Good Or Bad, Riding Is Back
Maintaining social distancing at a stop in Nederland.
I’m torn over how to begin this post. I had been figuring on “We saw a lot of motorcycles up on the Peak to Peak Wednesday.” But then it started shifting toward “Holy smokes there were motorcycles everywhere on Wednesday.” Either way, as you can guess, I finally went on another ride with the RMMRC.
I had been persuaded not to ride for a while by the argument that it was selfish and inappropriate to risk injury at a time when emergency resources were overtaxed. But with things opening up a bit now, and no flooding of the emergency rooms, I figured that argument was no longer valid.
Apparently a lot of other people think the same way.
There were 10 of us in Wednesday’s group: five Hondas, two Beemers, a Concours, a V-Strom, and a Spyder. (Surprisingly, we must have seen about 10 other Spyders this day. That’s a lot.)
We headed out US 287 to C-470 to the Golden Gate Park road, up to the Peak to Peak, to CO 7 running down to Lyons. From Lyons the group scattered as each took their preferred way home.
It was a beautiful day to ride. Still a little cool up on the Peak to Peak, especially at higher altitudes, but never cold. The roads were clean with no ice and no sand. All in all: great.
As you can see in the photo above, at a stop in Nederland, we do take the distancing recommendation seriously.
One thing that has emerged as a real issue on these rides is that in so many places the restrooms are closed. We made a stop right where we hit the Peak to Peak and some of us guys used the woods but there were two women on this ride as well and they were kind of SOL. Maybe that will change now. I know the parking lots for the mountain parks we passed were all full of cars so you would think those restrooms ought to be open. Maybe they were; we didn’t try any of those.
So nothing of any note on the ride but on my way home there were two interesting encounters. I came down CO 93 to head east on US 287 and as I headed east I saw a guy on a bike going the other way who tapped the top of his helmet. Oh really, cops up ahead? Sure enough, there was the guy with the radar gun and two squad cars further down, one in wait and the other issuing a ticket. I hadn’t been going all that fast anyway but I was glad to have slowed down a couple mph so as to pass at a legal speed.
Then as I got into the section where 287 is more urban and has traffic signals I was pulling away as the light went green and heard this roar and some guy on a sport bike blasted past me going really fast. I watched him weave in and out of traffic, splitting lanes when he chose to, and he was gone. But then I caught up with him at the next red light. When that light went green he wheelied out and went blasting out of sight and I caught up with him again at the next red light. Maybe he was just having fun but if he thought he was going to get to his destination quicker I’ve got some news for him.
So yeah, riding is back. Maybe I’ll finally use enough gas that I need to fill up, and can take advantage of some of these incredibly low prices. The lowest I saw Wednesday was $1.39.9. Who would have believed that?!
Biker Quote for Today
100 Reasons not to date a motorcyclist: Speeding tickets.
Tags: Peak to Peak Highway, RMMRC
May 1st, 2020 at 9:47 am
Ken, I sure enjoy your blog posts…..i’ve been reading them for years and I often forward them to a group of riders I know in this Colorado Springs/Woodland Park area. Reading this post today, when you mention the “taps the top of his helmet” by the other rider, that reminded me to ask you of other “signals” that riders give each other. I really only know of: tap the to of the helmet – cops ahead; down motion of left hand – slow down; then the standard wave someone by motion. Are there any others that you’re familiar with?
May 3rd, 2020 at 12:55 pm
Thanks for the note, Mark. Yes, there are other signals that are pretty common. Here is a page of signals you can check out. I also wrote about signals in a post called “Does Your Group Use Signals?“