Passes & Canyons Blog

This is the kind of road you don’t want to run out of gas on.

Dennis has a saying we all like: The only time you can have too much gas is when you’re on fire.

Yeah, we’ve all run out of gas a time or two, right? I certainly have. Little things like forgetting to reset your trip meter after getting gas. That sort of thing. Too much optimism about how far what you have will take you.

Well, there’s thread for that. Over on the AdventureRiders site. I like to check in on it now and then. Especially at times like now when riding is out of the question and I’ve got a blog post to write. So here are a few people’s stories.

• I had the tank off to check the valves and change the air filter. Put the bike back together and rode it like I usually do. I used the trip counter as a fuel gauge. I noticed that I had gone well over my usual range before the light normally came on. I congratulated myself on improving my fuel mileage by looking after my bike…. and it sputtered and died. Apparently the idiot light needs the idiot who took the tank off to remember to plug the wires back in on reinstall. Girlfriend at the time brought me fuel and had a great time telling everyone about it for weeks afterwards.
• The Triumph Daytona, on the first ride home from the dealership. $h…s must have filled the tank with a cup of gas and told me to “have a nice ride.” Had to knock on a strangers door for “lawnmower gas” to get home.
• Most adventurous fuel flame-out was in Moab with a rental dirt bike. Coming out of the White Rim Trail, I was trying to make a gas stop in Moab. The bike had no fuel gauge and I was trying to make this happen using memories of the odometer. Ran out a mile from the station and had to bum lawnmower fuel.
• 1984, I switched my Seca 650 to reserve ten miles from home at the end of a two week tour. It had been a long, wet, 800 mile day (and night) and I just wanted to see my own bed. Had to work the next day, made a mental note to get gas in the morning. (Yeah, that did not happen.) After work, in rush hour traffic on the freeway, bike starts to stutter. Oh, now I remember!
  Between Ft Morgan and Julesberg CO I ended up chilling on the side of the road for entirely too long not realizing what the problem actually was. It wasn’t a stretch where I ever had an issue before, but apparently had enough headwind and weight to drop my range a good 15-20 miles. I was also caught off guard not realizing that I’d forgotten to flip it off reserve from the last stretch, and the Shadow doesn’t die quite the same. Normally low on fuel is a quick loss of power but plenty of time to go to reserve, if you’re already on reserve it’ll cough a couple times and then just die. So I call my brother in NP, he comes out with a trailer, and the next day I fart around with it trying to figure out what I broke or wore out for at least an hour before I notice that the plugs have solid spark but are bone dry. D’oh.
• I was 16. My friend was taking me as pillion on my 1984 Yamaha 400 Maxim to do my driver license test. I filled the tank the day before. Little did I know that my sister had conveniently drained most of the gas from my tank that night to fill her car and left me only just enough to ride about 10 miles. We ran out of gas, at the bottom of the hill, had to push the bike nearly 2 miles to the next gas station. I missed my scheduled appointment for my drivers test and had to reschedule for two weeks later. Guess who I don’t call for Christmas every year.
• The last time I ran out of gas was in 1973 when I overestimated how far I could go on a tank of gas with my RD350. I was close to home so my dad (who just happened to go by) picked me up. I didn’t have tie downs so I sat on the bike in the back of his truck. I had rather long hair at the time and wasn’t wearing a helmet. My Dad was laughing at me the whole way home because I looked like an Indian Chief with a headdress on.
• Our day started out great, we were on an ADV ride from Northern CA in late May headed to Oregon and had tracks we were following around the backside of Mt. Shasta on a Forest Service dirt road when after 30 miles of riding we were blocked by snow. Unfortunately, the blockage occurred 10 miles from our intended gas stop, but turning around meant gas was almost 45 miles the other direction routing us on roads, with the gas gauges all having come on simultaneously on our BMW R1200GS’ with a “low fuel” warning flashing 40 miles of range left on the gauge. The funny thing is we hit ZERO miles remaining 5 miles from the gas station and decided to chance it (nothing to lose at this point and our fortune favors the bold attitude). When we arrived (yes we did not run out of gas) the gauge on the bike showed negative (-) 5 miles of range left which we all laughed about as we had never seen a negative number on the gas gauge before and thanked the BMW engineer who had designed it with the “Pushing Your Luck Attitude” in mind.

Here’s a story of my own. Sometime, many years ago, Judy and I were out on the CB750 and ran out of gas. Don’t remember where. As we wondered what to do a guy in a car pulled up and asked if he could help. You bet! So he drove us to get gas, and he even had a gas can with him. Along the way he explained that he was kind of a professional good Samaritan. That is to say, he would very much appreciate us paying him for his assistance. Man, at times like that you are so glad to have assistance. We readily gave him a large “tip.”

Biker Quote for Today

The road to hell is very grippy, with fabulous camber and some wicked left-handers.

Here’s a place I would hate to run out of gas. Anyone else coming by today?

Oh, gosh, it wasn’t so long ago since I dipped into this Adventure Riders thread. Back in February. No matter, I’m doing it again today. I’m short of subject matter.

The question posed in this thread is “When was the last time you ran out of gas?” Here are a few responses. What’s your story?

• At age 40 (now 67), 2nd day of ownership of my very first bike, taking a ride, I ran out of gas about 1/2 mile from home. I was such a noob, I wasn’t sure what was wrong. Bike sputtered and died. Luckily most of it was downhill to my home. I call dealer and they asked if I flipped the petcock. What the **** is that was my reply? After he stopped laughing, he explained and all was well. Plus I learned something about motorcycles.
• I equate the need to carry gasoline with the ice cream napkin postulate. The number of napkins you need is directly related to the number of napkins you do not have. Gas works the same. This past spring I got a new to me road cruiser. It isn’t exactly great on mileage, but I could go 200-250 on a tank full. But I realized that my butt and joints usually need a break before then. So typical I start looking for gas around 150 miles for a good stretch and fill up. This way I am never stressing about fuel and I am usually feeling pretty good.
• It’s been a few years now, but I ran out of gas a couple times with the bike that had the largest gas capacity of any I’ve owned. My 2010 GSA supposedly had an 8.9 gallon tank, but it actually held just over 10.0 gallons. I filled it to 10 gallons several times, at different stations, as the distance to go was very accurate . . . until the fuel strip messed up. I planned to stop at a station on the way to work, but ran out about 100 yards short. It took 10.05 gallons.
• The last out-of-gas moment was a planned event. I had two 2l Fuel Friend containers with me, you got to know what your range is, so go and do the test on each new bike! Interestingly enough a biker stopped and ask if I was ok. Thank you dude for checking!
• About ten years ago, my daughter was suiting up to ride her KLX 250 to work, and remarked that she was getting great gas mileage all of a sudden. I told her to check the petcock and she laughed, assuring me that it wasn’t on reserve. I laughed too, to myself, and waited for her call. Sure enough, she ran out. I brought her the gas can, but she was a bit late for work that day. She hasn’t run out of gas since.
• I just bought a low-mile ‘05 tiger to replace my high-mile ‘06 tiger, and have been swapping farkles (including gps and aux lights) from the old one to the new one. I learned the hard way that the trip meter gets reset when the battery is disconnected – I was passing a string of cars in a passing lane going up a hill when the bike started losing power. It took me a minute or two to deduce how I managed to run out when the trip meter read only 190 and I can get 260 to a tank.
• I was coming North on route 9 after school one night and the bike sputtered…I was going about 60mph reached down to flip to reserve and it was already there. Hmm no traffic around it was well after midnight. I quickly pulled the choke and started swerving from side to side and leaning the bike to the left as far as I could. This got me to the crest of the hill I was on and then the bike died. I was still rolling at about 30 mph with the clutch pulled and headed slightly down hill. I knew the area well and that there was an all down hill run 1/4 mile to a exit ramp then down hill to a gas station. I also knew the gas station was closed at 10:00PM…but figured I could drain all the hoses at the pumps and be ok. Coasted into the station and drained all the hoses got the bike fired back up and made the 5 mile ride home.

OK, thanks for sharing guys. Of course I have plenty of my own running out of gas stories. The first time was when I was taking a woman I was interested in for her first motorcycle ride and I had forgotten the petcock was already set on Reserve. We walked a mile to a station and back with the gas. Things never took off between her and me.

Another time was with my wife when my Concours was new. We took a ride with the Concours Owners Group and when they all stopped to get gas in Florence I didn’t, figuring we’d make it home. We split off from the group and were heading up CO 83 toward Franktown and I was watching the gauge. Figured it would be good to stop in Franktown. We didn’t make it that far. Fortunately we rolled to a stop in front of a farm house and they sold me a gallon.

I was on my way to work one day on the Honda, heading west on Hampden, and ran out at Franklin Street. Fortunately I knew if I could push the bike about two blocks I could then coast down another three blocks to a station. Got off easy that time. That station is no longer there so I’ll try not to do that again.

There must be others but that’s all I can call to mind right now.

Biker Quote for Today

Riding is like writing stories, one road at a time, one adventure after another.