Passes & Canyons Blog

We’re at that time of year now here in Colorado when you may or may not be able to ride some of the best roads in the state. May can be a little early to be coming here to ride but I know people are already doing so. Just this past weekend, when I was down at EagleRider in downtown Denver there were about eight Harleys lined up at the curb waiting for a group of European (German?) riders, who showed up while I was there.

I hope those guys didn’t have their heart set on riding Trail Ride Road because that ain’t gonna happen. The latest word from the Department of Transportation is that the hope to have that road open in early June.

On the other hand, DOT announced today that Independence Pass will open today. I’m guessing that if you ride that pass in the next couple days you’d better dress warmly. Right after it opens that road is likely to have high walls of snow on one or both sides of the road and temperatures at altitude are not balmy.

As for the other seasonal roads, here’s what DOT now says on their website.

Pikes Peak road: Currently the road is open 13 of the 19 miles. Weather permitting it will be open all the way later today.

Mount Evans road: “Due to recent heavy snowfall, the Mt. Evans Highway is not expected to open for another one to two weeks. Crews have been diligently working each day to get the road cleared of snow and ice. However, snow is cleared one day and then more snow falls overnight, requiring crews to retrace their plowing operation from the previous day. Crews are currently re-clearing the area between Echo Lake and Summit Lake and will then clear the last four miles to the summit.”

Cottonwood Pass and Kebler Pass are still closed as of this date, May 26, 2011.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Book review: The Harley-Davidson Motor Co. Archive Collection

Biker Quote for Today

Harleys: Making men into boys since 1918.

It’s too early to know if this is actually going to happen, but if it does it will be fabulous. I may be riding a Kawasaki KLR 650 (like the one above) from Seattle to Anchorage, AK, in late June, early July. Wow! How cool is that?

It’s all still very iffy. It will depend to a very great extent on money.

The whole business comes out of my familiarity with Sue Slate and Gin Shear, who run the Women’s Motorcyclist Foundation. They are organizing a breast-cancer research fund-raising ride in Alaska in August, and they have a need to get their own KLRs to Anchorage. That’s where I come in.

Dan Patino, who runs Go 2 Motorcycle Tours here in Colorado, would be riding the other one and we’re both eager to go. The problem is, by Dan’s estimate, it could cost us each as much as $2,000 for gas, food, lodging, and airfare to Seattle and then home from Anchorage. Yikes! I don’t have that kind of money to do anyone a favor, even if I get a great trip out of the deal.

Neither does Dan but Dan has ideas. First off, he’s hoping to make this ride an extension of the Adventures for the Cures ride up in Alaska and do some fundraising. And as a fundraiser, he has hopes that we can get some sponsorship. Specifically, he hopes he may be able to persuade an airline to pick up our airfare expenses and perhaps a hotel chain to take care of our accommodations. Meanwhile, I have already queried Rum Bum, who I write for regularly, about sponsoring us in some way, too. Maybe they could pay for some or all of our gas.

So I have no idea whether any of this will come about. We just got started talking about this two days ago. And without sponsors there is no way I can manage it. But oh man, if Dan can pull it off and line up sponsors to defray at least a major portion of our expenses . . .

Alaska. I have never been to Alaska, and it’s the only state I haven’t been to. I really, really want to go. And the opportunity to ride a motorcycle up there. Wow, have I died and gone to heaven? But I’ll try not to get my hopes up too high just yet. One thing for sure: You’ll be hearing about it here if this things comes off. I’m crossing my fingers.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
April 16 set for public opening of Motorcyclepedia Museum

Biker Quote for Today

Dual sport & adventure riding is cheaper than therapy

I put 2,143 miles on my Concours in 10 days going down to Arizona Bike Week, in Scottsdale, and the Overland Expo, in Amado, and there were parts that exceeded my expectations and others that fell short. It’s always that way, isn’t it?

It was some hard riding. Three of those days were in excess of 400 miles, with one of those being more than 500 miles. The weather in Arizona was blazing hot, hitting 100 some days. Nights were just as balmy as could be. If I lived in Arizona I think I’d sleep all day and be up and about all night. (That photo above is of me in the Kawasaki tent in Scottsdale, courtesy of computer simulation.)

While a large part of my riding was interstate, there were a couple stretches on the two-lane that were really good. Those would be the run from Holbrook, AZ, down to Scottsdale, which went through some forested mountains, and the route from Lordsburg, NM, over to I-25 a little south of Truth or Consequences. That last road seems to me to compete with the Tail of the Dragon for curves. I definitely recommend it.

Arizona Bike Week itself was a bit of a disappointment. There was little going on during the day, when it was blazing hot, and at night it depended on what group was playing in the party tent. The nights that Skid Row and Heart played there were a lot of people. The other nights were pretty slim. My conclusion is that this rally is primarily a local event that is primarily of interest to folks nearby who drop in for an evening.

Of considerably more interest was the Overland Expo down in Amado. This expo is for people who want to go adventure touring, whether on two wheels or four, and there were some amazing people in attendance. Ted Simon, who wrote Jupiter’s Travels, was there, as was Lois Pryce, who is well known for her travels as reported in Lois on the Loose and Red Tape and White Knuckles.

It was fascinating to see all the specialized gear–not to mention the incredible vehicles–that the vendors brought to show. It was also very interesting to speak with the organizers, Roseann and Jonathan Hanson, about their vision for the expo. I’ll have more on them and the expo later.

In truth, I had never seen all that much of Arizona before, so it was great to see so much of it now. Arizona has its own sort of very real beauty, but I have to say, I was glad to get into New Mexico where the beauty is less harsh. I could live in New Mexico but I don’t think I’d ever want to live in Arizona.

Most of all, though, the trip was a chance to escape the winter doldrums. It was, after all, the first bike trip of the year. It got me out of my day to day routine and away from this computer. The writing I do for a living is mostly about my motorcycling experiences in one way or another, and now I have a lot of new experiences to write about. I’d say that counts as a successful trip.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Arizona Bike Week builds up slowly (with photos)

Biker Quote for Today

Ahhh…the sound of a bike far off in the distance, late on a clear evening, calls to me, saying rise up and catch the wind under the moonlight’s embrace.

Some people do amazing things on motorcycles. You know, like go around the world, or ride from Alaska to the tip of South America. Serious adventure riding. To them I say, more power to you! Go for it! Just don’t ask me to come along.

I’ve been down in Amado, AZ, at the third annual Overland Expo, which is for folks who do like to do those sorts of things. (That picture above is in the motorcycle “corral” at the expo.) Some of the people there are those folks who we’ve all heard of for their renowned exploits. There was Ted Simon, who wrote the book Jupiter’s Travels about his four-year ride around the world in the 1970s, back before this kind of thing got popular. Lois Pryce was there, the author of Lois on the Loose, about her ride from Alaska to Argentina. And others.

I sat in on Ted’s and Lois’s presentations and what they did is truly amazing. Awe-inspiring. Incredible. They showed pictures and talked about the extreme troubles they overcame, as well as the extreme joys they experienced, and I came away from it all with the very definite thought in my mind that I just don’t want to do that. I don’t want to subject myself to the incredible hardships they faced. I don’t want to spend hours and days wrestling overloaded motorcycles through mud up to the seat. I don’t want to end up in jail in some foreign country. I’m sorry, you’re just going to have to count me out.

The whole basis of the Overland Expo is to bring people together, people who have done these things and people who would like to do these things. To inspire people to just make up their mind and do it. And it’s not just this kind of extreme adventuring. Maybe you just want to ride through Mexico but don’t know how to go about planning and preparing. That’s the kind of thing you’ll get out of Overland Expo. And that’s the sort of thing I could get into. Just because Ben Slavins quit his job to take six months and ride from New Hampshire to Ushuaia, Argentina, doesn’t mean you have to quit your job to go adventuring, or overlanding as the activity is called.

Actually, the way I see it, I was out overlanding myself this last 10 days. I packed up the bike and took off for places I’d never been before, met new people, saw new sights, learned a whole bunch, and had a great time. It’s not Ted Simon extreme, but it’s really just the level of the adventure. I’m not at his level and I don’t want to be. But it was still an adventure. And I’ll do it again. You should, too. You know, quit dreaming and just do it.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Arizona Bike Week comes to life, with photos

Biker Quote for Today

If you can’t pick it up by yourself, it is not an adventure bike.

The weather allowed me to ride to Scottsdale for Arizona Bike Week. Barely.

Sunday morning dawned warm and sunny–the weather gods were smiling. Apparently they were smiling because they knew the trick they were playing on me.

After writing about how I hoped I could keep my hands warm on this trip I got an email from Mike Landon suggesting that I get some of those thin, neoprene gloves that doctors and dentists use, and wear them under my regular motorcycle gloves. Like a “second skin” he said.

I also found that the glove liners I use for skiing would fit inside my motorcycle gloves–which themselves are Thinsulate-lined–so I had hopes that one or the other approach would suffice. Then for insurance I went to a sporting goods store and bought some chemical handwarmers to tuck inside the gloves if need be.

Always eager to experiment, I left home with one glove liner on, one mylar glove on, and not using the handwarmers for now. Twenty miles later, at Castle Rock, it was clear my fingers were getting cold on both hands equally. Then I hit nasty weather going over the Palmer Divide, with fog and light mist. Cars coming the other way had snow on them. Yikes!

I got to the south end of Colorado Springs and had to stop. My hands were in serious pain. While nursing my hot chocolate and getting warm at a convenience store I asked everyone who came in what they knew about the weather further south. The consensus was that I should be OK heading that direction. And when I was ready to leave I slipped a couple of those chemical handwarmers in my gloves, using both glove liners this time.

My take on using the mylar gloves is that they really did seem to do as well as the glove liners, which definitely counts. The ladies at my dentist’s office who had given them to me had mentioned that as your hands sweated the moisture would collect inside them and they were right, so I figured that since I had the glove liners it would be better to use them. Without the liners I would definitely have used the mylar gloves and been glad to have them.

The weather did improve as I continued south and my hands stayed comfortably warm. It must have been pretty cold as the pads never did feel particularly warm. Apparently every bit of heat they were giving off was needed. Stopping later and putting my gloves back on they seemed quite warm.

I paid $1.49 a pair for these chemical warmers at a sporting goods store but I’m told you can get them in bulk at WalMart for 50 cents a pair. And they’re supposed to be good for 7 hours of heat but after 9 hours these were still pumping it out. In other words, I will always have some of these tucked in my tank bag from now on. They’re a lifesaver.

So to make a long story short, I rode 530 miles Sunday to Grants, NM, and then on to Scottsdale the next day. That photo is of my bike at a rest stop along the highway in New Mexico. I’m ready for Bike Week to get revved up but right now I’m at a local Kawasaki dealership. Seems those tires I thought had enough rubber on them to get me here and home again were only up for half of that ride.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
I’m here for the party–where is it?

Biker Quote for Today

“Adventure” is “Trouble” in the past tense.

I’ll be leaving on my first big motorcycle trip of the year in about a week so I’ve been getting that nagging feeling that I need to be figuring out where I’m going and especially where I’m going to stay along the way. That staying part really matters to me because I’m on a very tight budget and if I don’t limit my spending this whole thing will end up costing me money. Ideally I’m supposed to make some money off it selling the articles that I write about the trip and the events I’m going to. (Although that campsite in the photo above, in Laughlin, NV, was too gritty event for me, so I only stayed there one night.)

Right off the bat I got a bit of a surprise. I use Microsoft Streets & Trips to map out routes, and if you want it to it can show you the shortest route between any two places. I put in Denver and Scottsdale and was surprised to find that it routed me west on I-70 and then south to Scottsdale. I had in mind going south on I-25 and, catching I-40 at Albuquerque, and then going south from Flagstaff to the Phoenix/Scottsdale area. I don’t normally like taking the interstate but in this case I need to cover distance and I just want to get there as quickly as possible. Plus, the weather is still an unknown and I figure going south first is my better bet.

So I added Albuquerque to the route and presto, there’s what I had expected–sort of–and it was only 9 miles longer. What was the sort of? What I hadn’t considered–because I really don’t know Arizona all that well–is that the more direct route leaves I-40 at Holbrook, AZ, and cuts southwest to Scottsdale across some desert, some forest, and a mountain range. Cool! Whatever I lose in speed by leaving the interstate I’ll surely regain by the shorter distance, and I’ll be riding a two-lane road through some places I’ve never been before. That’s more my idea of a fun motorcycle trip.

Then where to stay. Last year going out to the Laughlin River Run I spent three days getting there. I stayed the first night at my brother’s in Grand Junction, and the second night at the home of some people in Cedar City, UT, who I connected with through the Motorcycle Travel Network. I checked the MTN first thing but there are no members along my route.

If I ride to Albuquerque the first day it’s going to be a long ride but that will also leave me just as long a ride the next day. Plus, at interstate speeds on my Kawasaki Concours, a highway-loving machine, that should only take me five hours of actual riding time. The fact is, if I really wanted to push it I could probably go the entire 850 miles to Scottsdale that first day but that would be truly extreme. Besides, when I ride that leg between Holbrook and Scottsdale I want to be able to enjoy it. So I looked for somewhere between Albuquerque and Scottsdale as a likely place to spend the night.

First I checked Gallup. I’ve stayed in Gallup before and what I’ve found there are semi-expensive motels and super-cheap ones where I would fear getting bedbugs. There is a KOA there that would run me $24. That would be OK. But what are my other options?

A little east of Gallup are the two towns of Prewitt and Grants. Both of them seem to have camping, for less than the KOA. I’m thinking that by the time I get to either of those towns I will be so ready to get off the bike that not going that extra 50-60 miles on to Gallup will be extremely attractive. And if I get to each of them and the camping isn’t available or whatever, I can still go on that extra distance to Gallup.

So OK. I guess I’m set. I always have some trepidation before I set out on one of these trips and this one is no exception. On the other hand, I’ve been feeling kind of down and discouraged lately, I think from being cooped up all winter, and this would seem like the perfect antidote. I’m itching to get on the road.

Biker Quote for Today

If you owned a plane would you trailer it, too?

Having fun and riding motorcycles is what life is all about, isn’t it? Cheers then to the guys on the Single Over-Head Cam 4 Forum for the little relay rally they’ve put together, which will be passing through Colorado probably some time in May. If you ride an SOHC 4 you may even want to join in, although even those of us on DOHC bikes and others are welcome.

It all started out with a post on the forum by a member with the handle of MyCB750K6, who wanted to get the group to organize rides as it had done in years past. The original idea was a 1,000-mile ride but it quickly grew to become a relay rally through all 48 continental states. And then to add some whimsy, someone came up with a little plastic Godzilla that will be the token passed along from rider to rider.

The first riders will be leaving Daytona on March 12. They’ve divided the country into regions and each region has its team. The initial Team Southeast Coastal will hand off to Team Southeast, to Team Southwest, to Team California, to Team Central Rockies, to Team Central, to Team Mid Atlantic . . . Dates are in place for part of this but not for the Central Rockies, yet, thus my lack of specificity.

The idea is taking off. Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum has signed on as a sponsor and the Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club has pledged its support.

The guys at the forum make it clear this is NOT a race. Says the moderator of the group, “The premise here is to organize a ride where as many members as wish can be a part of a group effort to promote and take pride in SOHC4.com, to meet and interact with other members, to enjoy amazing riding and provide others with what they have accomplished, to benefit charitable organizations, to accomplish our goals, to ride as little or as much as they want and just have a safe and fun time doing so.”

The hope is that it will become an annual event and continue to expand. The plan has already expanded to now include Canada. Next the world? We’ll see.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Adventures for the Cures 2011 to ride Alaska, Yukon

Biker Quote for Today

There are old racers, and there are bold racers, but there are no old, bold racers who don’t walk funny.

If you read Rider magazine you may have gotten a bit of a shock when you opened the latest issue (March 2011) that arrived this past week: There’s a picture of me in it, and it ain’t pretty.

You can see it in this section of one page that I scanned and have included here. That’s me and Klaus Herder, who is with Motorrad magazine, at dinner on the last night of the EagleRider media tour we went on in October out in California.

We were sitting across the table from Donya Carlson, who is an editor at Rider, and who had been on the tour as well. She shot this picture and later sent it to me, with no hint that she actually planned to use it with her article. What a surprise when I saw the article!

Of course, we both made it into another picture as well, because it’s a group shot and we’re all in it. And then there’s the matter of one of my pictures also being used in the article. The day we rode along Big Sur I went ahead and waited for others in the group to come along so I could get pictures. I was waiting on the far side of a bridge and Donya came along with Simon Weir, who writes for RiDE magazine in England. I got a good shot of them on the bridge and sent it to both of them later. Donya contacted me to ask if they could use it with her article, so at least I knew about this one.

So anyway, it’s a silly picture of us but that’s OK. Everybody gets a laugh. And thank you, Donya, for the fun. Not to mention the opportunity to get published in a major national magazine. I usually pass my magazines along to my friends after I read them but in this case they’re going to have to buy their own copies–I’m hanging on to this one.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Delay of lead law enforcement gives kids’ bikes a breather

Biker Quote for Today

You want me to go where??? On that???? OOOOKKKKKAAAYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!