Passes & Canyons Blog

Hot ziggety, it’s almost time for our summer trip!

It looks like eight members of the Old Farts Motorcycle Club (OFMC) will be making the ride this year. I, myself, was uncertain for the longest time. I’ve been out of work and feared I’d be offered a job and then not be able to immediately turn around and take a week off. Long story short, I worked it out.

It’s a good thing because this is the year we’re doing the trip I’ve been pushing for for several years. We’re mostly staying in Colorado, with a couple days in New Mexico. Lots of times we’ve taken these long rides, across numerous states. I love those trips but I have also wanted to spend some time just riding, not traveling. That is, check into a motel and stay there for a couple days doing day rides. Then move on and do it again. And let’s really do Colorado.

Well, with eight guys no one gets everything they want, but I got a lot of what I wanted. Most of us will head out on Friday and gather in Cripple Creek. On Saturday we’ll mosey along to Salida, stopping to see Bishop Castle along the way. Most of these guys have never seen Bishop Castle so this will be a real treat for them.

On Sunday we’ll continue west and cross Independence Pass, with Snowmass the destination. The next day we’ll cross McClure Pass and we’ll take CO 92 to the Blue Mesa Reservoir. Then we’ll head to Lake City and Slumgullion Pass, finally ending the day’s ride at South Fork.

The following day it will be on over Wolf Creek Pass and down to Taos, NM. We’ll spend two days in Taos and play some golf.

Next it’s back to Colorado, to Ignacio and from there to Montrose, where John lives these days. We’ll spend a couple days there, either playing golf or doing day rides. And then home.

Of course, one of the good things about these rides is that they will enable me to finally get some photos of some of these passes. There are a number of these roads I have not been on since I started this website, and thus have not gotten any photos of them yet. That’s about to change, and you’ll see the results on the various pages for these passes.

So hot dang! Got some bikin’ to do soon!

Biker Quote for Today

Riding faster than everyone else only guarantees you’ll ride alone.

All right, now this is great!

I’ve talked before about the group of guys I ride with and how we call ourselves, with tongue in cheek, the Old Farts Motorcycle Club. That’s tongue in cheek because, for one thing, several of these guys are pretty dang young.

Well anyway, John did a design a couple years ago of a logo for the group, forming a motorcycle from the letters OFMC. A very ingenious design. Zoom ahead a couple years, and now as we’re getting ready for this summer’s trip John has had the design turned into a sew-on patch and it looks great. Here, see for yourself:

I can’t wait to get my hands on these. He had enough made so we each get six, and I have three spots picked out already. One will go on my leather jacket, and one will go on a baseball-type cap. The third will go on a denim shirt that already has a patch on it that I want to cover up. It’s a really nice shirt but the patch is for a company where I used to work that I would describe as a bunch of jerks who know nothing about treating people with decency and respect. I haven’t been able to cut it off so I’m just going to cover it up. Then I can start wearing the shirt!

So, oh boy! The bike trip’s coming soon!

Biker Quote for Today

Sometimes the best communication happens when you’re on separate bikes.

Continuing something of a theme I’ve been developing this week, I want to talk now about hypothermia. As in getting really, really cold in an unsafe manner.

Hypothermia: An abnormally low body temperature, often caused by prolonged exposure to cold.

I wrote a on Monday about my day riding Motorcycle Lead for a bicycle race. The wind started blowing and the temperature dropped and it started to snow. By the time I got off the bike I started to shake and shiver uncontrollably. That was the beginning of hypothermia. Then on Wednesday I wrote about fairings and how they do so much to keep you warm. This was not planned but I might as well round out the discussion.

The first time I got a taste of hypothermia was on one of the earliest rides I did with my buddies John and Bill in our group that we call the Old Farts Motorcycle Club. We had been down in New Mexico and were headed back into Colorado when we got caught in a cloudburst. We didn’t have rain suits back then, we just got wet. At the time it didn’t seem like such a big deal. In Colorado it is common to have brief rain showers, and then the sun comes out and all is fine. We didn’t get drenched or anything, and we just kept riding.

Awhile later we reached Alamosa and, stopping at the first traffic light in town, agreed unanimously that we really wanted to find a coffee shop before we did anything else. We were cold.

We got to a coffee shop and ordered a pot of coffee and started shivering and shaking. A lot. A whole lot. Over the course of the next hour or so we probably drank eight pots of coffee but just kept shivering. Somewhere along the line we realized that this was hypothermia. We had gotten wet, but the wind dried us out when the rain stopped, but with the moisture it also extracted a dangerous amount of our body heat.

Hypothermia can be dangerous. It can cause you to become mentally confused, which can lead to dangerous or deadly mistakes when riding a motorcycle. It’s not a good thing.

So what should a motorcyclist do to avoid hypothermia, and what do you do if it happens anyway? First off, don’t drink coffee. Hot coffee may seem like just the ticket but you would do a lot better to drink hot cocoa or have a bowl of hot soup. Something with calories. Of course, if coffee is the only warm thing around, as was the case for me at the bicycle races, do what you’ve got to do. Wrapping up in a blanket or sleeping bag is a very good thing, too. If the hypothermia is serious you should not hesitate to call for emergency medical care.

It’s better to avoid hypothermia in the first place. The first line of defense is the proper gear. Carry a good rain suit and don’t delay too long in putting it on. Use your electric vest if you have one. Heated grips would be good. I swear by the fairing on my Concours, and the windshield on the CB750. Wear plenty of layers. Stop frequently and get warm in a convenience store/gas station, cafe, or rest stop. Wear synthetics or wools that don’t hold the moisture in direct contact with you skin. Avoid alcohol if you’re going out somewhere where you’re likely to get cold.

Mostly it’s just common sense: stay warm in whatever way you can. Don’t be an idiot. It’s better to arrive late, or call off the ride, than never arrive again.

Biker Quote for Today

Never be afraid to slow down.

What do you do when the name of your motorcycle club no longer really fits, but you’ve got the coolest logo around and you are not about to jettison that? I mean, check this out:

Old Farts Motorcycle Club was always tongue in cheek, and in the beginning we were nowhere near old. Heck, I was still in my 30s. The original three of us are all quite a bit older now, and we’ve been joined by several other guys our age, but we’ve also been joined by sons and their friends. They’ve only borne the OFMC title grudgingly.

On this year’s trip the discussion began in earnest. We had some good proposals. For the sons it was proposed that OFMC could mean “Our Fathers’ Motorcycle Club.” For the friends it could be “Our Friends’ Motorcycle Club.” And finally, to cover everyone, it could be “Our Fuckin’ Motorcycle Club.”

So there was no decision one way or the other. More than anything, I guess the idea is going to be that the name is “OFMC,” and you can let those initials represent whatever you want. Everyone is happy and we still have our killer logo. Is this a great country or what?!

The Old Farts Motorcycle Club headed southwest this year, to the land of blazing heat. Descending into Laughlin, NV, we could feel the heat rising until it felt, in the most literal sense possible, like a sauna. Probably about 110 degrees.

We rode about 1,600 miles this time, and learned a number of interesting, useful things. For one, you can’t get a cold brew anywhere on the Navajo reservation. We pulled into Tuba City, AZ, hot and dusty and ready for a swimming pool and/or a cold beer and found that neither was available. No pool was actually surprising considering we were at the Quality Inn. The redeeming factor was that the people working at the Quality Inn were absolutely the nicest, more friendly, most helpful folks you’ll ever meet. Plus, it was a gorgeous evening to sit out on the lawn and enjoy the perfect, cool night.

There were nine of us this year and that’s really too many. That many guys can’t just roll into town and expect to find room at the inn. And having reservations for the whole trip removes the spontaneity that has so often led to the best part of our trips.

So what do you do? You can’t tell three or four guys they’re disinvited next year. No, the only approach I can see that makes sense is to take more trips and you just assume that some guys will be on one trip but not another. With any luck, this will be a situation where too much of a good thing is resolved by having even more of a good thing.

It’s hard to believe, but we’re leaving on our annual bike trip in less than three weeks, June 15. This is kind of early for us, but we’re going south, to Arizona and New Mexico and Nevada, so it will be warm. There will be nine of us this year in this Old Farts Motorcycle Club excursion.

We’re going to ride the Unaweep Highway, which several of us have been on, but other haven’t, and it’s a good one. Then we’ll head on down through the Monument Valley and on to Fraser, AZ. In case you’ve never been to Fraser, let me tell you about it. It’s an old mining town not far from Sedona, and it sits up on the side of a mountain so steep that the road zig-zags back and forth through town. The front of a building faces the street in one direction and the same street passes by on the back side of the building. There’s no such thing as a cross-street.

From there we’ll head on to Laughlin, NV, where we’ve been a couple times before. It’s a lot like Las Vegas was before it got huge, and it’s on a river just down from a dam and reservoir. Nice place. Then we’ll work our way on home again, spending a couple days in places in Colorado that we’ve passed through but never stopped at.

Less than three weeks! Hot dang!

Tomorrow is the day. The Old Farts Motorcycle Club is going to the Sturgis rally this year and we leave tomorrow. There will be eight of us going this year. This includes the three stalwarts, John, Bill, and Ken; four who have joined us over the years, Friggs, Dennis, Johnathon, and Jason; and one newbie, Brett.

We’ll be heading out Friday afternoon and riding to Guernsey, WY, where we’ll spend the first night. Saturday it’s on to stake claim to our accommodations in Rapid City, where we’ll spend three nights. During that time we’ll be running over to Sturgis, up to Deadwood, and generally cruising the terrific roads of the Black Hills.

Next we’ll head west, with a stop for the night in Gillette. Then on to Saratoga to our favorite lodging there, the Sage and Sand Motel. After one night in Saratoga Johnathon, Jason, and Brett will head back to Denver while the rest of us take a loop trip through the Snowy Range and spend a second night in Saratoga.

Leaving Saratoga we’ll cruise the short distance to Craig, CO, where we have a tee-time set for a bit of golf. No, we don’t carry our clubs with us, that’s what rentals are for. Then on home the next day.

We don’t normally plan out our summer trip with reservations all along the way but this year, traveling in the vicinity of the rally during actual rally week we figured it would be wise. We didn’t used to make any plans, other than the destination for our first day. Then we’d just follow our noses and see where we ended up. Those days are gone, though–that’s part of what the OF part of OFMC is all about.

Look for details on this trip in about 10 days. Sturgis, here we come.

We’ve been to Sturgis before but this year we’re going to the rally. Who is “we”? The guys I ride with have taken the whimsical name of “Old Farts Motorcycle Club” although, as one wife points out, some of the guys have just cause to dispute that name. It all started with John, Bill, and me (Ken) when we first got our bikes and started taking these summer trips. After awhile John’s son Johnathon joined us (after his dad got a new Shadow and gave him the old Virago) and then Bill’s brother Friggs moved back to town and got a bike. Bill’s brother-in-law Dennis joined us with his Gold Wing, and next, Bill’s son Jason joined us on his dad’s old Shadow when Bill bought his Harley, and Jason’s friend Todd came with Jason. Finally, Johnathon’s friend Randy hooked in with us.

So this year we’re headed to Sturgis, although the OFMC line-up is already changing. Just got word yesterday from Jason that Todd wiped out on his VTX just a few days ago. Totaled the bike, broke a few bones, and demolished his helmet (not his head!). Don’t have details yet but Jason says he should be OK. In the meantime Jason has another friend who is interested in coming and is working to get a hall pass from his wife and employer.

We don’t always have stops plannned and accommodations reserved but this year, traveling near the Black Hills during the rally, we figured it’s essential. I’ve been looking at motels half-way between Rapid City and Denver — some place we can reach easily after work on a Friday night — and it sure is funny how the price on this date is higher than their highest posted price. Can someone explain that to me? Oh, I get it.

That’s OK. No one bought a motorcycle in order to save money, or if they did they were misinformed.

So anyway, we’ll see you maybe in Sturgis. We’ll be the large group of Hondas with a Yamaha and one Harley mixed in.