Archive for the ‘OFMC’ Category

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To Sag Or Not To Sag

Thursday, July 6th, 2023

How lucky Tom was to have a sag wagon along on this trip.

It was only a terrific stroke of luck for Tom that when his motorcycle died in Arizona on one of the loneliest, most out-of-the-way roads around that Dave was right behind with his Ford F-250 pick-up and a trailer. Dave had planned on doing the ride but then had surgery the week before and couldn’t ride. On the morning of our departure, on the spur of the moment, he decided to heck with it, he was going even if that meant he had to drive. And as long as he was driving the F-250 he figured he might as well bring along his trailer, just in case someone needed it. And Tom did.

How much would a tow truck have cost to get him anywhere the bike could be worked on, and then how long might he have to stay in that town until parts arrived? We’re talking a significant chunk of cash here. As it turned out, the problem was just in the switch that keeps you from riding off with your side-stand down, so not expensive to fix at all. But Tom had the leisure of handling the problem back at home and the only cost, besides not getting to do the rest of the trip on his bike, was paying Dave for gas.

Not surprisingly, this whole situation has ignited a discussion within the RMMRC. Perhaps it would be nice to have a sag wagon along on all our long trips. After all, it was just last year that Dave was the one with a problem–bad stator on his Beemer–that resulted in him staying in Minnesota while the rest of us rode on home. Then he had to deal with this away-from-home dealer rather than the local shop he knows and where they know him.

Of course the real issue here could simply be, who among us wants to make the trip but not ride? Somebody would have to drive the truck. Well, the RMMRC has another long trip coming up soon, out to the Columbia River and the Cascades. And Tom has volunteered to be the driver. If, he adds, everyone else pays for his gas.

It would be like insurance. Everyone pays a little, hoping truthfully to get nothing in return, but really happy to have the coverage if you do need it.

This pay-for-the-gas provision has generated some discussion. Initially some people were immediately willing to pay it; some others were hesitant. On its own the cost would not be negligible–except compared to a huge towing bill. An F-250 gets about 15 miles per gallon. Let’s figure $3.50 per gallon, and a 3,200-mile trip, like this Columbia River thing. That would be about 213 gallons, with a total cost of about $745. Let’s say there are 10 guys going; that would be about $75 each for insurance. You see where this is heading?

Suppose eight guys are willing to pay but two are not. If one of them does break down then what? We’re not going to abandon them. Maybe at that point they have to make the choice to pay the entire gas cost or else figure out some other way out of their predicament. I mean, at that point if one of the guys who paid for the insurance broke down he would not have his sag wagon available that he was paying for. That totally doesn’t work.

If you just decided, as a group, that anyone going had to join in on the insurance are you going to drive people away? Nobody wants to do that.

And even if everyone is paying, what are you going to do if more than one person breaks down?

To get some perspective, let’s look at what would happen without a sag wagon. Just last year, coincidentally not 50 miles from where Tom had his problem, Bill had a problem. He hit a big rock in the road and bent his wheel, causing the tire to lose air with no possibility of reinflating. Amazingly, the tire did not go flat until we reached our day’s destination.

After exploring several options what he finally ended up doing was getting a tow to the next town, where a shop put in a tube that we figured had solved the problem. That tow cost about $150 and delayed our next day’s start till 3 p.m. on our longest day of the trip. But we handled it and we rode on. (Although by the time we got to Farmington the tube had lost air and the next morning Bill paid $2,000 for a new tire and wheel at the local Harley shop. At home he figures he would have gotten the wheel and tire for half that.)

As a different example, in 2018 on an OFMC trip we had a major disruption when Dennis unknowingly put diesel fuel in his Indian. Obviously we didn’t have a sag wagon so we replicated one. That is, Dennis made phone calls and then we rode him over to the nearest town where there was a U-Haul shop, he rented a truck and we went back to his bike, we loaded his bike on, and we altered our course to go to the nearest Indian dealer. It wasn’t cheap, especially since it was a one-way rental on the U-Haul. But we made it work. And it cost Dennis a pile of money.

In short, there is no obvious best answer. Perhaps the thing that will keep this from becoming too much of a dilemma is what I mentioned before: Who wants to get stuck driving the truck? Tom is willing on this next trip but then what? Who? Certainly not me–I came to ride!

Biker Quote for Today

A dirt bike is like your buddy. A road bike is your lover.

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Tales Of The OFMC: Going Riding, One Way Or Another

Monday, May 15th, 2023

We still use paper maps but back then that was the only option.

The OFMC did really well in terms of avoiding mechanical issues on the road for a very long time. We only sort of, semi avoided it, however, on our seventh trip, in 1995. Bill had his problem before we left.

John and I were at John’s waiting for Bill to get there when the phone rang. It was Bill, with a dead bike a few miles away. We rode down there and found him in a shopping center parking lot. Thinking that maybe if we could get it running all would be fine (fat chance!) we pushed and pushed and pushed him till we were about to keep over. But miraculously, at some point, we did get it started. At this point Bill figured it would not be wise to head out of town so he went straight to his dealer’s place while we waited at John’s.

Maybe an hour later Bill called to tell us the issue was his stator, which had died, and the dealer did not have one in stock and at best it would be a couple days to get one in. We hated to leave without him but we all clearly understood that if someone couldn’t ride the others were not going to let that ruin their trip. John and I left, headed north.

We got as far as Wheatland, Wyoming, that evening and checked into a scuzz-bag motel. Got a quick fast-food dinner and headed to the nearest bar for a few beers. Along with the live band for entertainment that evening we got a pick-up offer from a local woman whose lack of beauty was matched by her obesity and drunkenness. “You guys want to come home with me?” No. Really, really no. Thanks for the invitation.

The next day we headed on to Deadwood, South Dakota. A gambling stop is always a mandatory part of our itinerary. Of course we lost money; Bill is usually the only one who wins. In the morning, before we started out, John called his wife Cheryl to see if she had heard anything from Bill. This was before cell phones.

Yes Bill had called. No, he had not gotten his bike fixed but he bought a trickle-charger and figured if he removed the fuse for his lights and rode only in the day-time he could keep the bike running, and then charge it overnight. He also had a long extension cord. He would meet us that evening in Thermopolis, Wyoming.

Great! Bill’s gonna make it!

Of course this was before we started planning everything out beforehand, so there was no plan as to where to meet Bill in Thermopolis. So we got a motel on the mail drag and parked our bikes right out front by the curb to make them totally visible. And what do you know, about 20 minutes later here came Bill. He immediately plugged in the charger.

From Thermopolis we rode on first to Pinedale, then Bozeman, Montana, and then to Salmon, Idaho. The night in Bozeman was the Fourth of July so we had a great spot from our motel on a hill to watch the fireworks. Did you know that Bozeman is so far north that they don’t even start the fireworks show until about 10:30 p.m.? And it’s not really dark yet then.

On the way to Salmon we stopped in a couple little ghost towns, Virginia City and Wisdom, where a bartender looked very disapprovingly at my bandana. He told me I had it tied all wrong, and then proceeded to show me how to do it right. I couldn’t follow his instructions so to this day I don’t know how to tie my bandana “right” but that’s OK, I don’t ride without a helmet anymore anyway.

Each of these nights Bill dutifully plugged his bike in to charge and each day it ran OK. Just hoping we don’t have any surprises.

The next night in Kemmerer, Wyoming, we learned another good lesson: some motels have rooms with more than two beds. With three of us we had always taken turns being the one who slept on the floor. This was back when we used to always carry tents and sleeping bags so that was an option, and that’s what we did. We sure didn’t have the money to pay for a second room. Well, this place in Kemmerer had four beds so from that time on we always asked.

The next day, our final night out, we planned to stop in Saratoga but our usual place, the Sand and Sage, had no rooms. They suggested we ride on to Encampment or Riverside, just down the road. We did and got a little cabin that had beds for us all and it was just sweet. About as rustic as you can get but that suited us just fine. We liked it so much we came back in later years.

And Bill never had a problem. Let’s hear it for ingenuity.

Biker Quote for Today

Why motorcycles are better than women: If your Motorcycle goes flat, you can fix it.

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Tales Of The OFMC: The Price Of Curiosity

Monday, May 8th, 2023

Having a beer beside the road, but in this case it was when we knew we were stopping for more than an hour, and we only had one.

Years ago, in the early days of the OFMC, we were young and dumb in a lot of ways. We seldom wore helmets and in the beginning we had almost zero actual gear. We also would stop at bars and have a few beers and it was de rigueur for us to stop a couple times every day to smoke some pot. You know, we were immortal and when you’re immortal you do these things.

So one day as we were heading across southern Idaho we stopped at Craters of the Moon National Monument and took a hike down into some lava tubes. We went way back in deep and turned off our flashlights to see if we could see anything at all in the total darkness. Give your eyes a few minutes to adjust, then see if you can see your hand in front of your face. No. Not at all. It really is that dark.

Having settled that, John pulled out his pipe and lit up. Just as there is no light down there, there is very little air movement, so I’ve always assumed that when the next visitors came down that tube, long after we were gone, they would smell what we had been up to. Hey, we’re just young guys having fun.

We got back to our bikes with a good buzz on and you might have thought that would have been sufficient but when we got to Arco shortly after there was a bar in the middle of town that was calling our names. We stopped.

It was a typical small-town bar, with a handful of locals enjoying a beer on a hot afternoon. We sat at the bar, returned the greetings from the locals, and ordered beers. Somewhere along the way I noticed this thing hanging from the ceiling. This was one of those bars that has a lot of old implements and stuff to add decor and this thing looked like a pair or big ice tongs except that the ends, rather than being pointed like ice tongs, were rounded. There was also a cord attached to this thing but I didn’t think much about that.

What is this, I wondered. It was just above me, within easy reach, so I reached for it and pulled on it. A bell attached to the other end of the cord rang out and the locals went silent. And they were all looking at me. Oops.

It turns out, as they were all too happy to explain to me, the rules in the bar were that anyone who rang that bell had to buy the house a round. (The object, by the way, was for leading a cow around by the nose. Cow nose tongs. Thus the rounded rather than pointed ends.)

Oh gosh, this is going to cost some money. And you have to understand this was back when I was a poor young guy and didn’t exactly have tons of money to throw around. Bill and John and I quickly conferenced and in the meantime the locals were saying that they would excuse us from the rule this time but we agreed that no, by golly, we would honor the tradition. So another round of beers went out, including to us. The locals thought we were a good bunch of guys.

Came time to head out and we did, with more than a little bit of a buzz. We were headed on to Idaho Falls and we were in a good mood. And it was fun to ride really fast. Inebriation will do that to you.

Fortunately all ended well and we just had a good story to tell. Would we dream of doing something like that today? Of course not! But we did it then, and we always enjoy telling the story. How boring would your life be if you didn’t ever have stories to tell. I know my life has not been boring.

Biker Quote for Today

100 reasons not to date a biker: 58. Beer is the base of our food pyramid.

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Tales Of The OFMC: Ask The Locals, And Follow Your Impulses

Monday, April 10th, 2023

Later in the same trip when John laid down his brand new Honda Shadow twice, before we reached Salt Lake City, we were in Heber City, Utah, and trying to figure the best route to Salt Lake. It seemed our choices were to go southwest on US 189 and pick up I-15 near Provo or go north on US 189 and pick up I-70 north of Park City. Both called for skirting around the mountains between us and Salt Lake City and both entailed riding interstate. Neither looked wonderful.

There was a third option. Looking at our paper map we saw a little road winding its way through the hills. After our less than wonderful experience on Ripple Creek Pass the day before we were more than cautious. But we had the brilliant idea to ask a local: Is this road paved? Would it be a good choice?

Asking a local is one of the best things you can do in an unfamiliar area. They can not only tell you yes or no about the condition of a road, they can point you to places and routes you aren’t even aware of. I’ve had that experience again and again. Women like to say that guys don’t ask for directions but I sure do, and I’ve benefited from it many times.

This particular road was UT92, known as the Alpine Loop Scenic Byway. We took 189 south and turned onto 92 about halfway to Provo. The first community you pass through here is Sundance, the place made known by Robert Redford and his Sundance Film Festival.

And the road was awesome! It’s very narrow, barely more than one lane much of the way. It twists and turns up over the hills and eventually works its way down American Fork Canyon out onto the flat lands again over by a place called Point of the Mountain. I’m familiar with Point of the Mountain. I crashed a hang-glider there many years ago, an event that ultimately led me to take up the much safer interest of riding motorcycles. I sold my hang-glider to get money to buy my first motorcycle.

Along the way the road passes through Timpanogos Cave National Monument, a place I still have yet to visit although I’m familiar with it from my years working at the National Park Service.

But the road is great, absolutely one of the best we have ever been on. Well paved and gorgeous. You just have to take it easy because when you encounter traffic coming the other way it gets tight. Thank you whoever it was who we consulted on this one.

We spent a couple days with friends in Salt Lake City, as we had done the year before, and then headed west across the salt flats to Wendover, Nevada, and on west to Wells, where we turned north on US 93. We stopped for the night at the little town of Jackpot for the first time. Jackpot has become one our favorite stops as it has gambling–an OFMC must on each trip–and also golf. Golf is also a must on each trip now, but at this point it was something we had never done.

Our first time playing golf on the OFMC trip. And that’s the bridge over the canyon in the background.

About golf. We only stayed in Jackpot that one night but the next day we continued north to Twin Falls, where US 93 crosses the Snake River. This is where Evel Kneivel tried years ago to jump the canyon on a motorcycle. If you’ve never seen the Snake River Gorge here you simply cannot just cross without stopping to have a look. And we did, and we were amazed to see, down in the bottom of the canyon, a golf course. Incredible. Let’s ride down there and check it out.

Don’t even try to do this anymore, but we rode down there that day, liked what we saw, asked if we could have a tee time, they said sure, and we then rode back up, found a motel, dropped off our stuff, and rode back down to play golf. We had only gone 25 miles on the day but we didn’t care, this was too cool to pass up.

It’s a really nice golf course, in a fantastic setting, and we had a great time. So this was the first time we ever played golf on the OFMC trip. From then on, though, it became an every year thing. But Twin Falls has grown a lot since then and you’ll never get a tee time the same day there now. Make your reservations well in advance.

So the lesson learned? If something is just too cool to pass up, don’t pass it up. Do it! It may soon turn into a tradition that you wouldn’t dream of not doing. But first you have to do it the first time.

Biker Quote for Today

Corners for some motorcycle riders is a time to slow down, for others it’s just a reason to get closer to the pavement.

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Tales Of The OFMC: Know What Kind Of Roads You’re Taking

Thursday, April 6th, 2023

John and Bill on their Honda Shadows (years later).

It’s a whole lot easier these days to get a good handle on the places you intend to head to and the roads you’ll be on getting there than it was in the early days of the OFMC. Getting onto some dicey roads on a brand new bike is a good way to get your first scratches right away. This is a lesson John learned one year.

When the OFMC first got going, John bought a used Yamaha Virago, I bought a used Honda CB750 Custom, and Bill bought a brand new Honda Shadow. After we’d been riding about five years John decided to upgrade and he bought a new Shadow almost exactly like Bill’s, except newer. These were the bikes we set out on in 1994.

We headed toward Kremmling, where John’s Mom was living, and stopped to pay her a visit. We left town continuing northwest on US 40. Just a little further up the road we turned off US 40 onto CO134 over Gore Pass to Toponas. Nice ride. First time I’d ever been over that road.

From Toponas CO131 heads back up to US 40 but John had looked at the map and was interested in Routt County 8, which goes over Ripple Creek Pass from Yampa to Meeker. He had scoped it out and figured out (or so he thought) that it was paved all except for about 10 miles of gravel. Were we willing to do that bit of gravel? Back in those days these guys were more adventurous and we said yes; later on they concluded they did not wish to do gravel at all. I’m still willing, except on my Concours but I’ve always been more adventurous than them.

John was wrong. This road was 40 miles of gravel, much of it washboard and much of it deep with sand. It was probably the hardest riding any of us has ever done. And John managed to put his brand new bike down for the very first time.

John was leading and I was right behind. At one point he decided to stop and take a break and pulled off to the side of the road. Unfortunately for him, right at this point the side of the road was deep sand. I braked cautiously as I saw him go down. Fortunately there were the two of to help him get that bike up.

Ripple Creek Pass, by the way, is a beautiful road if you want to do it in a car or on a bike that is equipped for that kind of thing. I highly recommend it.

But that business of so much serious washboard had another impact. I noticed later that day that a couple of the welds on the sissy bar on my Honda had vibrated so hard that they broke. My sissy bar, with most of my stuff strapped onto it, was dangling precariously. But we stopped in Vernal, Utah, that night and then went on to Salt Lake City the next day and spent a couple days there. While there I went to a welding shop and got it fixed. So not a big deal. But that’s how bad the washboard was.

Heading from Vernal to Salt Lake the next day Bill was in the lead as we came alongside Strawberry Reservoir, near Duchesne. He saw a dirt road running down to the water and decided he wanted to check it out. John followed and I was right behind John.

It turned out the road was deeply rutted from erosion. Bill had no problem but John got himself in a fix and was about to lose it. He called out to me, “Ken, come help me! Quick!” I wanted to help him but I was in the same rough ground he was in and before I could do anything to help him I had to find a place to stop and park my own bike. By the time I did that he was down, his brand new bike laying on the ground.

As I recall, Bill came back on foot and helped us get John’s bike back upright, and we then rode on down the rest of the way to the water. We hung out for awhile and then managed to get back up to the highway uneventfully.

Now fortunately, neither of these two spills did any real damage to the bike, just a few cosmetic scratches and such. But it was no longer the brand new bike he had started out on just the day before.

We got more cautious about the roads we took after that.

Biker Quote for Today

It’s not the falling off that hurts, it’s the landing.

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The Journey To The Helmet

Thursday, March 30th, 2023

Some helmets are more fun than others.

I wear a helmet any time I ride now, but for years I did not. What changed that?

When I bought my first bike I had a Bell half-helmet from my hang-gliding days. I figured that was all I needed and I only needed that if it rained, if it was cold, or if I was in a state where helmets are required. I did find, however, that if I was going to wear it I also needed a visor. The helmet had three snaps across the front so I bought a visor that snapped onto those. Voila. But I didn’t wear it much; mostly I left it hooked on the helmet lock on the side of the bike.

It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the value of a helmet. In the third year of the OFMC trips I was headed for Durango and came upon a chip-seal operation. Cruising over new chip-seal, the car in front of me threw up a rock that I saw coming right at me and it glanced off my helmet as I tried to duck out of its way. I had the helmet on at that time because it was a rainy day. So I knew the value of helmets; I just enjoyed riding without one too much.

By the sixth year of the OFMC trip I had a full-face helmet. I had picked up a used Bieffe helmet at a yard sale for $25. Yeah, I had probably heard that line about if your head is only worth $10 then buy a $10 helmet. But I was poor and I still wasn’t big on helmets. But a half-helmet really doesn’t do all that much good in rain. And to this day I say, if you’re going to wear a helmet, wear a real helmet that gives you all the protection possible.

So I wore that Bieffe for a lot of years, but not very much. Truth was, it hurt. The Styrofoam liner pressed against my forehead and after an hour or more I was in pain. I only learned why that was last year. I was buying a new helmet and some that I tried on did that same thing. The sales guy explained that some helmets are shaped differently to accommodate different people’s heads. Some heads are oval shaped, others are more round. Don’t get a helmet meant for someone with a round head if your head is oval shaped.

Time passed and Bill and John started wearing their helmets more and more. I was the hold-out. I remember some year when they both wore their helmets nearly the entire time. I defiantly did not wear mine at all on that trip. More guys joined the group and more and more of them wore helmets all the time. It wasn’t peer pressure but that kind of thing does impact your thinking, if only subtly.

Oh yeah, and along the way I got ride of that painful Bieffe and bought a series of other helmets. One of the first was a new Bieffe but that hurt me the same way the old one did. I hadn’t learned about that yet. I still have that one but it’s hardly ever been worn.

Another thing that came with the passage of time is that I got married. I still was not overly concerned for myself but I didn’t like to think of what something happening to me would do to her. And then family things started happening.

First, my oldest brother was diagnosed with, and then died from, brain cancer. Next my second brother and his wife ran into serious marital issues when her sister developed serious mental illness. My sister-in-law felt she had no choice but to care for her sister, despite the extremely bad relations between her sister and her husband, my brother. That marriage ended. And then my younger brother’s wife got hit by a truck while she was riding her bicycle. She was wearing a helmet but those bicycle helmets are junk, if you want my opinion. She suffered irreparable brain damage.

At that point I was feeling like I was inviting a clean sweep. I did not want Judy to have to deal with the same issues all my siblings were facing. For Christmas that year I told her my real gift to her was that I would always ride with a helmet from then on. Actually, I had made that decision and was doing so for some months before this, but this was the first time I ever mentioned it to her. Merry Christmas, Judy. She was very pleased with the gift.

This was my own personal journey. It applies to me, and only me. I’m not one of those converts who now thinks everyone else should do the same. I still believe in helmets being the choice of the rider. And I choose to wear a helmet always.

Biker Quote for Today

You might be a Yuppie biker if you paint your office nick-name (like EasyRider or Bad-Ass) on your Bell open-face helmet.

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