Passes & Canyons Blog

I’ve never been a dual-sport kind of guy, mostly because I haven’t had the opportunity. Well, I had the opportunity over the weekend.

I hooked up on Friday with Sue Slate, the National Program Chair for the Women’s Motorcyclist Foundation. Sue is in Keystone from now through the end of the International Women & Motorcycling Conference and I dropped by to talk with her about the Adventure for the Cures ride she has organized.

This ride will take a dozen experienced riders with very little, if any, experience on dirt on a tour of the Colorado mountains. The mix is expected to be about 80 percent dirt/gravel and 20 percent pavement. Each rider had to commit to raise at least $2,000 for breast and ovarian cancer research, as well as pay a sign-up fee of $400. The “Dirty Dozen” begin their ride on Aug. 10 and will end up back in Keystone for the start of the conference.

So I met up with Sue, and we talked about the ride and about her motivation for doing the fund-raising that she does, and mostly about her total passion for motorcycles. Sue got her first bike at age 19, used to ride observed trials, and lives and breathes motorcycles. As a public school teacher she used to ride to work every day, would bring motorcycle engines into class as a way of showing unmotivated students that even a motorcycle mechanic needs to be able to read, write, and do math.

Now retired from teaching, Sue works ceaselessly for the WMF and also finds time to be an on-call employee for Kawasaki, working at various motorcycle events around the country.

We covered it all and then she asked me what I was doing that afternoon. I had nothing planned, and was wondering that question myself, because I was in Keystone with my wife, who was there for a conference. “Do you want to go for a ride?” Sue asked.

Of course I did, but I hadn’t planned on doing so and I didn’t have any gear with me. No problem, Sue had extra gloves and a helmet that would fit me as well as a green-white-black Kawasaki jacket. And she had bikes. Lots of bikes. Sue had rolled in from New York the day before in an RV pulling her “toy hauler” with five dirt/dual-sport bikes of various sizes. She would ride her KLR 650. I rode her Versys.

We geared up and off we went. Sue had suggested riding Boreas Pass, which struck me as terrific because I had never gone far on that road, and only on cross-country skis. And I’ve almost never had the chance to ride dirt.

I was sure the road to Boreas Pass ran off CO 9 from a little north of Breckenridge toward the pass but I followed Sue on up to the top of Hoosier Pass, where we pulled off. “Oh yeah, Hoosier Pass, that’s the name,” she said as we dismounted. So no, I didn’t get to do Boreas Pass. Turns out the Versys I was on didn’t have the right tires for dirt anyway.

So we admired the view, chatted with another biker who pulled off there, and then headed back down the pass, up I-70 to Copper Mountain, and then rode to the top of Fremont Pass. Then we headed back to Keystone.

I didn’t get to ride dirt but I did get a chance to ride the Versys, which was a new one for me. It feels a lot different from the inline fours I’m accustomed to but I definitely liked the upright seating position. I was interested to find that the little half windshield did a very good job of blocking the wind blast at speed. I’ve never enjoyed riding without a fairing or windshield for that reason.

The seat was much too hard for me to even imagine taking off for a weeklong ride as we do each summer. Other than that, it was a nice bike. I’d really like to do more off-pavement riding because there is so much of it here in Colorado and I really feel like I’m missing a lot. I don’t have room for a third bike, though, so maybe it’s something to consider whenever one of my current two dies. But that’s not likely to happen soon. There must be another way to work this out.

Anyway, it was fun getting to ride the bike and Sue is a fun person to hang out with. And I’ll have a chance to get some dual-sport riding instruction before the Adventure for the Cures ride sets off. Of course I’ll be reporting back to you on that.

Recent from the National Motorcycle Examiner
Dual-sport motorcyclists combat cancer

Biker Quote for Today

You never see a motorcycle parked in front of a psychiatrist’s office.