Passes & Canyons Blog

Looking out over Cherry Creek Reservoir.

The thermometer on Sunday read 59 degrees, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and only the faintest breeze was blowing. To ride or not to ride was not an issue. The only choice I had was which bike to ride. I chose the Honda, mainly because getting it out was the least effort.

I started off, as I so often do, across the dam to pick up Parker Road. On such a great day there were a lot of bikes on the road.

As I neared and then crossed over Arapahoe Road there were two bikes coming up on the on-ramp. As the traffic flowed one of them merged ahead of me and the other behind me. We cruised like that for a while and I was a little puzzled when the guy behind me did not take advantage of opportunities to pull ahead of me and rejoin his buddy. When we came to a traffic light I made sure to leave him plenty of room to pull past.

But he didn’t. He stopped behind and it dawned on me this was not his buddy ahead of me, we were just three solo riders who all happened to be in the same place at the same time.

I have often had the fantasy of getting mingled with some bikers who had been up to something nefarious and having all of us get scooped up the police. How to convince the cops that I really didn’t know these guys and I was not involved in whatever they had been doing. The obvious line of persuasion would be that hey, just because you see two people in cars you don’t assume they’re together. Well, just because we’re on bikes doesn’t mean we’re together either.

Judy summed it up pretty well, though, when I mentioned this to her: People in multiple cars generally do not travel together; people on multiple bikes frequently do. And if you see a bunch together it’s normal to assume they are in fact together. See, even I made that assumption.

So I peeled off from my “buds” in Parker, heading west on Main Street. This is a developing area so even though I had been on this road not that long ago there was new stuff to see. The southern suburbs keep creeping. Just before reaching I-25 I turned north on Peoria and was surprised to see, at Lincoln Avenue, the University of Colorado South Denver Campus. What? Really? This growth just amazes me at times.

Continuing north I passed under C-470 and ran up into the south end of Arapahoe County Airport. That required a jog over onto Potomac and from there I meandered my way on home. Not a long ride but very nice of a terrific day.

Biker Quote for Today

There are two kinds of people . . . motorcycle owners and sad people.

Every group seems to have its own approach to how to ride together.

Going riding with Willie and Jungle and some of their friends a week and a half ago I was very interested from the outset to see if this particular group was into staggered riding. It didn’t take long at all to figure out the answer was no.

Do we need an explanation? Staggered riding is where each rider alternate taking the opposite side of the lane from the rider ahead and behind them. That opens up sight lines and gives each rider a better view of the road ahead, and it also doubles the space between each rider and the rider directly behind them, which makes for safer riding.

I do a lot of my group riding with the OFMC and that is a group where staggered riding is not the norm. There have been a few of us who have lobbied for doing so but most of these old farts don’t give a hoot about it. Finally I resorted to always riding last so I can put myself in the position I desire and have no one behind me to sit right on my tail or anything.

With the Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Riders Club, on the other hand, riding staggered is absolutely the norm.

So with Willie and crowd, we gathered in Pueblo and set out the next morning headed for Lake San Isabel. There were only four bikes at that point and Jungle took the lead. Kevin and Bonnie were in the number two spot, Judy and I were third, and Willie was in the rear.

The dynamic shaped up very quickly. Jungle stayed largely in the middle of the lane. Kevin stayed largely on the left so I took the right, although at any given moment Kevin might drift over. I just kept a good distance. Willie, in the rear, always stayed so far behind it didn’t matter where she rode.

The next day we had added a couple bikes but it was pretty much the same. Nobody but me seemed to pay any attention to keeping staggered. Oh well, it’s not like I was going to make a big fuss about it. I prefer riding staggered but if it really mattered a lot to me I would not ride with the OFMC. But it was interesting to be with a different group and see how they do things.

Biker Quote for Today

Wait! I do not snore! I dream I’m a motorcycle!