{"id":13293,"date":"2026-03-23T12:20:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T18:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/?p=13293"},"modified":"2026-04-15T02:38:55","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T08:38:55","slug":"my-travels-with-charley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/my-travels-with-charley\/","title":{"rendered":"My Travels With Charley"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>


\nCharley on my Honda CB750 Custom.<\/p><\/div>\n

I was going to go on the RMMRC<\/a> ride on Wednesday last week<\/a> but then we had a family emergency. I wasn’t going to go but Judy urged me to, saying there was no reason to skip it and she would be fine without me. So I did go.<\/p>\n

The emergency involved her son, Charley. I can explain it in one word: fentanyl. After being on life support for 11 days he died this morning. His organs were donated to families that needed them.<\/p>\n

While my relationship with Charley was never better than cordial, we did share some motorcycle history.<\/p>\n

It has always been an amusing image in my mind of one time, when he was still a teenager, when he wanted a ride somewhere. I was going to go for a motorcycle ride but I told him I would give him a lift on my bike, the Honda CB750 Custom. Charley was much bigger than me so picture this big guy on the back of a bike with his knees splayed widely outward. He felt silly, and it did look silly, but I got him to where he wanted to go so he wasn’t complaining. He did remark later that his friends found it laughable.<\/p>\n

Later, when he was living on his own, he had his own motorcycle. We never knew this, though, until after he had sold it. But one day, I don’t remember how it came about, he and I decided to take a ride. I was on my Concours and he rode the Honda. And yes, it really was too small a bike for him.<\/p>\n

We rode down to Franktown, to the Stagecoach. That’s where this picture was shot. We just had a beer and rode home. No big deal, nothing eventful. But that’s the only time we ever rode together.<\/p>\n

Just about a week before his fateful event he was telling me he figured it was time for him to have a motorcycle again. Would I help him pick out a bike? Of course I told him I’d be happy to.<\/p>\n

Then a week later he went missing. After three days Judy filed a missing person report with the Denver police. Later that day he was located, in an intensive care unit in Thornton, on life support with irreparable brain damage.<\/p>\n

And now you fentanyl merchants have brought tragedy to one more American family.<\/p>\n

Biker Quote for Today<\/h3>\n

I’m sorry, I don’t have one today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was going to go on the RMMRC ride on Wednesday last week but then we had a family emergency. I wasn’t going to go but Judy urged me to, saying there was no reason to skip it and she would be fine without me. So I did go. The emergency involved her son, Charley. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[460,349],"tags":[1563],"class_list":["post-13293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-honda-motorcycles","category-kawasaki","tag-fentanyl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13293"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13438,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13293\/revisions\/13438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}