Passes & Canyons Blog

Later in the same trip when John laid down his brand new Honda Shadow twice, before we reached Salt Lake City, we were in Heber City, Utah, and trying to figure the best route to Salt Lake. It seemed our choices were to go southwest on US 189 and pick up I-15 near Provo or go north on US 189 and pick up I-70 north of Park City. Both called for skirting around the mountains between us and Salt Lake City and both entailed riding interstate. Neither looked wonderful.

There was a third option. Looking at our paper map we saw a little road winding its way through the hills. After our less than wonderful experience on Ripple Creek Pass the day before we were more than cautious. But we had the brilliant idea to ask a local: Is this road paved? Would it be a good choice?

Asking a local is one of the best things you can do in an unfamiliar area. They can not only tell you yes or no about the condition of a road, they can point you to places and routes you aren’t even aware of. I’ve had that experience again and again. Women like to say that guys don’t ask for directions but I sure do, and I’ve benefited from it many times.

This particular road was UT92, known as the Alpine Loop Scenic Byway. We took 189 south and turned onto 92 about halfway to Provo. The first community you pass through here is Sundance, the place made known by Robert Redford and his Sundance Film Festival.

And the road was awesome! It’s very narrow, barely more than one lane much of the way. It twists and turns up over the hills and eventually works its way down American Fork Canyon out onto the flat lands again over by a place called Point of the Mountain. I’m familiar with Point of the Mountain. I crashed a hang-glider there many years ago, an event that ultimately led me to take up the much safer interest of riding motorcycles. I sold my hang-glider to get money to buy my first motorcycle.

Along the way the road passes through Timpanogos Cave National Monument, a place I still have yet to visit although I’m familiar with it from my years working at the National Park Service.

But the road is great, absolutely one of the best we have ever been on. Well paved and gorgeous. You just have to take it easy because when you encounter traffic coming the other way it gets tight. Thank you whoever it was who we consulted on this one.

We spent a couple days with friends in Salt Lake City, as we had done the year before, and then headed west across the salt flats to Wendover, Nevada, and on west to Wells, where we turned north on US 93. We stopped for the night at the little town of Jackpot for the first time. Jackpot has become one our favorite stops as it has gambling–an OFMC must on each trip–and also golf. Golf is also a must on each trip now, but at this point it was something we had never done.

Our first time playing golf on the OFMC trip. And that’s the bridge over the canyon in the background.

About golf. We only stayed in Jackpot that one night but the next day we continued north to Twin Falls, where US 93 crosses the Snake River. This is where Evel Kneivel tried years ago to jump the canyon on a motorcycle. If you’ve never seen the Snake River Gorge here you simply cannot just cross without stopping to have a look. And we did, and we were amazed to see, down in the bottom of the canyon, a golf course. Incredible. Let’s ride down there and check it out.

Don’t even try to do this anymore, but we rode down there that day, liked what we saw, asked if we could have a tee time, they said sure, and we then rode back up, found a motel, dropped off our stuff, and rode back down to play golf. We had only gone 25 miles on the day but we didn’t care, this was too cool to pass up.

It’s a really nice golf course, in a fantastic setting, and we had a great time. So this was the first time we ever played golf on the OFMC trip. From then on, though, it became an every year thing. But Twin Falls has grown a lot since then and you’ll never get a tee time the same day there now. Make your reservations well in advance.

So the lesson learned? If something is just too cool to pass up, don’t pass it up. Do it! It may soon turn into a tradition that you wouldn’t dream of not doing. But first you have to do it the first time.

Biker Quote for Today

Corners for some motorcycle riders is a time to slow down, for others it’s just a reason to get closer to the pavement.

John and Bill on their Honda Shadows (years later).

It’s a whole lot easier these days to get a good handle on the places you intend to head to and the roads you’ll be on getting there than it was in the early days of the OFMC. Getting onto some dicey roads on a brand new bike is a good way to get your first scratches right away. This is a lesson John learned one year.

When the OFMC first got going, John bought a used Yamaha Virago, I bought a used Honda CB750 Custom, and Bill bought a brand new Honda Shadow. After we’d been riding about five years John decided to upgrade and he bought a new Shadow almost exactly like Bill’s, except newer. These were the bikes we set out on in 1994.

We headed toward Kremmling, where John’s Mom was living, and stopped to pay her a visit. We left town continuing northwest on US 40. Just a little further up the road we turned off US 40 onto CO134 over Gore Pass to Toponas. Nice ride. First time I’d ever been over that road.

From Toponas CO131 heads back up to US 40 but John had looked at the map and was interested in Routt County 8, which goes over Ripple Creek Pass from Yampa to Meeker. He had scoped it out and figured out (or so he thought) that it was paved all except for about 10 miles of gravel. Were we willing to do that bit of gravel? Back in those days these guys were more adventurous and we said yes; later on they concluded they did not wish to do gravel at all. I’m still willing, except on my Concours but I’ve always been more adventurous than them.

John was wrong. This road was 40 miles of gravel, much of it washboard and much of it deep with sand. It was probably the hardest riding any of us has ever done. And John managed to put his brand new bike down for the very first time.

John was leading and I was right behind. At one point he decided to stop and take a break and pulled off to the side of the road. Unfortunately for him, right at this point the side of the road was deep sand. I braked cautiously as I saw him go down. Fortunately there were the two of to help him get that bike up.

Ripple Creek Pass, by the way, is a beautiful road if you want to do it in a car or on a bike that is equipped for that kind of thing. I highly recommend it.

But that business of so much serious washboard had another impact. I noticed later that day that a couple of the welds on the sissy bar on my Honda had vibrated so hard that they broke. My sissy bar, with most of my stuff strapped onto it, was dangling precariously. But we stopped in Vernal, Utah, that night and then went on to Salt Lake City the next day and spent a couple days there. While there I went to a welding shop and got it fixed. So not a big deal. But that’s how bad the washboard was.

Heading from Vernal to Salt Lake the next day Bill was in the lead as we came alongside Strawberry Reservoir, near Duchesne. He saw a dirt road running down to the water and decided he wanted to check it out. John followed and I was right behind John.

It turned out the road was deeply rutted from erosion. Bill had no problem but John got himself in a fix and was about to lose it. He called out to me, “Ken, come help me! Quick!” I wanted to help him but I was in the same rough ground he was in and before I could do anything to help him I had to find a place to stop and park my own bike. By the time I did that he was down, his brand new bike laying on the ground.

As I recall, Bill came back on foot and helped us get John’s bike back upright, and we then rode on down the rest of the way to the water. We hung out for awhile and then managed to get back up to the highway uneventfully.

Now fortunately, neither of these two spills did any real damage to the bike, just a few cosmetic scratches and such. But it was no longer the brand new bike he had started out on just the day before.

We got more cautious about the roads we took after that.

Biker Quote for Today

It’s not the falling off that hurts, it’s the landing.

Some helmets are more fun than others.

I wear a helmet any time I ride now, but for years I did not. What changed that?

When I bought my first bike I had a Bell half-helmet from my hang-gliding days. I figured that was all I needed and I only needed that if it rained, if it was cold, or if I was in a state where helmets are required. I did find, however, that if I was going to wear it I also needed a visor. The helmet had three snaps across the front so I bought a visor that snapped onto those. Voila. But I didn’t wear it much; mostly I left it hooked on the helmet lock on the side of the bike.

It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the value of a helmet. In the third year of the OFMC trips I was headed for Durango and came upon a chip-seal operation. Cruising over new chip-seal, the car in front of me threw up a rock that I saw coming right at me and it glanced off my helmet as I tried to duck out of its way. I had the helmet on at that time because it was a rainy day. So I knew the value of helmets; I just enjoyed riding without one too much.

By the sixth year of the OFMC trip I had a full-face helmet. I had picked up a used Bieffe helmet at a yard sale for $25. Yeah, I had probably heard that line about if your head is only worth $10 then buy a $10 helmet. But I was poor and I still wasn’t big on helmets. But a half-helmet really doesn’t do all that much good in rain. And to this day I say, if you’re going to wear a helmet, wear a real helmet that gives you all the protection possible.

So I wore that Bieffe for a lot of years, but not very much. Truth was, it hurt. The Styrofoam liner pressed against my forehead and after an hour or more I was in pain. I only learned why that was last year. I was buying a new helmet and some that I tried on did that same thing. The sales guy explained that some helmets are shaped differently to accommodate different people’s heads. Some heads are oval shaped, others are more round. Don’t get a helmet meant for someone with a round head if your head is oval shaped.

Time passed and Bill and John started wearing their helmets more and more. I was the hold-out. I remember some year when they both wore their helmets nearly the entire time. I defiantly did not wear mine at all on that trip. More guys joined the group and more and more of them wore helmets all the time. It wasn’t peer pressure but that kind of thing does impact your thinking, if only subtly.

Oh yeah, and along the way I got ride of that painful Bieffe and bought a series of other helmets. One of the first was a new Bieffe but that hurt me the same way the old one did. I hadn’t learned about that yet. I still have that one but it’s hardly ever been worn.

Another thing that came with the passage of time is that I got married. I still was not overly concerned for myself but I didn’t like to think of what something happening to me would do to her. And then family things started happening.

First, my oldest brother was diagnosed with, and then died from, brain cancer. Next my second brother and his wife ran into serious marital issues when her sister developed serious mental illness. My sister-in-law felt she had no choice but to care for her sister, despite the extremely bad relations between her sister and her husband, my brother. That marriage ended. And then my younger brother’s wife got hit by a truck while she was riding her bicycle. She was wearing a helmet but those bicycle helmets are junk, if you want my opinion. She suffered irreparable brain damage.

At that point I was feeling like I was inviting a clean sweep. I did not want Judy to have to deal with the same issues all my siblings were facing. For Christmas that year I told her my real gift to her was that I would always ride with a helmet from then on. Actually, I had made that decision and was doing so for some months before this, but this was the first time I ever mentioned it to her. Merry Christmas, Judy. She was very pleased with the gift.

This was my own personal journey. It applies to me, and only me. I’m not one of those converts who now thinks everyone else should do the same. I still believe in helmets being the choice of the rider. And I choose to wear a helmet always.

Biker Quote for Today

You might be a Yuppie biker if you paint your office nick-name (like EasyRider or Bad-Ass) on your Bell open-face helmet.

In the fourth year of our OFMC trips we were starting to get our act together. At least we were a little more prepared. Mainly we were learning to make our decisions contrary to what most people do. The benefit is avoiding crowds.

We headed up to Laramie that first day not at all tuned into the fact that Frontier Days was going on in Cheyenne at that time and, just as with the Sturgis rally, the crowds fill up accommodations far beyond the one town. There was not one motel room available in Laramie. But in those days we carried tents and sleeping bags so we found a KOA, and they always have a spot of grass you can claim as your own.

Next day we blazed across Wyoming, just burning up miles, stopping that night in Lander. We cruised the next day to Jackson but even in those days Jackson was getting out of hand. I had last been there in 1976 and it was then just a small town and not yet the tourist Mecca it became later. By the time we got there it was well on its way toward Mecca. So rather than stay there we headed over Teton Pass down to Victor, Idaho.

That was our first really good decision. No hustle, no bustle, rooms cheap, good food. Plus, the pass was a nice ride. We liked Victor so much that we stayed there again a few years later, this time by planned intent. I will note, however, that these days, Victor has now seen much of the same sort of expansion and development that Jackson was going through then. A sleepy little town no more.

Most of the tourists to the Tetons head for the east face of the mountains, over at Jackson and in the park. Coming to the west side we got to enjoy a view of the mountains that most tourists never see, and there were zero crowds. And really pretty country.

We headed north along the west side of the mountains and got to West Yellowstone. We didn’t want to get into the thick of the crowds in Yellowstone so we stayed in the northern part of the park, crossing over to the northeast exit out of the park. Another good choice.

We came out of the park at Silver Gate and went on to Cooke City and here we had a decision to make. It was the middle of the afternoon and there were hours of sunlight left but we wondered if we wanted to push on over the Beartooth Pass today or spend the night and go tomorrow. The decision was almost made for us by the fact that we were having trouble finding an available room in town. But finally we spoke with a woman who told us she did have a cabin that she didn’t normally rent out and it wasn’t made up but if we just wanted a place to roll our sleeping bags out on bare beds we could have it quite inexpensively. We took it.

The next day we bundled up with all the warm clothes we had and started up the pass. Up at the top of the pass there is a little store and we stopped there to warm up and stretch a bit. Talking with the proprietor we learned what a very good choice we had made the night before.

He said the night before they were just closing up shop for the night when a group of riders on Gold Wings had stopped in. It was starting to be dusk and the road was starting to ice up. Would it be OK, they asked, if the proprietor and his wife could drive down into Cooke City behind them, slowly, so they could take advantage of their headlights to help see the road, and the ice on the road, better? Sure, you bet.

So down they went, slowly, white-knuckled. He said they winced numerous times as they saw one bike or another slipping on the icy road, but they all made it down safely. And this was exactly what we would have encountered at the other end if we had gone over the night before. Except we wouldn’t have had the benefit of his headlights. We were learning a good lesson: Don’t be in a hurry. Don’t push it.

The next couple days were uneventful until we got into Nebraska and were bending toward home. At a rest stop we met another guy on a bike who informed us that Nebraska was “a bucket state.” Oh, we didn’t know that, and we had not been wearing our helmets. Thanks. And then we rode on further till we pulled off on a wider area of shoulder to stretch our legs. There was a hedgerow of trees on the east side of the highway and the shade was welcome.

But Bill thought he saw something odd through the trees and wanted to go investigate. We followed a path through and came out onto the most amazing sight we could have imagined. Here were all these cars, planted upright in the ground, and a few spanning other upright cars. We had stumbled onto Car Henge, outside of Alliance. What craziness was this?!

Nowadays if you visit Car Henge it is a well-known tourist stop and there is a shop and toilets and it’s all developed. Back when we first found it, it was just out there in a field. No signs to explain it, nothing. Just a bunch of cars painted gray and half buried in the ground. We only learned what it was all about when we got into Alliance and asked somebody. If someone asked me what is the strangest thing you ever stumbled onto it would be Car Henge hands down. And the trees are all gone now so it’s plainly visible from the road. But not back then.

No more adventures the rest of this trip. But we still talk about this one. What a great trip.

Biker Quote for Today

Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to ride a motorcycle and he will realize fishing is stupid and boring.

Kevin coming down ahead of me into the Flaming Gorge area on that trip in 2015.

I’m the guy planning the OFMC ride these days and last week I sent out the route along with assignments as to who reserves motels in what town. It will definitely be the remaining three of us again this year, me and Bill and Dennis, plus we may have one or two others. We started at three, then ballooned to about 10 or 11, and have now shrunk back to three as guys hang up their helmets.

The two possibles include Bruce, who joined us for the first time last year, and Kevin, an old friend who it occurred to me that I ought to call. Neither of them can say for sure at this point but either or both may come along.

At Dennis’s suggestion, this year we will at least attempt to do the rest of the trip that got altered significantly a few years ago when Dennis inadvertently put diesel in his tank. We were headed for Missoula, Montana, that day, with intent of going over Lolo Pass. With fortune on our side we ought to get there this time.

We’ll be starting out this time headed for Meeker. We’ll take US 40 up to Craig and then CO 13 down to Meeker. If Kevin joins us he’ll probably meet us there; he lives in Gunnison.

Day two will be out of Colorado into Utah, north past the Flaming Gorge Reservoir, and into Wyoming to Kemmerer. Our first stay in Kemmerer many years ago was memorable because we eventually realized that several of the rooms just down from ours were gutted and had no roofs. Apparently there had been a fire. We probably won’t be staying at that motel this time. If Bruce joins us he’ll probably join us in Kemmerer, having made our two-day ride into a longish one-day ride.

From Kemmerer we’ll continue north through the Star Valley and then into Idaho. We’ll pass through Idaho Falls and go on to Arco, another town with some amusing memories from long ago. But I won’t go into that here; that’s a great candidate for my Tales of the OFMC series.

The next day we’ll run up from Arco, through Challis, to Missoula. I know this is a really nice ride so I’m looking forward to it. We’ll spend the night in Missoula and the next day double back just a few miles to the turn-off to Lolo Pass. This is actually a ride that Kevin and I did several years ago, along with his buddy Jeff. Those guys are pretty spontaneous so I was amused when we suddenly stopped and they both stripped naked and jumped in the river. It was a hot day, you know?

We’ll take US 12 down to Kooskia, then head south on ID 13 to Grangeville and there pick up US 95. At New Meadows we’ll get off onto ID 55 to Cascade, our stop for the night. This stretch will be the only new highway for us on this trip and it looks like it could be spectacular. I’ll let you know.

From Cascade we’ll head south to Boise and there we have little choice but to get on I-84. We’ll take that all the way down to Twin Falls and there turn south for our regular gambling/golf stop in Jackpot, Nevada. Along the way we’ll pass through Mountain Home, which is where Kevin’s buddy Jeff now lives, so we may lose Kevin there, presuming he’s with us in the first place. If Bruce is with us we’ll definitely lose him in Jackpot because while we stay there two nights, he will ride on after one night to get home as quickly as possible.

The big slog of the trip will come when we leave Jackpot, running south on US 93 to Wells, Nevada, and then east on I-80 to Wendover, across the salt flats to Salt Lake City, and then down to our destination that day, Spanish Fork.

Leaving Spanish Fork in the morning we’ll be on US 6 and then US 191 down to I-70 at Green River, Utah, where we’ll take the super slab to Grand Junction for our final night. The next day we’ll head home, presumably on I-70.

Should be a good trip. It will be a couple more days than usual because that is necessary if you’re going to get to Lolo Pass and not also do several long days. If there is one thing the OFMC does not like these days it is long days.

Biker Quote for Today

It is the unknown around the corner that turns my wheels.

Still riding this good machine.

On Tuesday morning I headed out early because I had a long way to go. By the following evening I needed to be at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon to meet up with John and Bill. I had miles to burn.

My destination that first day was Durango. I had a friend, Donna, who lived there with her future husband, Neil. I figured I’d spend the night with them.

This was at the time the longest one-day ride I had ever done. And I hadn’t gone far when I felt the need to stretch out my legs so I went to put my feet up on my highway pegs . . . and discovered the left one wasn’t there. It was there when I took the bike in the shop but it wasn’t there now. More anger. Not to mention lack of comfort.

I got to Durango and found my way to Donna and Neil’s, exhausted. I know for a fact that she was not thrilled to have me show up in a foul mood complaining loudly and bitterly about these jerks who had shafted me so badly. I understand that. But I figured my anger was more than justified and surely they could understand that and would sympathize.

At least as far as the highway peg was concerned, Neil did me a big favor. He fished out an aluminum tube about seven inches long and used duct tape to attach it in the appropriate spot. Thank you so much, Neil. And I spent the night and headed out in the morning. That wasn’t where this part of the story ended, though. About a year later, when Donna and Neil were getting married, I only heard about the wedding indirectly. I thought there must be some mistake; surely I should have been invited. I called Donna and she told me that no, they didn’t want me at their wedding because I would bring too much negativity. I was stunned. Sometime later we did patch over this rift but that was just one more disservice those jerks at the shop did me.

I headed on to the North Rim. Another hard day’s ride and I was there, and with a little luck I found Bill and John’s campsite. But they weren’t there so I went looking for them. First I went to the lodge, which was nearby. I didn’t find them there so I speculated that they had gone out to view the sunset somewhere. Figuring that what I would have done was to go out to an area called Cape Royal, 23 miles from the lodge on a slow, twisty road. So I headed out there.

It was a long ride, probably at least 45 minutes. And they weren’t there. Nothing to do but head back. But before I got anywhere close to all the way back the bike started to sputter and then died. It was getting dark, I was very tired, I was out on a lonely road with nothing and nobody around, and my bike was dead. I broke. It was more than I could take. Standing beside the bike I pounded my fists savagely on the seat screaming “God damn it! God damn it! God damn it!”

Then I had a thought. Maybe I had just run out of gas. Maybe I could flip to Reserve and the bike would run. I did and it did. Hallelujah!!!

I headed back to camp as fast as I could and when I got there and saw Bill and John I had never in my life been so happy to see them. What a day!

In the morning we stopped at the gas station there by the lodge and it was then that I noticed how thin the rubber was on my front tire. I had looked at it just the day before and it had a lot more tread then. I showed it to Bill and John and that was when we all learned just how important it is to keep proper air pressure in your tires. Let the air pressure run too low and you can burn off thousands of miles of tread in just a few hundred miles.

The rest of the trip was good and as soon as we got home I headed over to the shop. I wanted my highway peg and, guess what, my bike was still leaking oil and my pant leg was still getting splattered with oil. That’s what this whole business had been about in the first place. Here’s where the guy at the counter showed what a total jerk he was. First off, he pointed to the job ticket and how all it said was do a ring job. There was nothing there about stopping an oil leak. The ticket that I’m certain he wrote up deliberately in precisely that manner. And no matter what I could say he just blew me off.

And then I brought up the highway peg. Oh no, he blustered, we’re not responsible for that. Fortunately, the mechanic who had done some or all of the work was right there and he said wait a minute. He ran in back and came out with the peg. Middle finger to you, counter guy.

There is some justice in this world, however. I learned about a month later that this shop had gone out of business. Closed their doors. Kaput. Gosh, I can’t imagine why.

Biker Quote for Today

Quick fixes are named for how long they stay fixed.

My baby, my first bike, my Honda CB750 Custom.

On that OFMC trip to the Grand Canyon where the communicators were useless I mentioned that Bill and John had to leave without me and we had to meet up later. Why was that?

For as long as I had owned this 1980 Honda CB750 Custom it had leaked oil. I would go for a ride and by the time I got home the lower portion of my right pant leg would be spattered with oil. Not a wonderful thing. So about six weeks before we were to leave on the trip I decided to do something about it.

I took the bike to a repair shop and told them I wanted the leak stopped. I didn’t really know what it would take to do that, but I trusted that they would. The guy at the counter had a much better idea of the situation, though, and he totally set me up. For what it’s worth, I figure what was needed was gaskets. At least, that’s my take on it now. But what he seemed to understand was that even a new set of gaskets was not a guarantee of no leaking.

So he told me, gosh, we’re going to have to tear the whole engine down to do that so while we’ve got it apart it might make good sense to give it a ring job, too. I was naive and trusting so I said OK, do that. Then he wrote up the ticket saying that the repair needed was the ring job. He made no mention of stopping an oil leak.

I made sure to tell him I was leaving on a trip in six weeks and the bike absolutely had to be ready by then. I didn’t see how that could be hard to do and he assured me that they would have it for me long before our departure date. So I left the bike in their hands.

What I learned later was that this shop was struggling financially. At this time of year they could make a lot more money doing quick jobs like new tires and oil changes, whereas tearing my bike down and doing my work was nowhere near as remunerative on an hourly basis. So they put their attention toward the cash flow jobs. Time went by and I didn’t get a call so I called them. No, it was not ready yet, but no problem, they would definitely have it for me in time. OK.

More time passed and I called again. Same answer. OK. And more time passed and now I was getting nervous. Same answer: they’d have it for me in time.

Finally, about three days before departure I called again and this time the jerk at the counter said no, there’s no way they’re going to have it ready for me in three days. That would be a Friday. The best they could do, he said, was have it for me on Monday. Can you say angry!? But what could I do? And what could Bill and John do? So they left without me, and we made plans to meet up in a few days.

I was livid. This was utterly inexcusable and clearly these guys didn’t give a rat’s patootie about me as a customer. And the thing was, this was a much bigger deal to me than it might have in other circumstances. But the thing was, when I bought this bike it was at the absolute lowest point of my life, before and since. I was at absolute bottom. And I bought the bike and it brought me unbridled joy! It literally gave me something to live for, at a time when I desperately needed something to live for. And in the nearly three years since I bought it it had been nothing but pure, absolute joy to me. And now, for the first time ever, there was anger and negativity connected with it. And I resented that bitterly! That they could introduce negativity into my relationship with the bike was beyond despicable. Unforgivable. The very worst blow they could strike. I hated the guy at the counter with the deepest passion.

And would they actually have the bike ready for me on Monday? Well, they did, though not until Monday afternoon, too late for me to even get started till Tuesday morning. So I picked it up Monday afternoon, took it home, packed, and got ready for an early Tuesday departure. Finally.

I’ll pick up the story next time; it’s far from over.

Biker Quote for Today

Sometimes I ride my motorcycle to nowhere to see nothing just so I can ride my motorcycle.

We have been back to the North Rim and this photo was from a later trip, but we don’t seem to have shot any on this early trip.

By the time John and Bill and I, collectively the OFMC, were getting ready for our third annual trip we had concluded it would be nice to communicate while riding. Up to this point we had depended on hand signals but that meant you had to ride up alongside someone and then make the appropriate motion. Workable but not optimal.

Back in those days we didn’t have a lot of money, which was a big part of the reason we did these trips as much on the cheap as we could. We knew you could get in-helmet communication systems but they were expensive.

I think I was the one who got the idea to check out these inexpensive communicators from Radio Shack. We all three met up one day at a Radio Shack in Lakewood and inquired about these things. What they were was just a chunk of hardware connected by a cord to an ear plug. You put the ear plug in place and just talk and the sound moves through your head via the bone and is picked up and transmitted. Obviously, the speaker is in the earpiece.

We each put an earpiece in our ears and then we walked around, and Bill even went outside to the parking lot. We could hear each other fine, so we figured this would do the job. Great. Pay for them and we’re set. Did we try them out on our bikes before the trip? No. That would have made too much sense.

Our departure on this trip was complicated by the fact that a shop I took my bike to for some pre-trip work totally screwed me over. I’m sure I’ve told that story here before and it’s too long to get into now so suffice it to say, they did not have my bike ready by the departure date. So Bill and John took off without me, with an understanding that I would meet them at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in a few days.

Meanwhile, they took off with their earpieces in and expected to chat as they rode. Sorry, no dice.

What I only came to learn some time later is that radio signals are affected by motion, and the more speed the more they are affected. It turns out that these little cheapos work just fine if you’re walking but on a motorcycle going 65 miles an hour they totally fail. They tried using them that first day, found them worthless, and put them away never to pull them out again. Of course, I didn’t know that. This was well before the days of cell phones.

So I finally got my bike from the shop and I took off, doing some hard riding to reach the Grand Canyon in two days. I had no problem finding the campground but found that I had no way to find them in the campground. I thought they might have left a message for me at the gate, and they had, but I didn’t notice it. I asked the ranger at the gate and he knew nothing but just at that moment a ranger just getting off duty overheard and knew about them and told me where to find their camp site. No problem.

I found their camp site but they weren’t there. All this time I had the earpiece for the communicator in and the unit turned on and I was calling out for them but getting no answer. I was certain they would be listening and waiting for me but no answer. So I set up my tent and went to find them. I rode down to the main parking lot by the lodge, calling for them again and again. Still no answer.

It later turned out that they were there, but somehow I did not spot their bikes. Trying to guess where they had gone I set off on a lengthy wild goose chase that itself is a whole other story. Eventually I just went back to the camp site and by then they were there. They had been back a while before they noticed a new tent in their site so now they had been wondering where the heck I was.

After what I had just been through I was overjoyed to finally find them, and seeing a beer in John’s hand I cried “Give me a beer!” He told me apologetically that this was the last one and I took it from his hand and downed it. And then I asked them why the heck they didn’t respond to me on the communicators. They laughed and told me how worthless those proved to be and it never occurred to them to pull them out to help me find them when I arrived. Actually, they might have done the job in that situation if they had used them. But they didn’t.

That was the last time the OFMC ever seriously considered communicators. Some years later Judy and I got communicators and I specifically got some that would work between bikes in case one of the other guys decided to get a set, too, so we could communicate on rides. But no one else ever was sufficiently interested, so to this day the OFMC operates without communicators. Nowadays, though, we do finally all have cell phones so while not the same, they do the job when needed.

Biker Quote for Today

It’s not a gang. It’s a loose association of rugged outdoorsmen who like vibrations between their legs.