Passes & Canyons Blog

The home page of the A&M Moto Toys website.

This is long overdue. I have been acquainted at a distance for quite a few years now with Mark Odette. We have never met but we connected back when I was writing for Examiner.com and I was putting together a series of articles on the antipathy in the sportbike community to ABATE. (It was pretty much all about helmets.)

At one point way back then Mark suggested we meet up somewhere and do a ride together. That never came together, though. But we’ve been connected on Meetup for years now. And it was through Meetup something over a year ago that I became aware that Mark set up his own motorcycle rental outfit. I made a note immediately to contact him and do a blog post about his endeavor. This is finally that post.

The company is called A&M Moto Toys LLC and they have a website plus a Facebook page. Everything I’m about to tell you comes from those two sources because I never have connected directly to Mark.

The thing that really stands out here is that unlike so many motorcycle rental places offering street bikes, Mark is offering dirt bikes. What bikes does he have? Here’s the list from the website: 2022 Talaria Sting; 2022 GPX Moto FSE450R; 2022 GPX Moto FSE300R; 2022 GPX Moto FSE250E; 2022 Rieju MR300 Pro; 2019 Beta 390 RRS. He also list these as bikes he intends to add to the fleet: 2022 Moto GPX TSE300R; 2022 Moto GPX 450 Rally; Moto GPX Adventure 500; Kawasaki KLR 650 Adventure.

The company is located in Monument. It says they serve Colorado Spring, Denver, and Pueblo. No prices given but the banner across the home page touts “Affordable Rentals.” Considering that some Harley rentals will run you up to $200 a day, I wonder what affordable means here. In my mind I’d be looking for maybe around $100 a day, but I have no idea really.

It also appears that Mark deals in parts. He lists a variety of manufacturers being represented.

That’s kind of it in a nutshell. You can reach Mark at contact@ammototoys.com.

And then there’s one other interesting note I turned up looking over the A&M Moto Toys website. Mark generously lists information on another rental outfit run by a friend called Ride With Will Rentals. This outfit offers ATVs as well as dirt bikes and will even handle lodging for you if you’re coming in from out of town. This company is headquartered in Pueblo West.

So hey, want to go dirt riding but don’t have a dirt bike? Now you know where to go.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker when you can t imagine your life without riding or the memories of riding.

Kevin Smith of Colorado Mountain Moto was one of the first rental folks I ever went riding with.

I’ve been in touch recently with Ron Coleman, who runs Western Dual Sport Motorcycle Adventures, and I asked how business is doing in the motorcycle rental field here in Colorado considering that so many more companies have gotten started in the last few years. I said I hoped there was enough business that people don’t start folding left and right.

Ron’s reply was that business is good and he just figures that the market is growing and there’s room for everyone, at least everyone who is out there now.

That is so great. Before I ever bought my first bike my roommate and I decided one day to rent a bike just to see how much we might get into riding. We naively went to a nearby shop and found that there was nothing. No one rented bikes back then. What were we thinking?

Times have changed a little, haven’t they?

So I thought I’d do a run-down here of the rental places I know of here in Colorado. I’ll make note that I’m not going to go into the list of Harley dealerships because I think pretty nearly all of them do rentals. Just add them to the list of the others.

Of course there’s Ron with WDSMA. He used to run strictly Suzuki V-Stroms but now also has Suzuki DR 650s and a Yamaha Super Tenere. He used to have a BMW GS800 but I don’t see that mentioned on his site so maybe he got rid of that one.

Kevin Smith, with Colorado Mountain Moto, runs V-Stroms out of Gunnison and he also now has at least one Honda XR650L.

One of the newcomers is Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Adventures, owned by Paul and Marsha Minock. Unlike many of these folks, I don’t know them. Their website says they offer BMW F800GS and F700GS.

Colorado Motorcycle Adventures (do you start to see a theme in the names and the types of bikes rented?) is run by Scott Lee. I rode with him earlier this summer and had every intention of doing so again sometime soon but boy the summer is flying by in a hurry. Scott has a whole herd of bikes, from KTMs to BMWs to Triumphs and Kawasakis.

Ben Kriederman has been operating House of Motorrad for a few years now. He specializes in BMWs, as the name suggests, and recently opened a store in Boulder. I haven’t ridden with Ben but he did fix me up with some good gear for my V-Strom.

Colorado Sports Rent is run by Brad Pester. Brad rents a lot of recreation gear and dirt bikes are just a small part of his offering but they’re the only bikes he has. I spoke with one of his employees recently who told me they were considering getting a couple street bikes as well.

Another outfit that has a whole stable of different bikes is Colorado Tour Bike Rentals and Sales. They have a lot more road bikes than the others I’ve mentioned so far. I don’t know much else about these folks; I’ve never met or talked with them.

Of course along with all the Harley dealerships there is also EagleRider. EagleRider rents mostly Harleys but they do have other bikes as well. I’ve met the manager of the Denver location several times but can’t remember his name just now. I’ve also rented from EagleRider and was on a media tour with them once. Recently another EagleRider location opened Grand Junction.

Another one I really don’t know anything about is Extreme Rentals. They appear to have a number of Honda dirt bikes.

MountainADV.com is out in Durango and they rent KTM and BMW dual sport bikes.

The folks at San Juan Backcountry rent some dirt bikes plus ATVs and Jeeps.

And finally, there is ScooTours, a scooter rental outfit in Denver. This is run by David Howard. David and I went out scooting one day. I keep intending to touch in with him to see how business is going. Scooters are fun, you know. One of these days I’m going to buy one.

So those are the ones I know of. If you are aware of any rental outfits I haven’t listed please send me a note. It’s just amazing to me that all these companies have gotten going and they’re all staying in business. That’s just great.

Biker Quote for Today

A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul.