Passes & Canyons Blog

We had some fabulous weather to start off February so I got out on all three bikes right away.

Of the two bikes I’ve recently had issues with the situations varied. The V-Strom, which I put a new battery into, started and ran just great. It still drips something but that is a longstanding issue that I’ll just continue to live with.

The Concours is a different matter. It fired right up and I ran it a good while to make sure it was warm. That bike has always needed to warm up before heading out.

Previously I had apparently left the reserve lever in the Prime position, an error that led to gas trickling into the cylinders and seeping past into the oil pan. In that state the bike wouldn’t run and I ended up making a real mess changing the oil. And once it was changed, although the bike fired up and ran, it didn’t initially run well. I rode around the neighborhood to be sure it didn’t crap out on me a long way from home, but eventually it did fine.

Well, same thing this time. I pulled out of the driveway and there was very little power. Again I rode around the neighborhood until it seemed to be doing OK and then I took off. This time, however, in two instances when I was coasting downhill and not revving the throttle at all the engine died. Now, it started back up right off when I pushed the starter button but this bike has never just died on me before. For the rest of the ride, anytime I was slowing down I made sure to give it a little more gas so it would not die. That’s a pain.

Maybe the business with dying could be remedied by just cranking up the idle speed a bit, I don’t know. But what the heck is the issue with the poor running in the beginning? Could there still be gas in the oil? Certainly not much–would just a tiny bit have that effect? Is there some other issue? I’m convinced that my mechanic put too much oil in when he changed it back in June. Could that have blown out a seal? What happens if a seal is blown? I just don’t know the answer to these kinds of questions. I need to do research.

Of course I could change the oil again–it certainly helped to change it before. I hate to do that because motorcycle oil is not cheap and changing oil on this bike is not a simple operation. And if I did that and it still was not running right, then what?

I just did a quick Google search and it appears I ought to check the air filter to see if excess oil has been through out that way. Now I need to look into how I get to the air filter. Sigh. I’ll let you know what happens.

Biker Quote for Today

Why motorcycles are better than women: Disassembling the motorcycle is done out of pleasure rather than need.

Coronavirus or not, the OFMC took its annual trip in 2020, and we’re all still alive and healthy. So you can bet we’re planning a trip for 2021.

As the designated trip planner I have asked the guys what they want to do and then worked out a route and itinerary. They guys are good with what I came up with and here it is.

Our destination for the first day is Scottsbluff, NE. The guys mainly wanted to go to the Black Hills this year and this is a good midway point. You can ride all the way in one day–I have–but it’s more leisurely to take it in two. Plus, if you’ve never been to Scottsbluff and gone to the top of the bluffs you should. The actual park is Scotts Bluff National Monument. So this short ride will give us plenty of time to do that.

The next day we’ll ride on up to Custer, SD, which will be our home base for three nights. The OFMC always likes to spend two days in one place in order to have a day for golf. It turns out there are very few places in the Black Hills where there are public courses, and Custer is one. On the other day we’ll just ride around in the Black Hills.

Then leaving Custer we’ll have a short day’s ride up to Spearfish, SD. That’s a really short ride but the OFMC also always wants to do some gambling, so we’ll take a very short ride to Deadwood, give the casinos some of our money, and then complete the leisurely run to Spearfish.

The next day’s run is also very short, so I had to figure a good way to extend it. We’ll run up from Spearfish to Belle Fourche, then west through Hulett and on to Devil’s Tower National Monument. We’ve been to Devil’s Tower before but never gone in and up to the monument, this time we will. And then we’ll ride on to Newcastle, WY, for the night.

Following that we’ll cruise on down the eastern side of Wyoming to Torrington. That’s another short day but when you look at the map there’s not a lot of places to go without going a long way. And in recent years we have made a deliberate effort to stay in towns we’ve never stayed in before. We’ve never stayed in Torrington. Who knows, maybe we never will again.

The day after that will be the most scenic of the whole trip, as well as one of the longest. We’ll head south to Cheyenne and then take the state roads between Cheyenne and Laramie. Most people take the interstate but the state road is much nicer. Then we’ll head southwest out of Laramie down through the Snowy Range and back into Colorado for a night at Walden. That’s our last night out and the next day we’ll head home. So that’s the trip this year. Only about 1,000 miles.

Biker Quote for Today

It’s your road and yours alone. Others may ride it with you but no one can ride it for you.

I’ve read that pilots make better motorcyclists, or motorcyclists make better pilots – I can’t remember which. Probably the latter. Both go beyond the basic right, left, forward, backward movement that you get in a car. Both have to lean.

You do get some lean in a car when you turn sharply, but it is centrifugal force trying to throw you in the opposite direction of your turn, while the seat you’re sitting on essentially remains in the same plane. On a bike, as in an airplane, the entire vehicle rotates clockwise or counter-clockwise on an axis running from front to back. You remain firmly planted on your seat, which rotates with you, and you lean in the direction of the turn, not the opposite.

What this adds up to is fun. Anyone who rides, or who has spent much time with bikers, knows that bikers love “the twisties.” Whereas car tires are shaped like a bowl, with a flat bottom, motorcycle tires are more circular. You roll the bike to the left and to the right and the patch in contact with the road moves up the left side and up the right side and it’s all good because you’re supposed to use the sides of the tires, not just the bottom.

In the twisties, it all comes together into a dance. In a series of s-turns you go into a right-hander and you lean right and the bike rolls right, then, with a left-hander immediately following, you straighten the bike back up and keep going over on the left. Then it’s back up and over on the right and back up and over on the left. There’s no better feeling than rolling those tires all the way across their profile, side to side, and back again, again and again. You set up a rhythm, your body and the bike move gracefully to the music of the road, and the world is a wonderful place. It has to be the closest thing to what pilots feel that you can experience on the ground.

Of course, if you’re a dirtbike rider or a motocross rider you also get the ups and downs that pilots get, and you even catch a little air now and then. But I’m a bit leery of that business of going up in the air more than just over whoops. I like the fact that if a motorcycle’s engine stalls you just coast to a stop, as opposed to being in the air praying you can either restart it or find a place to land safely.

I do like to fly, but I’m happy to do my flying on the ground.

Biker Quote for Today

Motorcycle riding gives you a sense of freedom that you don’t get in a car. Your senses take on a different significance.

Getting you from one place to another is only a small part of what makes for a great motorcycle road. More importantly, a great motorcycle road twists and winds, climbs and descends, allows you to take your time, and offers a fresh experience that affords numerous interesting stops.

Check, check, and check. Add the High Road to Taos to your list of top two-wheel routes.

The “Low Road” to Taos is the main one, and it’s a busy highway that mostly follows the Rio Grande Valley. The High Road is small and quiet and offers a taste of Southwestern culture that can make you feel like you’re gone to another country. Unfortunately, until recently that culture also included the Third World mentality that “the world is my trash heap,” but an aggressive anti-litter campaign appears to have turned that attitude around.

Starting out from the general vicinity of Espanola, northwest of Santa Fe a few miles, the High Road at first passes through small communities that afford a glimpse of life in this region before the advent of electricity and technology. Homes are hidden deep in the shade of towering trees that keep the otherwise oppressive heat and vicious sunshine at bay, offering a coolness that is delicious in its relief.

The road then rises to the brown, arid hilltops, riding a ridge line that passes above the lush green farming valleys of towns with names such as Rio Chiquito and Cordova. The architecture gives a sense of place that is lost in the ticky-tacky sameness of modern housing developments.

Approaching the small community of Truchas a cemetery alongside the road displays a colorful aspect more common south of the border than north, including one grave site flanked on both sides by sheet metal cutouts of the V-twin hog the deceased once presumably loved.

On through Ojo Sarco, Las Trampas, and Chamisal, the road – NM 76 – winds until it ends at NM 75 near Rio Lucio. East through Penasco and beyond you follow a river canyon, and then at Rock Wall a left turn of about 160 degrees puts you on NM 518, where you start to climb and then climb some more.

Now the road earns its title of the High Road to Taos. Coursing high through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the vegetation is dense pine and spruce forest and the vistas, when they present themselves, are of neighboring mountains and the deep valleys in between. Then you descend into one of those valleys and soon encounter the congestion and fast-food franchises that make the outskirts of Taos indistinguishable from any other American city.

Biker Quote for Today

I want to take you on a motorcycle ride through the sugar cane and the countryside — Michael Franti

Not a whole lot going on at this time of year, and not a whole lot of riding, either. So I’ll make this short and just pass along a video Jerry Pokorny sent out.

Biker Quote for Today

Why motorcycles are better than women: You can choke your motorcycle.

I’ve only mined this ADV thread a few times so there’s a lot here. The theme is “Stupid questions people ask you when stopped.” Here are a few, although some people get off the train of the question.

Out for a ride?
Nope, pushed it here just to hang out…

Pulling up at lights, gas stations, etc. – I guess because I’m only 5’4, 115 pds, and female.
“Do you ride that thing?”
I usually just look at them, or say, “Yea – why not?”
Perhaps I should come up with something snappier, like….
“No – I just push it around, so I can sit on it at stoplights.”

The comment that gets me is “That’s a murdercycle!” or something similar. When someone tries to tell me how DANGEROUS my Bandit is, that one day I will die on her, I simply reply “well, my best friend died in a car crash, as did my Grandfather. I don’t trust cars!”
If they keep going on about it, I tell them I’d rather die on my bike, doing what I love, than driving in my car on the way to Safeway.
So far all I get from those comments are blank stares.

There are so many TYPES of questions. Some nice, some smart-assed some incredibly stupid. I got asked by some smart-assed kid what my ADV sticker meant today and used someone else’s reply of “Antisocial, Disturbed and Violent and that it was court ordered” This kids eyes got big and then he just walked away while looking over his shoulder. Guy sittin’ on the bench was in tears laughing when I turned around. I just grinned and went in the store.

I stopped in at the little camp store on Mount Pisgah on the Blue Ridge Parkway Saturday and chatted with a guy who was sitting out front taking in the scene.
He was on a Honda Shadow (a 600 cc or so bike). He said that when people ask him why he doesn’t have a Harley, he says, “I can’t afford all of them t-shirts!”

LEO: License Please.
ME: (already have it out and hand it over)
LEO: I have you on radar going 74 in a 50, do you know how fast you were going?
ME: Huh, are you asking for a second opinion? Cause I might have a conflict of interest.
He didn’t think this was funny, it cost me.

You ride a motorcycle? (Amazing how often I hear this walking to or from my bike.)
No, this stuff protects me from hyenas.

Stupidest question has to be when I ride up on my Commando with the big fuel injection emblems on it, and some says “I see it says fuel injection….what kind of carburetors do you have on it.”

My least favorite: “Do you know why I stopped you, Mr.Wade?”

This is a little bit of a tangent. Being on the other side as a motor cop, I nearly got hit turning around and when I got to the driver’s door, I asked the driver “Do you know why I stopped you?” When he said no, I had forgotten and had to say, “Neither do I, thank you for stopping and please drive safely.”

Biker Quote for Today

Life without a motorcycle is no life at all.