Passes & Canyons Blog

A motorcycle/scooter dealership in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

So it has been three weeks since I received the title for my V-Strom and tomorrow morning I’ll be stopping by motor vehicle to register it and get plates. Finally.

Why did I wait so long? I’ve been out of the country. We were gone for 17 days to Italy and Croatia. You can bet I’ll be writing about the nature of motorcycling in those countries in the weeks to come. Just as a teaser, that photo above is a dealership in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Not at all what dealerships here look like. But riding over there is not what riding here looks like, either.

I have some odds and ends here to throw out. I got another email asking for ideas for a ride. I may be able to address this one reasonably well on my own but maybe someone out there has something to offer as well. Here’s the question:

Hi Ken,, I was hoping you could help me out,, Not sure if you got my last email,,, I am looking for a guided D/S Off road ride, in Colo possibly ghost town to ghost town,, with a support truck,, either staying at a lodge/motel/hotel.b&b/RV, anything with showers, and FOOD,,,, Not being from the area, don’t want to waste ower time figuring out where to ride on ower own,, I ride a KTM450exc, my buddy rides 510 Huskey,, It could be either the two of us or possibly up to 6 riders,,Dont know at this time,, If you have any ideas please give me a call or email,, Thanks

As before, offer anything recommendations you have as a comment or email them to me at kendbin at yahoo dot com.

Oh yeah, the spammers are back. I had made it tough for comment spammers to leave junk comments but that cut my legitimate comments to zero so I loosened it up. Checking for the first time now is several weeks there were more than 40 spam comments waiting to be deleted and not one single legitimate one.

I got a surprise email the other day from Craig Vetter. Yes, that Craig Vetter, the guy who made all those fairings, among other things. Seems Craig saw an article I did last fall where I talked about his Fuel Economy Challenge at the Vintage Motorcycle Days event in Ohio, and he sent a note thanking me for it. That was very fortuitous because I’ve been owing Rider magazine a feature about Vetter and his challenge for some time now and haven’t followed up on it. I emailed Craig back and asked if we could talk sometime once I got back to the U.S. and he said sure. So that will get me off the dime.

One more thing: this Sunday is the Old Bike Ride. You’ll want to be mounted on a bike at least 1980 or older, although if you want to volunteer as a corner worker you can ride anything. I don’t have any idea what they would use corner workers for at the Old Bike Ride, though. Anyway, here’s what Jerry Pokorny sent out about the ride:

Old Bike Ride 11, this Sunday. Information can be found at http://www.nortoncolorado.org/obr/OBR11.html.

Remember, if you want to participate but don’t have a motorcycle that qualifies (pre 1980), you can volunteer to work a corner and ride anything you like. Contact Bob Ohman to discuss it (303) 570-9333 or reohman@q.com. Bob would appreciate hearing from a few more of you about volunteering for corner duty. It will not detract much at all from your enjoyment of the day.

BMAC members and supporters in Colorado Springs will meet at the parking lot of the North Campus of Pikes Peak Community College (Hwy 83 next to the New Life Church) between 7 – 7:30 am. Departure for Golden at 7:30 am (come with full tank of gas – we won’t be stopping on the way).

Arrival in Golden about 9:00 am, riders meeting at 9:15 am and departure for OBR 11 at 9:30 am SHARP!

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Biker Quote for Today

Soaked to the skin, chilled to the core but alive. I left a puddle at the hotel desk as I checked in … this is how adventures end … not with a bang but a puddle on the carpet!… — SkyRiderman

The Givi bags on my new V-Strom come pre-scarred so I don't have to worry about doing it myself.

My new V-Strom is new only to me; it has 17,000 miles on it from two previous owners.

That’s OK with me. As you can see in the photo above, this bike has gone down at least once so that means I can drop it myself and not feel that horrible pang of regret from having put the first scratch on your new baby. Not that I had a tendency to go down on bikes but I’m planning on getting off the pavement on this bike, and when you do that your likelihood of going down increases.

Heck, I’ve already dropped one of Kevin’s V-Stroms. We were going over Cinnamon Pass and came to a particularly tight switchback on what was at that point just a narrow gravel trail. I didn’t make the turn successfully. No problem. Pick the bike up, get it facing in the right direction, get back on, and go.

About two switchbacks later I came to another really tight one and this time I stopped to study it. I could see that the steeply sloping rock face that was the corner of the turn had tracks across it. I figured other people in this spot had just powered through and around, so that’s what I did. I gave it some revs, let out the clutch, and hit that rock face with power and just carved that turn around and was on my way up the trail again, all in an instant.

I want to do more of that kind of riding. That day was one of the best riding days of my life, and it was that ride that totally sold me on getting off the pavement.

So I took the new bike out for a ride Saturday. Not a very long ride at all, because I don’t have plates on it. But I took a little jaunt through the neighborhood just to get on it and get a feel for it. Fired up great and ran beautifully. Hey, oh boy–fun times to come!!

Biker Quote for Today

Adventure riding has been good for my attention deficit diso….Hey, what’s down that road?

Kevin and my new bike were waiting for me at home on Monday.

I got home from work on Monday and Kevin was sitting in his truck waiting for me. I was glad to see him because I had had some fears that he might be stuck in a white-out on the prairie east of town. As it was, it was snowing and rolling that bike down Kevin’s narrow ramp off the trailer was made extra dicey by the fact that our footing on the trailer was very slick due to the snow.

But we got it down safely and wheeled it into the garage where it’s going to sit for awhile. I need to get it registered and get plates and that’s not going to happen right away because I don’t yet have the title. I’m buying the bike from Kevin’s brother-in-law in Tennessee and he hadn’t found the title by the time Kevin was leaving. They did find it, though, and it’s in the mail.

In the meantime, I’m in possession and that means I needed to get it insured. I logged in to my insurance company’s website and it showed me the policy I had on the other two bikes. I clicked on “Add a vehicle” and it stepped me through the process.

I was a little surprised when I found that the insurance on the new bike would be more than the insurance on the other two combined. I guess that’s because one of the old ones is 33 years old and the other is 14 years old. But I fiddled with the coverage, increasing my deductible a little, and knocked the total down enough to satisfy me. So I got that taken care of. Of course, it never hurts to shop around any time you’re changing your insurance coverage–you never know where you might find better coverage for less money.

Just as soon as I get plates on it I need to spend a little more money. As Kevin had told me, the front tire is pretty much shot and he says the chain is in bad shape. In my experience that means I’ll probably be replacing the sprockets, too. The really, really nice thing about having a job these days is that I have a paycheck coming in and that means I have the money to pay for these things. Hallelujah!

Of course then, the other thing that needs to happen is that it needs to stop snowing. I was talking to my friend Dan the other day and he was saying that due to two foot surgeries over the winter he hadn’t had the chance to ride in five months. Now he can ride and it just won’t stop snowing! One way or another though, he said, he’s leaving here on May 5 to ride to Maine by way of Florida. Can you tell he’s an Iron Butt guy?

My time will come. Patience is a virtue. And then I’m figuring on seeing a whole lot of Colorado I’ve never seen before.

Biker Quote for Today

There is something wrong about pics of motorcycles in the snow that is just wonderful….

My V-Strom as it prepares to leave Tennessee.

Mine, that is.

See that photo above of that 2007 V-Strom 650 on that trailer? That’s my new bike and at the moment this post is being published it is on that trailer on its way to me here in Denver. Here’s how this whole thing came down.

As anyone who knows me or who reads this blog is aware, I’ve been wanting a dual-sport bike for a long time. Working full-time as a motorcycle freelance writer, however, I never had the money. Since November I’ve been working a contract gig as an editor at the National Park Service so I finally have some spare cash.

In the meantime, my friend Kevin Smith, who runs Colorado Mountain Moto out of Gunnison, had gone down to Tennessee to do some remodeling work for his sister. He drove down and took his trailer with him because his brother-in-law had a V-Strom he wanted to sell and Kevin figured he could use it in his motorcycle rental business. Kevin favors V-Stroms and it is largely through him that I have ridden V-Stroms quite a bit. I like them quite a bit.

As Kevin tells it, however, he got down to Tennessee and the more he thought about it the more he got to thinking that money was tight and he really needed the money more than he needed another bike. So he sent me the following email:

Hey Ken if your still thinking about another bike I found a Vstrom in TN. Not sure I need it yet 07 17000 miles I could bring it with me if your interested. $3500. Cheers Kevin

I quickly did some checking to see how that price matched up to others locally and it looked pretty good, although some local bikes had extras this one does not, and Kevin said it will need a front tire and a new chain soon. I hesitated. I’ve finally got a bit of a financial reserve again and draining it significantly was a hard thing for me to decide to do.

However, much to the envy of a lot of guys, I’m sure, my wife Judy was all for it. She kept pushing me. “Come on, you’ve wanted this for a long time. Do it!”

So I did it. And now it’s on its way here. Kevin will be here later today and will spend the night with us before heading on to Gunnison. And I’ll add a Suzuki to go with my Honda and my Kawasaki. People who I meet and to whom I mention that I ride invariably ask, “Do you have a Harley?” No I don’t. Harleys just don’t interest me. I guess that’s pretty clear by now. Not dissing you guys who do; it’s just not my kind of bike. But oh boy, I’m going to like having this V-Strom.

My friend Dan, who does ride a Harley, also has a GS800 from BMW. He’s been wanting to sell it but hasn’t yet. I was telling him on Saturday about the V-Strom and he said “let’s go ride.” I’ll definitely be taking him up on that.

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Biker Quote for Today

I’m not lost. I’m explorin’.