Passes & Canyons Blog

Here’s an amusing coincidence. I was going to do a post about an event coming up on Saturday in a couple weeks and I wanted to see where this place was. I used Google Earth to get a ground-level view and it turns out it is a place I have history with. Let’s start at the beginning.

I got an email awhile ago from Ben Kriederman, who rents BMW motorcycles through House of Motorrad, about an event they are putting on or sponsoring or whatever. It’s two Saturdays from now, April 27, and it is a slideshow presentation titled “Adventuring South.” It’s the story of a father and son who decided to ride their BMWs from Colorado to Argentina. No charge and as a promotional event for House of Motorrad they are giving away some goodies–plus free food and beer.

Sounds good to me. Maybe I’ll go, although I’m leaving town the next morning so it may not work out.

Oh yeah: where? This is where it gets interesting.

The location is 15801 W. Colfax, at a place called Uhl Studios. Zooming in on Google Earth to see the place I was surprised to see it is the same–although greatly remodeled–place that used to be home to Golden Skysails. Golden Skysails was a hang-glider dealer and trainer, and it was through Golden Skysails that I bought and learned to fly a hang-glider many years ago.

Of course, that whole business tied directly into motorcycling for me as well. I learned to fly, though not very well, and eventually I had a pretty bad crash. The only time I’ve ever flown in a helicopter was when I was air-lifted to the hospital.

After I was recovered I still wanted to fly so I repaired my glider and went out again a few times to fly but ran into a common issue: no air time. You see, the issue with hang-gliding is that you can get up early and load all your gear, then drive for a couple hours to a suitable place to fly, only to sit there all day and never get wind in the right direction. So you then break everything back down, load it up, drive a couple hours home, and you never got to do what you were planning to do. And the whole day is gone.

So after this happened a couple times I got fed up and decided to sell the glider. I promised myself that I would then take the money I sold the glider for and buy a motorcycle, because at least with a motorcycle, as soon as I threw my leg over and fired it up I would be doing what I came to do. And that’s what I did and I’ve never looked back.

Now we come full circle. I don’t know what Uhl Studios is but they’re in that space I was familiar with long ago. I’d sure like to be there on Saturday night but I suspect I just won’t have time. Oh well.

Thanks and an Update

I want to give a thank-you to Barry Jones and Jeff McDonald who responded to my request to help me figure out why no one was ever leaving comments on this blog. Turns out, I had things set to where anyone wanting to comment would have to sign up and have a WordPress log-in, and then they would need to be logged in. That’s way too much for most people. So I changed that. Now all you have to do to leave a comment is do a little spam-blocking routine, something along the lines of + 1 = 4, where you enter the 3. So please . . . offer your comments. And yes, I have already gotten a couple spam comments but I also have it set up so that no comment appears until I approve it. So you’ll never see some junk, spammy comment, although your own comment will not appear until I approve it. And I won’t be a censor; all I want to do is make sure it’s a real, bonafide comment, even if you’re telling me I’m the biggest jerk in the world, although I will not permit foul language. Just keep it clean. Thanks.

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Biker Quote for Today

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. — Ralph Waldo Emerson