I had written before about possibly taking a ride to Alaska on a Kawasaki KLR650 that needs to get to Anchorage for this year’s Adventures for the Cures ride. Ain’t gonna happen. Dang.

Doing this would have cost a bunch of money, more than I can afford, but my friend Dan Patino of Go 2 Motorcycle Tours, who was to be riding the other bike, was confident that he could come up with the funding to defray our costs. Unfortunately his efforts were for naught. Thanks for trying Dan. I had also contacted one of my editors asking if they would be inclined to sponsor us but they put me off and I didn’t pursue it once it started looking unlikely that Dan’s efforts would be successful.

So now my sights are set on the annual OFMC ride, coming up in about a month. But first I have to get past this next four days of RiderCoach training. We’re back at it in full force on Thursday and the pressure will be constant until late Sunday afternoon. I feel pretty confident but I’m going to be overjoyed to have this ton of weight lifted off my shoulders. At the moment I just have this feeling of dread.

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Biker Quote for Today

Ride hard or stay home!

It’s too early to know if this is actually going to happen, but if it does it will be fabulous. I may be riding a Kawasaki KLR 650 (like the one above) from Seattle to Anchorage, AK, in late June, early July. Wow! How cool is that?

It’s all still very iffy. It will depend to a very great extent on money.

The whole business comes out of my familiarity with Sue Slate and Gin Shear, who run the Women’s Motorcyclist Foundation. They are organizing a breast-cancer research fund-raising ride in Alaska in August, and they have a need to get their own KLRs to Anchorage. That’s where I come in.

Dan Patino, who runs Go 2 Motorcycle Tours here in Colorado, would be riding the other one and we’re both eager to go. The problem is, by Dan’s estimate, it could cost us each as much as $2,000 for gas, food, lodging, and airfare to Seattle and then home from Anchorage. Yikes! I don’t have that kind of money to do anyone a favor, even if I get a great trip out of the deal.

Neither does Dan but Dan has ideas. First off, he’s hoping to make this ride an extension of the Adventures for the Cures ride up in Alaska and do some fundraising. And as a fundraiser, he has hopes that we can get some sponsorship. Specifically, he hopes he may be able to persuade an airline to pick up our airfare expenses and perhaps a hotel chain to take care of our accommodations. Meanwhile, I have already queried Rum Bum, who I write for regularly, about sponsoring us in some way, too. Maybe they could pay for some or all of our gas.

So I have no idea whether any of this will come about. We just got started talking about this two days ago. And without sponsors there is no way I can manage it. But oh man, if Dan can pull it off and line up sponsors to defray at least a major portion of our expenses . . .

Alaska. I have never been to Alaska, and it’s the only state I haven’t been to. I really, really want to go. And the opportunity to ride a motorcycle up there. Wow, have I died and gone to heaven? But I’ll try not to get my hopes up too high just yet. One thing for sure: You’ll be hearing about it here if this things comes off. I’m crossing my fingers.

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Biker Quote for Today

Dual sport & adventure riding is cheaper than therapy

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.

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