Passes & Canyons Blog

The Harley-Davidson Pan America is the first Harley I might consider owning.

Anyone who rides motorcycles knows how easy it is to strike up conversations with other bikers just about anywhere you encounter them. That’s especially true out on the road. You’re in a gas station or at a motel and there’s someone else with a bike and you talk. Just that simple.

No surprise then that on this latest OFMC trip we encountered our share of interesting folks.

We were in Arco, Idaho, and there were two bikers in the room next to Bill and Dennis. This was a father-son duo who were headed back to Salt Lake City after a few days out. The dad was on an Indian much like the one Dennis used to have and his son was riding the Harley he handed down to him. Nice kind of dad to have. Actually, Bill had done the same with his son Jason some years earlier.

After dropping the son off, the dad still had some riding to do. He was going to keep on going and would meet up with a friend a day or two later somewhere else. The details are hazy now but this guy was definitely enjoying himself. They had come down the day before through Challis, which was the way we were headed the next day and it was good to be able to ask a few questions.

For one, Google maps wanted to route us east a bit to go up between a different row of hills. Who knows, maybe that’s a nice route. No, said the dad, that’s nowhere near as nice as through Challis, but do be aware that we might encounter smoke from several forest fires burning up the way we were going. Also, if we are planning to head south from Cascade, Idaho, later, be aware that that road has closures due to blasting as they widen that highway. We never had any smoke but days later we did have a stop at the blasting site. It’s good to have a heads-up about these things.

Also at that motel in Arco there were three young guys on Harleys. They were doing some hard riding and told us they were hoping to make it all the way to the Oregon coast the next day. All the way to the coast? Holy crap. Plus, while two of them said their bikes were very comfortable for these long rides, the third said his was not. He was definitely regretting his choice of bikes. Not fun.

In Kemmerer, Wyoming, we came back to our motel after dinner to see a dirty, well-ridden bike we could not recognize loaded down with gear, parked right in front of the motel main door. Not long afterward, this guy came walking over from the same restaurant we had been at and yes, it was his bike. And the bike was a Harley Pan America. None of us had ever seen one before.

As for well-ridden, he was on his way home to Amarillo, Texas, after having ridden to the Arctic Ocean in Canada and then doing a loop around Alaska. And, by the way, this was not the bike he started out on.

Turns out he left home on a different Pan America but he said that one had always been a lemon, giving him lots of problems. So he rode up to the Arctic Ocean, into Alaska, and barely limped into Fairbanks, to a Harley dealer. There the guys checked out his bike and it definitely had problems but there on the showroom floor they had another just like it, brand new. Would he like to trade? Yes, he would.

So this beat-up, dirty bike we were looking at had 4,000 miles on it and was only 10 days off the showroom floor. But unlike the other one, it was not a lemon and he had had no problems at all with it. And he was figuring going all the way from Kemmerer to Lamar, Colorado, the next day, and on to Amarillo the next. He denied being hard-core, and when the discussion turned to gear he said he always wears all the gear because he falls down so much. Different people have different perspectives. And you meet all kinds of different people on the road.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker when picking bugs out of your beard becomes part of your daily grooming ritual.

Taking a break at the Flaming Gorge.

The OFMC, at this point consisting of Bill, Dennis, and me, took off on our yearly trip two Fridays ago, planning a longer trip than usual and thus an extra day to do the extra miles.

We headed out from Golden up Clear Creek Canyon, got on I-70 near Idaho Springs, and continued west on the slab. I was on my Kawasaki Concours, Bill on his Harley, and Dennis on his BMW. An uneventful ride to Vail, where we stopped for lunch at McDonald’s. That raised a question: Why does a place like that send a guy to clean the bathrooms during the lunch rush? Wouldn’t his efforts be more useful on the line at that point, and you know of all those customers there have to be quite a few wishing to use the restroom. Do these people ever think about these things?

Glenwood Canyon seemed especially beautiful in this very green summer. At Rifle we got gas, then turned north to Meeker. We got behind a truck and at a clear spot with no oncoming traffic I figured Bill would pass but there was a double yellow line and he didn’t. Then there was a dense stream of oncoming traffic and I was sure we were coming to construction. We did, but got there just as the tail end of the line started moving, so we didn’t have to stop. It was quite a few miles of gravel and dirt, and slow going.

We got to Meeker and typically for Bill, he rolled right past the motel. Dennis and I did not. My mantra on these trips is “never let Bill lead” but on a straight shot like this he could hardly go wrong . . . until he did.

Bill has friends who now live in Meeker and they said there were “doin’s” in the town park, come on down for free food and music. So we did. Bill and Dagney seemed quite nice and agreed to ride with us the next day to breakfast in Rangeley. They showed up the next morning on their Harleys and we had a really nice early morning cruise.

The place we went for breakfast turned out to have one cook and one waitress/cashier/drink preparer and the place was packed. It was 45 minutes before she was able to bring us water and ask for our orders. Everyone knows at this point how hard it is to get people to hire. We finally rolled out of there about 11 a.m.

We picked up US 40 at Dinosaur and went west to Vernal, Utah. Hot as blazes. It got a bit cooler as we gained elevation heading north toward the Flaming Gorge. That’s always a nice ride. Got a late lunch at Mountainview, Wyoming, passed under I-80, and rode another 45 minutes to Kemmerer, our stop for the night.

We learned from our waitress at dinner that there was a bluegrass festival going on in town that whole weekend, including right at that moment, but we were at a place just south of town and none of us was inclined to ride into town. Too bad, it would have been fun. Instead we spent a long time talking with a guy from Texas who had ridden his Harley-Davidson Pan America up to the Arctic Circle in Canada, then did a circuit through Alaska, and was now headed back home. Some people are more hard-core than us.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker when you can identify bugs by taste.