Finally Some Riding on the New Bike

July 8th, 2013
V-Strom at Red Rocks

The new bike in an exotic place, even if it is close to home.

I hate how this business of working 40 hours a week interferes with my riding time. I may have been broke most of the time while I was a full-time freelance but at least I got to ride plenty.

This weekend was looking like more of same. Saturday went by with every hour claimed and I was determined to get out on the V-Strom on Sunday. But Sunday came and every hour seemed to be claimed as well and I was getting pretty disheartened. And I said no.

I decided that no matter what else didn’t get done, I would ride. And I got on and off I went.

It wasn’t any kind of big deal ride. I had wanted to head up into the mountains and take some gravel road I’d never been on on a bike before, but I didn’t have that much time. Instead I just cruised west through town, doing what I could to dodge raindrops. I actually put my rain jacket on at one point but was pulling it off again five minutes later. Hot!

Made my way out to Golden and then turned south. At Morrison I decided to run over to Red Rocks and get some pictures. I wanted to be able to say “see what cool places I’ve been on my new bike.” Sure, Red Rocks is not exotic, unless you’ve never been there. Chances are someone will read this who has never been there and will look at that picture above and think, “Wow, that’s not exotic? What kind of incredible place do you live in?”

But I have an ambition now. On Adventure Riders they have a “Wee-Strom” thread (that’s for the 650cc V-Strom as opposed to the 1000cc V-Strom) with the title, “Let’s see your Vstrom OFFROAD!” On this thread a lot of guys have posted a lot of terrific shots of their bikes in some fabulous places. I want to add a bunch of my own photos to this thread. I just have to go shoot them first.

Anyway, I headed back home, having been out for two hours. It wasn’t much but I did ride the dang bike! I guess the first serious miles I’m going to get on it will be on the OFMC summer trip which is coming up very soon. None of the guys have seen the new bike yet. Time to do something about that.

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Biker Quote for Today

Everyday is a good day for a ride! But Sunday is perfect!

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Posted in V-Strom | No Comments »

Always Looking

July 4th, 2013
Cars and bikes on highway

At least when you ride in a group they're a lot more likely to be aware of you.

The following post is sponsored by CentralContracts.com.

I rode my Concours to work on Wednesday, and figuring that on the day before the holiday the traffic was likely to be light, I went up I-25 to 6th Avenue (the northern route).

Normally when I ride I don’t like taking that route because of all the stop and go you can run into on the highway, and that’s just murder on your clutch wrist. I prefer to go across on Hampden, which turns into freeway past Santa Fe, and then north on Kipling and then some winding through the neighborhoods to my destination (the southern route). It’s actually a mile or so shorter on that route, too, but it’s a little slower than the northern route.

Of course the other reason I avoid I-25 most of the time is that it is simply inevitable that someone in that jammed traffic will decide to pull into my lane, never bothering to turn their head to check and see if perhaps I’m there. I know better than to hang in someone’s blind spot normally, but when you’re on a packed superhighway there’s just no way to avoid it again and again the whole time.

So it was no surprise when this woman started coming my way. I laid on the horn–fortunately the Connie has a loud one–and I had to laugh seeing her swing sharply back into her own lane. Hopefully feeling quite chastised.

That never seems to happen when I’m in my car, but on the bike it is inevitable. Bikes just get hidden too easily in the blind spot. And people trust their mirrors too much.

For the rest of the ride, though, and for the ride home there were no other incidents. As a motorcyclist you have to pay extremely careful attention all the time in heavy traffic like that and you learn to read people and what they’re probably going to do. At the very least, you hypothesize that they’re going to do something and while they don’t always do it, when they do you’re ready.

And one thing I noticed this day was that there were several drivers who I firmly believed were intending to come my way but just before they made their move they saw me. They did what every driver ought to do. They were good drivers. You can’t avoid noticing the bad ones–they’re flagrantly putting your life in danger. But it’s easy not to notice the good ones. On this day I noticed the good ones.

In other words, they’re not all idiots out there. It just seems like it some times.

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Side Stand by Hand?

July 1st, 2013
custom motorcycle

This custom bike has the side stand right about where you would expect it to be.

I just have to remark about something I saw this weekend. Maybe this is totally common and I’ve just never seen it. Maybe not. Maybe you know.

We were up in Cheyenne on Saturday where my nephew and his new wife were having a party for friends and relatives. They got married in an extremely small, private affair so this was their wedding party.

We were out in back and across the alley a guy rolled up on a custom bike. Sorry, I didn’t have time to get a photo. Anyway, he needed to get off the bike to open his garage door so once he was stopped he reached back with his hand and flipped the side stand down. I was like, what!?

He got the door up, remounted, and then reached back by hand and flipped the side stand up and rolled into the garage. What?

OK, I mean, considering the location of the side stand it would be pretty hard to reach it with your foot. And sitting so low and leaned back it was totally reachable with his hand. But I’ve never seen a bike with the side stand way the heck back there. Is this common for custom bikes?

I went digging through my pictures of custom bikes and came up with the one above, as an example. As you can see, this one has the side stand right by the foot peg. Normal. Move that thing back behind the belt, practically hanging off that rear fender, and that’s where this bike I saw had its stand.

Not a big deal, but worth a remark, I thought. Like I said, maybe it’s common on those sorts of bikes, and maybe I’ve just never paid attention. But it sure got my attention on Saturday.

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Posted in custom motorcycles | 1 Comment »

How to Go 200 MPH with a Stock Kawi Engine

June 27th, 2013
Streamlined Motorcycles

Streamlined motorcycles at last year's Vintage Motorcycle Days. That raggedy-looking green bike is Vic Valdes, who made his streamlining out of discarded political posters.

I spoke with Craig Vetter last week, working on an article that I hope I’m not too late getting to Rider magazine. Vetter, as you probably know, is the designer of the Windjammer fairing and a lot of other things, and these days he’s really focused on fuel efficiency.

Vetter has worked out the design for what he calls The Last Vetter Fairing, which is body work that creates a streamlined motorcycle with upright seating and room to carry four bags of groceries.

He told me that in a recent test ride, with two identical motorcycles, one streamlined, the one that was streamlined got double the gas mileage of the stock bike. But he also talked about the power you need to push a bike down the road at 70 mph, and that comes out somewhere in the 20-25 horsepower range.

And here’s the kicker. If you’ve got too much power you’re not going to see any major miles per gallon increase with streamlining, he said, because all that power eats up too much gas.

“What you would notice is you could go probably 200 miles an hour. But where is it legal to go 200 miles an hour?”

I get the point but it still kind of tickles my fancy to think of my Concours going that fast. “I hit 189 miles an hour but the dang thing only gave me 68 miles to the gallon! What a gas hog!”

So anyway, it was a really good conversation and I couldn’t begin to use all the interesting stuff in that one short article for Rider so all the extra will make for some good blog posts here. Stay tuned.

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Exploring Unpaved Colorado: Tarryall and the Hayman Fire

June 24th, 2013
Forest road through denuded hills.

The road winding through the area scorched by the Hayman Fire.

The whole point of getting a dual-sport bike was to explore parts of Colorado where the road is not paved. We did that this weekend.

The plan was to go down the road to Tarryall Reservoir and then loop back up to Bailey on a series of roads. We didn’t follow the agenda.

First off, we got off U.S. 285 about a mile and a half east of Jefferson, rather than at Jefferson as planned. That put us on Park County Road 56, Lost Park Road, rather than Park CR 77, which is Tarryall Road. That was fine because CR 56 was gravel whereas, as we learned, CR 77 has been paved all the way to Tarryall Reservoir. We ended going up through some beautiful country that we had never seen before, and that’s the whole point.

We met up with Tarryall Road a little north of the reservoir and cruised past and the pavement ended. But only for now. Turns out that the entire way from Jefferson down to Lake George, on U.S. 24 just west of Florrisant, is in the process of being paved. And what a nice route! Once they finish this will be a must-ride street bike route. It’s not very often that an entire new paved road becomes available. This will be a good one.

We didn’t go all the way to Lake George, however. I had been reading in Steve Farson’s terrific book, The Complete Guide to Motorcycling Colorado, about Matukat, a series of roads that runs from Bailey down past Wellington Lake and down through the heart of the area burned by the Hayman Fire a few years ago. This road meets up with Tarryall Road a few miles north of Lake George and we turned onto it, heading back north again.

As Steve describes it in the book, “From the roads you ride to the sights you see, this route delivers big time.”

Part of the route is wooded; much of it shows the charred landscape of the fire, although things are starting to green up again. It will be many years before the forest comes back the way it used to be but that provides an opportunity. We couldn’t help but think about how different the view is with so many of the trees gone. There were many places where we could see forever and the whole landscape was visible. If there had been tall trees lining the road we would have been happy to find the occasional unobstructed view so we could see the area around us. In fact, it makes me think about going back and shooting a bunch of photos from specific spots and then doing so again every 5 years for the next 30 years or so. And then what an interesting exhibition I could put on!

So we diverged from the agenda again along here. There are a number of intersecting roads and they’re not all well marked, so we missed our turn that would have taken us up by Wellington Lake and out at Bailey. Instead, we came out onto CO 126 down near Deckers and followed it up through Pine to catch U.S. 285 at Pine Junction.

Oh well, that just leaves us with a piece of road we still have to get to. Next time! And next time we’ll reverse course and head south from Bailey. And then probably find some different road going somewhere else. I mean, we’ve already seen Tarryall Road now. Although I will be back there on my Concours or my CB750 when that road is finished.

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My Inglorious Ride to Work Day

June 20th, 2013
My Concours laying on its side.

This was not my smoothest move of the day.

Monday was National Ride Your Motorcycle to Work Day, so I did. I try to help promote this thing every year but it has been a long time since I’ve had an actual job to ride to. I do now, so I did.

You’ve probably already noticed the photo of my Kawasaki Concours laying on its side. Oh, yeah–that.

So I got to work expecting to see a whole bunch of bikes in the parking lot. Normally there are quite a few guys who ride pretty much every day when the weather permits. I was pretty surprised to get there and find the only other bike in this one of two motorcycle parking areas was that Honda Ruckus off to the right there. Didn’t ever get down to see who was parked in the second area.

OK, no big deal. I got off and set the bike on the side stand with that yellow disc under it so it wouldn’t sink into the asphalt. But with the slope of the lot my bike was sitting up too straight, worrying me that a good stiff wind could blow it over. It has happened before. No problem, I’ll just rock it up onto the center stand.

I have no explanation for what ensued. I’ve rocked that bike onto the center stand hundreds if not thousands of time. But the first time I tried it I couldn’t get it up. So I tried again. But something was wrong and instead of rocking it onto the stand, it just tipped over. Man, do I hate it when that happens!

Right at that moment there was no one around to ask for assistance so I took a whack at it myself. But a Concours is pretty darn heavy. I was getting nowhere when a guy I don’t know but had seen around the building came along and offered to help. We quickly got it back up. No damage.

He told me he rides a Vulcan but I was too distracted to pay much attention to anything else he told me about the bike. Next time I see him I’ll thank him again and ask.

So OK, it was no big deal but it sure was annoying. Plus, I’ve never had to pick that bike up all by myself. I’ve done that with my Honda but this bike is heavier. I’m not sure I could have. I sure wasn’t having any success before this other guy came along. Maybe the brain fart that was in effect that made me drop the bike was still in effect as I tried to lift it.

At least I rode to work on Ride to Work Day. Where were the rest of you guys?

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Biker Quote for Today

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. — G. K. Chesterton.

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Posted in Kawasaki | 1 Comment »

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