Passes & Canyons Blog

Have you ever had a problem on the road? Or have you gone out to start the bike and it wouldn’t, and it’s not the battery?

At times like this it can get expensive. Having your bike hauled somewhere to be worked on can easily cost you $100. Unless you’ve had the foresight to sign up for MoTow.

MoTow Roadside Assistance is offered by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) for the piddling fee of $25 per year. You have problems, you call for assistance, and they have “people who know how to tow motorcycles” available to help you out 24/7. The service covers all your bikes and it doesn’t matter what you ride.

Now, maybe you have a pretty new bike and don’t generally have mechanical problems. Good for you. On my old bike, my 1980 CB750 Custom, it can get dicey at times. There have been a couple times that bike has just quit on me. But the MoTow guy has showed up quickly and hauled the bike to the shop. Not a dime out of my pocket (not counting my annual membership).

It doesn’t have to be a problem on the road. A buddy of mine called just yesterday hoping I would have some great idea to get his bike running so he wouldn’t have to spend a bunch on it. He has a newer, more dependable bike, but it seems he left it parked all winter, never fired it up, and didn’t put in gas stabilizer. Bad decision. I’m no miracle worker. But he has MoTow so he called and got the bike hauled to the shop. He’ll have to pay for the carb cleaning himself. That one use of his MoTow membership will pay for his membership for three years.

There is a catch here. MoTow is only available to AMA members. AMA membership is $39 a year. So that’s not quite such a savings, right?

Well, you get a lot more from AMA than just access to MoTow. You get a monthly magazine, American Motorcyclist, which has a lot of good reading, but that’s not really the important thing. What you get with AMA membership is representation in government. We all know the limitations non-bikers continually try to put on us and it’s not pixies who fight those battles to protect our rights. It’s the AMA.

Here in Denver they recently passed an ordinance that allows the police to ticket bikers whose exhaust pipes are not OEM. The idea is to fight noise but it is so wrong in its implementation. It basically says that it doesn’t matter how quiet your bike is, you can get a ticket if it is not an OEM muffler and pipes. Never mind that while the cop is writing you a ticket, a really loud car or truck may pass by, ignored by the cops. The ordinance is clearly discrimination against motorcyclists. And the AMA is on the case. They haven’t gotten it changed yet but they’re still working on it.

I could talk a whole lot more about what the AMA does, I’m a real believer in the organization. But I’ll save that for another time. Right now, just think about the fix you might find yourself in if your bike breaks down on you and how good it would feel in that case to know that help from MoTow is just a phone call away.

Biker Quote for Today

A friend is someone who’ll get out of bed at 2 am to drive his pickup to the middle of nowhere to get you when you’re broken down.

Noisy motorcycles have drawn the ire of the Denver City Council and the Council has now passed an ordinance singling them out. This is good and bad.

The good is that the Council is trying to address the legitimate concerns of the populace. Let me give an example. The issue is about noisy bikes downtown when the bars close. Closing time is 2 a.m., so a lot of people who live downtown are asleep . . . until the biker boys rev their engines. My dentist lives downtown and periodically I’ll mention one of my bikes or one of our trips. Then he’ll go into his usual rant about the racket the bikes make late at night. He has every right to be unhappy and I’m sure he welcomes this new ordinance. I’m happy for him.

The bad is that the ordinance wasn’t necessary, and in singling out motorcycles it does nothing about noisy cars or noisy trucks. The city already has a noise ordinance and what the police need to do is enforce it, regardless of vehicle type. The way this ordinance works, your bike has to have a muffler with a particular stamp on it, and if you don’t have the stamp you get a ticket. So what if you don’t have the stamp but your noise is within legal limits? Too bad. American jurisprudence is now turned on its ear and you are guilty until proven innocent. In the meantime, while the cop is writing you a ticket, an illegally loud truck drives by unmolested because the cop does not have a decibelmeter to prove that he is in violation. Or to prove that you are not.

The police say they can’t afford to issue decibelmeters to all cops so this discrimination against motorcyclists is warranted. Well, downtown is a very finite space and Lodo, where most of the action is on a Saturday night, is even more so. How about giving those cops decibelmeters, or at least a few of them, and have the ones with the meters come to the assistance of the ones without when needed? No, that would make too much sense.

Fortunately the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) got wind of this and is getting involved. With any luck, their experienced team will lead the Council to an acceptable alternative. But if you ride an obnoxiously loud bike, don’t think the AMA is going to save your butt. They’ve made it clear that they have no love for overly loud bikes making people hate bikes and bikers. If you’re over the noise limit it won’t bother them one bit to see you get a ticket. As long as it’s legitimate and not carried out in a way that illegitimately targets bikers and excludes other actual violators.