Passes & Canyons Blog

Some of these have got to hurt . . . and they all must be a hurt to the wallet.

We’ve all seen these guys who do amazing things on their motorcycles–trials riding, street stunting, whatever–but I bet you have wondered, as I have, how they learn to do these things. The answer, of course, is practice.

But when practice means falling down repeatedly on a motorcycle that can get to be painful and expensive. But how else are you going to learn?

Well, Jerry is the king of sending motorcycle videos and here is one he sent me recently, titled “50 Motorcycle Crashes in 2 Minutes.” Some of these folks were indeed practicing, but most were out riding and showing off. Which means their embarrassment was especially public.

Prepare to grimace.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/50-motorcycle-crashes-in-2-minutes/vi-AA1JOAcn?ocid=socialshare

Biker Quote for Today

“There’s a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore looking like an idiot.” — Steven Wright

I wish I could say I shot this photo yesterday but I didn’t. I’m missing it all this year.

Since I’m not able to ride again yet (four more weeks!) I’m running a little dry, so as I do at times like this I have turned again to threads on the Adventure Riders forum. This is the one titled “Stupid questions people ask you when stopped.” Time for some amusement.

• I had a Gold Wing Aspencade once. I insulated the left saddlebag with thin styrofoam to make it into an ice chest. It worked quite well. It would keep 24 cans of beer ice cold for 2 days in the hottest of summer weather. My buddies and I pulled into a gas station and, with the bike on the side stand, it started to drip. A passerby noticed the puddle under the bike and asked if the bike had air conditioning. “Yes,” I replied, “It does.”
• I’m standing next to the bike again in full ATTGATT and somebody asks “Your bike?” – I say Nooooo, it’s my Granny’s.
• After being pulled over by the local Police who have seen me on the DR a couple hundred times by now… “Is that thing street legal?” Me = Nope, it just has lights and a plate because I like the extra weight!
• Yesterday. It was raining, Grey and an all around dreary day. As I walked into a gas station dripping all over the place some guy speaks up: I bet you wish you are in a car today don’t ya?
  Me: That is a bet you would lose. (stepped to the counter and paid for purchase)
  Him: What do ya mean? You can’t be enjoying yourself!
  Me: You’ve never ridden a motorcycle have you? (Laughed and turned to walk out)
  Clerk: He rides every day rain or shine and always has a smile.
• One Sunday morning I was out for a ride in the Colorado back roads. The morning was fantastic and I had seen nary another driver. Coming over a hill and looking down, an officer of the law was sitting, apparently also enjoying the lonely Sunday morning. I was well in excess of the posted speed limit. I pulled up to him and stopped. He got out of his car and walked across the road to me. “Nice morning for a ride.”
  “Yes sir,” I said.
  “If you would slow up some you will have many more.”
  “Yes sir,” I said.
  “Have a nice day,” he said, and walked back to his car.
  It was a great day.
• Last week, it’s snowing like hell and I stop at a light while riding to work. (already 2 inches on the road, no studs B.T.W.) and the yuck next to me asks out his rolled down window… “You know it’s snowing don’t you?” Me = “Nah! Hadn’t noticed.”
• I was driving my 1200 LT and notice that a guy was following me in his car. At a red light he pulls over and says: Wowww what a bike! For that money you might have bought a car instead!
• Stopped at a gas station today… some random guy came up and ask me if my 1982 BMW R65LS was a Harley Davidson… :huh? I guess the BMW badge on the tank, tail, bikini fairing and on my license plate bracket wasn’t enough of a hint that it wasn’t an HD. I toyed with the guy saying “Yeah, it’s one of those boxer twins that HD is FAMOUS for…” and rode off.
• My ride is an FJR1300. Not the fastest or most powerful bike on the planet, but definitely no slouch. Was at a gas station one day and a guy walks up to me and asks “Do you need all that power or do you just want it?” “Both,” I replied.
• I kid you not, I was stopped at an intersection with two other guys on bikes and a troglodyte waltzes up and asks “are those motorcycles?”

OK, calling it a day. Hope you got a chuckle.

Biker Quote for Today

Bike to work. Bike to play. Bike tomorrow. Bike today.

Taking a back road in Utah.

I’ve been drawing from this Adventure Rider thread when it’s this slow time of year for a long time but this may be the last time. The most recent entry was in April of 2023 so it seems to have died. So here are perhaps the last of the what is the strangest thing you’ve ever hit:

• I caught a pheasant in my left shoulder once while straightening the bike up after exiting from an aggressive S-curve. The subsequent explosion damn near took me off the bike. (Felt like a bowling ball.) Then I noticed I couldn’t see, and my face was very warm. Many feathers, and much blood, came into my full-face around my chin. I stopped and tried to figure some things out, and decided to proceed to a convenience store in the next town. When I walked in to find the bathroom the crowd stopped and stared at me. The lady behind the counter asked me if I was OK, and if I’d been shot. One look in the bathroom mirror and I understood why she asked that.
• Taking a trip across the US on a Suzuki T500 in the mid 70s, somewhere in the UT dez doing about 80mph and the road goes on forever, pretty much straight but lots of rollers. Come over a rise and see a buzzard in my lane feeding on something and he has the easy choice of going right or left to get away but he goes off in the direction I’m going. He’s taking off, so not going very fast, I’m doing 80, very fast and I hit him directly with the front of my fairing (he covers the whole thing), he rolls over to the right and glances off my shoulder. I didn’t go down or get hurt but it bent my fairing back so I pulled over to survey the damage. Looking back I saw him flying away, slowly with a great story to tell his friends.
• Hit by, as opposed to run into. An attacking Barn Owl. I don’t know why, but apparently it thought my white helmet was dinner. It was night, and I saw it half a second before it hit. The classic flared pose, talons out, wide spread.
• I was taking my soon to be wife on her second ever (at 46) motorcycle ride down a 2 lane road.As we met a square body pick up truck his hood flew off an sailed right over our heads with inches to spare.
• I had a Canada goose fly into the right side of my Super Tenere a couple of days ago. It didn’t kill him but literally knocked the @&%# out of him all over the right front panel of the bike.
• Was in middle-of-nowhere West Texas windmill country on my TW200 headed for Utah last spring. Doing about 35 on a gravel road at dusk and top a small rise to see a herd of 20 or so wild/feral pigs running across the road. Handful of drum brake slowed me down enough to tap the slowest one on the rump and send him into a barrel roll while thankfully barely altering my trajectory.
• My riding buddy on his way to Sturgis somehow missed a cinder block that was in the road with his front wheel but couldn’t/didn’t with his rear wheel. He blew out his tire and destroyed the wheel but managed to keep it upright.

There you have it. Just one more reminder to be careful out there.

Biker Quote for Today

You start with a full bag of luck and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck.

Bike Week in Daytona.

I haven’t gone after this thread in a while: What stupid things do people ask you when you’re on your motorcycle? Let’s dig in.

• A guy in a weird car with lights and stuff, stops me and asks: Do you know how fast you were going?
• The other day in a shopping center parking lot, a guy asks me if that is my bike. As I’m mounting up, I say “no…but it’s about to be.”
• A few years ago, I was refueling in West Yellowstone on a bleak, 45° very rainy day. Across the pump island, was the father of a bunch gassing up the family minivan. The Dodge was literally rocking from all the kids jumping around inside. Mr. Griswold looked over at me, kinda smirked and said, “I’ll bet you’d like to trade with me right now.” I smiled and said, “Let me ask you: Has every day of your marriage been like your honeymoon?” He thought for a second and replied, “I get it.”
• When people ask me how fast my bike can go, I usually say, “I don’t know.” People don’t really know how to respond, so they just look at me. Sometimes they’ll ask me in a condescending tone how I don’t know, then I’ll tell them, “I may be slow, but I’m alive.”
• Situation: It’s getting toward dusk/dinner time, and has begun to rain. Q: “How are you going to get home?!?” A: “I put on my pants, jacket, helmet, gloves, turn the key, start the engine, then start my normal riding onto the road from the parking lot, and take the way I normally take. Its really quite simple.” Questioner: “Huh?”
• A few years back I was riding with 2 buddies in the Texas Hill County. As we approached a town we slowed down. Unfortunately not enough as the cop clocked us at 101. Another mph and we would have been arrested. The stupid question came when the cop asked how fast the bikes could go. Given the situation we declined to answer.
• I usually leave my helmet on when I ride the elevator on my way to work, to free up my hands and not bang it into the sides of the crowded elevator. So this guy says “You ride your motorcycle to work today?” and I said “No, just being real safe in my truck!”
• Many moons ago while on a Suzuki a guy walks by and says, wow, I didn’t know Suzuki used the same motors as Kawasaki’s, looking puzzled I assured him that they each made their own power plants, he said no they both use motors made by “Dohock,” as he pointed to the DOHC cast into the end cover.
• I was asked the dreaded “Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?” by an LAPD motor officer. I had been making way too good of time down a mid morning freeway (about 90 indicated) and I actually laughed and said “I sure do.” Ended up with a warning and a nice conversation with a fellow rider.
• Q: “Did you drive them all the way from Germany?” A: “Yes, but we had to change the water tires in New York.”

People say there are no stupid questions. I’m not so sure.

Biker Quote for Today

“Animals travel on all fours. Mankind on two. Motorcycling is not a means of transport but an ideology, a nomadic way of life.” -– Amit Reddy

Aren’t you going to get wet going through that water?

In a lot of instances you’ll hear that there are no stupid questions and that’s because it’s not stupid to ask if you don’t understand. At times, though, the answer seems so obvious that you do have to wonder. Adventure Rider has a thread for people to post the stupid questions they have been asked and I’ve dipped into it before. Here are some more.

• The one I seem to get most often is: “Nice bike, who makes KTM?” At first I tried to explain it to people. Now I just tell them KTM is my initials and that I put it together in my garage.
• At the end of August, I was on a group ride in the Gorge with about 6 other guys, all dressed in various types of MC gear. It is a blazing summer day, 95+ degrees. We stop for ice cream at Cascade Locks. I’m trying to take a group pic when a woman comes up, points at my day-glo yellow mesh jacket and asks in an incredulous tone: “Have you boys been skiing?”
• The Kawi Voyager XII has louvers in the lowers and of course the question is ” Does that have A/C?” “Yes it does, A/C in the winter and heat in the summer.” Some get it, others, not so much.
• A cute little blond girlie with large mammaries, sidles up to me as I was donning my gear after quaffing a cold beer and asks “Would you take me for a ride on your bike?” Duh!
• Had a girl ask me not long ago how i was able to get my pipes such a pretty blue color!
• “Alberta, what state is that in?”
• Can’t tell you how many times I have just gotten off my bike (I’m wearing my one-piece Aerostich) during the summer months and somebody just has to ask: “Are you cold?” Standard answer: “I’m freezing, aren’t you?”
• Him: That run OK? Me: You didn’t see me push it here now did you?
• Lady: what’s that wire for coming out of your jacket? (electric vest) Wise-ass answer: that’s a booster for my pacemaker.
• Dumbest thing was a 20ish year old guy’s comments at a gas station. He looks at my boxer and says, “must be fast with 2 big ‘motors’ like that.”

OK, what’s your vote? Are there stupid questions or not?

Biker Quote for Today

What kind of a motorcycle does a pirate ride? An Arrrrley Davidson.

No, you wouldn’t get any questions if you were on this . . . would you? But you’d get good gas mileage.

It’s been quite awhile since I looked at this thread on Adventure Riders but it’s worth checking out now and then. The topic is, what stupid questions have people asked you on your bike?

• The steer horns I have on the front of my bike have gotten some nice questions that seem to be rather consistent by region. Texas/Louisiana: ”that’s from a hunt you went on right?” New England: ”is that in case you run into any animals at night?”
• You ride that all the way here? Yep, it’s too heavy to push.
• I ride a KTM 950 SM. when asked “what kind of bike is that?” I reply, “it is a KTM.” their reply, “Oh, I had a Kawasaki when I was younger…”
• When people ask me how fast it is I tell them I’ve had it to about 195. And most of the time they believe it.
• When I turned 16 and got my license, my dad let me ride his (then) R1100S up to the beach. I pulled into the motorcycle parking and took my helmet off, only to have a 21-year old on a CBR come up and ask “What are those things sticking out from the engine? Are they superchargers?”
  I was dumbstruck until he pointed to the cylinders. When I told him that it was an opposed twin, a.k.a boxer engine, he told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and told his girlfriend that they were superchargers. She just laughed at him because of the face I made when he asked me.
• OP: Why’s your bike so dirty?
  Me: Because I like riding it in the dirt.
  OP: Yea, I get that, but why don’t you wash it?
  Me: I do sometimes, but then it just gets dirty again, so why bother?
• I was running late Monday night so I walked into class ATGATT (‘stich, boots, helmet in hand, etc.) At the end of the class, the guy next to me asks, “Schwinn or Huffy?”
• My fav “goin’ ridin’?” to which I reply “nope, Im taking a trip to the moon”
• At the grocery store, I usually get (whenever I’m ATG), “so, you’re on a bike, ‘eh??” And I usually respond with…” Nope…gonna get shot out of a cannon…..again!”
• While wearing my Olympia mesh 1-piece during the Summer I often run out for errands at lunch and keep it on while I run in for a sandwich or at the farm stand. I often get asked if I fly a plane or if I’m in the military. Sometimes I get asked if I was skiing – yep that’s right…I’m skiing in 92 degree weather in NJ in July 150 miles from the nearest hill!

I know I’m dating myself here but Art Linkletter used to have a section on his show called “Kids Say the Darnedest Things.” You know what? People say the darnedest things. And there’s your proof.

Biker Quote for Today

Why motorcycles are better than women: You don’t have to convince your motorcycle that you’re a motorcyclist and that you think that motorcycles are equals.