Passes & Canyons Blog

I don’t have details yet but will pass along this warning that just came to me:

Please inform your readers, Berthoud is in extremely poor condition. Rode it today, and even had it not been raining and snowing, the road would be very bad!

I replied asking if the problem is that the pavement is in bad shape, or what. I’ll add that info when I receive it.

OK, here’s additional info:

The road was in terrible shape. Lots of potholes, cracks, and still a lot of sand all over.

So there you go. Be careful out there.

Continuing something of a theme I’ve been developing this week, I want to talk now about hypothermia. As in getting really, really cold in an unsafe manner.

Hypothermia: An abnormally low body temperature, often caused by prolonged exposure to cold.

I wrote a on Monday about my day riding Motorcycle Lead for a bicycle race. The wind started blowing and the temperature dropped and it started to snow. By the time I got off the bike I started to shake and shiver uncontrollably. That was the beginning of hypothermia. Then on Wednesday I wrote about fairings and how they do so much to keep you warm. This was not planned but I might as well round out the discussion.

The first time I got a taste of hypothermia was on one of the earliest rides I did with my buddies John and Bill in our group that we call the Old Farts Motorcycle Club. We had been down in New Mexico and were headed back into Colorado when we got caught in a cloudburst. We didn’t have rain suits back then, we just got wet. At the time it didn’t seem like such a big deal. In Colorado it is common to have brief rain showers, and then the sun comes out and all is fine. We didn’t get drenched or anything, and we just kept riding.

Awhile later we reached Alamosa and, stopping at the first traffic light in town, agreed unanimously that we really wanted to find a coffee shop before we did anything else. We were cold.

We got to a coffee shop and ordered a pot of coffee and started shivering and shaking. A lot. A whole lot. Over the course of the next hour or so we probably drank eight pots of coffee but just kept shivering. Somewhere along the line we realized that this was hypothermia. We had gotten wet, but the wind dried us out when the rain stopped, but with the moisture it also extracted a dangerous amount of our body heat.

Hypothermia can be dangerous. It can cause you to become mentally confused, which can lead to dangerous or deadly mistakes when riding a motorcycle. It’s not a good thing.

So what should a motorcyclist do to avoid hypothermia, and what do you do if it happens anyway? First off, don’t drink coffee. Hot coffee may seem like just the ticket but you would do a lot better to drink hot cocoa or have a bowl of hot soup. Something with calories. Of course, if coffee is the only warm thing around, as was the case for me at the bicycle races, do what you’ve got to do. Wrapping up in a blanket or sleeping bag is a very good thing, too. If the hypothermia is serious you should not hesitate to call for emergency medical care.

It’s better to avoid hypothermia in the first place. The first line of defense is the proper gear. Carry a good rain suit and don’t delay too long in putting it on. Use your electric vest if you have one. Heated grips would be good. I swear by the fairing on my Concours, and the windshield on the CB750. Wear plenty of layers. Stop frequently and get warm in a convenience store/gas station, cafe, or rest stop. Wear synthetics or wools that don’t hold the moisture in direct contact with you skin. Avoid alcohol if you’re going out somewhere where you’re likely to get cold.

Mostly it’s just common sense: stay warm in whatever way you can. Don’t be an idiot. It’s better to arrive late, or call off the ride, than never arrive again.

Biker Quote for Today

Never be afraid to slow down.

Have you ever had a problem on the road? Or have you gone out to start the bike and it wouldn’t, and it’s not the battery?

At times like this it can get expensive. Having your bike hauled somewhere to be worked on can easily cost you $100. Unless you’ve had the foresight to sign up for MoTow.

MoTow Roadside Assistance is offered by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) for the piddling fee of $25 per year. You have problems, you call for assistance, and they have “people who know how to tow motorcycles” available to help you out 24/7. The service covers all your bikes and it doesn’t matter what you ride.

Now, maybe you have a pretty new bike and don’t generally have mechanical problems. Good for you. On my old bike, my 1980 CB750 Custom, it can get dicey at times. There have been a couple times that bike has just quit on me. But the MoTow guy has showed up quickly and hauled the bike to the shop. Not a dime out of my pocket (not counting my annual membership).

It doesn’t have to be a problem on the road. A buddy of mine called just yesterday hoping I would have some great idea to get his bike running so he wouldn’t have to spend a bunch on it. He has a newer, more dependable bike, but it seems he left it parked all winter, never fired it up, and didn’t put in gas stabilizer. Bad decision. I’m no miracle worker. But he has MoTow so he called and got the bike hauled to the shop. He’ll have to pay for the carb cleaning himself. That one use of his MoTow membership will pay for his membership for three years.

There is a catch here. MoTow is only available to AMA members. AMA membership is $39 a year. So that’s not quite such a savings, right?

Well, you get a lot more from AMA than just access to MoTow. You get a monthly magazine, American Motorcyclist, which has a lot of good reading, but that’s not really the important thing. What you get with AMA membership is representation in government. We all know the limitations non-bikers continually try to put on us and it’s not pixies who fight those battles to protect our rights. It’s the AMA.

Here in Denver they recently passed an ordinance that allows the police to ticket bikers whose exhaust pipes are not OEM. The idea is to fight noise but it is so wrong in its implementation. It basically says that it doesn’t matter how quiet your bike is, you can get a ticket if it is not an OEM muffler and pipes. Never mind that while the cop is writing you a ticket, a really loud car or truck may pass by, ignored by the cops. The ordinance is clearly discrimination against motorcyclists. And the AMA is on the case. They haven’t gotten it changed yet but they’re still working on it.

I could talk a whole lot more about what the AMA does, I’m a real believer in the organization. But I’ll save that for another time. Right now, just think about the fix you might find yourself in if your bike breaks down on you and how good it would feel in that case to know that help from MoTow is just a phone call away.

Biker Quote for Today

A friend is someone who’ll get out of bed at 2 am to drive his pickup to the middle of nowhere to get you when you’re broken down.

If you ride with buddies — and who doesn’t? — I cannot over-stress the importance of making sure that everyone understands the principles your group will follow on rides.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. My buddies John and Bill and I have been riding together for nearly 20 years. We take week-long summer trips and go on various other rides over the year. We have had the good fortune not to have had any accidents along the way. Barely. That’s the issue.

We very nearly did have a serious accident on one of our early rides. I was in the lead, with Bill behind me, and John behind him. We were coming up a road that was snaking up a mountainside and I saw ahead of us a pull-out on the left with a terrific view of the valley below us. I slowed down as I considered stopping, and just as I decided that I would pull over Bill went shooting past me on my left. If I had made my decision to pull over half a second sooner he would have T-boned me and who knows how bad the injuries might have been.

So essentially, what I’m saying is that the most serious danger we have ever encountered was not at the hands of some inattentive driver, but at our own hands. There’s no excuse for that.

Every group needs to have signs and signals, and use them. The first and most obvious one is to signal your turns and look before turning. That applies to anyone on the road and should be so obvious as to not need mentioning, but I didn’t do either that day.

Other good things to have agreed-on signals for are gravel or other obstacles on the road, and reminding someone to turn off their turn signal. Indicating you want to make a stop is another obvious one.

What about the less obvious? For example, when it was just the three of us we all understood that when passing through a town we would stay bunched close so that everyone would make it through any traffic lights. It was up to the leader to judge before going through whether the others would have time to make it. Now that we ride with a bigger group I don’t think we’ve had this discussion with the other guys. Consequently, we end up getting all disjointed and needing to pull over and wait. Sometimes, with a larger group, that’s just inevitable. But not always. It’s guaranteed, though, if the last guy is half a block behind the next guy. Stay close.

It should be understood, too, that when making a turn at a crossroads, you wait until you’re sure the guy behind you has seen which way you’re going.

What else? I’m sure there are more things to discuss and agree on. The main thing is to raise the subject and then make sure everyone is on the same page. It will make your rides safer and help avoid stupid delays and hassles. Do it!

Biker Quote for Today

Don’t lead the pack if you don’t know where you’re going.

I need to give credit to Big Cab Daddy for this, I ran across it on his blog, Returning Motorcyclist.

What would you think of a little device that sticks to the top of your helmet and, powered by the wind, gives off a flashing light to make you more visible to other drivers?

That’s exactly what the HJC Wind Light is. What the sales blurb says is:

Simply affix the wind light to your helmet using the adhesive tape provided and let the wind do the rest? As you ride, the wind goes through the front of the intake grill causing the internal turbine to power 8 bright LED lights. Active at speeds as low as 25mph. Wind powered, no batteries required!

The thing costs about $30. Here’s a picture:

I’d be really interested to hear from anyone who has had a chance to try this thing out. Maybe I’ll have to be the one to do that. It looks like it could be a pretty good gadget.

I mentioned before that I emailed Sen. Ken Gordon to ask about a news report where an ABATE rep said they expect to see a new helmet bill next legislative session. Now I have the response. Ken Gordon said:

The answer is no. I am not planning to do that and I have talked to the people that were involved with this year’s bill and they aren’t either. The rumor is probably the paranoid rumination of someone who imagines something that they don’t like and then assumes that it will happen.

That’s good. Thanks Ken for not getting carried away.

I sent an email to Ken Gordon, my state senator, today. I want to know if he really is planning to introduce a helmet law bill to require adults to wear them. He succeeded this past session in passing a law requiring minors to do so. Here’s the text of my message to him:

Ken–
Hello. I am one of your constituents and I ride motorcycles. I have a question for you.

In an article on July 5 in the Rocky Mountain News about the new helmet law for minors, they quoted Terry Howard of ABATE saying “It’s been rumored that they are going to try and introduce a helmet bill for adults next session. . . . (We fully expect our opponents) to introduce an adult helmet law.”

My question: Is this true? Are you planning to introduce a more comprehensive law? I would very much appreciate a direct answer. I don’t want to assume that Terry Howard is right, I would rather hear directly from you about it.

I’ll tell you right now that I would oppose any such law. I wear my helmet at times when I feel it is wise and at other times I do not. I prefer to be the judge of this.

To your argument that bikers hurt while not wearing helmets add to health costs for all I would simply respond, people who eat poorly and eat junk and become overweight incur health costs that drive up the costs for the rest of us. Do you plan to outlaw eating junk food? I mean, seriously: what is the difference? There are a lot more people eating that second donut and getting fat than there are bikers getting hurt not wearing helmets. The health costs are much higher.

I will really, truly appreciate hearing from you on this issue. Thanks.

So now let’s see how he responds. I’ll be sure to post it here. Stay tuned.

Contrary to what I said here before, it appears that the Colorado Legislature did indeed pass a helmet law this past session. If you are under 18 you are required to wear a helmet, either as a rider or passenger.

I have a bit of a beef with the Rocky Mountain News on this, because I read the newspaper every single day and they had stories about this as it was under consideration, but I never saw anything about it passing. So after awhile I assumed that like so many bills that get introduced, this one had just died a quiet death. Wrong.

Now, I’m not going to get all upset about this particular law. As ABATE’s Terry Howard said, because it was about kids, it was hard to oppose. The problem, as Howard also says, is what comes next. According to the story in the Rocky, Howard and ABATE fully expect Sen. Ken Gordon, this bill’s sponsor, to come back with a helmet bill for adults.

I’m sorry to say that Ken Gordon is my senator. I didn’t vote for him–and I did vote, for the Libertarian candidate–but Gordon is my senator. I’ve never had any real negative feelings toward Gordon but that could change if he tries this. I developed a strong animosity toward then-Rep. Bill Owens, back when the now-former Colorado governor was a state rep and introduced helmet bills in every session. But Owens finally gave up. What’s it going to take for Gordon to give up?

Of course, this may be a matter of jumping the gun. He may have no such intentions. Still, I intend to contact Ken Gordon and ask him flat out if that is his intent. And I will make it clear that if he tries it he will have a fight on his hands. It won’t be so easy next time.

Gordon says it’s all about the health of the people and lowering medical costs for us all. Stop right there Ken! Would it not be a safe statement that overweight people incur much higher health care costs–running costs up for us all–than non-overweight people? Overweight people such as, say, Sen. Ken Gordon? Let’s pass a law against eating junk food, or gaining too much weight, or some other measure to stop people from endangering themselves in this manner. It’s only fair!