Never Let Bill Lead
Passing through a one-way tunnel on the Needles Highway. No way for Bill to go wrong here.
I was off camping last week down near Ridgway with a bunch of the guys and as we headed home Bill was driving. Getting to Denver is a pretty straightforward thing but it occurred to me that because we wanted to take the Clifton cut-off from US 50 up to I-70, rather than take 50 all the way to Grand Junction, I had better navigate for him.
Why? Because one thing I’ve learned and relearned is that on a motorcycle trip you should never let Bill lead. And while this was not a motorcycle trip, Bill was driving and thus totally likely to take us astray from our planned route.
I can’t begin to relate all the times on bike trips when Bill has missed turns or otherwise gone wrong when he has been in the lead. The earliest I remember is a day up in Wyoming when we were coming south from Kemmerer and needed to turn off US 189 onto WY 412 to get to I-80 at Lyman. Bill was leading and just as we got near the turn he decided to hit the throttle a bit and took off at 100 mph. John cranked it up and followed him while I pulled up to the intersection and parked. A while later John came back, having seen that I was not behind him. He had no idea where Bill was.
We waited and it was a good long wait. Finally Bill showed up, very sheepish. He had gotten nailed by a state patrolman and got a big ticket. Then when John and I never caught up to him he figured he ought to go back and see what was up. Of course, this was before the days of cell phones.
So there have been plenty of other times when Bill has shown his inability to navigate well, and this summer’s OFMC trip was no exception. Back when there were more guys doing these trips Bill didn’t often have the opportunity to take the lead but now that it’s down to just him and me and Dennis, Bill ends up leading more often, although usually I take the lead. With Bill in the lead more, the chances for errors are greatly increased.
This past summer, on the first day out, we met at a shopping plaza alongside I-76 up by Brighton. It was obvious to me that to get onto I-76 from the lot where we met up we should just go out and take a left, then a quick right to get to the highway. Bill led and immediately went to the right. I hoped that maybe he had an idea where he was going but several miles later he pulled over and as I came up beside him he asked if I knew how to get to the highway. “Follow me,” I said and went back the way we came.
A couple days later we were up in the Black Hills and we were riding the Needles Highway, the Custer State Park Wildlife Loop, and the Iron Mountain Road. I was shooting pictures with my GoPro and wanted them ahead of me in the pictures so I could not lead. At one point we stopped and I told the guys we needed to go right when we got to the highway ahead. So, of course, Dennis, who was leading, went left. He can be as bad as Bill sometimes.
We ended up backtracking and then coming out of the Wildlife Loop I told Bill, who was leading at that point, that we needed to go right up ahead. So of course he turned left. No Bill, your other right.
But that wasn’t the end of it. A couple days after that we were headed to Torrington and we had stopped a bit down the road for a break. I told Bill when we got into Torrington we needed to go right on the main street of town. This should have been fairly obvious because it was the only place you could turn because the road we came in on runs alongside a railroad track. You guessed it: he blew right past that turn and we had to go back.
So you can understand my concern heading up to the Clifton cut-off. But I was navigating so we didn’t miss it.
If you ever ride with Bill, don’t let him lead. Just don’t.
Biker Quote for Today
Why motorcycles are better than women: Motorcycles always sound pleasant.
Tags: leader goes astray
