Passes & Canyons Blog

Victory brought in the truck loaded with bikes and I went riding.

I did make it over to Grand Prix Motorsports to ride some Victorys, as I said I was going to, and of course it was fun and interesting. How can riding some new motorcycles not be?

But what was particularly interesting was the way the whole event was so unstructured. Maybe the ride leaders hadn’t done this sort of thing before, I don’t know. Usually you register and sign the waiver and then you sign up for particular bikes on particular rides. Before each ride the leader runs through everything you’ve already heard countless times before, such as ride staggered, no passing, no slingshotting, no wheelies, and on and on.

Not in this case. Heck, they didn’t even have the bikes lined up in any systematic way. They had about 12 bikes to ride and early on there were maybe 10 of us to ride, so at one point the leader just said, “OK, everyone pick the bike you want to ride and mount up.” As far as the rules, he pretty much just said no wheelies and he asked us to ride in a staggered formation. Not that they actually enforced that latter part. Some people did try to ride staggered but others ignored it so you were pretty much on your own.

And guys were passing. Don’t like where you are in the line? Zip on ahead to where you want to be. I’m not offering this as a criticism, I’m just remarking about it because I’ve never seen this before on a demo ride.

It got fairly comical at some points. One time we were about to head out and everyone began pulling their totally disorganized bikes into readiness. Two guys backed out of where they were and turned the opposite direction of everyone else. Are you guys blind or what? We’re not headed that direction. Finally by about the fourth ride they had decided they needed to get that part more organized so when the third ride came back they had us line the bikes up all in a row, the way you would have expected it to be done all along.

Anyway, no big deal. It was fun and I rode three bikes, a Boardwalk, A Hard-Ball, and a Hammer 8-Ball. I’m not going to rehash my take on the bikes; I’ve already done that on Examiner.com. Suffice it to say that I’m not a cruiser guy so while they were all capable machines, I won’t be buying any of them. I like my pegs underneath me, not way out front. But if you like that type of bike you might like having a Victory. My friend Randy, who accompanied me (not the Randy who left me behind out by Rifle a few weeks ago), didn’t care for the Victory Vision he rode. He said, “If I want a bike that shakes a lot I’ll buy a Harley.”

Doesn’t matter. It was fun and interesting to ride some new bikes. And sometimes when I do this I discover a bike I love. Just not this time.

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That's me on a Victory in 2010 at the Laughlin River Run.

I’ve got a pretty good idea where I’m going to be tomorrow. Victory Motorcycles is bringing in a truckload of bikes to Grand Prix Motorsports, down at 3105 W. County Line Road, in Littleton, and they’re offering demo rides. Oh boy, a chance to ride some new bikes! Count me in.

In fact, they’ll be around on Saturday as well, so if you have to be in the office on Friday you can still get out there and try out some bikes on Saturday.

I did some test rides on some Victorys a couple years ago, when I was down at the Laughlin River Run. I was surprised how much I liked the Kingpin. It was a very good-looking bike, sat low, and the reach to the foot and hand controls was comfortable. I’m not a cruiser guy but if I had unlimited storage space and unlimited cash I could see owning one.

That’s one of the things I like about doing demo rides. You never know when you’ll test ride a bike and find that it is wonderful. And you also might get to find out that the bike you’ve been developing a hankering for is maybe not so well suited to you and your style of riding as you thought. Nothing beats a test ride.

So if you see me at Grand Prix tomorrow, say hi. I love to actually meet the people who read this blog.

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I did go to ride Kawasakis on Saturday as I said I was going to but it didn’t work out quite as I expected. They had quite a turn-out and so instead of letting you sign up for three bikes in quick order, you could only sign up for one, and by the time I got there around 10:30 a.m. the earliest I could get a ride was 1:30 p.m. Ouch. And there was only one bike available then, the Z1000 Ninja. Fortunately, that was a bike I wanted to ride.

I didn’t really know what to do. It’s too far for me to have gone home and come back, but what was I going to do with the time? I made the decision not to decide and just hung around for awhile, but that got boring. Just for lack of anything else to do I approached this guy who was looking at the Concours 14 and asked if he had had a chance to ride it. I mentioned that I had and I loved it.

We got to talking and enough of what I said about my own bikes apparently clicked and this random guy, Evan Lyons, suddenly said, “Are you the guy who does that blog?” Yes, he really did mean this blog and he told me he was there at the demo event because he had read about it on this blog. Blew me away. (And that’s Evan in the picture checking out the Concours, just right of center. I shot the picture before we met and looking through my shots later, there he was.)

I know people do read this blog and visit the MotorcycleColorado.com website because I get web statistics from Google Analytics and they tell me exactly how many visitors there are. But in five years I’ve only met about half a dozen of you so it’s always a real kick to come face to face.

So I talked with Evan and his wife, Noel, who ride a YZF600 and a ZX-6, respectively, and got acquainted. It seems Evan found the site thanks to a letter to the editor that I did awhile ago that I never expected to be printed. I had picked up issue #1 of the reborn Motorcycle Escape magazine, which I just chanced to run across on the newsstand.

I liked the look of it and bought it and when I read it I found they had a nice piece on riding in Colorado. Then what honked me off was that they had a little blurb about another website featuring rides in Colorado, which, when I checked it out, I felt didn’t hold a candle to this one. Not that I’m biased or anything but I really do think this one is far better and yet here these guys were getting the spotlight and not me. (Hey, I’ll let you decide for yourself. That other site is ColoradoMotorcycleRides.com. Check it out.)

So anyway, just feeling a bit annoyed, I wrote a letter to the editor saying “You guys screwed up. You should have spotlighted my site.” And completely forgot about it.

I’ve looked for issue #2 of Motorcycle Escape but never spotted it. But apparently they did publish it and Evan got a copy. And apparently they published my letter. Evan saw it and decided to check out my site. And he read the blog and read about the demo event. And he came and we met. How’s that for a chain of events?

Anyway, Evan and Noel left because their ride was even later than mine and they figured to do something else and come back. I was on the verge of just forgetting the whole thing when it occurred to me that Thunder Valley Motocross Park was just down the road and on such a nice sunny day I should be able to get some good pictures. I had been there once before shooting pictures but it was overcast and my old camera was slow and I didn’t get much that was very good. This time I got a lot of good shots and I’m sure you’ll be seeing some of them here from time to time.

Then I went back and rode the Z1000 Ninja. But that’s another story, told here. I will say this: I was surprised how much I liked it.

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The Kawasaki Ticket 2 Ride tour is coming to the Denver area this weekend so what the heck, I’ll go do some demo rides. If you’re inclined to do so as well, they’re going to be setting up out at Bandimere Speedway.

They’ll be there on Saturday and Sunday. Sign up starts at 8 a.m. and rides start at 9 a.m. and end at 5 p.m. It’s first come, first served they say. Generally the earlier you get there the better chance you’ll have of getting some rides in without having to kill a lot of time in between.

This same tour was down in Scottsdale when I was there for Arizona Bike Week. The way they worked it there, and the way I assume they’ll be working it here, is that you fill out the paperwork and then tell them what bikes, up to three, you want to ride. They then schedule you in for those three. If you want to ride more you then go back to the sign-up desk later and see if they can fit you in. If they can they will.

What’s more, if they have a ride going on and there are bikes unclaimed they’ll announce that and let anyone who wants to jump on those bikes.

Kawasaki has two tours going this summer, this one and the Vaquero Nation tour. The Vaquero Nation tour is not coming here, so I presume that if you want to test ride a Vaquero they will have one or two but it will be harder to get on one if they are in demand. Beyond that, they’re bringing at least one bike of the entire Kawasaki line-up, with the exception of the dirt bikes. But if you’re specifically interested in one particular bike, all the more reason to show up early.

Me, I just like to ride as many different bikes as I can, just to see what they’re like. I’m going to be hoping to get a shot at the KLR 650, maybe a couple Ninjas, and if I stick around for more, maybe a Vulcan. Or I might take another Concours 14 out for a spin. I absolutely loved that bike when I rode one in Scottsdale.

Maybe I’ll see you at Bandimere.

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