Archive for the ‘Yamaha motorcycles’ Category

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Off To Utah On 5-Day Ride

Monday, June 1st, 2026


Stopped to catch a view in Utah.

Five of us with the RMMRC headed to Utah last week on a 5-day ride. On the BMWs were Dave, Lindsay, and Tom. Gene was on his Yamaha and I was on my Suzuki.

We met out at the Phillips 66 in Morrison and the first order of business was to link our communicators. We failed and headed out with only two linked, Tom riding lead and Gene riding sweep. It was a chilly morning destined to get a lot colder before it got warm.

Our destination on Day One was Green River, Utah, which is about 330 miles. We were doing it all on I-70, just to get there. We ran up from Morrison past Red Rocks, got on I-70, and blasted west.

The first point of interest came at the foot of Floyd Hill. At that spot I-70 comes down a steep incline and then makes a hard turn left into Clear Creek Canyon. That hard left makes the turn a bit of a hazard. The state has been working for a couple years now to straighten out the bend and generally improve that stretch of road but all that has been visible all this time has been some earth-moving as they cut into the hillside a bit.

That has changed. Down at the bottom you now see tall pillars with a short slab of what will be highway indicating the route of the new flyover they’re putting in. Around the bend you see more pillars indicating that they are raising the highway leading to the curve and you can see where the lane will go right through a notch they have cut in the hillside. Very interesting.

We climbed on up toward the Eisenhower Tunnel and by now my fingers were getting numb and I was cursing my failure to wear my electric vest. I had it with me but it wasn’t doing me any good in my bag. We got through the tunnel and headed down to Silverthorne and as it didn’t get much warmer down there I knew I was going to be cold all the way to Vail.

Up from Silverthorne, past Frisco, past Copper Mountain, and up Vail Pass. Just over the top of Vail we encountered more major highway construction. Apparently they are widening the road on that side and there is already a high median barrier in place. However, we were heading west on the eastbound side of that new barrier because they’re just in the process of building the highway on the westbound side. Also, up at the top of Vail Pass, there was a brand new rest area to replace the old one that has been closed for a couple years. Your tax dollars at work. Probably good expenditures.

Tom was setting an aggressive pace the whole way and after we got down and through Vail he bumped it up another notch. We stopped for lunch in West Glenwood and headed on toward Grand Junction. We had discussed where we would need to get gas and we all agreed we could make it to Fruita. But at this blistering pace–80 to 90–my gas mileage was suffering badly. We got into Debeque Canyon and I was down to just one bar on my fuel gauge and it was flashing red. I had no helmet communications but Gene, just behind me, did and I waved him up. I pointed to my gas tank and he got the idea. He told Tom I needed to stop for gas so Tom pulled off at Palisade. I really don’t think I would have made it to Fruita.

Off we went again and once we got into Utah we were truly blasting. That stretch of I-70 has an 80 mph speed limit and we were going the obligatory 5 to 10 mph faster–or more. And the wind was blasting us in the face. Google says from Palisade to Green River is 113 miles. My fuel gauge was showing three bars of five when we got there. Normally I get about 140 on my first two bars.

So now we were in Utah. The slog portion of the trip was over. Tomorrow the real fun begins.

Biker Quote for Today

The bike is an extension of my being; we ride as one.

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Posted in BMW motorcycles, Colorado motorcycle rides, motorcycle touring, Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Riders Club, Suzuki motorcycles, V-Strom, Yamaha motorcycles | No Comments »

Seriously?

Monday, September 22nd, 2025

I was out walking to Target and Ace Hardware Saturday because Judy is away for a few days and I’m under doctor’s orders not to drive. Besides, I like to walk and it wasn’t that far.

Who rides on a tire like that?

One reason I like to walk is because you see so much more than you do when you drive. Like this bike. First it was like, oh, a motorcycle. A Yamaha.

Then I noticed there was no windshield, no instrument cluster, no headlight. OK, so this guy is presumably not driving it at this time–it’s just parked here.

But then I noticed the tire. Look at that tire. The rest of the trashed front end presumably happened in some mishap, but that tire only got that way by being ridden. Ridden long after it should have been replaced. Who rides a tire down to the cords and then keeps riding it? Maybe someone prone to doing something careless that ends up with the front end smashed up.

I can understand the smashed up front end. My Honda got smashed up in front, too, and all I was doing was sitting on it. But that tire!

Biker Quote for Today

Motorcycling is the safest dangerous thing you can do, or the most dangerous safe thing you can do.

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Posted in Motorcycle Safety, Yamaha motorcycles | No Comments »

How About A New CB750?

Thursday, August 7th, 2025

The new Honda CB750 Four.

My friend Nick, from Chicago, is keeping close tabs on my recovery from my June 29 crash and he also knows I intend to buy a new bike. He texted me the other day with the startling news that Honda intends to bring back the CB750 in 2026. I had to check this out.

Calling it the CB750 Four, this new bike is styled very much like the old CB750–like the one I rode for nearly 40 years before it got smashed on June 29. While I loved that bike I will admit I was not in love with the old tech. So the ability to get a very similar bike with the most modern tech available is extremely inviting to me.

I had already begun looking for a Yamaha Tracer because that is a bike I identified a couple years ago as something I would like to have. There are not many left on the dealers’ floors but when you can find one they go new for $12,600. All the bags and everything else are extra.

This new CB is supposed to be priced at $9,000, with bags extra. Of course, that’s before Trump’s tariffs kick in. I was talking with a sales guy at Vickery the other day and he said the only info he has as yet is that dirt bikes will go up in price about $1,500. He said he expects street bike prices to go up by double that. So who knows what the CB will actually cost.

Meanwhile, it gives you a pretty good incentive to either buy new from what is already in the country or else buy used. I would seriously consider picking up a new Tracer now but I hate buying a bike I have never ridden. Fortunately there will be a Yamaha demo days event in Cheyenne in early September. And considering that I’m currently constrained from riding as I recover from the crash, that may prove to be very good timing.

As for the CB750 Four, certainly I will want to climb on one and see how it feels but if there is one motorcycle I have extreme familiarity with it is this new one’s ancestor. If I swing my leg over the new one and it feels like the old one I really don’t think I’m going to need to ride it to make my decision.

Biker Quote for Today

Your motorcycle is a discovery; your bike is freedom. It doesn’t matter where you are when you’re on the bike; you’re taken away.

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Posted in Honda motorcycles, Yamaha motorcycles | No Comments »

Learning Basic Motorcycle Riding

Thursday, October 31st, 2024

Think of all I would have missed if I’d never learned to ride a motorcycle.

I wasn’t born knowing how to ride a motorcycle. I had to learn. Neither were you? What a coincidence. Eventually I did learn, however. You did, too? Good for us.

I did not learn by taking a class. Heck, I’m not sure I was even aware back then that classes like that were offered. If I had been I wouldn’t have taken one because I was poor. I was so poor, in fact, that I had to borrow money from my parents to buy my first motorcycle, although I never let them in on that secret till many years later.

Before I bought that bike, my 1980 Honda CB750 Custom, I had ridden motorcycles occasionally, although not recently. I had friends when I was younger who had bikes who occasionally let me ride, but it was only good fortune that kept me from crashing them. I didn’t know how to steer properly.

When I bought my Honda, a friend who had ridden scooters as a kid told me he assumed I understood about counter-steering. Nope. Never heard of it. He didn’t know how to explain it, other than you push the bar right to go left, so I was still none the wiser. But I now understood there was something I needed to learn more about.

Whenever I’m new to something I dive in and learn as much as I can as quickly as I can, mostly by reading. John’s first bike (as an adult; he had a scooter as a kid) was an old Gold Wing that someone gave him. (Nice, huh? Would like this free Gold Wing? Oh gosh, I don’t know. Sure, I’ll take it.) That was a bit too big a bike for him right off the bat but he rode some with another teacher at his school. Then when that guy died unexpectedly his widow asked if John would like to buy his Virago at a very low price. So John got rid of the Gold Wing and bought the Virago.

Along with the Virago, the widow gave John a bunch of her husband’s motorcycle magazines. These he shared with me. The first issue I ever saw of Rider magazine was the one with the newly introduced Honda Pacific Coast on the cover. I read those magazines cover to cover, including the ads, soaking up every bit of knowledge I could. Soon I was subscribing to Rider and Cycle and passing them along to the guys after I had read them. I still do that.

This–along with practice on the road–was where I learned about counter-steering. Along with a whole lot more.

I also learned about traction management. I’m talking about how you have the most traction when the bike is completely erect and the farther you lean the less available traction you have, right up to the point where you lose traction altogether and go into a low-side crash.

First John got a bike, then I did, then Bill did. We rode together a lot. One thing I quickly noticed was how both of them were able to go faster in the twisties than I could. I initially attributed this simply to the fact that they had both had scooters as kids and so were more experienced than me. Later I also figured out that both of their bikes had lower centers of gravity than mine, which just simply made it easier for them. (It’s funny to think of my Honda as having a high center of gravity. My two other bikes, a 1999 Kawasaki Concours and a 2006 Suzuki V-Strom 650 are both very tall bikes and I have long come to consider the Honda as the low one.)

Trying to learn to ride better, and to keep up with them, I took to sitting up straight and leaning my Honda way over. I did not understand the risk that entailed as opposed to leaning my body to the inside of the curve and keeping the bike as upright as possible. But I never crashed and eventually I learned the ins and outs of maintaining traction.

Most of my friends to this day have never taken a riding class. Eventually I was no longer poor and I did take riding classes–a whole bunch of them ultimately. By then I could ride competently and what I ended up learning were some finer points that I had still missed. It may surprise you but even an experienced rider can learn something from a riding class.

I did learn to ride. And I like to think I eventually got pretty darn good at it. So here’s a thank-you to everyone–writers, teachers, other riders–who helped me get to this point. I don’t think I would have gotten this good without you.

Biker Quote for Today

On the bike, time stretches, and I glimpse moments of forever.

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Posted in Honda motorcycles, Kawasaki, Suzuki motorcycles, V-Strom, Yamaha motorcycles | No Comments »

Tales Of The OFMC: The Group Grows And Shrinks

Monday, September 23rd, 2024

We had a big group for a while.

When the OFMC got going–before we even came up with the OFMC name–there were three of us: John, Bill, and Ken (me). John had bought a bike, so I bought one, so Bill bought one. Soon enough we decided we needed to go somewhere on these fine machines. That was 1989.

Things took a new twist in 1998 when John’s son Johnathon joined us for the first time, riding the old Yamaha Virago his father had given him when he moved up to his Honda Shadow. That started a chain reaction.

In 2000 Bill’s brother Friggs joined the group. The funny thing is, he didn’t even own a bike at that time. Instead, he rented a Harley. The rental had an “unlimited miles” note in the paperwork but when Friggs took the bike back after the trip the rental guy grumbled that unlimited miles didn’t mean that many miles. Oh yeah? Friggs bought a Virago shortly after the trip.

Then in 2004 things exploded. Bills’ son Jason now joined us and he brought along a friend, Todd. Johnathon also brought his friend Randy. It was also the first trip for Bill and Friggs’s brother-in-law Dennis. Now it was getting too big a group to just be showing up in some random town expecting to find enough motel rooms, but that was a lesson we learned on this trip, not beforehand.

In 2006 Johnathon brought another friend, Brett, and we had the biggest group yet. So we’ve got three original guys, one brother, two sons, one brother-in-law, and a fluctuating line-up of sons’ friends. In 2010 Matt, a brother of one of the friends (see how it spreads!) came along. Finally, in 2015, John’s wife’s cousin Frank joined us and we had the biggest group ever. From there the OFMC began to shrink.

Johnathon and Jason were the first to drop out. They were both young married guys with families and they made the decision that they needed to put their families first and not risk getting hurt badly or killed. Several of the friends fell away then, too. By 2017 we were down to John, Dennis, Bill, Friggs, Brett, and me.

In 2018 John, one of the three founders, did not come. His health issues had gotten too serious and he had sold his motorcycle. The end of an era. Then in 2018, on a clean, smooth road, for no knowable reason, Friggs went down. He escaped serious injury–thank goodness for his helmet–but after finishing the trip he sold his bike and has never ridden again.

Then in 2019 it was just three of us again, Bill, Dennis, and me. That continued until 2022 when we were joined by Bruce but Bruce didn’t make it in 2023 or 2024 so at the end it was just us three. Same number as we started with, two of the same guys. Can’t say for sure yet but it looks like that’s the end. At a poker game recently John asked if there would be a ride next year and I listened keenly to the replies Bill and Dennis gave. Dennis was non-committal, probably waiting for Bill to answer, and Bill said he was not inclined to. But he didn’t say a positive no. We’ll wait and see.

Biker Quote for Today

Motorcycling is like talking; the road speaks, and my heart understands.

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Posted in Honda motorcycles, OFMC, Tales of the OFMC, Yamaha motorcycles | No Comments »

The Surprising Freedom Of Selling A Motorcycle

Monday, July 15th, 2024

I got a lot of good riding out of this bike and it hurt to sell it, but I’m not unhappy that it’s gone.

As all regular readers of this blog are aware, I sold my 1999 Kawasaki Concours back in March. It was the first time I had ever parted with a motorcycle that I owned. Riding for 35 years, I have owned three bikes and still own and ride two of them. Selling the Connie really brought mixed emotions.

It didn’t help, of course, that I ended up letting it go for a pittance. But after problems at the end of last year’s OFMC trip, and months spent waiting for the shop where I took it to do . . . nothing . . . it really was something of a relief to be done with it. But it was still sad and a bit wrenching.

During this time I looked around and found a used Yamaha FJ-09 at Vickery Motorsports that I was very interested in but until I could clear space in my garage I had nowhere to go with it. By the time the Kawi was gone the FJ-09 was, too.

So now whenever I get together with friends the question always comes up, are you going to get a new bike? My answer is as surprising to me as it is to them: No.

No, I really kind of like only having two bikes. I like having room in my workshop to use it as a workshop, rather than as a garage. I like having one less vehicle to maintain, pay taxes on, and pay insurance on. And it had gotten hard to find someone to work on such an old bike.

I also like not jockeying around this really heavy machine. Both my other bikes are much lighter than the Concours and I had been aware for a long time that the day was going to come as I get older when I was not going to feel up to handling that heavy thing. I’m not at that point, but already being free of that feels good. I also don’t miss having to deal with all that bodywork–the plastic panels covering the engine and forming the fairing. That stuff makes any work you do on the bike twice as much of a hassle.

Still, having finally sold a bike, I now feel a new freedom to think about doing so again. My main bike now is my 2006 Suzuki V-Strom 650 and I like it a lot but truth be told, I really would not mind something just a little bigger. Like that FJ-09, or the newer Yamaha Tracer. When I’m riding the V at highway speeds that little engine is very busy. An 850cc or 900cc engine would not have to be working quite so hard to hit those high speeds. Plus, the V-Strom is old enough that it’s now an issue to find someone to work on it.

I’m in no hurry, but what I foresee is to find an FJ or Tracer, buy it, and immediately turn around and sell the V-Strom. But right now I have not looked at bikes for sale at all, and I have no inclination as yet to begin. I’m just enjoying the two bikes I have.

Biker Quote for Today

Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of riding a motorcycle.

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Posted in Kawasaki, Yamaha motorcycles | No Comments »

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