Passes & Canyons Blog

Ten minutes earlier this road was jam-packed with stop and go traffic. Now you can see the first car that filtered past the burning truck down the hill.

We got an early start out of Spanish Fork on the next to last day of this year’s OFMC trip and I figured we’d be climbing into the hills east of the extended Salt Lake City metropolitan area but in fact we plunged down a canyon. We were on US 89, which led in a short while to US 6.

Another surprise was that at the mouth of this canyon there were about 10 wind turbines. You normally think about those things being out in the open where they catch a lot of free-flowing wind. I figure it must be that the wind blows in across the salt flats and then hits these hills and gets channeled into this canyon.

So we went down and down and finally started climbing. Very pretty along this part. Then we started down again, a long way, and finally came out on the desert floor at Price. Now it’s going to get hot and boring. It did. We got lunch and gas at Green River and then just blasted the rest of the way to Grand Junction, our stop for the night. Not an eventful day.

Leaving Junction early in the morning we were figuring on getting down the hill on I-70 before the inevitable crush of traffic that happens every Sunday afternoon. Wrong. We started getting into heavy traffic at about Vail. But before I get into that, something else happened just west of Vail.

As I said, traffic was getting thick and we got behind someone going too slow in the right lane, so Bill and Dennis moved over to the left and when I had the chance I did, too. I looked back and was about 50 feet ahead of the guy coming up in that lane so, as I always do, I threw my left arm straight out to clearly signal my intent and simultaneously moved into the left lane. Totally normal move.

About five seconds later I heard the familiar sound of a car coming around me on the left . . . but I was in the left lane. I turned to look and there was the guy I had pulled in front of, now about even with my rear fender, going past me half way on the shoulder. I moved right to give him more room and threw up my hand in a “what the heck” sort of motion. He threw up his left hand in a sort of “oops, sorry” kind of motion. And we rolled on.

The way I figure it, he must have been looking at his phone and looked up only just in time to realize he was about to murder a motorcyclist.

Back to the story. I told the rest of this story here but there was a lot that I left out in that account. For one thing, I was not alone sitting there by the highway broken down. I could see, in the space of about a quarter mile, five other vehicles all pulled over with problems. I walked back and spoke with the two women in the car behind me, and they had also overheated. But for them it was normal. They had a bottle of coolant and once they could safely remove the radiator cap they poured some in and took off. The couple in front of me had overheated and had called for a tow. I didn’t walk up to the three vehicles ahead of them.

All this time the interstate was a parking lot. Three lanes full of traffic stopping and starting. Then about 500 feet down the hill there was a bang and a lot of smoke or steam or something and within a few minutes there was not a single vehicle on the road in front of me. I learned later from the tow truck driver who picked me up that there was a truck on fire back there.

Obviously, when this truck erupted in flames everyone behind him stopped. Then, after maybe five minutes cars started filtering past and one by one they would go speeding past me. And gradually there were more and more as they all got bolder.

What impressed me was how quickly the emergency folks handled the situation. It took a while for them to get to the scene but once they did they had the truck moved and whole road open again within 15 minutes. And then it was the same old parking lot again.

I did eventually get home that day, at 10 p.m., and that was finally the end of this year’s OFMC trip for me–though not yet the end of my hassles getting the bike home. But it could have been a lot worse. What if I had overheated out in the middle of the salt flats, in blazing heat with no shade? What if it had happened at any of the other times we were stuck in 100-degree-plus weather with no shade? At least when I broke down up on the mountain my actual concern was the oncoming rain storm. And I had rain gear.

Meanwhile, the Kawi is now in the shop for service and to find out if the overheating was due to a bad thermostat or heat sensor. Stay tuned.

Biker Quote for Today

If I were to die from riding a dirt bike my crash better look awesome.

Motorcycle maintenance doesn’t always prevent breakdowns.

Biker Brotherhood: A Tale Of Two Breakdowns

My old 1980 Honda CB750 Custom gave me trouble the other day. Twice. And others bikers came to my aid. Twice. Thanks guys. Stopping and helping another biker is a time-honored tradition and it’s one of those things that makes our group special.

Starting out from home, I had only gone about a mile and she died. I knew I had switched to reserve near the end of my ride a couple days ago, but that should have meant I had plenty of gas to get to a station. But “ought to” and “should have” are meaningless in the face of reality.

Happily, as I rolled the bike onto the sidewalk to get it out of the busy intersection where it had chosen to die, another rider came along and asked if everything was OK. No, it was not OK. So Roger gave me a ride to my house to get a can of gas and then stuck around to see if that would do the job.

It didn’t. I poured the gas in, turned the key, and thumbed the starter and while it turned over just fine, that was all. The only other thing I could think of that might be a problem was the fusible link. This part of my electrical system requires removal of the seat to get to, which is not an easy proposition on this CB, so I only do it when I need to. I figured I needed to.

Roger stuck around meanwhile, and when I got to the link it was fine. So now what? As I put it all back together and put the seat back on Roger was fiddling with the gas line down under the tank. He called my attention to a translucent portion of the line, and how when he nudged it with his finger a bit more gas moved into the line. He did that several times and each time more gas filled the line until it was full.

“Try it now,” he suggested. I turned the key and pushed the starter and it fired right up. Wahoo! I would never have thought to look at that, and Roger swore he’s no mechanic but was just following intuition. Only once I was up and running again did he depart, having done a very good deed for a total stranger.

Problem No. 2
So I filled up and headed off to Loveland, where I was going to test ride some Triumphs. I’ll be telling you all about that soon but suffice it to say for now that I loved the Bonnevilles!

I headed back to Denver and thought the bike might not be running quite right about the time I got back into the metro area. It was rush hour and I was going south on I-25 right through the heart of town, so it was slow going. I was in the far-left lane right at the 8th Avenue exit when the bike just died. We were moving slowly so I coasted only about 10 feet before I came to a stop. Fortunately, there was a spot just 10 feet ahead of me where the concrete barrier dividing north- and southbound traffic separated, creating a space just big enough for two motorcycles to tuck safely out of the way. I rolled up into that space.

Clearly I wasn’t going anywhere any time soon on my own. I was stuck in the middle of the interstate with traffic not about to subside. Within just a couple minutes, however, a guy on a Kawasaki, whose name I did not get, pulled into the space (that’s how I know there was room for two bikes) and asked if I needed help.

Yes, I certainly did, could I use his cell phone to call for assistance. I made the call and also called my wife to tell her I wouldn’t be meeting her as planned. And then the Kawi guy took off, having done his good deed for the day. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Long story short (and leaving out some interesting details), I was rescued and hauled off to the shop. There my bike remains as I wait to get the word on what caused the problems.

Bikers helping bikers
I have to say that this practice of bikers helping bikers is a very special thing. I know it arose out of the vagaries of undependable machinery in the early days but that it continues today, when bikes are much more dependable, is a testament to how people really can get along if they choose to.

We may not share political opinions and may have a lot of different ideas about a lot of things, but when you see someone stopped by the side of road you don’t ask who they voted for. You ask if they need help. And if they do, you provide whatever you can. What a wonderful thing it could be if we incorporated this attitude into the other parts of our lives.

Biker Quote for Today

When I hit the open road the ride becomes meditation, the sound of my pipes become music, the rolling through turns becomes a dance, and riding becomes a celebration of freedom!