Passes & Canyons Blog

We just spent five days in Barcelona (Spain) and as always, I observed the traffic scene–i.e., the two-wheeled type–closely. I’ll tell you two things: No non-California city in the US is ready for this scene, and it is then a good thing that no such city will soon be experiencing this.

Barcelona streets are packed with traffic so vehicles frequently move slowly and even when they move fast they are slow by our norms. And because traffic moves so slowly, the filtering and lane-splitting are constant.

We took a cab one day. The right-hand curb lanes on busy streets are reserved for buses and taxis so those types of vehicles can make better time. Of course motorcycles use that lane a lot. And apparently they’re allowed to, either officially or unofficially.

Let me make a side note here. In Europe they tend to use the word “motorbike” and that’s actually probably a better word for them. The highly dominant two-wheeler is the step-through scooter, like the Vespas of old. There are also real motorcycles but anything over 500cc is rare. Baggers are non-existent.

But you also have plenthy of the stand-up scooters that have become popular, plus lots of power-assisted bicycles–ebikes. And of course plain old people-powered bicycles and skateboards. All of these, for our purposes, can be grouped under the term “motorbikes.”

OK, back to the narrative. I was saying we took a cab.

The one problem with taking the right-hand cab and bus lane is that both of these conveyances are prone to making stops. And when they do you can end up sitting a while before they move again.

The obvious thing to do is go around them but that means merging into the next lane and on our cab ride, as the cab would start to insinuate its way in, the motorbikes behind the cab would dart into the opening and block the cab out of the space it had created. We missed getting through red light cycles a couple times for exactly that reason.

Our cab driver stayed totally cool, showing no frustration or aggravation. I’m sure because he deals with this all day every day. And he was vigilantly watchful for these scooters and all.

How do you suppose a typical American driver is likely to respond to something like this? Rhetorical question. We know the answer.

So no, no non-California city in the US is ready for this but it’s not going to happen anywhere any time soon. In Europe motorbikes are everywhere by the thousands. Until Americans take up two-wheeled travel in those kinds of numbers that kind of scene cannot develop. And hopefully, as it will happen gradually–if it ever does–we’ll all have time to adapt to it just as gradually. Until it feels normal.

How crazy would that be?

Biker Quote for Today

Why did the motorcycle stay at home? It was two-tired.

It happens as you get older. You eventually find you don’t need all the stuff you’ve accumulated and you start thinning the herd.

Dennis is the latest with stories to tell. He and Janice had lived up in the hills off Deer Creek Canyon Road but had decided it was time to move down into town. They bought a pretty dang nice–but much smaller–place over in Arvada and are pretty happy with it, but . . .

The “but” for Dennis is that the place they left had an oversized three-car garage. He and Janice each have a car and they each have a motorcycle. No problem at the old place. Big problem at the new place.

I was over there last week and got the tour and made a point to see the garage. I definitely understand. There’s plenty of room for the two cars but in order to get two bikes in they first have to move the car on the left out and then wheel the bikes in and line them both up along the side of the garage. Like, right alongside. As in almost touching. Whereas they used to just ride in and park the bike and get off.

It has an effect. It used to be when Dennis needed to go into town he’d just figure “might as well take the bike.” And he rode a lot. Now, it is a real effort to get the bike out. He’s not going to do that just on the spur of the moment, just because why not. No, if he needs to make a quick run to the store–something he used to routinely do on his BMW, or the Indian before that, or the Harley before that–it’s going to be in the car. Every time. Dang.

His situation makes my situation, which I have always thought of as quite nice, seem really, really nice. We have a large two-car garage with an attached workshop. I park one bike in the garage and when I had three bikes I parked two in the workshop. Now I just have one in the workshop. And yeah, I have to pull my car out to get the V-Strom out and then pull Judy’s car out to get it back in, but there’s no issue with cramming it into a tight space. I just pull in front of the cars and park. Then with the bike or bikes in the workshop, I just open the door and roll it/them in or out.

As reasonably convenient as that is, it has nevertheless deterred me from riding as much as I might have over the years. It’s the idea of gearing up and then getting a bike out, just to make a quick run to the store, that just doesn’t work for me most of the time. So I totally understand Dennis’s disinclination to go to all the trouble he has just for a quick run to the store. Dennis has always been the guy in the OFMC who has ridden way more than anybody else. I think that has changed.

Of course, my prospective answer to this issue has for a long time been that I want a little electric scooter. But I’ve never bought one. And now they have these electric power-assisted bicycles. A moped, actually, although the name “moped” has been appropriated by scooters, which are not in fact mopeds. Sooner or later I’m convinced I will. Then it will be the easiest thing in the world to hop on and cruise off on some small errand. Fun. What am I waiting for?

Biker Quote for Today

100 reasons not to date a biker: 18. The bike gets washed and waxed twice a month. The car never.

The coolest thing I saw in Hawaii (yeah, we were just there), and I was really sorry I didn’t have a chance to get a picture, was two young guys on scooters, headed for the beach. They had their boogie boards with them, laid length-wise on their seats, and they were sitting on the noses of the boards with the tails sticking out behind. What a great idea.

OK, so backing up, we just spent 10 days in Hawaii, on the Big Island and Oahu. Of course I paid attention to motorcycles. And the islands have lots of narrow, winding roads that motorcyclists tend to flock to, but you don’t see motorcycles there. Any you do see are probably tourists; the locals seem to stick to the cities. I mean, when there are 150 miles of highway on the whole island, how many times can you ride those roads? And it’s not like taking your bike to another island is much of an option. I wouldn’t want to live in Hawaii.

So anyway, in the Kona area, the main tourist area on the Big Island, on the western, leeward side, there are a lot of scooters. That makes total sense because parking is in short supply and gas is expensive.

Other than scooters what you tend to see is big Harleys. Those guys almost universally ride without helmets and frequently without jackets, despite the fact that rain falls almost every day. A lot more of the scooter riders wear helmets but certainly not all of them. A very sparse middle range consists of smaller sport bikes. Those guys almost universally wear helmets and jackets. And boots and gloves.

On the rest of the island, even over in Hilo–a larger city–it was pretty much all Harleys. One night at dinner there was a couple at another table that caught my eye. She had a puffy jacket but had taken it off. He–in a place where everyone else was in T-shirts and many in shorts–was wearing a leather motorcycle vest over a hooded sweatshirt, and a wool hat on his head. I never got a chance to see if he had anything on under the sweatshirt. The only thing he took off, when their food arrived, was his wool stocking cap. Dude, are you not roasting?

I didn’t know for sure if they were on a bike till they left. Then from outside there was this explosion of aftermarket pipes as he fired it up. Yep, definitely on a bike.

In Hawaii it rains a lot, though not very hard most of the time. One time we were driving through heavy rain but came out of it. It was just then that we passed a guy on a Harley going the other way. No helmet, just a T-shirt. Oh man, you are in for it.

He’d probably just call me a wimp.

OK, and I’ll leave you with a thinker: Why do they have interstate highways in Hawaii?

Biker Quote for Today

“Universal” accessories are so named because that is where you must search to find the bike they will fit.

Is there anyone who rides a motorcycle who does not understand why so many people are enthusiastic about these new electric power-assist bicycles, or E-bikes? I mean, aren’t they really just very small motorcycles? Sure, maybe you prefer a bigger bike, but isn’t it still pretty much the same thing?

It used to be the non-biker’s option for doing it small was the scooter. Although still, even years ago there were mopeds. Those were gasoline-powered motor-assist bicycles. Wait, isn’t that what E-bikes are, swapping electricity for gas?

Of course the terminology has gotten all twisted around in recent years. These boards you stand on are now called scooters and what are truly scooters are now called mopeds and real mopeds are now called E-bikes. Fine. It doesn’t have to make sense, it just is.

Certainly there are issues that need to be resolved to accommodate all these new E-bikes on the road and on the bike paths. The Denver Post recently had a lengthy article about all of this (E-bikes coming quicker than the infrastructure for them). One reader followed that up with a letter to the editor saying that E-bikes going 25-30 miles an hour have no place on paths with mothers with strollers and folks walking their dogs. “Motorized vehicles belong on the streets!”

I’m not even going to try to sort that all out. My point in all this is simply that this surge of E-bikes can only help those of us on motorcycles.

How? Well first off, you’re probably aware that it has been clearly established that motorcyclists are better car drivers. We pay more attention to our driving and we’re vastly more aware of motorcycles on the road with us. It stands to reason that people who get out on the road on an E-bike are going to see the things we have seen for so long, and it is going to change them as drivers. That can only be good. At least some of them are sure to realize they need to just put their damn phone down and drive. Hallelujah!

Certainly as they now are thinking a lot more about their own safety they will come around to our side in terms of supporting safety measures such as banning using cellphones while driving.

Others may start thinking that as fun as it is on the little bike, maybe it would be really fun to be on something bigger, something like . . . a motorcycle. And they’ll join our ranks.

It will also help that people in cars are seeing more and more people on bikes of all kinds. The more of us they see–E-bike, scooter, bicycle, motorcycle–the more they will realize we are there and they need to be alert for us. Again, hallelujah!

So I welcome these E-bikes. In fact, I wish I had one. I’ve thought for a long time that sooner or later I’d have a scooter but with three motorcycles I really don’t have room for one. I would have room for an E-bike, however. One of these days . . .

Biker Quote for Today

My biggest fear is not crashing on a bike. It’s sitting in a chair at 90 and saying, ‘I wish I had done more.’

Covid 19 has changed a lot of things. The real question is, will these changes last or will they stick around long after the virus is no longer an issue.

For instance, after being stuck at home interminably, people are hungry to get outside and do stuff. Judy and I like to camp but when we went out last year we had trouble finding a campsite because everyone else was out camping, too. And from the reports, this included a lot of people who had never camped before, not just those of us who have done it since forever.

Will this continue to be the case? Will all these new campers decide they really like this, and will they continue to jam the campgrounds? We’ll find out, won’t we.

A similar thing has happened in the motorcycling world. Motorcycle sales are through the roof.

In a report from the Motorcycle Industry Council, dated May 13, new bike sales increased 37.2 percent in the first quarter of 2021, compared to last year. And the increases were reflected in all of the on-highway, off-highway, dual-purpose, and scooter categories.

That’s incredible. And unlike camping, where lots of new campers can crowd out those who have done it for a long time, getting one new motorcyclist on the road doesn’t negatively impinge on us old-timers at all. It’s definitely a case of the more the merrier.

It could get a little congested on the off-road areas, however. The MIC report says that “Year-to-date sales of dual-purpose motorcycles were up the most, by 47 percent.” Wow. But maybe these folks are more like me, not necessarily wanting to go off on trails so much as just not wanting to pass by all these gravel roads and never finding out where they go.

There are so many ways that Covid has changed things and some of them are for the better. Let’s hope we can hang onto the good ones.

Biker Quote for Today

Look at that badass on that Can-Am Spyder said no one ever.

At this point I’ve been riding motorcycles for so long it’s all become so second nature. I remember at first when it was new and I always was fully alert and focused just because I had to be. I thought back then that the idea that I would ever find myself struggling to stay awake while riding, as often happens in a car on a long drive, was totally absurd. Not true these days.

Thinking back even further, though, I go to a trip my lady friend and I made to Mazatlan. This was the only time I’ve ever ridden a bike in Mexico. It’s not a tale of glory, though; it’s a tale of ignominy.

Although I’d ridden motorcycles every chance I got since the time I was 15, I never had that many opportunities in those early years so the skills never had a chance to solidify and settle permanently in my brain. That only happened when, at 37, I finally bought my first bike and started riding a lot.

I was probably about 30 when Sue, my girlfriend at the time, and I took a week’s vacation to Mazatlan. Unlike me, Sue had owned motorcycles and ridden a great deal. One entire year in college her only transportation had been her motorcycle and she had even managed to ride it when there was snow on the streets, using her feet as outriggers.

It was only natural then, when we saw a place in Mazatlan renting motorcycles and scooters by the hour, that we decided to go for it. It turned out that the place only had one motorcycle available at that moment, plus some scooters. This being Mexico, of course the guy in charge set me up on the cycle and picked out a scooter for Sue. No self-respecting man would want to be seen on a scooter while his woman rode a cycle, would they? No way.

Never mind that Sue was the experienced one and ought to have been the one on the bike. We could swap once we had gotten away from the rental place.

Scooters, of course, have no gears; you just twist the throttle. Motorcycles have gears and you flip the toe lever down to get into first, and then flip it up for all other gears. Surely I must have understood this other times I had ridden but it was one of those bits of knowledge that had not stuck. Sue probably mentioned it to me before we took off but in the excitement of the moment that didn’t stick either.

We blasted away from the rental place and as the revs went up I pulled in the clutch and toed the lever down to get into second. Down. Letting out the clutch, the engine revved very high and I was clearly not in a higher gear. Again I clutched and toed the lever down. Again the engine raced and things were not right.

Maybe I was doing something wrong, I thought. Maybe I needed to be going faster before I shifted. I cranked the throttle harder, the engine really screaming now, and pulled in the clutch, flicked down on the shift lever. Releasing the clutch it was just like before.

It was about this time that the rental guy came racing up on a scooter waving us over. “Stop! Stop!” he yelled. “You break the bike!” Not allowing any protest he informed us he was taking the bike and giving me his scooter. And he kept muttering about “You break the bike.” Sue told me again after he left that second and higher gears are up, not down, not that it mattered any more.

So we scooted around Mazatlan for awhile and had a fun time anyway. Hey, scooters are fun. And they’re a lot harder for idiots to break.

Biker Quote for Today

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning difficult.

I tend to be pretty environmentally minded and so for years I’ve been a little proud that I ride motorcycles, which get better gas mileage and use fewer resources.

That said, is it really true that we who ride are easier on the environment than people in cars? This is a question I have raised more than once and the answer is never clear cut. So I’m approaching this from a different perspective today.

The point I want to focus on today is that, if we only used bikes for transportation and were saving all that gas and resources it would be a simple yes. But we don’t. In fact, many of us almost never use our motorcycles as basic transportation, we ride them for recreation.

Which is to say, when we ride them we are burning more gas, creating more pollution, using more resources, than if we had other recreational pursuits. When the OFMC takes off on a trip, each of us is riding a motorcycle, getting good gas mileage. But how does the gas usage of our whole group equate with what we would burn if we all rode in one van? I’m sure that flips the equation pretty seriously.

Now, I do use my bikes for transportation some of the time. I have a number of regular errands that I almost always run on a motorcycle. But most of my riding is just joy riding. It’s a beautiful day, I want to be out in it. So off I go.

One option that grows more viable with time is getting an electric motorcycle. Can I see myself with one of those at some point? Absolutely. In fact, I went up to Boulder a few years ago with cash in pocket intending to buy an electric scooter. I didn’t because it was used, and thus had some issues, and the seller did not strike me as altogether trustworthy when he spoke to the issues I raised. But yeah, I’d say there is a 100% probability that some day I will have an electric two-wheeler.

Which brings me to the second part of this discussion: Do we really care about being green?

Do we really, truly care? Yes, I care about being green, that’s why I recycle, cut my waste to almost nothing, turn lights off, walk a lot, take light rail . . . so many things that I do. But do I care so much that I’m going to stop “wasting” gasoline on motorcycle joy rides?

Emphatically NO! I love riding motorcycles way too much for that.

So does this make me a hypocrite? I guess it does, at least a bit. Am I going to beat myself up over it? Probably not. I’ll just take solace in knowing that whatever I do that is harmful to the environment, most people do a lot more. And I accept that if you are going to live in our so-called modern society this is what happens.

But I really should keep my smugness in check.

Biker Quote for Today

Fast cars and motorcycles raisin’ hell in cowboy boots. — Tim McGraw

February 1 and 2 were good days to ride so I did. I took my Honda out of what we call the workshop and when I came back I rolled the Kawi out so I could put the Honda in first. That put the Kawi in position to come out easily so I could ride it next time. The V-Strom lives in the garage so I end up moving cars to get it in and out.

While I was doing all this shuffling of bikes, pushing them around, rocking them back onto their center stands, it struck me that these are heavy machines. I realized that at some point, still quite a few years down the line, fortunately, there is likely to come a time when I won’t physically be able to do it anymore. I’m healthy as a horse now, but inevitably there will come a time when I’m old and frail. What am I going to do then?

It was interesting that the answer presented itself immediately. I’ll switch to a scooter.

That’s not the only possible answer to that question. For a lot of people the answer is a trike. I know a lot of people who ride trikes now, and several of my riding buddies have spoken from time to time of switching to a trike when it becomes an issue. But I don’t like trikes; they steer like cars. They don’t lean. About the only way that they’re like motorcycles is that you’re out in the open. But heck, I could get that with a convertible and it would be almost the same thing, and a lot more versatile.

One three-wheeler that I might consider would be a Piaggio MP3. Like the Can-Am Spyder, they have two wheels in front and one in the rear, but the front end is totally different, and unique to Piaggio. On an MP3 the two front wheels work like one and you do actually lean. Don’t ask me to explain it, it’s a sophisticated design, but I rode one once and it was very nice. Then of course there are several other newer bikes like the Yamaha Niken that I’ve read good things about, although the Niken is said to be pretty darn heavy itself, what with a double fork up front.

No, I figure a scooter will be the way to go. First off, they’re light, but they can be pretty powerful. During the week I scooted everywhere a few years ago I spoke with a scooterist who told me he could easily hit 90 mph on his 250cc ride. I doubt I’ll need more speed than that when I’m 85. Even now, the speedometer on my Honda CB750 –an old bike–tops out at 85 mph.

Of course, there could be another alternative by that time. Electric motorcycles are getting better all the time and the ones that are out there now are light. They have to be in order to get any good distance on today’s batteries, but I’m betting that in 20 or 30 years you’ll be able to buy a great electric bike that is comparable to an 800cc motorcycle of today and it will weigh half of what my 750cc Honda weighs.

Nope. I can see me possibly owning a number of different bikes sooner or later, but I just don’t see a trike in my future. And I do hope to be riding in my 90s.

Biker Quote for Today

Why bikes are better than women: Wearing two fresh rubbers makes riding a bike MORE enjoyable.