Passes & Canyons Blog

I’ve said numerous times before that if you are going to ride all year round then you have to be opportunistic in the winter. On December 3 the temps were in the 50s and the fierce winds of the last two days had died down. Falling temps were predicted in the days ahead and that was all I needed to get out on all three bikes. I hope it’s not the last time I’ll be able to get out but if it is at least I did get each bike ridden a little this month.

I started out on the V-Strom, in the middle of the day. The V has the least protection from the wind so I wanted to use the warmer part of the day. Wearing my electric vest was a no-brainer and I turned it on right away. I very quickly concluded that another layer on my legs would have been nice.

If you’re going to ride three motorcycles in one day it kind of means you’re not going a long way on any of them. But I don’t just go out and ride around the block. (I did that one time years ago but at that time the run around my block was about six miles long. And the temperature was about 20. But I had to get my ride in for that month.)

So I did a nice little scoot and came on home but then I had other things I needed to do. Maybe I would get to the other two later, maybe not.

Several hours later I could get out again so I took the Concours. It has the best weather protection and at this point I had put on long underwear. It’s always interesting to me how it feels getting on the Connie after being on the V. There’s just a lot more power; it’s an impressive motorcycle. I never notice any shortage of power when I’m on the V but in comparison the Connie makes it seem weak. Whatever.

Another fairly short ride this time because now I was thinking about getting the third in. And it was getting later in the afternoon.

I got home and switched to the CB750 Custom and headed out. Very little wind protection on this bike and it wasn’t long before even the long underwear was feeling like not enough. Pretty quickly the sun went behind a bank of clouds, never to reemerge on this day, and the temperature starting dropping fast.

I took a different route than I have before and was coming up University Boulevard, figuring I’d go east on Yale. But I was thinking Colorado Boulevard, not University, so I was looking for the Colorado and Yale intersection. That meant I blew right on through the University and Yale intersection. No problem, I’d just go on up to Evans.

But then as I was coming up alongside the University of Denver, nearing Evans, I decided to turn east on Harvard. I hadn’t been down through that University Park neighborhood in many years to this would at least be something different. Oh my gosh! We’ve all seen areas where a lot of houses have been scraped off so new, big homes can be built in their places. Also the pop-tops, where they take the basis of the house and enlarge it hugely. Well, this entire neighborhood has been scraped. Not a pop-top in sight and hardly a single original home still standing. Every now and then there would be on old original but I have never seen any area so completely scraped and rebuilt.

And many of these homes are gargantuan. There was one in particular what looked like it extended all the way from the sidewalk in front to the alley in back with zero footage given to yard. Huge!

So that made my ride at least a little more than just an obligatory running of the steeds. It’s all about exploring. You can explore even in the middle of the city you live in if you just turn at a different corner than you typically do.

Biker Quote for Today

Guys on motorcycles are just cyclists too lazy to peddle.