Passes & Canyons Blog

The OFMC did really well in terms of avoiding mechanical issues on the road for a very long time. We only sort of, semi avoided it, however, on our seventh trip, in 1995. Bill had his problem before we left.

John and I were at John’s waiting for Bill to get there when the phone rang. It was Bill, with a dead bike a few miles away. We rode down there and found him in a shopping center parking lot. Thinking that maybe if we could get it running all would be fine (fat chance!) we pushed and pushed and pushed him till we were about to keep over. But miraculously, at some point, we did get it started. At this point Bill figured it would not be wise to head out of town so he went straight to his dealer’s place while we waited at John’s.

Maybe an hour later Bill called to tell us the issue was his stator, which had died, and the dealer did not have one in stock and at best it would be a couple days to get one in. We hated to leave without him but we all clearly understood that if someone couldn’t ride the others were not going to let that ruin their trip. John and I left, headed north.

We got as far as Wheatland, Wyoming, that evening and checked into a scuzz-bag motel. Got a quick fast-food dinner and headed to the nearest bar for a few beers. Along with the live band for entertainment that evening we got a pick-up offer from a local woman whose lack of beauty was matched by her obesity and drunkenness. “You guys want to come home with me?” No. Really, really no. Thanks for the invitation.

The next day we headed on to Deadwood, South Dakota. A gambling stop is always a mandatory part of our itinerary. Of course we lost money; Bill is usually the only one who wins. In the morning, before we started out, John called his wife Cheryl to see if she had heard anything from Bill. This was before cell phones.

Yes Bill had called. No, he had not gotten his bike fixed but he bought a trickle-charger and figured if he removed the fuse for his lights and rode only in the day-time he could keep the bike running, and then charge it overnight. He also had a long extension cord. He would meet us that evening in Thermopolis, Wyoming.

Great! Bill’s gonna make it!

Of course this was before we started planning everything out beforehand, so there was no plan as to where to meet Bill in Thermopolis. So we got a motel on the mail drag and parked our bikes right out front by the curb to make them totally visible. And what do you know, about 20 minutes later here came Bill. He immediately plugged in the charger.

From Thermopolis we rode on first to Pinedale, then Bozeman, Montana, and then to Salmon, Idaho. The night in Bozeman was the Fourth of July so we had a great spot from our motel on a hill to watch the fireworks. Did you know that Bozeman is so far north that they don’t even start the fireworks show until about 10:30 p.m.? And it’s not really dark yet then.

On the way to Salmon we stopped in a couple little ghost towns, Virginia City and Wisdom, where a bartender looked very disapprovingly at my bandana. He told me I had it tied all wrong, and then proceeded to show me how to do it right. I couldn’t follow his instructions so to this day I don’t know how to tie my bandana “right” but that’s OK, I don’t ride without a helmet anymore anyway.

Each of these nights Bill dutifully plugged his bike in to charge and each day it ran OK. Just hoping we don’t have any surprises.

The next night in Kemmerer, Wyoming, we learned another good lesson: some motels have rooms with more than two beds. With three of us we had always taken turns being the one who slept on the floor. This was back when we used to always carry tents and sleeping bags so that was an option, and that’s what we did. We sure didn’t have the money to pay for a second room. Well, this place in Kemmerer had four beds so from that time on we always asked.

The next day, our final night out, we planned to stop in Saratoga but our usual place, the Sand and Sage, had no rooms. They suggested we ride on to Encampment or Riverside, just down the road. We did and got a little cabin that had beds for us all and it was just sweet. About as rustic as you can get but that suited us just fine. We liked it so much we came back in later years.

And Bill never had a problem. Let’s hear it for ingenuity.

Biker Quote for Today

Why motorcycles are better than women: If your Motorcycle goes flat, you can fix it.

Years ago, in the early days of the OFMC, we were young and dumb in a lot of ways. We seldom wore helmets and in the beginning we had almost zero actual gear. We also would stop at bars and have a few beers and it was de rigueur for us to stop a couple times every day to smoke some pot. You know, we were immortal and when you’re immortal you do these things.

So one day as we were heading across southern Idaho we stopped at Craters of the Moon National Monument and took a hike down into some lava tubes. We went way back in deep and turned off our flashlights to see if we could see anything at all in the total darkness. Give your eyes a few minutes to adjust, then see if you can see your hand in front of your face. No. Not at all. It really is that dark.

Having settled that, John pulled out his pipe and lit up. Just as there is no light down there, there is very little air movement, so I’ve always assumed that when the next visitors came down that tube, long after we were gone, they would smell what we had been up to. Hey, we’re just young guys having fun.

We got back to our bikes with a good buzz on and you might have thought that would have been sufficient but when we got to Arco shortly after there was a bar in the middle of town that was calling our names. We stopped.

It was a typical small-town bar, with a handful of locals enjoying a beer on a hot afternoon. We sat at the bar, returned the greetings from the locals, and ordered beers. Somewhere along the way I noticed this thing hanging from the ceiling. This was one of those bars that has a lot of old implements and stuff to add decor and this thing looked like a pair or big ice tongs except that the ends, rather than being pointed like ice tongs, were rounded. There was also a cord attached to this thing but I didn’t think much about that.

What is this, I wondered. It was just above me, within easy reach, so I reached for it and pulled on it. A bell attached to the other end of the cord rang out and the locals went silent. And they were all looking at me. Oops.

It turns out, as they were all too happy to explain to me, the rules in the bar were that anyone who rang that bell had to buy the house a round. (The object, by the way, was for leading a cow around by the nose. Cow nose tongs. Thus the rounded rather than pointed ends.)

Oh gosh, this is going to cost some money. And you have to understand this was back when I was a poor young guy and didn’t exactly have tons of money to throw around. Bill and John and I quickly conferenced and in the meantime the locals were saying that they would excuse us from the rule this time but we agreed that no, by golly, we would honor the tradition. So another round of beers went out, including to us. The locals thought we were a good bunch of guys.

Came time to head out and we did, with more than a little bit of a buzz. We were headed on to Idaho Falls and we were in a good mood. And it was fun to ride really fast. Inebriation will do that to you.

Fortunately all ended well and we just had a good story to tell. Would we dream of doing something like that today? Of course not! But we did it then, and we always enjoy telling the story. How boring would your life be if you didn’t ever have stories to tell. I know my life has not been boring.

Biker Quote for Today

100 reasons not to date a biker: 58. Beer is the base of our food pyramid.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The OFMC’s second year doing a week-long trip was a learning experience. I already described how totally unprepared we were on our first trip but we still had a lot to learn.

Our first day out we rode from Denver to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. If you’ve been there you know that from where you turn off US 50 it’s about eight miles in to the park, and it’s not a fast eight miles. We set up our tents and then realized that with no food we were going to need to ride into Montrose to get some dinner. That was about 20 miles away. OK, maybe we should have thought of this beforehand.

So we went to town and ate. As we were heading back, in the parking lot, I started pulling forward, just idly dangling my feet when my toe snagged on one of those concrete blocks that you park up against. My leg was hanging down in front of my peg and with the toe stopped by the block and my leg trapped by the peg it could have been serious. Breaking my foot or ankle was a real possibility. Fortunately my toe slipped over the block and freed me. I had just learned that you really ought to raise your feet pretty much as soon as you start moving. More ignorance dispelled.

We rode into Utah and ended up for the night camped on the shore of Lake Powell. This time we had the wisdom to stop in Monticello and get food, but we had made the assumption we would be able to get firewood at the campground. Wrong. So we gathered bits of grass, twigs, and anything else we could find that would burn and built a tiny fire that we took turns cooking hot dogs over, holding them with our fingers and moving them back and forth over the tiny flame. But man they tasted good!

Back then there was a ferry across from Hall’s Crossing to Bullfrog. Today there is a bridge. We rode the ferry across and headed on into Las Vegas. Back in these days we usually didn’t wear helmets, although we had them along. We rode into Nevada, into Vegas, to a hotel, and only after that did we learn that Nevada was a helmet state. Oops. Maybe we should research these things beforehand. (Nope, we didn’t learn this lesson here.)

From Vegas we rode on down to Laughlin and this was where we first encountered nasty riding. There was a lot of wind and the dirt and dust in the air was horrible. We were glad to be wearing our helmets. And we got down to Laughlin and there were no rooms, or at least none that our meager budgets could handle. But we discovered that just on the other side of the river was Bullhead City, Arizona, and there were free water ferries that you could get across on. (They’re not free any more.) Over there were affordable motels and we got one.

The affordable food, however, was on the Nevada side. Back then casinos treated restaurants as loss-leaders. They would draw you in with super cheap food and hope to make it up with you gambling and losing to them. We got a terrific prime rib dinner for all of $3.50. Don’t go looking for that today because you won’t find it.

Back at our motel it was a pretty good time. It seems there was some big deal going on somewhere in the vicinity that had drawn in strippers from all over, and a bunch of them were staying at our motel. Hanging out by the pool was very pleasant. But then I had a not so pleasant encounter.

I was standing outside our room, on the second floor, looking out over the parking lot and pool, talking with some other guy also on a motorcycle. At some point he pointed down to my CB750 below and referred to it a “that POS” except he didn’t use the initials. My motorcycle, this POS he was talking about, was the love of my life. I had never in my life wanted so much to punch someone’s lights out. I restrained myself but man I wanted to hit this guy, hard!

The next day was just a long ride east on I-40 across Arizona, into New Mexico, to Gallup. All day it was a strong wind directly out of the north, hitting us from the side. All day. We got a lot of practice at leaning into the wind, and also about how when someone passes you and blocks the wind momentarily you better be ready to straighten up and then be ready for the blast once again once they get past. Another less than pleasant first.

At this point one of our primary factors in choosing a motel was cost. We wanted the cheapest we could find. In Gallup we discovered that sometimes it’s better to pay a little more. We had the filthiest, crummiest little place you can imagine, not to mention the bugs. I don’t remember whose turn it was to sleep on the floor but it was not pretty.

We reached Albuquerque and stopped by to visit my brother and sister-in-law. He was not there but she was. I have no idea what we did while there but my brother told me later that his wife complained to him about what poor guests we were. He’s not married to her anymore.

Heading north back into Colorado we went through Ojo Caliente and on up toward Alamosa. Along the way we ran into a cloudburst and got pretty wet. No big deal. These storms pass and the sun comes out and everything dries off and everything’s cool. Of course, we were still total novices at this and we still didn’t have any rain gear.

So we got wet, but we kept riding, and sure enough, it wasn’t too long before we were dry again. But we got into Alamosa and we were starting to shiver. We headed to a coffee shop and sat there and drank about seven pots of coffee, all of us shaking and shivering, just trying to warm up. Hypothermia. It was nasty.

And then for one final lesson, we came back out to the bikes and, being a hot day, the asphalt was hot and the side-stand on Bill’s bike had sunk into the asphalt, allowing his bike to topple over onto John’s, knocking both of them down. Up till then we had no idea of putting a puck or a flat can or piece of wood or something under the side-stand to keep it from sinking in. You live and learn.

The next day we rode on home. No more lessons to be learned. But we had had quite an education this week.

Biker Quote for Today

The best routes are the ones you haven’t ridden.