{"id":7954,"date":"2017-01-02T12:05:01","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T19:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/?p=7954"},"modified":"2017-01-01T12:07:49","modified_gmt":"2017-01-01T19:07:49","slug":"new-years-eve-a-nice-day-to-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/new-years-eve-a-nice-day-to-ride\/","title":{"rendered":"New Year&#8217;s Eve A Nice Day To Ride"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_7956\" style=\"width: 507px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/LBMR2016.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7956\" src=\"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/LBMR2016.jpg\" vspace=\"10\" alt=\"Harley with Christmas bow\" width=\"497\" height=\"373\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7956\" srcset=\"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/LBMR2016.jpg 497w, http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/LBMR2016-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 497px) 100vw, 497px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-7956\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong><em>This Harley out front of the Grizzly Rose was decked out in its own Christmas bow.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Our thermometer out back read 37 degrees when I took off on Saturday for the <a href=\"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/great-colorado-weather-means-two-rides-this-weekend\/\" target=\"_blank\">Last Brass Monkey Run<\/a> so it was a no-brainer about how warmly to dress. I wore all the winter gear.<\/p>\n<p>Still, I had the heated gloves set on the second highest setting and that was too much; I went two blocks and stopped and turned them down a notch.<\/p>\n<p>It was definitely Michelin Man time for me&#8211;I was so covered in warm clothing that I felt like if I had gone down I would have just bounced. But I was warm, truly warm. I could have gone for a long ride. Sweet.<\/p>\n<p>I got to the Grizzly Rose and as I expected, there were plenty of bikes. Not like last year where it was cold and icy and there probably weren&#8217;t more than 25 bikes altogether. People rode this year.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the place was not crowded. The first year I went to the Last Brass Monkey Run the place&#8211;and the parking lot&#8211;was packed. From what I understand, ABATE membership has declined significantly since that time. That&#8217;s too bad. ABATE is the chief lobbying group for motorcyclist issues at the state capital. But apparently most people don&#8217;t thing that concerns them very much. They might think differently if there was no one down there standing up for our interests.<\/p>\n<p>So I went in and walked around and as is pretty much always the case, the only people I knew were all working the event. Taking tickets, running the poker walk games, handing out the door prizes&#8211;all that. If I were a better ABATE member I would have been working, too, but agreeing to be the District 10 legislative liaison this year is the first time I&#8217;ve ever gotten really involved. Mostly I just go to meetings and then do my bit to get the word out about what&#8217;s going on that riders should pay attention to. I consider that a valuable contribution but it&#8217;s not like working the events the way all the rest of the folks do.<\/p>\n<p>I got my chance, though. I found Stump manning a table for the poker walk and stopped to talk awhile. He had two bags with marked ping-pong balls in them. Players would draw from each bag and if you got, say, a ball marked diamond and a ball marked 8 then you had drawn an 8 of diamonds. Stump would then note that down on your sheet as one of the cards in your poker hand.<\/p>\n<p>At one point Stump walked away to do something and I found myself there playing dealer. And because he never came back, I stayed there as dealer till the poker walk ended. So I did help out a little.<\/p>\n<p>After that I took off. By then it was a lot warmer out and I had a thoroughly pleasant ride home. Not at all bad for December 31.<\/p>\n<h3>Biker Quote for Today<\/h3>\n<p>98% of all Harleys ever sold are still on the road. The other 2% made it home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our thermometer out back read 37 degrees when I took off on Saturday for the Last Brass Monkey Run so it was a no-brainer about how warmly to dress. I wore all the winter gear. Still, I had the heated gloves set on the second highest setting and that was too much; I went two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[225],"tags":[410],"class_list":["post-7954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abate","tag-last-brass-monkey-run"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7954","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=7954"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7958,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7954\/revisions\/7958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}