Passes & Canyons Blog

Getting ready to ride to Bennett.

The early part of this week has been great riding weather, with bad weather coming soon, so of course I was out taking advantage of it.

On Monday I took the V-Strom out and ran the regular errands I carry out each month. Not a lot of miles so I’ve got to get back out on this one again this month if I want to turn over the next 1,000 on the odometer. I’m still about 70 miles away. Maybe today after I finish this post. The weather is supposed to hit tomorrow.

On Tuesday I went out on the Concours for a longer run. I’m still waiting to get the bike in to Rowdy Rocket Garage to get this vacuum issue fixed so I’m still contending with the fact that the engine races like crazy every time I pull the clutch in to shift. I’ve started figuring out how to adapt to the problem at other times. For instance, if I’m coming to a stop I just let the bike slow down a lot before I finally pull in the clutch and downshift. Normally you would be concerned about stalling but this bike is not going to stall. In fact, much of the time I can let go of the throttle just as if I had cruise control on and the bike just keeps going.

This ride just strengthened my resolve that yes, I am going to sell this bike at some point and replace it with something newer and lighter. It just isn’t all that much fun to ride when I’m constantly having to pay attention to this problem. And yes, once I am finally able to have the problem addressed it will eliminate this negative condition but I’m past that. My mind is made up to move on. I was talking to Bruce yesterday and he was saying just go ahead and sell the bike as it is and take whatever you can get. But I don’t think I could find any buyer at this time of year so I’d like to have it fixed so I can enjoy riding it in the next few months before I sell it. At least if it’s not going to cost too much.

Then on Wednesday the RMMRC took a ride out to Bennett for lunch. I rode the CB750.

There were eight of us on this beautiful, warm, sunny day. We headed out down Parker Road, then east on Quincy and out into the country. There are not a lot of options on roads to take going out where we were headed so we just rode the straight out to where we turned north on County Road 129, jogged east and then north under I-70, and reached our destination, the High Plains Diner. We had never been there before and I was favorably impressed. The food was good–nothing spectacular–at very reasonable prices. I would not hesitate to go there again.

Heading out after the meal we didn’t have a lot of choices. We could go back the way we came or we could go east about a mile and take the Kiowa-Bennett Road south. Heading west without going south didn’t offer any attractive options, although I guess we could have gone east on US 30 to Watkins and then south on Watkins Road. We took the Kiowa-Bennett Road.

Two of us were inclined to go on all the way to Kiowa and then turn west but the other six decided just to go south as far as Quincy and then retrace our route there. So we did, then home. But man, it was a great day to be out on a bike.

Biker Quote for Today

One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.

Ice racing is a family sport–and a lot of fun.

When I’m updating my Rides and Rallies page I often check in on various clubs to see what events they have planned.

One such club is Harry’s Roamers. While it is not the only thing they do, Harry’s Roamers is well known for putting on ice racing up at Rainbow Falls, down toward Woodland Park. Judy and I have been to the ice races a couple times and it’s a lot of fun.

But this year I was not finding anything about ice racing being scheduled. That was odd. Normally this would be about when the racing season was winding up. What I did find was an exchange on one site between someone asking if there was ice racing this year and a reply. What caught my eye was that one of the people exchanging notes was Joel Brown. Joel is my mechanic. Hah! I’ll just call Joel and ask him what the deal is.

So I did and Joel told me a whole lot. First off, I didn’t know it but Joel is the president of the club. OK, I guess I’ve really come to the right source. Another thing Joel told me was that Harry’s Roamers is the oldest chartered motorcycle club in Colorado, having been chartered by the American Motorcyclist Association in 1929 in operation continuously ever since. Joel said they’re really intent on making sure they hit the 100-year mark, whether ice racing is in the mix or not.

Oh yeah, ice racing. So what’s the deal?

Well, it seems the owner of the Rainbow Falls property decided he wasn’t being paid enough for hosting this series of events and so he asked for more this season. A lot more. Joel said they had been paying close to $2,000 per week between lease and percentage of the gate but this year he wanted $3,000 and 10 percent of the gate. And just as killing the goose that lays the golden eggs does not work to your advantage, this increase has been met with zero income. It just doesn’t work to operate at a loss, Joel noted, also pointing out that everyone doing all the work this thing requires are volunteers.

So they’re looking for another venue but so far have not found anything. They need either a lake or some large enough area that could be prepped and then flooded. But that latter would require a lot of water and where do you get that and for what price? As for lakes, anything that is part of the Denver water system is off limits.

There is a lake down at Lake George and that town seems interested in having the races move there but nothing much has happened so far on that possibility. At Georgetown Lake they already host four-wheeled ice racing but that means those folks already have dibs on the better part of the season and it is hard to know way back in October what condition the ice will be in come March. And you can’t just decide to hold races next week, you have to arrange for things like insurance, having an ambulance on the premises, providing porta-potties, and all that other stuff that you and I, just showing up for a day of fun, assume will be there.

Meanwhile, Harry’s Roamers is continuing to hold its meetings and plan a bunch of rides, and if someone has a lake they’d like to rent out for a few weekends in the middle of winter–something up in the hills where you can count of cold and the ice being solid–Joel or anybody in the club would love to hear from you.

Biker Quote for Today

“Riding a race bike is an art – a thing that you do because you feel something inside.” – Valentino Rossi

With the RMMRC on top of Independence Pass.

I’ve discussed the camaraderie of riding motorcycles a number of times recently and then events prompt additional thoughts.

As I’ve said, I was struck on this recent RMMRC Great River Road ride by how little social interaction there was among the group once we got to out stop for the night. That surprised me and initially I thought it was just the contrast with the OFMC, where we spend all the time doing stuff together till it’s time to turn in.

But then the morning we took the ride up Coal Creek and then over Douglas Mountain Drive we got together beforehand for breakfast. And at breakfast it occurred to me that this is where there is always a lot of camaraderie–before the ride. Then, a week later when we did the ride up Golden Gate Canyon and then over Squaw Pass Roy called me to tell me several guys were meeting at his house to ride out to Golden. The plan was kickstands up at 9:45 but they were leaving Roy’s at 8:30. Why so early?

It dawned on me that getting there early and hanging out is . . . drumroll . . . camaraderie.

So there’s plenty of camaraderie in the RMMRC–at least on the day rides. Either before the ride or in the middle if we stop for lunch. But it’s a whole different dynamic on long runs, or at least on the one long run I’ve done with the group.

The key came to me at lunch on this day when talk turned to a long ride some of the guys are thinking about for August. They want to do a trip to Oregon and the Columbia River Gorge. There and all the way home in eight days. Eight days. Oh my gosh, that’s a lot of hard riding. And that’s the key.

If you get up early each morning so you can burn up hundreds and hundreds of miles, you get to your day’s destination, have dinner, and people are ready to go to bed. With the OFMC we don’t do these long days, we often reach our destination as early as 2 or 3 p.m. and we’re not exhausted. This gives us time and energy to swim in the motel pool, stroll around and find an ice cream shop, have a beer or two, then have dinner, and kick back with another beer.

Now, Judy and I are planning a trip to the Pacific Northwest in the next few weeks so I definitely won’t be going along on a ride right back to Oregon soon after we get home. But I can just see how this whole thing will play out. They’ll get up early, ride hard and long, and hang it up early. On the whole trip. All the camaraderie will come at the meals–not in the evening.

Now I’m totally convinced that if I want to do any RMMRC rides on the terms I prefer I’m going to have to be the one to organize them, and I’m going to have to make the point to anyone interested that this is a different kind of ride. And in the meantime I’ll just stick to doing day rides. We have a really good time on the day rides.

Biker Quote for Today

You might be a Yuppie biker if you complained about the “smell and fumes” near the back of your last group ride.

A rider on Squaw Pass.

When the temperatures are consistently in the high 90s there is one thing you can do to escape: take a motorcycle ride in the mountains. We did.

The Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Riders Club (RMMRC) tries to have rides going on nearly every week. The week before we did the Peak-to-Peak and the canyons running down from it. This time we overlapped that route but tended more to the south.

Six of us met in Golden and headed up Golden Gate Canyon. The temps heading up weren’t cool but it sure wasn’t 95 either. One note, there is a stretch with quite a bit of sand on the road. Be careful.

We reached the Peak-to-Peak and headed south to Black Hawk, then turned up toward Central City. We passed through Central City and took Central City Parkway over to I-70. Now it was pretty darn comfortable.

At I-70 we hopped over to Idaho Springs where we stopped for lunch. The place we were heading for was no longer in business so we went downtown. The place we had in mind there had no indoor seating but had one big table with a big umbrella outside. The heat outside would have been intolerable but the umbrella made all the difference. A couple thousand feet of elevation helped a lot, too.

From Idaho Springs we headed up and over Squaw Pass. Now we got some real elevation and some cloud cover, too. Nice.

The Squaw Pass road is one of those that separates the aggressive riders from the not-so-much guys. It has a lot of twists and turns and a lot of very tight turns, often posted at 15 or 20 mph. I was perfectly having them blast ahead just as fast as they liked. I’m in no hurry.

Back down to Evergreen Parkway and a right toward Evergreen, and then we skirted around the town via Meadow Drive. If you aren’t familiar with avoiding downtown by using Meadow Drive you ought to look it up. I can’t believe I went so many years and never knew about it.

Then we headed down to Kittredge but turned up Myers Gulch Road, which becomes Parmalee Gulch Road, bringing us out onto US 285. That just allowed us to stay in the hills a little bit longer.

And then we came down out of the hills expecting to get hit by a blast of heat but instead, as soon as we rolled out onto the flatlands we hit a rain shower. Not enough to get soaked, just enough to cool things off. I was on the Concours, which has a great fairing, so I hardly got wet at all. And the rain kept up until we got nearly to Federal. From there it was just a short cruise the rest of the way home and what little wet I had picked up just had time to evaporate–read: cool me off–by the time I was home.

I love it when everything goes in your favor.

Biker Quote for Today

The joy of riding a motorcycle is out of this world. The thrill of riding in the hills and mountains is an opiatic addiction.

The sidecar boys show up to do the Elephant Ride in 2010.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled telling of the tale of the RMMRC Great River Road ride to alert you to an event that there was no other way to fit in: Rigs in the Rockies 2 2022 USCA National Rally.

In case you’re wondering, USCA stands for United Sidecar Association. And that’s what it is, a gathering of folks who ride sidecar rigs.

This event will be happening Thursday, July 7 to Sunday, July 10, at the Delta County Fairgrounds in Hotchkiss. I’ve looked on their website and Facebook page but can’t find any info about activities but I guess if you ride a sidecar rig the only thing that really matters is that these are your people and you want to go be with them.

And if that’s not your ride, but you’ll be in the vicinity, I would definitely stop by, just to see them all.

Have a good Fourth!

Biker Quote for Today

There are too many ways to lose your life besides dying.

The Pass Bagger patches.

The BMW Motorcycle Club of Colorado is a good place to go to meet folks to ride with, but their website is also a good resource even if you don’t want to join the club.

In particular, I’m looking at their Pass Bagger page. The Pass Bagger “quest,” as they call it, encourages members to earn patches for riding greater and greater numbers of passes in Colorado. First off, who knew there were so many?

There are three categories: paved passes, unpaved passes, and gaps and summits. If you click on the links to the lists you’ll see about 80 paved passes. OK, some of these have got to be just high spots that technically are passes but you would never realize it. And in some cases it’s a little confusing considering that, for instance, they list three Ute Passes. I’m not sure if this is all one pass or three separate ones. Each is listed in a different county. Doing a little digging it seems there really are three.

As for unpaved passes, there are probably something like 130 of them.

Where it really gets interesting is the gaps and summits. A sampling of these include Cat Creek Gap in Archuleta County, Limestone Gap in Moffat County, and Battle Mountain Summit in Eagle County. I have no idea what any of these are. That’s a pretty good reason to go find out, wouldn’t you say?

All of these also include the longitude and latitude so you can plug it into your GPS, as well as the elevation and the level of difficulty. A few are designated as favorites.

So I’d say that’s a pretty good resource. Of course the club has a whole lot of other rides and events to participate in. Yeah, I know I mentioned these guys in my post just a couple weeks ago about riding clubs in Colorado but I felt they have so much going on it was worth it to bring the club up again. And despite the BMW in the name they welcome all makes.

Biker Quote for Today

Why motorcycles are better than women: You only need to get a new chain or belt for your Motorcycle when the old one is worn.