Biker Encounters With People While On The Road
Monday, September 8th, 2025
The OFMC at the Grand Canyon.
People always want to talk to you when you’re out on motorcycles, have you noticed? Of course you have. They look at us wistfully and reminisce about when they had a bike, or how great it must be to just get out on the road and go, or whatever thoughts we stir. Bikers are so daring, so cute and lovable, right? How can you not strike up a conversation with them?
Usually those conversations go pleasantly and everyone parts with good feelings. Usually.
Then there was the time the OFMC was at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, in the parking lot by the lodge (burned down in summer 2025!) when a family on vacation struck up a conversation. Cool bikes. Hey, would it be OK if our son climbed on board one? Oh sure, what the heck, no harm.
Well, no. The boy climbed on, wearing shorts, and managed to let his bare leg press up against one of the exhaust pipes. Blazing hot exhaust pipe. Yow!!!
OK, that didn’t go so well.
Then there was the time in Aspen when we struck up a conversation with a couple cougars who seemed to think we were of interest. Things went pleasantly right up to the point where I asked one of them if, way back years ago, Hunter Thompson ever had any chance of winning his run for election as sheriff of Pitkin County.
This was a simple question based on my honest interest in whether the answer was yes or no. You would never know that from the response I got. She replied scornfully that no, he never had a chance, and did we think they were all stupid? Well, I never suggested that, I was asking a simple question.
I did reply that it would be nice to have a sheriff who wouldn’t arrest anyone for simple possession of marijuana. She then got quite nasty, pointing out that marijuana was illegal (back then), whereas her drug of choice was alcohol (which was legal by then but back in the 1920s this was not the case). And by this point she had certainly had plenty of her drug of choice. We didn’t stick around a lot longer.
Fortunately, these less than great encounters are vastly outnumbered by the good ones. But the not so good ones make better stories, don’t they?
Biker Quote for Today
If you are going faster than everything else you only have to worry about what is in front of you.
