to the movie main characters race team in support of the “works rider” (principal actor in this production). There is no other compensation but the ego trip of having your bike and possibly you in a movie – now how cool is that?

The other need is for a few mid to late 1980s vintage 80 cc 2-stroke motocross bikes to be used in a scene with the producer’s main character YZ – 80 as “other competitors bikes.” This will be shot in late June or July. No walk-on part for this but you will still have bragging rights on having your bike in a movie………..

Ok, let’s hear from you as soon as possible. Let me know what you have (make, model, displacement, year) and if possible send a photo. I will help screen candidates and forward the best options to the producers for his consideration.

This sounds like a heck of a lot of fun so please respond at your earliest convenience!

Ride fast, life is short

Whiskyman

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I’ve made a lot of progress but this website is still suffering the effects of being hacked. I’ve come up with some answers to some of the questions that were driving me crazy and I thought you might be interested.

By the way, this image is from Google Webmaster Tools, showing what in Google’s mind my website is all about. Yeah, sure, this website is all about male potency drugs. You bet.

But that’s what I finally figured this is about. You see, nobody ever saw the junk pages that were planted on my site. There was only one thing that outwardly suggested something was amiss, and that was the Google ads on the site. Those are supposed to be related to the subject matter on the site, so you would think on MotorcycleColorado.com the ads would be for motorcycle parts, gear, rental, whatever.

But no, the ads showing were for this drug, because the junk pages the hacker inserted were all about C—–. (I’m not going to name the drug because I don’t want it associated with this site.) That caused Google to display ads for the drug, and presumably someone was getting more traffic to their sites where they sell the stuff. And that’s why some asshole caused me all this trouble.

And it’s stupid! No one comes to this site for those drugs. All they managed to do was kill my traffic. I can tell you exactly how many people clicked on the drug ads since the hacking was done and you can count them all on two hands. Meanwhile, it has taken me countless hours to fix all this.

Apparently this is pretty common for this product. When I went looking for remedies to my problems I found that there is a whole category of advice for webmasters facing exactly this problem. Seems to me like Google ought to be doing some serious examination of who benefits from this and kicking some advertisers out of their program.

Fortunately, things are slowly getting back to normal, at least as far as Google is concerned. But I still need to do the same sort of recovery work with Bing, Ask, Yahoo!, and any other search engines worth the trouble.

So what have I learned from all this? It doesn’t matter if you can’t remember it and have to look it up every time, use a REALLY strong password. I admit, my previous password was too simple. I didn’t figure my site was worth anyone hacking. I was wrong. Now my password is longer, has lower case, upper case, special characters, and doesn’t spell anything. Can I remember it? No way. But I don’t think a burglar is going to break into my house and search through my papers to find the password to my website.

Now if I could just have two minutes alone with this asshole and a baseball bat . . .

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