Posts Tagged ‘winter riding’

A Day Like Yesterday

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Concours with mountains

Snow is on its way. By the time it stops, sometime tomorrow, we could have as much as a foot. Is it any surprise I was out riding yesterday?

Never mind my commitment to riding both of my bikes at least once every single month, though that was a factor as well. When I have a great day on the first day of a winter month I’d better ride, because how wretched would I feel if I didn’t and it snowed the next day . . . and I never got a chance the rest of the month.

But the bigger factor was just that it was a gorgeous February day, and who wouldn’t want to go riding on a day that? I’ve been keeping the Honda on the battery tender, so it fired right up. The Kawi took a bit to get going, so I went for an extra long ride with it to get a bit more juice into that battery.

A good bit of that was on the highway, too, where I could get up some speed. At a motorcycle mechanics 101 session Alan and Dan and I went to last fall the guy said you really only start charging your battery once revs get up over a certain level, so just cruising around on city streets probably doesn’t do a lot for it. I wonder, though, if that means that if you deliberately stayed in a lower gear so you’d get higher revs you would get more charging. I tried at one point last year to get some definitive information on this whole matter but found that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of definitive info out there. Which means that I have to wonder where this guy was getting his information and how reliable it was.

But hey, charging the battery was a secondary concern. Riding was number one. And I had one of those odd experiences I have from time to time. I took off and was out for awhile and then at one point it hit me, “Wow, it’s really good to be on a bike!” This is a winter thing, when we don’t get to ride so much. You get away from it for a few weeks and you start forgetting how great it feels. Then you get on and go and it’s a surprise: Oh yeah, I forgot how much I enjoy doing this.

I have a friend who tells me his wife is like that in regard to sex. Whenever they do it she loves it but in between times she seems to forget how much she enjoys it. He figures if she remembered she’d want to do it more often, but she doesn’t. Then she’s surprised every time.

So I felt that surprise again yesterday. It makes me wonder how people get by living in places where you have to put your bike away for the entire winter. ‘Tis a privilege to live in Colorado.

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Biker Quote for Today

Warning: If you value your life as much as I value this motorcycle, don’t fuck with it!

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Winter Is Not a Time to Just Park Your Bike

Thursday, December 4th, 2008

Franktown, Palmer Lake, Sedalia loopOh man, winter is really here. It’s colder tonight than it has been since last winter. And we had a real snowfall last week.

I admit, I’m not one of the real hard core. I haven’t been on either of my bikes in almost three weeks. This weekend, however, I will be on one or both of my bikes without question as long as there isn’t ice and snow on the streets. ‘Tis the season to be opportunistic–you never know when a blizzard will strike and keep you off the bike for weeks. You have to grab the moment when you’ve got it; tomorrow can easily be too late.

And where do I ride when the weather gets bad? Well, first off, I stay down here on the flatlands. It’s a whole other climate up in the mountains. We might have 50 degrees and sunshine down here but you head up to Georgetown or Estes Park and all of a sudden it’s 25 degrees and there are patches of snow and ice in the portions of the road that are in shadow. And if there’s no snow and ice you can bet the road is covered with sand from the last snowfall. That makes for better traction in a car but it makes your motorcycle ride much more of an adventure than you would prefer.

So with the mountains ruled out, where to? Well, there’s one really nice loop that I’ve taken many times and it comes complete with your choice of biker bars to stop at for some socializing and refreshment. Going counterclockwise, I head south on US 85 to Sedalia, turn west on CO 67, go a mile and then turn south on CO 105. This is a very nice ride that takes you down to Palmer Lake, and you then reach I-25 at Monument.

Continue east on CO 105 until you get to CO 83 and head north. This takes you past Castlewood Canyon State Park, a nice stop, to Franktown, to Parker, and the back to Denver. The whole ride, if you end up back where you started, is about 90 miles.

Places to stop include the Stagecoach in Franktown, in Sedalia you’ll want to hit the Sedalia Grill, and in Palmer Lake, O’Malley’s Pub is the place to go. Black leather is definitely the fashion in these places, and the food is good, too.

If you up on the north side of town and don’t want to head all that way south, my favorite place is Jerry D’s in Dacono. Again, black leather is the fashion. You’ll feel right at home.

It has been said that winter is nature’s way of telling you to polish your bike. That may be, but it’s no reason not to get in some good riding when the weather permits.

Biker Quote for Today

Young riders pick a destination and go. Old riders pick a direction and go.

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