Passes & Canyons Blog

A rest stop in Yellowstone, just before the second patch of construction.

The OFMC left Cody headed into Yellowstone National Park wondering just how bad the tourist traffic would be. We weren’t going in to see the park–we’ve all been there many times–we just needed to get through and out the north gate at Gardiner. If there had been a realistic alternative we would have avoided the park.

Somewhat to our surprise, the road from Cody to the park was not busy and as we got into the park the road was still not busy. Maybe we were going to have a pleasant ride after all.

U.S. 14 into the park goes up over a small pass and it was inevitable that we would get behind some campers going up the hill but there were passing lanes and some of the camper drivers were polite and used the pull-outs to let other traffic pass. Nice. We got down on the other side to where the road runs along Yellowstone Lake and all was clear sailing. And then we hit the construction zone.

For about 12 miles or so, from Yellowstone Lake to Fishing Bridge, the road was totally ripped up. I didn’t mind because I was on my V-Strom but Dennis was on his Indian and Bill was on his Harley. Neither of them ever willingly gets off onto the gravel. This time they had no choice.

So we weaved our way through and around loose gravel and mud holes. Loose gravel is one thing but you really don’t want to go into the mud holes. We did our best. And we uneventfully reached the intersection where the road goes north or west, with our route north.

I was in the lead and the construction ran all the way to the very lip of the road we were getting onto. It was not clearly visible at all but just before I hit the pavement there was a considerable dip that sent my front end first down and then up sharply to the point of getting some air with my front tire. Then bump-boom as the rear did the same. OK, glad I have deep suspension. What about those guys?

Dennis was right behind me and he saw me go up and down. But he’s short and sure as heck didn’t want to come to a stop in the middle of that mess, with no way to touch the ground. So he powered on through. What else could he do? Bill followed, doing the same. Great. No harm, no foul.

It was on this stretch going north that we did encounter the idiotic tourist delays Yellowstone is famous for. Is there a bison way over there? Everybody stop and grab your cameras. Oh, we’re in the middle of the road? Who cares?

So we got on through that section and headed west at Canyon Village, over toward the Norris Geyser Basin, then north hoping for clear sailing out of the park.

Wrong. Long before we reached Mammoth Hot Springs we ran into more construction. More gravel. More slow going.

While this stretch was in pretty good shape, not as torn up as the stretch coming in, it was wet. The truck had obviously just recently sprayed water to keep the dust down, and while there was no dust, the wet made things very slippery. Time to take it really easy around these curves.

And finally we were out of the park. OK, that wasn’t so bad. We’ve definitely seen it worse. Try cruising past Old Faithful just after that geyser has done its thing, for example, and everyone is leaving. Yeah, that wasn’t too bad.

Biker Quote for Today

Reasons not to date a motorcyclist: Our idea of a date night is riding to a sleazy biker bar.

Strapping the bike down before driving to Idaho Falls.

Our experience on the recent OFMC trip where Dennis inadvertently put diesel in his Indian has led me to think about some things I hadn’t considered before. Primarily, the importance of being close to someone who can work on your motorcycle when need be.

It’s no secret that there are one heck of a lot more Hondas or Harleys on the road than there are Indians. First off, the modern-day Indians are a much newer brand than Harley, plus they cost a lot. So–so far at least–Indian is sort of a niche brand.

Thus, the economics of the situation dictate that there are a lot fewer Indian dealerships around and also not all that many independent shops with experience working on Indians. And when you paid something in the mid-20s or more for your Chieftain I’m guessing you aren’t comfortable letting just any wrench jockey tear into it.

But what do you do when you break down? In Dennis’s case, he rented a U-Haul truck and we loaded the bike in and drove more than 200 miles out of our way to get to the nearest dealer. That will disrupt your trip in a hurry.

If it had been Bill, on the other hand, who rides a Harley, we would only have needed to get the bike another 40 miles or so in the direction we were heading to find a Harley shop. Same thing for me on my Suzuki V-Strom. And there are plenty of all-makes shops that would have been fully competent to work on either of our bikes. Perhaps they would also have been fully competent to work on Dennis’s bike but as I say, he was not particularly willing to take that chance.

So obviously, if you’re like Dennis and you ride a bike where repair options are sparse you are going to make an extra careful point to be sure the bike is in top condition before you take off on a trip like this. But Dennis didn’t break down; he made a mistake at the pumps and grabbed the wrong pump.

I’m sure this is not an irrelevant issue for some people when they’re deciding which bike to buy. And it has to be a chicken and egg thing: how do you get the sales without the dealer networks, but how do you support the dealer networks before you have the sales? I guess in this case it helps to be a big corporation like Polaris that can afford to subsidize the new brand for awhile from sales of the established brand. But even they don’t have infinite resources.

I guess I’ll stick with my Honda, Kawasaki, and Suzuki bikes. There are a lot of them out there.

Meanwhile, I want to note that as I prepped to write this piece I googled Honda, Harley, and Indian dealerships in Colorado and was amazed–as I periodically am–at how many shops come and go. And then there are those who change their names. I try to keep my “Colorado Motorcycle Dealers and Repair Shops” page reasonably current but this is an ever-changing target. I ended up adding about eight new shops and revising the name on two. About once a year I try to go through and click each link to see who is no longer in business, and there are always a bunch of those. Ah, the joys of running a website.

Biker Quote for Today

Reasons not to date a motorcyclist: We never ask for directions. Getting lost is usually the point on a motorcycle.

The Biker Buddy logo.

I have talked numerous times about the Motorcycle Travel Network (MTN) and once at least about Biker Buddy. Both of these are similar to Airbnb in that it’s a matter of motorcyclists providing accommodations for other traveling motorcyclists.

But I haven’t said much lately and there’s a reason: It has been more than two years since we’ve had an MTN guest and in the almost two years since I signed up for Biker Buddy we have had no one contact us about a stay.

Until Monday night. On Monday night I got a Biker Buddy email saying that Maureen would like to stay with us on Tuesday night. That would have been great except we had plans to go to the Rockies game Tuesday night. So what time would she be arriving?

Here’s where it got frustrating. There may be ways to contact potential guests directly but because this was our very first we have no experience in doing so. This thing is an app on my phone and it showed that Maureen had requested a stay. I tried tapping her name, hoping to go to a profile that would list an phone number or email but it did not. I tapped a drop-down menu and one option was “Send an email” but when I tapped that it wanted me to fill in the email address, which I could not do.

What to do? Judy insisted that I cancel the reservation because if we couldn’t be here she should not be coming by expecting us. I did tap the cancel button but was told that a reservation cannot be canceled within 48 hours of the arrival. The only thing that left was the “Confirm reservation” button. If I tapped that we would be confirming but with no idea whether we’d be here when she came. If I did not tap it, perhaps she would call, or else figure out we weren’t able to accommodate her.

On the chance that she might come by because the reservation had not been canceled, I left a note on the front door with my phone number and telling her she was welcome but we would not be home till late. No one was here waiting for us when we got home.

Then on Wednesday I checked my email and found that around 4 p.m. the day before Maureen had emailed me. That was followed up about half an hour later by an email from Ginger, one of the folks who runs Biker Buddy. But I didn’t think to check my email before we left for the game.

It turns out Maureen was expecting to arrive around 10:30 p.m. You never know how long a baseball game will last but this was a short one and we were home before 10:30. It would all have been fine. So darn. We enjoy hosting other bikers when they come through town and we’re sorry we missed Maureen. I explained to Ginger what happened; maybe they’ll revise the app to make it possible for hosts to do what I wanted to do, i.e., directly contact the guest.

So that’s a disappointment. But it’s nice to finally get a request after two years being a member. In the meantime, the Motorcycle Travel Network seems to be fading into the sunset. We had not had a guest in quite awhile but when I checked I found that our membership had expired. So I renewed for two years. Well, that two years expired in February and we had zero guests during that time. That’s sad. We’ve had nothing but good experiences with MTN, both as hosts and guests.

If you are comfortable with the whole Airbnb idea, you really should try one or both of these programs. There is no cost to host on Biker Buddy, while membership in MTN is $40 per year or $60 for two years. Biker Buddy pays you $40 per night to host, while you get $20 per night with MTN. And most importantly, you meet a lot of good people who share your motorcycling passion. Just do it, OK?

Biker Quote for Today

It is incredible what a rider filled with irrational desire can achieve. — Dr. Claudio Costa

Cruising past Yellowstone Lake.

This year’s OFMC trip was a surprising one in terms of the temperature. The whole week before leaving Denver we had had temps near 100 and so it was on the day we departed. We really wanted to get moving so we could at least have some breeze.

This is Colorado, however, and when you get up high the temperature drops. So as we had taken off dressed for heat, crossing Berthoud Pass was, shall we say, chilly. This set the stage for a week of see-saw temperatures.

By the time we got down to Winter Park it was hot again and that heat stayed with us up to Walden and then to Saratoga, Wyoming. In fact it was so hot in Saratoga that we parked next to a small office building where there was shade on the east side. There was nowhere to sit or anything but we wanted to get off the bikes and we absolutely wanted shade, so we took what we could get. Then we cruised on into Rawlins for the night.

The next day we were going to be crossing the heart of Wyoming, which we know from experience tends to be a long, hot, dusty ride. Again, we dressed for the heat. We had gone about 40 miles when I pulled over. I was cold! The day had started out cool and it was not getting a bit warmer. Bill and Dennis were happy to layer up, too.

We took off again but then reached a rest area and while we were stopped there we added another layer. It was still darn chilly! This was totally unexpected.

Our destination that day was Cody and when we reached Riverton we made another stop. Now it was definitely heating up and layers came off. Then, as we neared Cody, the heat really set in. Where was this heat this morning?

Come morning and this time we were warned. Dennis noticed some riders coming in from the west, from Yellowstone, where we were headed, and they were warmly dressed. So we dressed warmly and were glad we did. It was sure nice to be getting away from that 100 degree heat in Denver, which we could see was still going on.

We got through Yellowstone, spent the night at Chico, Montana, and headed up to Livingston to catch I-90 toward Missoula. Then we got rerouted toward Idaho Springs by Dennis’s by now legendary mistake of putting red diesel into his bike’s tank. We ended up heading south on I-15 and it was a pleasant day. Getting used to the cooler temps I had even put on my electric vest before he headed south with the Indian in the U-Haul, though I certainly did not have it turned on.

That changed when we reached the state line between Montana and Idaho. Just like going through a door into another climate, suddenly it got really cold and I flipped the “On” switch on my power cord. Boy, did that heat feel good!

And then about five miles outside of Idaho Falls it suddenly got blazing hot! Of course I turned the vest off but I couldn’t wait to get stopped to tear off my extra layers. How was it so cold just 50 miles ago? It’s not like we came down out of the mountains or anything.

For the rest of the trip the temperature fluctuations calmed down a bit. As expected it was hot in Vernal, Utah. As expected, it was comfortable through most of Colorado, only getting hot again as we neared Denver.

But the thing that really got me was how we headed out initially expecting hot weather and how little of that we encountered, yet all the while Denver was baking. Meanwhile, those folks in cars are pretty much oblivious to all this. I’ll take the bike any day.

Biker Quote for Today

The cheapest part of a project bike build is the initial purchase.

You can see that flashing, hollow bar right in the center of this shot.

The benefit of being very familiar with your motorcycle is obvious. You know where everything is and you know what to expect. Still, there are some things that only come into play occasionally and so perhaps you’re not as familiar with them as you are with the bike in general.

I went for a ride yesterday with members of the Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Riders Club (RMMRC) and this was one of those times.

I was on the V-Strom and unlike my other bikes, the V-Strom has a gas gauge and no reserve. Because this bike has a larger tank and gets better gas mileage than my friends’ bikes I generally find myself filling up before I would actually need to. I’ve never run out of gas on this bike. Which means that I have never found the true limit to how far it can go on a tank of gas.

Taking off yesterday I thought I had plenty of gas. The gauge is in bars; five bars is full. I didn’t look at it closely but was figuring just from how much I’d ridden it lately that I had four bars. It wasn’t until it was too late to do anything about it that I noticed I was at three bars. That made me a little uncomfortable but I still figured I had plenty.

Our route was to be out U.S. 285 up to Pine Junction, south to Deckers, and then back along the Platte, up by the Rampart Range, and down to Sedalia. Then home. Not that long a ride.

So there I was at three bars and to my dismay, I dropped to two bars right away. Oh gosh, I’ve got a whole lot less gas than I thought I did.

OK, now here’s what you need to understand about this gas gauge. The five bars do not represent equal amounts of gas. I generally will get 100 miles before the first bar disappears and I’m running on four bars. Then the next three go away fairly quickly and then the fifth bar is closer to the first in mileage. I was talking about it once to my friend, Kevin, who sold me the bike, and I can’t remember the figure he threw out but basically he said you have a whole lot of miles left when you go to one bar.

Another thing to understand is that switching between the odometer and the trip meter on this bike is a pain in the butt. And it’s one or the other, as opposed to my other bikes where you see both at the same time. So after riding this bike for more than six years I still don’t have a good feel for how many miles each bar represents.

Anyway, at two bars I was a bit concerned but not a lot. And then it went down to one bar really quickly. Uh oh, I don’t like this.

Now, what happens when you go to one bar is, I would guess, intended to make you nervous and persuade you to fill up as soon as you can. First a flashing gas pump icon appears next to that one bar but then you go a few miles further and the solid black bar changes to a hollow red flashing bar, as shown in the photo above. Now I’m really getting uncomfortable.

The saving grace in all this is my experience the first time this happened. I was out with the OFMC and we had spent the night in Meeker. I had arrived there via a different route than the other guys and unbeknownst to me, they had gassed up upon arriving in town. I had not. We headed out of town in the morning and as we neared Rangely I saw I was down to two bars. Just shy of town we turned south on CO 139 over Douglas Pass down to Loma. And very soon after that I went to one bar and it started flashing red. Oh crap.

It’s about 70 miles from Rangely to Loma with no gas in between. I sweated that ride. But I got there. So that told me I could get at least 70 miles on one bar. So there we were yesterday up in Deckers, and I knew it was less than 70 to home. But I was still nervous. Still, I was with other guys and I carry a siphon hose on each of my bikes so I figured I’d be fine.

We reached I-25 at Castle Pines Parkway and split up and then I only needed to go another 10-12 miles–with no ready assistance at hand. With each mile I felt more and more relaxed and rolled happily into our driveway. As I said, it’s really good to be familiar with your bike.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker if you’ve spent more on your motorcycle than your education.

A perfect example of why this fight is hopeless, in Sunday’s Denver Post.

This battle has been lost. I’m throwing in the towel.

It doesn’t matter what the truth is, reality wins. And the reality this time around is that the ignorant general public has taken the word “moped,” which describes a power-assisted bicycle with pedals, and given that name to scooters, which have no pedals. The “ped” in “moped” is a direct reference to those pedals. Scooters do not have pedals.

It is the advent of these stand-up scooters from companies such as Lime that put the last nail in the moped coffin. Everywhere you go downtown you either see mostly young people zipping around on these rent-by-the-minute scooters or you see them parked awaiting the next rider to come unlock them using their smart phones. These things are also known as scooters, but there was never any confusion when the only scooters of this sort were ridden by young kids who made the things themselves.

Now that these stand-up scooters are everywhere the other scooters are known as mopeds. It avoids confusion. Never mind that they are not in fact mopeds.

You see it in the article pictured above. Just as the stand-up scooters have proliferated as short-term rentals, companies are now seeking to position “mopeds” in the same way. Do these companies know that what they’re marketing are really scooters? If they do, they don’t care. The public calls them mopeds so just go with the flow. I mean, heck, in South Carolina they actually use license plates for scooters that call them mopeds.

So what about actual mopeds? What are they called now? And that’s not merely an academic question because actual mopeds are now seeing a big resurgence in popularity. Well, they’re called power-assisted bicycles, as in the descriptive phrase I used above.

I’m very torn here. I worked for many years as a technical writer and my approach there was always to use the clearest, yet accurate, term available in order to avoid reader confusion. In this case, it is just wrong to refer to things that are actually scooters as “mopeds.” But if I do call scooters “scooters” then that confuses the reader. It is impossible to be both accurate and clear.

So, as I say, I give up. This battle is lost. But I suspect in the future I will go with the awkward approach of saying something such as “scooters, which many people refer to as mopeds.” I just can’t bring myself to say something I know is not true, even if the rest of the world is just fine with that.

Biker Quote for Today

Why motorcycles are better than men: Motorcycles don’t go bald.

All geared up on the V-Strom.

It occurred to me on this latest OFMC trip that I was road-testing various articles of gear for the first time. That is to say, the first extended test, as opposed to going for a two-hour ride. So what’s the scoop?

Riding Pants
I had tried out my new riding pants on day rides but this was a quantum leap. I brought only one pair of jeans and the rest were lightweight, comfortable pants for in the evening. I planned to ride each day with the riding pants and only underwear underneath.

When I tried them on at home before the trip, though, it was the first time in warmer weather and thus the first time I didn’t at least have long underwear on. I found the armor in the knees rubbed uncomfortably on my knees. So I took an old pair of socks I was throwing away and cut off the toes. Then I pulled them up over my knees, with the heels covering my knees and then tried the pants on. The socks worked great.

This system got more of a test on the trip because a couple days I forgot to put the “knee socks” on. And the armor rubbed uncomfortably. So I’m sold on the socks. Plus, I’m sold on the pants. For one or two days on the trip I decided to wear the jeans instead. You know, I never noticed before how tight and constricting jeans are, at least compared to these looser fitting, very comfortable riding pants. I’m sold.

I will say, though, that at times when we were standing around and it was hot, these riding pants were definitely hotter than jeans would have been. Kind of like keeping your jacket on.

Riding Jacket
Oh yes, the jacket. That was new as well.

I like this jacket. It’s mesh with a zip-in liner. On the hot days it was so nice to have that cooling air movement passing over me. On cooler days, with the liner in it still needed assistance, such as a sweat shirt, to be warm enough but that was not hard to address. And pockets? I mentioned pockets previously and there are so many I didn’t even use all of them.

The jacket is definitely comfortable all day. With the armor it doesn’t compress as compactly as I might like so it wasn’t always possible to stuff it into the top bag at stops but I can live with that. I’d certainly rather have the armor in case it is needed.

Tank Bag
My newest acquisition was a Wolfman tank bag for the V-Strom. Though not as large as the tank bag I’ve had on the Concours for many years, this little baby proved itself to be extremely useful.

There are always a variety of smaller things you want to keep handy on a bike and up till now I had been keeping them stashed in the top bag on the back. But that was never ideal because in order to get in there I need to dismount, take the key out of the ignition, and open the thing. Then do the reverse to get ready to ride again. With the tank bag, I just unzip, do what I need to do, and rezip.

I kept granola bars, my camera, sunscreen, a cap–all sorts of stuff in that bag. Plus, at stops, I would stash my gloves in it. This tank bag is a big winner.

Top Bag
Speaking of the top bag, I’ve definitely road-tested it well over a period of years but this time out I ran into an issue. The bag is mounted on two rails on the bottom, with four bolts. In the six years I’ve had the bag the bike has been dropped at least four times that I can recall. Apparently, that impact has caused those bolts to rip through the rather cheap rails and/or the even cheaper plastic connection points on the bottom of the bag.

As I was packing to go I noticed that it wobbled a bit on its mounts and an inspection showed that it was only attached by two bolts, not the four as originally. It has probably been this way for awhile so I didn’t see any immediate issue but I figure the next time the bike gets dropped that bag is likely to come completely off, with no good way to put it back on. Still, just for insurance, I decided to stabilize it a bit using a bungee cord.

The problem there was that I kept undoing the bungee when I needed to get in the bag and then forgetting to reconnect it after. So I would be cruising down the road and realize that the cord was hanging loose. Now, if it was hanging loose over the side that could be a real hazard but I found that it was always just sitting there on the seat behind me. Still, there was always the danger so I finally figured out to hook the loose end to my handlebars so there was no way I could ride away without remembering to reattach it.

Bottom line, though, is that I expect I’m going to need a new top bag at some point in the future.

So there we go. A bunch of new gear and I’m very pleased with each item. Cool.

Biker Quote for Today

Don’t let the fear of what could happen make nothing happen.

A quick look at our riding gear makes it really easy to figure out who is riding which bike.

In the early days of the OFMC we were a pretty homogeneous bunch. At first we had two Hondas and a Yamaha but John soon gave his Virago to his son and bought his own Honda Shadow, nearly identical to Bill’s. I, of course, was on my CB750 Custom.

And our clothes were pretty standard: blue jeans and whatever layers on top we could piece together. It was a while before any of us got around to buying an actual motorcycle jacket. When we did they were generic jackets, not trademarked with by motorcycle make.

A lot has changed in 30 years. While I still have the CB, I rarely ride it on the annual bike trip any more, and nobody else even owns a Honda now. We are also fully geared up now, and manufacturer brands show up a lot.

This really became evident when, on our recent trip, we stopped at a rest area in Utah. Others stopped at the rest area included a young couple from California. At one point the guy came directly to me and asked how I liked my V-Strom. He himself has a V-Strom that he got from his dad and he loves it.

We didn’t ask but he volunteered that it was pretty easy to know who rode what bikes. Dennis rides an Indian and he had his jacket off, revealing an Indian t-shirt. Bill rides a Harley and his leather jacket is emblazoned with the Harley logo on the back.

And there I was, with the only semi sportbike wearing a mesh jacket and motorcycle riding pants, not jeans. The kind of gear you’re not likely to see on someone on a Harley or an Indian. Not too hard to add one and one and come up with two.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Clothes make the man.” I offer this variation: “Clothes make the make.” If that dude is wearing a Harley jacket he’s probably riding that Harley.

Biker Quote for Today

You’re a biker wannabe if you ride a Ducati. (OK, over time I’ve put up a lot of these “wannabe” quotes but have never found an appropriate place for this one. I guess it’s because it is just inappropriate. I love Ducatis. Rode a Monster once and what a bike!)