Passes & Canyons Blog

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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Biker Quote for Today

Women come and go, but motorcycles are forever.

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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Biker Quote for Today

When in doubt, throttle out.

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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Biker Quote for Today

Never be ashamed to unlearn an old habit.

I am so angry. I had been troubled lately looking at my website statistics because in the last week or so the traffic has been way, way down and that didn’t make sense.

So I decided to do a Google search for myself, as I have often done, searching for the two words “colorado” and “motorcycle.” Guess what came up. Take a look at this bit of screen capture.

Look at that. That’s my URL but someone stuck in some text for C—– (not going to use that word here). Bastards!! Why do these assholes do this? Can anyone possibly be making money in this way?

So I contacted my web host and hopefully they’ll be able to rectify the situation. I am so pissed.

And now I’ll put in the regular end of column stuff, though this is nowhere near a normal blog post.

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Biker Quote for Today

Go like hell, You’ll get there quicker!

OK, this is just a fun story I want to pass along. Thanks go to Mike Landon, who sent the link to me.

It seems there were these folks living in this Chicago-area nursing home who regularly passed a biker bar. They grew interested in the bar and decided to pay it a visit. But they didn’t just drop in. First, they did themselves up with tattoos and biker costumes, and rolled in as a “biker gang.”

They were welcomed and members of the local Latino American Motorcycle Association and ABATE chapters have agreed to take them all for rides on their bikes.

It’s a really fun story. Worth your time to read it here.

Biker Quote for Today

If your mind wanders, ride after it.

Just a little cross-fertilization here. If you read this blog regularly you know I also write for Examiner.com. What you may not know is that I also write, twice each week, for RumBum.com.

I’d have to say that some of my best writing goes up on RumBum, for the simple reason that they pay me better than some of the others. In case you’re interested, here are some of the pieces I’ve done for them that I like the best.

Heading Out On The Highway With The OFMC – One of the two pieces I do each week for RumBum is a personal column. As such, I write a lot about the trips I’ve made with our group, the OFMC. This piece introduces the guys and tells the history of the group.

The Life of a Motorcycle Demo Rider – The behind the scenes skinny on what it’s like for those folks who manage demos rides for the manufacturers.

Winging It – Tales of the good and bad things that come if you hit the road without a plan.

Don’t Drop the Bike – Some stories of time we did, one or the other of us, drop the bike.

Going Anywhere – Slowly – In a Ural – A profile on my friend, Dom, who rides a Ural sidecar rig. This is the guy I went up Guanella Pass with last week.

The Breaking Point – The story of my most despairing moment on my motorcycle.

Baja Dreams – The condensed version of the story I told at great length on Examiner about the J2 Racing team that ran in last year’s Baja 1000.

They. Are. Here. – A look at electric motorcycles and what the future may hold.

Are Motorcycles Greener than Cars? – Just scratching the surface on this surprisingly not-so-obvious question.

You Only Live Once… – A biker’s bucket list.

So there you go. With any luck something among those should sound interesting. And comments are always welcome. Suggestions, too. I’m always looking for new story ideas. Thanks.

Biker Quote for Today

Here’s to burnt skin, numb crotches, and bugs in your teeth. Ride on!

Regular readers know I like to pass along particularly interesting or amusing things I run into on biker forums. This time I’m just going to point you to the thread so you can check it out yourself.

The question posed was, “What was you most embarrassing biker moment?” This was on the HD Talking forum. Here’s an example of what you’ll find, courtesy of AcidRayn.

ugggh,!!!
just had one this morning!!
stopped for gas, same place, same pump i stop every morning.
sitting next to me is Uber Hot Mommy in her escalade, i’m talking
heather locklear, christie brinkley prime years hot here, she’s checkin me out,
or the bike, i look over, give the “yea im game” look, i say something stoopit,
she smiles, then starts cracking up, im like, how rude, yea, well, she seen the gas overflowin outa my tank and all over my jeans.
i had visions of going home as a fiery comet.

Enjoy.

Biker Quote for Today

Evolution stops when stupidity is no longer fatal!

    Racers at Miller Motorsports Park, one place I went this year

I put substantially more miles on my motorcycles last year than ever before but missed my overall objective of surpassing miles by car due to a big increase in car miles.

Overall I rode my two bikes 6,053 miles in 2009. That compares to 4,839 in 2008. But I drove my car 8,660 miles in 2009, compared to only 4,971 in 2008. Oh well, today starts a new year. I have ambitious plans for riding this year and if I manage to do it all this could be the year.

The breakdown for the two bikes was more pronounced than usual. I rode the Concours 5,016 miles, while only putting 1,037 miles on the CB750 Custom. That’s a reflection of doing more highway miles, traveling more, on the Connie. I only rode the Honda around town. That’s a pattern that is likely to repeat itself this year.

I’m hoping to go to Daytona Bike Week this year, on the Kawi, so that would add something close to 4,000 miles all by itself. We’ll see if the weather lets me get out of Denver on the bike though. If I were leaving today it would not be by motorcycle. Our road is covered with ice and snow.

Have a good year riding. I certainly intend to.

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Biker Quote for Today

People don’t really see motorcycles as an alternate form of transportation, at least not in the USA. They are bought to enhance our image or feed our need for performance. (Frank Smith, letter, CycleWorld, Nov. 2008)