Passes & Canyons Blog

PsychoSteve has come through again. The Elephant Ride is on for the second weekend in February, but the gathering point has moved a short distance.

There was initially some concern because PsychoSteve no longer lives in the house in Grant that has been the starting point of this winter ride up Guanella Pass. Veterans of the ride offered assurances that if nothing else the plan would be to camp up the Guanella Pass road a bit as has been done before, but that won’t be necessary.

PsychoSteve announced on Jan. 15 on Adventure Rider that he had arranged with the new owner of the Grant Motel to use that property for camp-out, bonfire, launch point–everything. At this point all of the five rooms in the motel are rented but Elephant Riders traditionally pitch tents or sleep in their vehicles, as I done the last two years.

To really take part in the adventure you need to show up on Saturday night (Feb. 11) for the bonfire, the eating, the drinking . . . the fun. Then on Sunday morning at around 10 a.m. or so the assault on the pass will begin. While there hasn’t been a huge amount of snow this year, PsychoSteve and a buddy went up there a couple weeks ago and report that there are indeed spots with serious ice and deeply drifted snow.

In other words, it’s a normal Elephant Ride. So drill those screws into your tires and get out your warmest winter riding gear. The fun is about to begin.

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Bikers are a rare breed…Harley riders are a dime a dozen.

Here’s an interesting possibility I just picked up on. Marketplace Events (ME), an outfit that primarily puts on home shows around the country, including here in Denver, is expanding into the big deal motorcycle shows business. Their main competitor would seem to be what is currently called the Progressive International Motorcycle Shows put on by Advanstar Communications in 12 cities around the country. Denver is not one of those 12.

Advanstar’s event used to be called the Cycle World International Motorcycle Shows, but now they have a new lead sponsor, Progressive. During the Cycle World years, however, they certainly worked closely with Cycle World’s Vice President and Publisher Larry Little. Little has now been hired by ME as their Vice President & General Manager, Motorcycle Group. That puts ME on solid ground to launch this thing, called the American International Motorcycle Expo (AIME), which they plan to do in Fall 2013.

So what does this have to do with the Colorado Motorcycle Show and Swap? Well, with the IMS only coming to 12 cities it doesn’t seem that ME would want to go head to head with them except on occasion. It makes more sense to bring the show to towns that don’t already have the IMS. Of course, you want to come to the bigger cities, and Denver would seem to be a good choice.

To put it bluntly, if I were running the Show and Swap I’d be feeling a little nervous. Certainly the Show and Swap offers some things the AIME is unlikely to offer, primarily along the swap lines. The IMS doesn’t get into used parts or such, and AIME probably won’t either. Still, if AIME does come to Denver they’re likely to find a lot of vendors and organizations who set up at the Show and Swap who welcome an alternative. The Show and Swap is not a vendor friendly outfit, as I discussed a few days ago.

So who knows. Right now this is all speculation. Marketplace Events has yet to release any details about its plans, and probably won’t for a good while yet. But when the time comes, it should be really interesting to see how things shake out.

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I’m a bit conflicted about going to the Colorado Motorcycle Show and Swap this year. I don’t go every year, but I have gone a number of times and had been thinking about it this year.

I’m a member of ABATE and each year ABATE sets up a booth. I worked the booth two years ago and was thinking about doing so again this year. At yesterday’s ABATE meeting they were making the point that they were short of people to work the booth, so why not?

Well here’s why not. It costs $15 to get in the show, and even though I was going two years ago to work the booth, I had to pay to get in. I asked Randy Savely, our District 10 rep, about that yesterday and he said oh yeah, that’s the way it is. In fact, he told me, last year when they went down on Friday night to set up, they had to pay admission to do so even though the show doesn’t open until Saturday.

Now hold on. You pay for the privilege of setting up a booth and then you have to pay to get in and man your booth? Or pay even to get in to set it up before the show starts? No, no, no. That is just wrong.

I mean, I can see how things could get out of hand if an organization set up a booth and then 100 of its members all wanted in free to “man the booth.” But that could be addressed just by saying, OK, each organization gets three passes; everyone else has to pay. But pay to get in the night before just to set up?! Please! To me, that smacks of just simple greed.

So you can imagine, I don’t feel very inclined to give these folks my $15. I may give in, but maybe not. It just smells a bit too much for my taste.

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Today is warm and sunny and that’s a good thing. We still have ice on our street, and more importantly, we still have ice between our driveway and the clear part of the street. I need that to be gone so I can get out on one of my motorcycles. By tomorrow it should be clear.

It’s the day after tomorrow that I’m particularly interested in. December 31 is the date for the Last Brass Monkey Run, as I’ve mentioned before. I’m planning to ride this year, and I’ll bet there are a lot of other people making similar plans. It’s not always possible but this year looks like a good one.

Of course, that also means I’ll almost certainly be out on both my bikes the following day. I make it a point to ride both bikes at least once every single month of every single year, and at this time of year you have to take advantage of the first opportunity you get. The weather can change and if you don’t ride today, tomorrow may not be an option. With good weather on January 1 you can pretty much assume I’ll be out riding.

Looking ahead to the new year, I’ve got some great trips planned. I’ve decided this is the year to expand my horizons, and to that end, I’m planning on heading to Ohio for the AMA’s Vintage Motorcycle Days. I’ve never ridden out in that part of the country, so this will be a long trip and it will be something completely new. Plus, I have a brother who lives in Ohio and he and a friend are in the process of opening a biker-oriented cafe in Michigan and of course he wants me to come out and tell the world about it. It’s a dirty job and all that. I’ve never ridden in Michigan before either.

But first we have some cold months to get through. All I ask is just a couple nice days in each of them.

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Yes, I have a problem — that there are 50 weeks of the year without Dakar!

What if they gave a Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge and nobody got any prize money? No, I’m not talking about last year’s questionable event, I’m talking about an awards ceremony that was held over the weekend . . . and Big Jim Durham said no one gets a cent.

I owe Dan Leffert and Alan Baumbach on this one. They were the ones who alerted me. I had pretty much ignored the Hoka Hey this year, even though they did come through a bit of Colorado. And like a lot of other people, I was only aware that Will Barclay, last year’s winner, had won again. But even Barclay doesn’t get paid this time.

What’s the reason? As it says on the Hoka Hey blog, the winners must not exceed the speed limit. Last year all they had to depend on was issuance of speeding tickets by local jurisdictions. This year they had GPS and other fancy gear that could actually track such things. And surprise, surprise, every single one of the supposed winners exceeded the speed limit at one point or another on their 11,000 or so miles of riding.

So no one get any prize money. Gosh, what do you suppose Jim Durham plans to do with all that cash?

And a bigger question than that, I wonder what the reaction is at Harley-Davidson? Harley signed on as a major sponsor this year but you really have to wonder how happy they are about this turn of events. Will they be back as a sponsor next year? I guess we’ll just wait and see.

I’ll also be extremely interested to see if even 10 riders sign up for next year’s Hoka Hey.

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Horsepower: Because sometimes testosterone is not enough.

I got wind of this Colorado English Motoring Conclave 2011 from Jerry Pokorny, who has his share of Brit bikes. It was held over the weekend up in Arvada. Figured I’d go up and check it out.

First thing I’ll say is that while there were some nice bikes there, there weren’t nearly as many as I’d hoped. Second thing, there were a lot of very, very cool cars.

Not a whole lot to say about it. I’ll just give you some pictures.

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