Passes & Canyons Blog

For five years now I have written for Examiner.com as their National Motorcycle Examiner, though of late I’ve been doing a minimum of work for them. Here’s an example of why.

I was putting up an article recently and found that when I filtered my content list for just the unpublished pieces there was more than the one I was working on. Turns out someone down there in their infinite wisdom decided to unpublish a piece I put up in 2010, presumably because it contained objectionable material. Now? After all this time? And what was objectionable about it?

So I’m going to republish it right here and let you see if you can figure out what they decided they didn’t like.

Only a biker knows . . .: Motorcycle wit and wisdom, #15

Dang, those bikers are quotable. It all started with the line, “Only a biker knows why a dog sticks its head out the window” and now we’re back with out 15th batch of amusing, sometimes thought-provoking, frequently dead-on biker quotes. Enjoy.

• You ain’t livin’ unless you’re livin’ on the edge.
• Bounce like you’ve got hydraulics in your G-string.
• Never look where you are going, always look where you want to go.
• On a motorcycle, you’re penetrating distance right along with the machine. In a car, you’re just a spectator; the windshield’s like a TV. — Von Dutch
• If it’s too loud you’re too old.
• You’re a biker wannabe if you spit out the bug that just flew in your mouth.
• Some people ride to enjoy life, some ride to travel, and some people ride to bars.
• Don’t die wondering, die wandering.
• Adventure is not the road we travel, it’s the obstacles we overcome.
• At the end of the day, you’ve still got to twist that throttle.
• Gravity: Obeying the law is for pussies.
• I don’t know, it’s kinda weird, but the constant chest pains seem to go away when I let the clutch out on my bike.
• Scars are tattoos with better stories!
• Remember kiddies, bikers have more fun than people.
• Remember when sex was safe and motorcycles were dangerous?
• If motorcycles are not allowed in heaven then I’ll ride mine to hell.
• Midnight bugs taste just as bad as noon time bugs.
• I’m a highway junkie! Lord, I love a white line!!!
• Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today. — James Dean
• It’s not the bike so much as it’s the rider. Put the stock pistons back in the bike and quit messing with stuff you don’t understand.

OK, there you go. Something in there is pretty offensive, right? My best guess is that it’s that line about gravity, and they got some cock-eyed idea that it was referring to female anatomy as opposed to being a synonym for wussies or wimps or something like that. There are a lot of reasons I don’t write much for them anymore and this is just one more on the list. Too bad, it was a good gig for a while.

Biker Quote for Today

Motorcycles are better than men because motorcycles don’t pass gas and belch all the time. If they do, you can do something about it.

I’ve been looking through a copy of Great American Motorcycle Tours, by Gary McKechnie, and I am blown away at the amount of effort he has put into this. And oh yeah, he’s also laid out 25 rides that would probably be a lot of fun.

This is actually the fifth edition of this book so I guess he’s had a lot of time to do his research but with all the detail he includes it would be a full-time job just trying to keep that all current. I have a hard enough time just trying to keep my Colorado Motorcycle Dealers and Repair Shops page semi up to date, and this is so much more.

The tours are distributed all over the country. That is by design, Gary says: “In this volume I have tried to be equitable in representing different regions of the country, so you should find at least one tour that’s near you.”

That’s fine, but in my mind it’s the information about the tours that are not near me that are of interest. One of the 25 is titled “Colorado’s San Juan Skyway” and that’s a great ride. I know that because I’ve ridden it and pieces of it many times. But I don’t need a book to tell me about that ride. What I like is the information about all the others all over the country.

Now, truth be told, I’ve done enough touring that I’ve also ridden a bunch of the other rides as well. But the large majority are places I’ve never been on a motorcycle and this book just points out what I’ve been missing. So far.

Which ones look the most interesting? Well, there’s “Oregon’s Best Run,” which runs down the Pacific coast from Cannon Beach to Florence and then goes inland to a town named Sisters. I’ve been all along the Oregon coast, though not on a motorcycle, but I have no idea what the terrain is like heading east there. Apparently it’s a good place to go. I’ll keep that in mind.

Then there’s the “Blues Cruise,” which starts in Memphis and follows the Mississippi River all the way to New Orleans. Again, I can say, “Oh, I’ve lived in Memphis and I’ve been to New Orleans several times,” but I’ve never been to either place on a bike. (I was 10 when we moved away from Memphis.) And the real strength of the book is the detail. Gary doesn’t just tell you the roads to take, he probably offers more than most people want. That’s fine, you don’t have to read it all, but whichever parts you do want to read, they’re there.

He starts each section with a “primer” that gives you some basic history and background information about the town or area. Then he runs through a list of some of the best tourist spots, again with background and history. In the case of Memphis, we’re talking about places like Sun Studio, where Sam Phillips discovered and made history with recording artists such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. And Graceland, Elvis’ home.

There’s more to Memphis than those places, though, and Gary continues with plenty of spots you’ve never heard of. This is followed with a small section on shopping, then restaurants, then bars, and then motels. This is the stuff that I’m certain must be a lot of work to keep current. Knock yourself out, Gary.

So anyway, the section continues with some highlights of the ride south and then goes into all this detail again about Vicksburg, the next sizable town on the route. And then on to New Orleans and the same treatment for New Orleans.

Now, for me, I don’t care two hoots about the shopping. I’m not going to spend my time reading that. But the rest of it, if I’m there or going there, I’ll probably read it all.

The obvious question–and Gary raises this himself–is, are these the best 25 rides in the U.S.? And as he says, well, some of them may be but the intent is not to point out the best, the intent is to point out some really good ones so if you’re going somewhere you’re not familiar with, you’ll have an idea about where you might want to go when you get there.

That works for me. I’ll be hanging onto Great American Motorcycle Tours and when I’m planning future trips, if I’m going anywhere near any of these rides I’ll be considering how I might incorporate some of these roads in my itinerary. Thanks for the heads-up, Gary.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
The OFMC and the day of bugs

Biker Quote for Today

Some days you’re the bug. Some days you’re the windshield. But you’re always in the wind!

I recently bought a Suzuki V-Strom because I have ridden them and I like them. Ron Coleman is part of the reason for that. Ron runs Western Dual Sport Motorcycle Adventures and he rents V-Stroms. It used to be that was all he rented but now he has a BMW GS800 and several Suzuki DR650s. I’ve gone riding with Ron a number of times, usually on one of his V-Stroms. This past weekend, though, we went riding and I was on my own V-Strom.

When Ron and I ride he generally takes me on gravel roads in the hills above Boulder that, in many cases, I had no idea existed. That was the case once again.

We headed up Boulder Canyon and then turned north on the road up Fourmile Canyon. Fair enough, I’d been up that road before. But we kept on going, way beyond anywhere I had ever been before. We got up into the area where the big fire burned a couple years go and I could see there were a lot of lucky people there. Whereas a lot of folks lost their homes, especially in the Wall Street area, all along Fourmile Canyon there were homes beside the road and scorched trees coming down the slopes but stopping just shy of the houses. I don’t know if that was due to the efforts of firefighters or just plain luck, but those places survived.

Eventually we came upon a sign that warned that the pavement was ending. This is what I love about this bike: we didn’t slow down for a second. These bikes love the gravel.

So the road wound around and around, climbing ever higher, and I just had no idea so many people lived up there. From riding through the canyon we emerged onto the ridge above and now we had some really nice views. Eventually the road came out at Gold Hill. Ron had led me on another gravel road to Gold Hill another time so I was a bit surprised to discover there is another route. From there we took a road we have ridden on before to the Peak-to-Peak Highway. We turned north and headed to Allenspark for lunch.

Unfortunately the Mountain Meadow Cafe was closing when we got there. Ron said he goes there a lot and it is a terrific place but they close at 2 p.m. and it was about 1:56 when we walked in. Oh well, another time.

So we headed back south and took the turn-off to Jamestown. From the Peak-to-Peak the road is unpaved, so once again it was just cool to turn off onto the gravel without giving it a second thought. I’ve been on that road before but I’m not sure I’ve ever been on it on a bike. Maybe once on my Honda. Not sure. Anyway, it’s a nice ride, a bit steep in places, and perfectly comfortable on the Suzuki.

We were headed for the Mercantile in Jamestown and it was a busy place when we arrived. We walked in, though, and the waitress told us that, sorry, they were just closing. Rats–again!

What to do, where to go . . . We were hungry. There has to be someplace we can eat. So we continued on down Lefthand Canyon to where it came out to U.S. 36 and turned north to Lyons. Here, on a straight and fast piece of road, I finally got to try out this little throttle lock device Ron had loaned me, which worked amazingly well considering how simple it is. I’ll tell you more about that soon because I’m buying one. We finally ate at Smokin’ Dave’s in Lyons and then headed back toward our various homes. On the way we zig-zagged across Boulder County avoiding the heavily populated areas and at one point Ron led the way off the pavement onto another piece of gravel that cut a diagonal and was therefore a short-cut. Again, it was no hesitation, just go. I love that. You don’t go another route in a car when you come to gravel. Why should you do so on a motorcycle?

And then we parted ways and headed on home. Another good day of riding.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
OFMC heads home, more dirt en route

Biker Quote for Today

Getting lost on purpose . . . again.

OK now, before I was so rudely interrupted by this OFMC motorcycle trip I was going to tell you about the road to Silt from down around Vega State Park. Back to where we left off.

As I had described, we had turned off the McClure Pass road (CO 133) to cruise a gravel road that runs over to Collbran, with Vega State Park on the way. After camping overnight at the park we were planning to backtrack a few miles and take the road that runs north to Silt.

In the morning, though, before heading out, we went around Vega Lake and stopped at the Vega Lodge to check it out as a potential overnight destination for the OFMC. It was a nice place with good rates so I have since told John that he ought to consider adding it as a stop on some future trip.

While talking with the lady who runs the place we mentioned we were planning to go back east a bit and take the road to Silt.

“Oh, we hate that road,” she said. “We go to Collbran and take the Debeque cut-off.” She told us it was a bad road in good weather and in bad weather it gets “really greasy.”

But the weather was good and we were not planning on being in any kind of hurry so off we went.

For quite a ways the road was not bad at all. It climbed a bit and we got up fairly high, and then came over the crest and started down. (You can see what I mean in the photo.) That was where things got quite a bit worse. It was obvious that cars and trucks going the other way had had struggles getting up this hill in the wet. In places there were ruts in the road dug by four-wheel-drive tires in mud and the going was pretty rough. Still, there was plenty of smooth road surface if you took your time and avoided the ruts. I definitely would not want to be on this road going either direction is a rainstorm, though. You could really see what she meant by “greasy.” Slick road surface that would give no traction at all when wet. Bad news.

But the weather was good and we had a nice trip. The road went down quite a ways and then we started running into farmland. The road was paved as we got further north and we reached a T intersection. Go left and it took you to Silt. Go right and it took you to New Castle. It’s called the road to Silt but there’s really no reason to go to Silt unless you plan to head west on I-70. If you were going east, as we were, you might as well turn right. We did and it was a nice run to New Castle.

And then it was time to do some slabbing. All good things do come to an end.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
OFMC dips into New Mexico

Biker Quote for Today

The destination is not important, only the ride there…

Having just ridden 1,611 miles over nine days on my new V-Strom 650 I’m finally able to state some opinions and give an appraisal. Here’s my take.

I know for certain I’ll be spending some money on this bike to make it fit me. It didn’t take very long before I found myself reaching repeatedly for highway pegs that were not there. I reckon it’s going to take installation of a case guard–not a bad idea on its own–to have something to mount highway pegs to. That’s exactly what I did with my Honda CB750 Custom many years ago and its definitely going to happen with the V-Strom.

I did find that it’s a reasonably comfortable alternative to shift my feet to the buddy pegs. On the Honda I do that all the time and it’s probably the most comfortable position of the three. On the V-Strom it’s not as good, but it’s OK. Better than nothing. But highway pegs will be very good.

The next thing I’ll be getting is a throttle lock. We had pretty short days on this trip but it still got to my right wrist after numerous hours. This will be simple and cheap.

Third, I’ll be getting a top bag for the rear. The side bags on the bike now are huge, so much so that I loaded everything I needed and had a phenomenal amount of space empty. In fact, they’re really too big for daily needs. I park in a pretty tight space at home and it’s much easier to do so without the bags on the bike. But a top bag won’t get in the way and will be plenty to carry all the day to day stuff I need. The side bags will just be for traveling.

The bike has incredible range. Suzuki says it holds 5.8 gallons of gas and I never got less than 52 miles per gallon. That’s a minimum range of just over 300 miles. And one time I got 70 miles to the gallon, so at that pace you could go more than 400 miles on a tank of gas. Amazing.

The seat is very broad and reasonably comfortable for quite awhile but it’s not as good as the seat on my ’99 Concours. The Connie will continue to be my main traveling bike, especially when I’m going a long way. But that’s not what I bought the V-Strom for anyway. I bought it to ride on gravel roads.

The seat is a little high but so is the one on the Connie so that didn’t even take any getting used to. It feels perfectly normal.

The little bikini windshield does remarkably well. I’m used to the big, full fairing on the Connie but I was never uncomfortable. I guess as long as the main blast of wind is deflected that’s all that matters.

On the gravel, where I intend to use it, the bike handles very nicely. I got a little nervous one time when the loose gravel on the road surface started getting pretty thick but there were no problems. And I’m sure the more I ride it on those kinds of roads the more comfortable I’ll get.

In the twisties the bike really shines. It’s so light and agile that it’s really fun to ride fast. After I met up with Brett and Jason in the Poudre we stopped to say hi and then I took off in the lead. They said later that they saw me for about 15 seconds before I disappeared ahead of them. I was having fun.

The one thing that does not excite me is that this bike has a chain that needs oiling and adjustment. So does my Honda, and it’s done in exactly the same manner, so it’s not onerous. But it is an annoyance. Shaft drive is so nice.

The riding position is just about perfect for me. I like to sit up straight and I like my feet underneath me. None of this feet-forward, slouched back sort of thing. On my Concours even after I added risers there is still a slight reach forward. That’s OK, I’m not unhappy with that. But on the Suzuki I sit bolt upright and that’s very nice. Of course, being a dual-sport bike, it is also designed to be ridden standing up on the pegs and the fit there is perfect as well.

All in all, I’m extremely pleased with it. If I didn’t already have the two other bikes I might not buy either of them, except, as I say, the Connie is the better traveling bike. Not that I’m going to get rid of anything; I’ll just get by with three motorcycles. It’s that old business of a dirty job that someone has to do, you know? And I’m glad to have added this third one to the fold.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
OFMC is off on its 2013 ride

Biker Quote for Today

That road less traveled is a toll road, and sometimes the charge is more expensive than we ever expected. Most of the time, it’s a one way road. Make the decision, hope for the best, and start traveling. Carry lots of coins. — PecosBill

I’ve known about the Phantom Canyon road for years but had never been on it until Saturday. Chalk up one more first on the V-Strom.

There are two roads leading up from Canon City to the Cripple Creek/Victor area. One is the Shelf Road, which I have been on before, and the other is the Phantom Canyon road.

On the last night out of this year’s OFMC ride we stayed in Canon City. Brett and Randy got going early wanting to get home to Denver as quickly as possible. John was heading back to Montrose, and Dennis, Friggs, Bill, and I weren’t in such a hurry to get home and decided to get there via Cripple Creek. As John headed west, Dennis, Bill, and Friggs headed north, following the pavement. I headed east and then north on the gravel.

The Phantom Canyon road is an old narrow-gauge rail bed so it is narrow and twisty and goes through some gorgeous country. At first it was very smooth, the sort of thing a street bike could handle easily, but up close to Victor it got rougher, particularly where the water runs across the road and eats trenches. It was nothing the V-Strom couldn’t handle with ease but again, a street bike could have done it. In fact, as I went up the canyon I encountered several bikes going down. The first were two dirt bikes, so of course they were fine. Then there was Can-Am Spyder and two trikes. With three wheels they were fine. And then there was a couple on a Harley. I’m sure as long as they took it easy and picked their path along they did just fine, too.

The canyon is very tight with steep walls at first, opening out later into something a bit more spacious. While the road does not show any “improvements” over the basic rail bed there are a few bridges that are clearly much more recent. And there are a couple railroad tunnels that give you an idea just how small those old trains must have been, because they would have been tight for two bigger motorcycles passing in opposite directions. In fact, much of the road is one lane and while a car and a bike could pass, two cars could not have. My biggest concern was not the road surface so much as the thought that a car might come fast around a blind curve and we might have an encounter. But that didn’t happen. A few cars going the other way were moving a bit fast on the more open stretches but on the tight curves it seemed everyone recognized that taking it slow was mandatory.

So this was the third time on this trip that I took the gravel while the other guys stayed on the asphalt. That totally works for me. I’m not keen on riding in such a big group to start with, and the reason I bought this dual-sport bike was to go places I would never go on a bike before. My wishes are now coming true.

Biker Quote for Today

Where a motorcycle takes you is more important than where you take it.

It’s not a challenge in any way but I’ve now ridden Kebler Pass on the V-Strom.

After spending the night at Powderhorn, at a ski condo, we ran over Grand Mesa and down to Cedaredge and turned east. At Hotchkiss all the other guys headed south through Crawford, to the north rim of the Black Canyon, over to Gunnison and up to Crested Butte. Me, I kept going at Hotchkiss, through Paonia, and turned off to ride Kebler Pass to CB.

I told these guys Kebler is a great gravel road but I had no idea just how great it would be at this time. My friend Kevin, in Gunnison, who I called once I got here, said they went hog wild with the mag chloride on Kebler this year and it’s practically paved. I would agree. Heck, there was even a guy on a bicycle. You don’t ride bicycles on really bad gravel roads.

Of course I’ve been on Kebler before, too, so the only thing noteworthy about this whole thing is that once again I’m getting out on unpaved roads–the reason I bought this dual-sport bike.

I did have a little trepidation heading for Kebler, however. Talking with a guy at a gas station at Cedaredge, he told me they had had a lot of rain lately and there had been mud slides and roads had been blocked. He thought Kebler Pass might be bad. He told me to take it easy because I might come around a curve to find a boulder lying in the road.

Then I pulled off at a station in Paonia and spoke to some guys there who were on dual-sports and they said they had just been over Kebler recently and it was the best they’d ever seen it. That was reassuring. And they were right.

So it wasn’t an adventure, but it was fun nevertheless. And of course it was gorgeous. Kebler Pass runs through some terrific country and if you haven’t been up there you owe yourself that treat. And if you’re on a Harley, do it anyway. You won’t find a gravel road in better condition.

Biker Quote for Today

You’re a biker wannabe if you won’t ride down a gravel road.

There is no better way of getting truly familiar with a new motorcycle than living on one for a week. Today is Monday of our OFMC weeklong trip, having left on Friday, and I’m really getting to know this V-Strom that I bought two months ago.

The first thing that hit me was that I have got to get some highway pegs on this bike. After a few hours on the road I’m looking for a place to move my feet to in a different position, and where the heck are those highway pegs? I’ll probably need to put on a case guard–which won’t be a bad thing–and then attach some pegs to that. That’s what I did with my CB750 all those many years ago and that’s still how the bike is equipped today.

The second thing to hit me was that I need a throttle lock. Again, after a few hours, your hand is starting to protest against hanging onto this grip all this time. That one will be easy and cheap to address.

We headed out on Friday, meeting up in the Poudre and that gave me an opportunity to try out the bike’s capabilities a bit, too. I rode up the Buckhorn road, over through Stove Prairie to the Poudre, and was heading up the Poudre when I saw for an instant, a couple curves ahead of me, two bikes. Not just any two bikes, but two Harleys with suitcases mounted on top of the top bags at the rear. Nearly all these bloated OFMC biker types have those on their luxocruisers these days.

So I figured I needed to catch up and see if it was really who I thought it was. Now there were a couple cars between me and them but these are motorcycles, so even if the center line is yellow a quick flip of the wrist and two seconds later you’re ahead of the guy you used to be behind. And I was. So it was a pleasure to see that the V-Strom had that pep. And it had it in spades.

I caught up and it was indeed Brett and Jason and they recognized my jacket, even though the bike was unfamiliar, and pulled off. When we took off again I was in the lead and they said it was about 15 seconds before I was gone out of sight. This bike is so light and agile that I just blasted up the canyon and it was fun.

Nothing particular to report about Saturday, just a few passes and then a night in Dillon where one of our group is the sax player in the featured band at some summer festival they do in Dillon. We left there Sunday morning, headed up CO 9 along the Blue River to Kremmling, west over Gore Pass, up to U.S. 40, and then for them, to Craig and down to Meeker.

Not for me. I saw that a road heading south out of Hayden looped around through some little nothing town called Pagoda and met highway 13 coming down from Craig somewhere north of Meeker. And there were about–by my judgment–8 miles of gravel. I went that way. As it turned out, there were closer to 11 miles of gravel but no problem. I was riding a dual-sport bike and it likes gravel.

So I got to see more of Colorado that I’ve never seen before. In this case, high cliffs on both sides with a lush green valley down the middle with a few ranch houses, some hay fields, some cattle, some horses, and a stream meandering down the middle. Nothing special, just the typically beautiful thing that ranch valleys normally feature. Has anyone ever noticed that ranchers live in some of the most beautiful places imaginable?

My route was probably half the miles that everyone else rode but I got to Meeker about 10 minutes later than they did because I was going slow on the gravel and they were blasting on the asphalt. That suits me just fine. It was a really nice ride. I love how I have so many more options now.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re becoming addicted to riding when you find yourself gravitating to the center of the lane, only to remember that you are not sitting in the center of the vehicle!