Passes & Canyons Blog

The “Bernie’s Colorado Journeys” website.

I did a radio interview today. Bernie Jwaszewski had contacted me and wanted to talk about the website for the benefit of people interested in touring Colorado. Bernie does a podcast/radio broadcast called “Bernie’s Colorado Journeys” on KCMJ.org or at 93.9 FM.

Seems Bernie has been into touring for a long time but just last year got himself a Harley trike. That opened up a whole new world for him, as you might well imagine. So he is interested in the best motorcycle roads in Colorado. Bernie, you came to the right place.

So we talked about the Passes & Canyons: Motorcycle Touring in Colorado website.

First off he asked about myself and why I built the site. That was easy: it combined my interests in writing, motorcycling, and tech. And then we went through each of the tabs at the top of each page that go to the main pages on the site, discussing each as we went along.

What was interesting for me was to have a chance to see the site at least partially through someone else’s eyes. For instance, Bernie looked at the page for motorcycle-accessible campgrounds along the Peak-to-Peak Highway and he came to the conclusion that Cold Spring Campground would not be suitable for someone pulling a camper. No, no, no, I assured him. The campground has pull-through sites but I just don’t go into that because the website is about motorcycles. I also mentioned that the campground pages are very dated and it is my intention in 2017 to update all of them.

That was the other point of interest for me. Time and again we would discuss this section or that page and I would add that my intentions are to expand this or update that or redo this–it just comes down to time to do it all. Hopefully I will find that time once I am no longer working for the National Park Service (hello end of January). But the updates and revisions I want to do could probably keep me busy for a solid month.

And then there are the other states in the region. When I first started building the site it was my intent to then do the same for other states in the west. When you figure I’ve had this site up for 11 years now and still have a ton of work that I don’t have time to do, it’s not hard to see why that plan has never gotten off the ground. But I haven’t given up on it. I’m thinking that maybe I’ll do a Kickstarter campaign to raise funding and then just go off for a month to two months and do an entire state all at once. Ride and shoot pictures and gather information during the day and build pages in a motel room in the evening. Get up the next morning and do it again. We’ll see.

So I’ll be interested to see what Bernie does with the interview. I mean, I’m sure he’ll want to do some editing, so it will be interesting to see what he focuses on. Also, just a note, he has also spoken with Steve Farson, who wrote the book The Complete Guide to Motorcycling Colorado. Steve’s book is very good and I’ll be interested to listen to Bernie’s podcast with him, too.

And one other thing: I’m interested to explore Bernie’s site. Who knows, maybe he has found some places in this state that I’ve never seen. You never know.

Biker Quote for Today

A cold hamburger can be reheated quite nicely by strapping it to an exhaust pipe and riding forty miles.