Passes & Canyons Blog

A short stop in Monument.

How odd is it to say I was glad while riding Wednesday that I was dressed warmly enough? I mean, the daily highs the last week or more have been in the upper 90s and I’ve been riding with my mesh jacket and only a sleeveless t-shirt underneath.

Wednesday was different. I didn’t know how different until I stepped out to get the bike ready. It was chilly–Chilly!–and looked like rain to the west. I opted to wear a sweatshirt under the jacket along with the t-shirt.

That proved to be the perfect combination. It was quite cool riding but very comfortable. After such beastly heat it was a wonderful day to ride.

So this was one of the usual Wednesday RMMRC rides. I met the group over at the pancake house. Several of the regulars were there but not going on the ride. Of those riding, only Dave was familiar to me. One other was a long-time member who I’m not familiar with and the rest were new folks, brought in by the Meetup.org posting. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: Meetup is a great way to bring new members to your club. Once the RMMRC switched from its old website to Meetup there has been an explosion of new members.

The ride was nothing special, just the standard loop through Monument. South through Sedalia to Palmer Lake and Monument and then over east to CO 83 and back north to the city. All the socializing was beforehand in the pancake house. But the riding was sweet, so cool, after such heat. And we never got rained on.

Biker Quote for Today

You might be a Yuppie biker if you buy bikes as investments.

The OFMC will not be going to New Mexico this year as we had planned.

With departure for this year’s OFMC trip drawing near, we were through into confusion when Dennis got word that New Mexico has issued an order that anyone coming into the state must quarantine for either two weeks or the length of their stay, whichever is shorter.

So, right. We were going to be in New Mexico for three days and they’re saying we should quarantine for that entire time. Plus, the Indian casino hotel we had booked in Espanola told Bill when he called that all their restaurants are closed, with only their snack bar open. Short notice but revisions were clearly in order.

There are two things that are givens on any OFMC trip: golf and gambling. Frequently we combine the two. That didn’t look possible now, so we figured out a new plan. Our first night will be in Alamosa and we agreed to head from to Gunnison for two nights, including a day of golf, and then go for one night to the Sky Ute Casino Resort to get in the gambling segment. Everyone had their assignment as to who to call.

Text messages started flying quickly. Bill found out the Sky Ute was closed. And I found out that the motel we like to stay at in Gunnison, which is directly adjacent to the golf course, had changed hands and names and their prices had about doubled. Yikes. Let’s go to Plan C.

Dennis called Cripple Creek and made us reservations at the Double Eagle Hotel & Casino. We’ll go there from Alamosa. Bill was able to get us a tee time in Gunnison so I had to look around a bit, finally finding a different motel with rates that are not sky high. We just won’t be able to walk out the back door directly onto the golf course.

After that the trip will get back on track as planned so long ago.

I have to admit, I was starting to have reservations about the whole trip. Infections rates across the country are now reaching record levels, although not where we’re headed. Plus, what better social distancing can you do than riding a motorcycle? The one issue will be eating. Restaurants are open, and we’ll have our masks with us, and at worst we can go to grocery stores for food. At motels it will just be us in our rooms and obviously we all accept that we’ll be exposed to each other, but none of us has had any exposure we know of.

Some people might argue that we should cancel the trip, but some people made the same argument when Judy and I went to New Orleans in early March (after Mardi Gras, not during). We decided to go and we don’t regret it. We had a good trip, we didn’t get sick, and it proved to be the only trip we’ll probably get to do this year. We did cut it short by one day, however, when we found the world closing down around us.

If this turns out to be a bad idea I guarantee I’ll be telling you about it. But I’m optimistic.

Biker Quote for Today

I can see Elvis
Throned like a king astride a golden Harley
Smoking a reefer he just rolled
Full of Acapulco gold
With Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley — The Waterboys

A larger OFMC in 2013.

The OFMC started off as just three of us, John, Bill, and me. Over time it grew to where we once had about 11 guys on our annual ride. Now we’re back to three: Bill, Dennis, and me. As this year’s trip nears I’ve been thinking about all those guys who came and left.

The big number one is John. John got this thing started. He was the first of us to buy a motorcycle, and after riding behind him for a while I figured I had to buy my own bike. When Bill saw us having so much fun he decided he needed one, too, and the OFMC was born.

So why is John out? Age and health. He’s suffering from macular degeneration as well as a number of other health issues. He has finally grown into the original name of the group, Old Farts Motorcycle Club. We weren’t old farts when the name was chosen with tongue in cheek but he has definitely gotten old now. We’re sorry to lose you John.

Not everyone ages at the same rate, however, and Bill and I are both much younger than our years.

Johnathon, John’s son, was the fourth member of the group. John bought a new Honda Shadow and gave his old Yamaha Virago to Johnathon. So Johnathon started coming along. After a number of years though, he felt the pressures a lot of dads of young families feel: his kids need a dad and motorcycling is too hazardous. So he gave it up, and has not come back.

Bill’s son Jason followed a similar arc. His dad gave him the old bike when he bought a new one and he rode with us for a few years. Then he decided he needed to do the dad thing and choose his kids over the bike. Jason, however, was recently given another bike and is riding again. But he’s still not coming on the trip; too much of a time commitment for someone with a family and not a lot of vacation time.

Friggs was the fifth member of the group. Friggs is Bill’s older brother and while he is in good health, he took a spill down in New Mexico a couple years ago and that convinced him to give up riding. He’s not the first to make that decision.

Back in 2004 we were joined by Todd, who was the friend of Jason. We figured Todd would become a regular but a couple months after the trip he got in a very serious crash and that was it for Todd. No more riding.

Along the way Dennis joined us. Dennis is married to Friggs and Bill’s sister Janice. And Dennis is still with us.

Randy was a friend of Johnathon’s and he came with us for a good number of years, even after Johnathon dropped out. But now he has just faded away. Didn’t come a couple years ago and not since; no real explanation.

Brett was a friend of Jason’s as well, and he came along for plenty of years. He doesn’t have any kids but following a divorce and a new wife he seems to have concluded he would rather spend vacation time with her than with us. So he has faded as well.

Brett has a brother, Matt, who came with us one year, but I think he felt he was a bit young to be hanging with the geezers so he never came back.

Ray is the cousin of John’s wife, Cheryl. Ray is a hard-core biker and he joined us on a couple occasions but with John out I doubt we’ll be seeing Ray again, although he definitely still rides with his own group.

That’s where we stand today. I expect the three of us to continue riding for many years yet. Maybe Jason will rejoin us in a few. Who knows, maybe Johnathon, too. Or maybe someone else–you never know.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker if when you plan a vacation you set up time to visit the bike shops first.

Scooters are harder to break than motorcycles.

At this point I’ve been riding motorcycles for so long it’s all become so second nature. I remember at first when it was new and I always was fully alert and focused just because I had to be. I thought back then that the idea that I would ever find myself struggling to stay awake while riding, as often happens in a car on a long drive, was totally absurd. Not true these days.

Thinking back even further, though, I go to a trip my lady friend and I made to Mazatlan. This was the only time I’ve ever ridden a bike in Mexico. It’s not a tale of glory, though; it’s a tale of ignominy.

Although I’d ridden motorcycles every chance I got since the time I was 15, I never had that many opportunities in those early years so the skills never had a chance to solidify and settle permanently in my brain. That only happened when, at 37, I finally bought my first bike and started riding a lot.

I was probably about 30 when Sue, my girlfriend at the time, and I took a week’s vacation to Mazatlan. Unlike me, Sue had owned motorcycles and ridden a great deal. One entire year in college her only transportation had been her motorcycle and she had even managed to ride it when there was snow on the streets, using her feet as outriggers.

It was only natural then, when we saw a place in Mazatlan renting motorcycles and scooters by the hour, that we decided to go for it. It turned out that the place only had one motorcycle available at that moment, plus some scooters. This being Mexico, of course the guy in charge set me up on the cycle and picked out a scooter for Sue. No self-respecting man would want to be seen on a scooter while his woman rode a cycle, would they? No way.

Never mind that Sue was the experienced one and ought to have been the one on the bike. We could swap once we had gotten away from the rental place.

Scooters, of course, have no gears; you just twist the throttle. Motorcycles have gears and you flip the toe lever down to get into first, and then flip it up for all other gears. Surely I must have understood this other times I had ridden but it was one of those bits of knowledge that had not stuck. Sue probably mentioned it to me before we took off but in the excitement of the moment that didn’t stick either.

We blasted away from the rental place and as the revs went up I pulled in the clutch and toed the lever down to get into second. Down. Letting out the clutch, the engine revved very high and I was clearly not in a higher gear. Again I clutched and toed the lever down. Again the engine raced and things were not right.

Maybe I was doing something wrong, I thought. Maybe I needed to be going faster before I shifted. I cranked the throttle harder, the engine really screaming now, and pulled in the clutch, flicked down on the shift lever. Releasing the clutch it was just like before.

It was about this time that the rental guy came racing up on a scooter waving us over. “Stop! Stop!” he yelled. “You break the bike!” Not allowing any protest he informed us he was taking the bike and giving me his scooter. And he kept muttering about “You break the bike.” Sue told me again after he left that second and higher gears are up, not down, not that it mattered any more.

So we scooted around Mazatlan for awhile and had a fun time anyway. Hey, scooters are fun. And they’re a lot harder for idiots to break.

Biker Quote for Today

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning difficult.

How can you call this an old bike?

Maybe you’ve had this experience. You buy a brand new motorcycle and you ride it. And you keep on riding it. And then one day someone mentions that you sure have an old bike. What? This is not an old bike! But then you count the years and . . . yes it is.

My 1999 Kawasaki Concours is like that. I bought it new from Vickery in ’99. About 10 years or so later I took it over for service and they told me they don’t generally like to work on older bikes like mine. They fired me as a customer. Aurora Honda had done the same some years earlier.

I will interject here that recently I learned that you can sometimes get your older bike worked on at a dealership. But it’s iffy.

So I turned to Mountain Thunder Motorsports for all my service needs. Joel was operating out of a building on old Hampden over near Federal Boulevard for many years and he became my go-to guy. Then his landlord terminated his lease. This may have been a boon for Joel because he now works at home–no rent!–and he tells me he’s very busy. The one hassle is that he now has to pick your bike up, take it home, do the work, and then bring it back to you. But he makes it work.

Anyway, my Concours needed a new front tire. I want to ride it on the OFMC trip in a few weeks and that old tire was not going to make it. For good measure, I asked Joel to also do a complete tune-up, something the bike had not had in probably way too long.

This morning I took it for my first ride since Joel brought it back and oh man, what a difference! I pushed the starter button and it fired up instantly. That was what it used to do when it was new but it hadn’t done that in a very long time. And it ran so smoothly. Plus, now it has a brand new front tire. How nice to have tread.

So now it’s just like new, right? Unfortunately, no.

When we were getting ready two years ago to go on a trip to Canada with Willie and Jungle and some other folks I arranged for Jungle to put a new rear tire on the bike. When he got the rear end opened up he showed me that some seal back there had failed. He packed the rear hub with grease and said that would take care of it but at some point I would probably need to have some work done.

I mentioned this to Joel and asked him to take a look, and he did, but he said while there was clearly a leak somewhere he couldn’t tell where without removing the radiator and other stuff up front. His advice was to clean away all the oil and dirt accumulated down there and then watch to see where new leakage might be coming from.

But oh golly, when I was riding the bike this morning it was just like new. How can you call this an old bike?

Biker Quote for Today

Why motorcycles are better than women: One gets in no trouble for storing disassembled pieces of the motorcycle in the basement.

Here’s an interesting shot from some years ago in California. Notice the gas prices.

It sure was sweet, wasn’t it, when gas prices dropped so low. Those days are over.

Back when everything was shut down AND Russia and Saudi Arabia were having a price war I watched as gas prices at the pump dropped lower and lower. Holy cow, what a great opportunity to save some money. Only problem was, like everyone else, I wasn’t going much of any place to use the gas I had. And I didn’t need gas. Between my car and three bikes, none of them were anywhere near low. But I really wanted to buy gas.

I finally reached a point where it made sense to fill my Honda. On May 8 I put 3.57 gallons in the Honda, at $1.189 per gallon. Total for the fill: $4.24. Terrific.

Then four days later I filled the Concours. It took 5.38 gallons and I paid $1.339 per gallon: total $7.21. I could get to like this.

I rode the Honda a good bit and filled it again on May 13. This time I paid $1.6999 per gallon. It took 3.35 gallons for a total of $5.69. Still not bad.

By June 14, when I filled the Kawi again I paid $2.269 a gallon. This time it cost $7.96 to put in 3.51 gallons. I don’t like the direction this is heading. And then on June 24 I put 3.09 gallons in the Suzuki and it cost $7.72, at $2.499 per gallon.

Welcome back to the real world. We knew it wouldn’t last but it was nice while it did. And I’m glad I got to buy at least a few gallons really cheap. I mean, $1.189 per gallon? In 2020? No one would have believed that a year ago.

In the meantime, the last time I put gas in my car was February 23. That’s the one I wish had been close to empty on May 8.

Biker Quote for Today

It takes both pistons and cylinders to make a bike run. One is not more important than the other.

There’s nothing more quintessential than an ice cream stop on a motorcycle ride.

Ain’t it grand to be able to do some of the old stuff, like riding out some place for lunch or ice cream. The RMMRC did both yesterday.

There were just five of us who showed at the meeting spot–mostly the hard core regulars, plus a guy, Rick, who I was not familiar with, although everyone else knew him well. The destination was Kiowa, for lunch at Patty Ann’s.

Patty Ann’s is a good place. I first encountered it when I was riding by myself out that way one day and figured I’d stop for lunch. There were a couple folks on motorcycles there so that is always encouraging. I was blown away, though, by how good the food was. I marked this place mentally as one to come back to.

Fast forward just a couple years and I have joined the RMMRC. Surprise: one of the club’s favorite rides in weather when you can’t go into the mountains was Kiowa, to Patty Ann’s.

So we all donned masks and walked in, and we pulled over a second table so we were sitting at least not elbow to elbow with each other. Then about the time we finished the meal Norvin came in. Norvin lives nearby so there was no point in him riding all the way into town just to ride back out.

We headed south to Elbert and past and then Robert led us on some roads I hadn’t been on, on a winding path over to Monument and we stopped again. For ice cream, at a place called the Rock House. Now that was a nice idea. And this was a nice place, with good ice cream they make themselves. Way too many places any more just serve up commercial ice cream, like Dreyer’s, which is good but you end up paying as much for a single scoop as a whole carton costs at the supermarket. I want ice cream that is made right there and that’s what the Rock House serves.

From Monument we continued north on 105 up to Sedalia and then U.S. 285 to the Daniels Park Road. Turning east onto Castle Pines Parkway the group splintered and everyone headed their own directions. Eat to ride, ride to eat is back.

Biker Quote for Today

Owning two bikes is useful because at least one can be raided for parts at any given time.

Up on top of Guanella Pass.

There were nine of us who showed up last week for the first breakfast-then-ride RMMRC outing in quite some time. The decision was made and we headed out for Guanella Pass.

I had missed a previous ride that was supposed to go over Guanella where I learned the next day that the pass was not yet open. These were some of the same folks and they told me that the time before they had gone as far as the barrier and had had to turn back. This time we knew the pass was open.

We crossed town on the newly opened/newly expanded C-470. For years this road was too crowded to bother with, and then for the last four years it has been under construction. Finally it was wide open and a fast run. We’ll see how long that lasts.

The direct way to go would have been out U.S. 285 but we took the nicer, narrow two-lane of the Deer Creek Canyon up to Turkey Creek Road and west to pick up 285 just down from Conifer. Then west on 285 to Grant, and a right turn up Guanella Pass Road (Park County 62 on this side).

It had been quite hot down low but as we climbed it cooled off. I was hoping it wouldn’t be too cold up on top. It was also breezy and I was hoping we would not encounter howling winds up on top. No problem either way; up on top it was calm and just pleasantly cool. Before heading down Robert even removed his jacket and rode in just his shirt. That would have been too chilly for me but I did remove the liner from my jacket, and later was very glad I did.

We stopped up on top and I noticed a much reduced effort at distancing than previous RMMRC rides have entailed. People are relaxing.

Coming up on the Park County side the road was extremely clean and clear. Heading down on the Clear Creek County side there was still a bit of sand on some of the tighter corners near the top. Be alert.

On top the question came up, do we just cruise down to Georgetown and get on I-70 and blast home? I said it was possible to go almost all the way back to Denver on just a very few miles of interstate. You take the lead, they said.

Down we went to Georgetown and through town and on toward Idaho Springs, not on the superslab but on old U.S. 6. At Idaho Springs you have to get on the highway for a few miles but then you can get off at U.S. 6 heading down Clear Creek Canyon, but take a quick right up Floyd Hill on old U.S. 40, which runs alongside I-70 in places and far away from the highway in other places. You do have to get back on I-70 at Evergreen Parkway but you get back off again and at Genesee. Then 40 runs all the way down to Golden.

So approaching the U.S. 6 exit I had six bikes behind me. As I got off I saw several had stayed on the interstate. Guess they just want to get home. But then when I got onto 40 not one bike followed me. Wow, I guess everyone had different plans. Not a problem; I like riding alone. I toodled my way on home, roasting now even without the liner in my jacket, and was glad to walk into the cool house.

Biker Quote for Today

It’s just crazy bein’ here with you, as a bad motorcycle with the devil in the seat, going ninety miles an hour down a dead end street. — Bob Dylan