Passes & Canyons Blog

You can see that flashing, hollow bar right in the center of this shot.

The benefit of being very familiar with your motorcycle is obvious. You know where everything is and you know what to expect. Still, there are some things that only come into play occasionally and so perhaps you’re not as familiar with them as you are with the bike in general.

I went for a ride yesterday with members of the Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Riders Club (RMMRC) and this was one of those times.

I was on the V-Strom and unlike my other bikes, the V-Strom has a gas gauge and no reserve. Because this bike has a larger tank and gets better gas mileage than my friends’ bikes I generally find myself filling up before I would actually need to. I’ve never run out of gas on this bike. Which means that I have never found the true limit to how far it can go on a tank of gas.

Taking off yesterday I thought I had plenty of gas. The gauge is in bars; five bars is full. I didn’t look at it closely but was figuring just from how much I’d ridden it lately that I had four bars. It wasn’t until it was too late to do anything about it that I noticed I was at three bars. That made me a little uncomfortable but I still figured I had plenty.

Our route was to be out U.S. 285 up to Pine Junction, south to Deckers, and then back along the Platte, up by the Rampart Range, and down to Sedalia. Then home. Not that long a ride.

So there I was at three bars and to my dismay, I dropped to two bars right away. Oh gosh, I’ve got a whole lot less gas than I thought I did.

OK, now here’s what you need to understand about this gas gauge. The five bars do not represent equal amounts of gas. I generally will get 100 miles before the first bar disappears and I’m running on four bars. Then the next three go away fairly quickly and then the fifth bar is closer to the first in mileage. I was talking about it once to my friend, Kevin, who sold me the bike, and I can’t remember the figure he threw out but basically he said you have a whole lot of miles left when you go to one bar.

Another thing to understand is that switching between the odometer and the trip meter on this bike is a pain in the butt. And it’s one or the other, as opposed to my other bikes where you see both at the same time. So after riding this bike for more than six years I still don’t have a good feel for how many miles each bar represents.

Anyway, at two bars I was a bit concerned but not a lot. And then it went down to one bar really quickly. Uh oh, I don’t like this.

Now, what happens when you go to one bar is, I would guess, intended to make you nervous and persuade you to fill up as soon as you can. First a flashing gas pump icon appears next to that one bar but then you go a few miles further and the solid black bar changes to a hollow red flashing bar, as shown in the photo above. Now I’m really getting uncomfortable.

The saving grace in all this is my experience the first time this happened. I was out with the OFMC and we had spent the night in Meeker. I had arrived there via a different route than the other guys and unbeknownst to me, they had gassed up upon arriving in town. I had not. We headed out of town in the morning and as we neared Rangely I saw I was down to two bars. Just shy of town we turned south on CO 139 over Douglas Pass down to Loma. And very soon after that I went to one bar and it started flashing red. Oh crap.

It’s about 70 miles from Rangely to Loma with no gas in between. I sweated that ride. But I got there. So that told me I could get at least 70 miles on one bar. So there we were yesterday up in Deckers, and I knew it was less than 70 to home. But I was still nervous. Still, I was with other guys and I carry a siphon hose on each of my bikes so I figured I’d be fine.

We reached I-25 at Castle Pines Parkway and split up and then I only needed to go another 10-12 miles–with no ready assistance at hand. With each mile I felt more and more relaxed and rolled happily into our driveway. As I said, it’s really good to be familiar with your bike.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker if you’ve spent more on your motorcycle than your education.

Norvin took a spill but was unhurt and there were plenty of folks to help him get back upright.

OK, now, this is the kind of riding that I bought the V-Strom for. And finding people to do this with is a large part of why I joined the Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Riders Club.

I met up on Saturday with three guys at Performance Cycle and we were joined by three others in Sedalia. This ride was billed as a non-technical dual-sport ride. You bet I clicked the button to say “count me in.”

Leaving Performance we headed south on I-25 to Happy Canyon Road, down to U.S. 85, where we turned north to Sedalia. Our bikes included two 650 V-Stroms, two Africa Twins, one GS 650, a Super Tenere, and a street bike that I guess I didn’t bother to look at to see what it was. Or else I don’t remember.

With everyone gathered, we headed west out of Sedalia on what I see is called Jarre Canyon Road for a ways before it seems to just become CO 67. Once it gets past the Rampart Range dirt-biking area the pavement ends and we were on our first stretch of gravel. It’s good gravel and while I was concerned it might be muddy due to all the rain we have had, it turned out only to be a bit wet. I only slid once going down this really steep grade (19% I’m told) when I downshifted thinking I was in third but was actually in second, so it was a bit of a jolt to hit first.

CO 67 brought us out to the Platte River onto pavement at the Platte and we wound our way on around to Deckers, where we stopped for a break. Then we turned north for a short distance on Douglas County Road 126, to Wigwam Creek Road, which heads over toward Tarryall Reservoir. This was our second stretch of gravel, and by far the longest of the two.

Now, I had had this stretch in mind for some time as a potential ride because a couple years ago Judy and I had driven this road in her Subaru. At the time, though, there were large stretches where it was deeply rutted and largely washed out, and would have been challenging on a bike. It has since been graded and was a good road all the way.

So we headed up the gravel, me in third position, and within less than a half mile I came around a bend to see Norvin, the group leader, on his side at the side of the road. Whoa, what happened?! He said he hit some sand with his front wheel and the whole thing just went right out from under him. Norvin was unhurt and the bike was pretty much undamaged, except the latch for his right side bag, which he reattached. This was a good example of why it’s nice to have friends along. He was back up and ready to go quickly.

But only a very short distance. That bag attachment was more badly damaged than he thought and in very short order the bag was just hanging loose. So we stopped again and someone produced a bungee cord. That did the trick and all was well.

The rest of the ride on this road was beautiful. This whole area got burned in one of the really big fires a few years ago but with all the rain it was deeply green everywhere. And the one very small upside of forest fires is that they open up the view and you can see rock formations and vistas that for decades had been blocked by trees.

We met the pavement again at Park County Road 77, Tarryall Road, and turned south to U.S. 24 at Lake George. Lunch time, at the Bla Bla Blah Cafe. Yes, that is its name. After lunch I believe the plan had been to head back north past Tarryall to U.S. 285 at Jefferson and home via that route, but the sky up that way was black and threatening so the decision was made to head east on U.S. 24. Three members of the group turned north at Woodland Park on CO 67 but I stayed with the others on U.S. 24 down into Colorado Springs.

Cindy, who lives in the Springs, peeled off there and Norvin and Kevin and I got on I-25 up to Monument. We turned east on CO 105 over to CO 83 and then north. Coming along past Castlewood Canyon State Park I could see over in the foothills how black and wet it looked and was very glad I had opted for this route. I came up CO 83 to I-225 and got into some rain going past Kennedy Golf Course but then I was home and dry.

This was a terrific day. I really, really want to do more of this.

Biker Quote for Today

While the big GS is a competent street mount, and great on back roads, don’t even think about riding it fast off road. This would be as absurd as a fat transvestite running in high heels.

At times like this you kind of feel stupid.

If I remember correctly, the first time I dropped a motorcycle it wasn’t actually even me doing the dropping. I was still learning how to park a bike properly and this was a lesson. I rode over on my Honda CB750 Custom to where John was watching his son’s soccer game and I just parked in the lot. When I came back it was laying on its side. Wind, I guess? Beats me, I never really knew. But it bent the brake lever and when we tried to bend it back the thing snapped.

There was another time when I didn’t do the dropping, either. I parked my Kawasaki Concours in the only place I could find and I was nervous about the angle. The Connie stands up pretty straight even on level ground and this was not level. I came back and found it on its side. I hate that. Now in a situation like that I would use the center stand.

But what about when YOU actually drop the bike? It usually seems to happen in a parking lot. You’re padding along on the bike to park it and you let it get away from you. Who hasn’t done that? I don’t see any hands raised.

I’m sure I did it at least a couple times in the early days and it was just like I said, in a parking lot. Really glad to have the guys there to help me get it back up.

Then when the Concours was new I had the most unnerving drop I’ve ever had. The Connie is tall and I was still learning to be comfortable on a bike that high. Judy and I had ridden out to Eldorado Springs to hike a bit in the park there. The parking lot was gravel so when we were leaving I told her to wait until I got it turned around–I was not at all confident on this bike in this situation.

So I fired it up and started to try to ride a tight 180 . . . and failed miserably. Down went the bike. Fortunately several guys rushed over to help me get it back up but I was really shaken. My low confidence was down to zero. But we had to get home so with my heart pounding and butterflies in my stomach I got back on and told Judy to get on. And I was never so glad to get home.

And there are other stories, such as the time last year when the OFMC came into Ruidoso and at a sharply angled intersection on a downhill slope I was turning my head far to the left to look for traffic and just put the Suzuki V-Strom down. Or the time I was parking the Kawi at work at the National Park Service and just totally failed as I tried to rock it up onto its center stand (that photo above).

What can you say? Stuff happens, and usually when it does you feel more than a little bit stupid. But we all do it. I’ve helped the other guys pick up their bikes more than once. Heck, Bill and I helped John pick his Shadow up twice in one day. I’m just glad the only time I’ve ever gone down on the bike while in motion we were only going about 5 miles per hour. And that was the fault of that dang dog. And yeah, it took a little courage to get back on the bike after that one, too. But again, we were way out there and had to get home. You’ve just gotta do it.

Biker Quote for Today

There are worse ways to die than on a motorcycle. All the better ways are boring.

Riding on gravel took me a while to get used to.

Motorcycles are inherently more unstable than cars. When a car comes to a stop it stops. Period. When a motorcycle comes to a stop you’d better put your foot down or you’re going to fall over. Something about two wheels versus four, you know?

Now magnify the instability by adding a curve in the rider’s trajectory. Motorcycles lean in order to go around curves, so you’re already cocked to one side. And then add gravel in the curve. There’s nothing quite as thrilling as feeling your rear tire break loose in gravel on a curve, and this is not the good kind of thrill such as what you get on a roller coaster.

Give credit to the people who design motorcycles and motorcycle tires that losing traction on gravel, or ice, or wet leaves doesn’t automatically mean you go down. All it takes is to hit a wee patch of pavement again and you’re back in control. You’ll probably want to take it easy for a while, though, and let your adrenaline subside.

Motorcyclists generally fall into two categories, those who learned to ride on dirt and those who didn’t. It’s a huge difference. Dirt riding is all about breaking traction, riding the slide, and keeping the bike up. Those who never rode in dirt are at a significant disadvantage.

I never rode in dirt. While I had the opportunity to ride several bikes from time to time over a lot of years, I never got good at it until I bought my first bike, my 1980 Honda CB750 Custom. I learned to ride on the road and gravel was a particular nemesis. I hated gravel roads and gravel in a curve scared the bejeezus out of me.

The very first trip Bill and John and I took, before we even named our group the OFMC, we camped one night at Rifle Gap State Park, outside of Rifle, CO. It was probably 8 to 10 miles from the campground to town and we needed to ride in to have dinner. I had noticed when we first rode out to the park that there was a lot of gravel in some of the curves so I was already in high-caution mode. Heading into town the other guys left me way behind and I picked my way carefully along. Heading back to camp after dinner it was now dark, and thus even harder to pick out the hazards. They were back at camp long before I got there.

The difference, of course, was that they had had scooters and dirt bikes as kids.

“Didn’t you slide on some of that gravel in the curves?”

“Oh sure, but when you ride dirt bikes you learn how to stay in control.”

It took me a long time to get comfortable riding my street bikes on gravel roads, but I do it pretty well now. (Except for the Concours, which HATES gravel.) I still hate gravel in a curve. But I’ve been on the dirt more since I got my V-Strom. Maybe someday I’ll feel that rear wheel slide out and smile. But I’m not holding my breath.

Biker Quote for Today

I’m not the biggest motorcycle fan – they’re cool and a lot of fun, but they’re scary as well! — Taylor Lautner

I love having three bikes, partly because they’re so different and each has its own strength.

For a little more than two weeks Judy and I were on a ride to British Columbia on my 1999 Kawasaki Concours. We got home on a Thursday and on Friday I took off with the OFMC for another week, this time on my 2006 Suzuki V-Strom 650. After basically living on the Connie for two weeks, was it an adjustment to be on the V-Strom, alone? You better believe it.

First off, Judy and I have helmet-to-helmet communicators, and I was totally accustomed to just talking with someone (her) as I rode along. Heading off on the OFMC trip, several of the guys had left earlier but I headed out with Brett. I can’t tell you how often I started to just talk to him, only to be reminded that, oh yeah, he can’t hear me. It’s silly how many times I did that.

As for being on a different bike, that played out in a variety of ways. For one thing, wow, what a change to go from a 670-pound bike with a 110-pound passenger to a 420-pound bike and no passenger. Can you say “light” and “agile”? I thought you could. This was like night and day. Smaller, lighter bikes are just fun to ride. I love my Connie as a highway, let’s-do-some-traveling sort of bike, but the Wee Strom is made for other pleasures, although it does fine on the highway.

Now, the seat is less comfortable than the Connie. I know most people think the first thing you should do is get an aftermarket seat, but I’ve never found that necessary or even desirable. I like the seat, and it is definitely better than the one on the V-Strom.

A different consideration is that the V has chain drive, while the Connie has a shaft. Not a big deal, but I did pay attention to the chain on this trip, even stopping to buy some W-D 40 because I forget to bring chain lube along.

The other significant thing about the V is that it has a digital read-out, not dials the way all older bikes do. One option on this digital read-out is the odometer and two trip meters that you have to punch a button to select. Also, a fuel gauge with five bars: full is five and when you get to only one it starts flashing to warn you that you are low.

These controls may be simple but it took me a while to figure out how they worked. As long as I’ve had the V-Strom I have had it just set to the odometer. That means that if you want to know what kind of gas mileage you’re getting you have to remember what the mileage was when you last filled up. I usually didn’t.

So on this trip I started using the trip meter for the first time. I wanted to understand how many miles each of those five bars represented. I quickly found that the first one did not go away until I had ridden at least 100 miles. The second one would generally disappear about 40 miles later. But I was riding with the guys, and none of their bikes can go as far on a tank of gas as my V-Strom so we were always stopping for gas before I got far into the third bar. I’ll have to figure out what the others represent sometime when I’ve riding alone.

But even the little I do know now has come in useful. As long as I’ve had the bike I’ve noticed that when I start it up after it’s been sitting for a while I smell gas. Once I saw gas dripping and I took it in for work that seems to have addressed the issue for the most part. But after I got home, with about 50 miles on the tank, I let the bike sit for a few weeks. Next time I got on it I was already down to the third bar. Whoa! Clearly I have a leak. Something is wrong. I’m hoping it will just require replacement of some rubber fuel lines. That’s going to be up to Joel to figure out.

Biker Quote for Today

If you need me I’ll be riding.

I’ve wondered about that smell of gas for a long time.

Don’t you love it when you solve a mystery that has puzzled you for ages?

I’ve had my 650 V-Strom for what, three years now? And from about as far back as I can remember I have noticed this smell of gasoline when starting off on a ride. It has gone away after awhile and there has never been a problem so I’ve just lived with it.

Now, I did ask Ron Coleman to check it out once when he was doing some other work on the bike for me, but he couldn’t find any problems. And of course because by the time he was looking at it it had been ridden awhile, he couldn’t even detect the odor of gas.

So Judy and I were just about to take off on this four-day ride with Willie and Jungle and friends a couple weeks ago and I decided to do something that, frankly, I don’t do often enough: check the oil. First I had to figure out how to check the oil. That’s how negligent I am.

I pulled out the owner’s manual and it said to rock the bike up on the center stand, start it up and let it warm up, then shut it down, wait about three minutes, and then check the sight glass on the side. So I rocked it up, fired it up, and then started looking around to find the sight glass. Not on the left side so I moved around to the right side.

The engine was still running, still warming up, as I crouched down to look for the sight glass. That was when I spotted a rapid drip of what was clearly gasoline coming from directly underneath the gas tank. Whoa, golly! I shut it off and told Judy we had a sudden change of plans and she needed to shift her gear from the V-Strom bag to the Concours bag. And off we went on the Concours.

Now it occurred to me that it would probably have been OK to ride the V-Strom, considering I’ve been riding it for years with this odor of gas, but I didn’t want to take any chances. So this past Tuesday I took it over to Joel at Mountain Thunder Motorsports and gave him the low-down. I explained that he needed to let it sit and then fire it up and look for the drip.

He called me a couple days later to say he had found the problem, a gasket getting old that would allow gas to pass out when dry, but would then soak up fuel and seal better. The bad news was that the gasket is an integral part of a larger part and that part is only available from Suzuki for $230. With labor the fix will cost me $500. Oh well, it’s only money, right?

Biker Quote for Today

Just bought bike parts . . . let’s see if I have enough money to eat.

First one beam, then two, and then two separated by a few feet.

After we rode Mike’s maze up to the house I needed to catch my breath. It’s a lot of work whipping a motorcycle around in an extended series of tight, extreme turns. Mike was ready to keep going. “What do you want to do next?” he asked.

I was loath to call it a day. I don’t get this kind of opportunity often enough. But just to ride the trail back to the track and then ride it to the house again felt like not enough. But Mike had an idea. We took the trail back to the track, this time with me in the lead.

So once again, tight turns where you have to turn your head absolutely as far as it can go in order to see the exit of the turn. Multiple times where the only thing to do to keep from falling over was to goose the throttle. Getting to be fun.

And then back at the track Mike set up the beams I had ridden straight over before into a couple end-to-end balance beams. The idea was to get up on the first beam, ride the length of it, and continue on the second one. This looked interesting!

It also turned out not to be too hard. I had a lot of times to work at it, too. It didn’t take long before I had made my first run the length of both of them. Most of the time I went off before I got to the end but that was no big deal. It wasn’t as if going off meant falling over; the bike just kept going but now I was on the ground. And sometimes I was hardly aware when I went off.

But of course Mike wanted to challenge me. So he separated the two beams by about two or three feet. Now the idea was to ride the length of the first one, come off, and then get up on the second one. This was a lot harder. Although I took my shot at it quite a few times, there was only one time when I was able to get down off the first and then up on the second. The rest of the time I just couldn’t get off the first and redirect quickly enough to get up on the second. But it was fun trying.

Then it was time to ride the maze/trail back up to the house to drop the bike I was using at the garage. Once again, riding the tight twists and turns, standing as much as I could, sitting as much as I needed to. And I was getting better and better. Which set me up for the real test. My own bike, my 650cc V-Strom, was down at the track. Kathy drove me back down to it and Mike came on his bike. I had two choices: just ride straight back to the house or take my V-Strom on Mike’s trail. We’re talking here a much heavier and less agile bike than these little dirt bikes I’d been on all day.

No one who knows me will be surprised I chose to take the trail. I mean, the whole point of getting some dirt bike training is so I will be more comfortable and more skilled at riding the V-Strom off pavement.

I was really glad Mike had suggested earlier that I put the bike in one gear and leave it there, avoiding having to even think about the clutch or shifting gears. You can do that on these bikes that rev really low. So off I went, whipping my bike hard around these turns that had seemed tight on a much smaller bike. And doing it. Wahoo! And then there were the times when it became suddenly very evident that this was not a dirt bike, and–most importantly–didn’t have dirt bike tires on it. My V-Strom has tires that are a compromise between full dirt and full street. They lean more heavily toward dirt but they’re not all-out dirt tires.

I counted three times in that run where that rear tire just came totally loose and started spinning out. In each case I dabbed, putting my foot down to keep the lean angle from going too far, and at the same time I goosed the throttle to make it stand up more. Was I thinking this all through in my head? Of course not, it was all just instinct coupled with experience. At times I ran way wide of the trail but no big deal, just head back to it as quickly as possible.

And then we were back at the house. Mike, ever the serious instructor, took another 10 minutes to discuss dirt riding etiquette with me and then I was headed home. And you know, their gravel road was just as simple and non-challenging as it could possibly be. That’s my objective right there.

Biker Quote for Today

A bike makes you a motorcyclist. Attitude makes you a biker.

Along the Peak-to-Peak.

Friday was hazy so the temperature never got up to what had been forecast but it was still nice enough I decided it was time to head for the hills.

I make it a point to just stay out of the hills all winter because even when it’s nice down here on the flatlands it can be cold and icy up there. Of course, if you ride on three wheels like Dom Chang then it doesn’t matter. I don’t, so it does.

I took the V-Strom up Clear Creek Canyon and it was a great day to be out. I didn’t wear any electrics because I figured it was warm enough I wouldn’t need them. That has been a mistake at times in the past but I was confident this time. Traffic was light and I didn’t have anybody behind me. I like not having anybody behind me on roads like that. And the people in front of me were making good time, no laggards.

Reaching Black Hawk it was still warm and I had not even seen snow in the shady areas. A little past Black Hawk and that all changed. Now the shady areas on the north-facing slopes had a lot of snow and the temperature dropped about 10 degrees. My legs were getting chilly because all I had there was jeans; on top I had layers.

All the way up Clear Creek Canyon and along the Peak-to-Peak the road was completely clear–no ice, no sand. But by the time I got to where the road down through Golden Gate Canyon peels off from the Peak-to-Peak there was snow everywhere (except on the road) and even cooler temps. I was looking forward to heading down.

And then there was sand in several places on the Golden Gate Canyon road. You’re definitely going to want to take it easy if you go up that road any time soon.

But what a great day it was to be riding up in the hills, nevertheless. Did you know the roads up there have a lot of curves? I’ve been riding down on the prairie the last few months and you don’t see near as many of those down here. Wonder why?

It was especially fun, too, being on the V-Strom. That bike is light and agile and you just zip around those curves. My other bikes are both heavier and just don’t have that feel to them. If I was in a place where I could only have one bike I could have the V and be plenty happy. But I’m glad I’m not in that place.

And then I was getting back near out of the canyon and I passed a guy on a Ural sidecar rig going the other way. I can’t help but wonder, was that you, Dom?

Biker Quote for Today

Meditation doesn’t mean you have to sit still.