Demo Riding and Meeting Readers
I did go to ride Kawasakis on Saturday as I said I was going to but it didn’t work out quite as I expected. They had quite a turn-out and so instead of letting you sign up for three bikes in quick order, you could only sign up for one, and by the time I got there around 10:30 a.m. the earliest I could get a ride was 1:30 p.m. Ouch. And there was only one bike available then, the Z1000 Ninja. Fortunately, that was a bike I wanted to ride.
I didn’t really know what to do. It’s too far for me to have gone home and come back, but what was I going to do with the time? I made the decision not to decide and just hung around for awhile, but that got boring. Just for lack of anything else to do I approached this guy who was looking at the Concours 14 and asked if he had had a chance to ride it. I mentioned that I had and I loved it.
We got to talking and enough of what I said about my own bikes apparently clicked and this random guy, Evan Lyons, suddenly said, “Are you the guy who does that blog?” Yes, he really did mean this blog and he told me he was there at the demo event because he had read about it on this blog. Blew me away. (And that’s Evan in the picture checking out the Concours, just right of center. I shot the picture before we met and looking through my shots later, there he was.)
I know people do read this blog and visit the MotorcycleColorado.com website because I get web statistics from Google Analytics and they tell me exactly how many visitors there are. But in five years I’ve only met about half a dozen of you so it’s always a real kick to come face to face.
So I talked with Evan and his wife, Noel, who ride a YZF600 and a ZX-6, respectively, and got acquainted. It seems Evan found the site thanks to a letter to the editor that I did awhile ago that I never expected to be printed. I had picked up issue #1 of the reborn Motorcycle Escape magazine, which I just chanced to run across on the newsstand.
I liked the look of it and bought it and when I read it I found they had a nice piece on riding in Colorado. Then what honked me off was that they had a little blurb about another website featuring rides in Colorado, which, when I checked it out, I felt didn’t hold a candle to this one. Not that I’m biased or anything but I really do think this one is far better and yet here these guys were getting the spotlight and not me. (Hey, I’ll let you decide for yourself. That other site is ColoradoMotorcycleRides.com. Check it out.)
So anyway, just feeling a bit annoyed, I wrote a letter to the editor saying “You guys screwed up. You should have spotlighted my site.” And completely forgot about it.
I’ve looked for issue #2 of Motorcycle Escape but never spotted it. But apparently they did publish it and Evan got a copy. And apparently they published my letter. Evan saw it and decided to check out my site. And he read the blog and read about the demo event. And he came and we met. How’s that for a chain of events?
Anyway, Evan and Noel left because their ride was even later than mine and they figured to do something else and come back. I was on the verge of just forgetting the whole thing when it occurred to me that Thunder Valley Motocross Park was just down the road and on such a nice sunny day I should be able to get some good pictures. I had been there once before shooting pictures but it was overcast and my old camera was slow and I didn’t get much that was very good. This time I got a lot of good shots and I’m sure you’ll be seeing some of them here from time to time.
Then I went back and rode the Z1000 Ninja. But that’s another story, told here. I will say this: I was surprised how much I liked it.
Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Demo riding the Ninja 1000: A modern-day standard
Biker Quote for Today
The Internet is great for motorcycling, but I’ve never done any riding on my keyboard.
Tags: Motorcycle demo rides
