Passes & Canyons Blog

Many people enjoy riding motorcycles as something that is part of your day. Then there are those for whom riding all day long is what it’s all about. Trust me, I’m not one of the latter.

When you take off on a week-long motorcycle trip you inevitably meet other bikers out on the road. You talk about where you’re coming from, where you’re headed, and all that. Sometimes the people you meet are really hard core.

We spent two nights in Gunnison on last month’s trip and there were a couple guys on bikes who were at the same motel. I flat cannot remember where they were from, maybe Ohio or Missouri, but they were a good ways from home.

One of these guys wasn’t really into really, really serious riding but his buddy was, and the first guy just did it because it’s what his friend wanted to do. “He’s just glued to the saddle.”

So what kind of day rides were they doing while in Gunnison? Oh, how about a day ride over to Arches National Park? That’s about 150 miles one way as the crow flies, and nearly double that on the ground. And then they figured to tour the park while they were there. Really?

Or how about something a little tamer: Gunnison to Lake City, to Creede, to South Fork, to Pagosa Springs, to Durango, to Montrose, and back to Gunnison. Heck, that’s child’s play, barely 350 miles. Of course they made the detour to do the rim ride and the East Portal Road down into Black Canyon of the Gunnison, so add another 50 miles.

By the way, the first guy told me that on the Million Dollar Highway he told his friend to just go on and not worry about him. That road freaked him out so much he wanted to take it very, very slowly.

In Gunnison we also met a couple who were riding their KLR 650. They were from Delaware. That’s a heck of a distance but they were not planning to ride the bike home. Instead, after they were done with their tour the were just planning to sell the bike and fly home.

Of course, the one group who really stand out in my memory was on a different trip, where Judy and I met three young guys on Sportsters who were making an eight day trip from Green Bay to the west coast and back. Now that is extreme.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker if you think God invented winter just as a good time to get your bike painted.

Tags: long-distance riding

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2020 at 12:12 pm and is filed under motorcycle touring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.