Passes & Canyons Blog

After our stupid joke Bill and I bought a round for the group in a bar in Medicine Bow.

If you ride in a group it’s the generally accepted practice that you are responsible for making sure the guy behind you is still there. And if he’s not you slow down to let him catch up, and if he still doesn’t show maybe you stop and wait. And if he still doesn’t show you go back.

My friend Jungle always says that if you stop you should wait five minutes before going back. If the guy behind is OK, five minutes won’t matter. If he’s dead it won’t matter either.

Now, that’s not to say that the OFMC has always followed this rule. I was heading west on I-70 behind Brett and Randy one time when I had a flat just east of Rifle. I pulled over but I couldn’t get off the bike because the road sloped away and if I put out my kickstand the bike was going to fall to the right. Fine, I’ll just wait here until they come back for me.

Well, they didn’t. After awhile I started waving at any bikers passing on the highway, hoping someone would stop to give me a hand. Several did pass, and seemed like they wanted to stop, but they were going fast and by the time they could have stopped they would have been a quarter mile down the road. But finally a couple did stop, and they started hoofing it back to where I was.

Just at that time a guy in a pick-up came along and he stopped. Do you need help? You bet I do. He helped me hoist the bike up onto the center stand, which is amazingly hard to do when you have a flat tire–not sure why. So by the time the biker couple got there all I could say was thanks a whole lot but I don’t need you any more. But thank you so much.

It turns out that Brett and Randy noticed I was not behind them so they pulled off at Rifle. But the exit goes downhill, to where you can’t see the vehicles passing by above on the highway. After sitting there a few minutes they decided I must have just gone on past them on the highway so they took off again. Wrong. Once I was finally able to rejoin the whole group the next day neither of them said one word, like “Oops” or “Sorry” or anything. Jungle told me, “You need new friends.”

Which brings me back to Bill and Ken’s really bad practical joke.

We were up in Wyoming one time coming down a highway in the middle of nowhere, me riding sweep and Bill just in front of me. We got to a fork and I don’t know how we knew this but we knew that if we took the fork to the right it would rejoin this same road a little further along. The other guys were going to the left. Presumably, considering when this was, Bill must have pulled over at the fork and when I pulled up next to him he suggested that we take this other road and ride fast and be waiting for them up ahead. A fun surprise.

So we peeled off and we got to where the roads rejoined and we sat and waited. And waited. And waited. Oops, you don’t suppose they noticed we weren’t there and are looking for us? Bill headed back on the road they were coming on while I sat at the intersection in case someone came the other way. And of course that’s what it was. They were looking all over for us, riding back the way we had all come and getting very concerned.

Considering how unorganized we were back then, the ploy might have worked except that just a quarter mile past the fork there was a rest area and the group pulled off. It was not hard to realize we were not there. Where are those guys? When did you see them last? They found out when Bill got all the way back to that spot.

They were not happy. They wouldn’t let us live that one down for a long time. What in the world made us think this would be a clever trick?

I do think that after my flat by Rifle everyone in the group really came to understand that you are responsible for keeping an eye on the guy behind you, so we’re not unteachable.

Biker Quote for Today

100 reasons not to date a biker: 20. We smell like leather and gasoline.