Passes & Canyons Blog

Common sense prevailed in the Colorado Legislature this season. Attempts to pass a helmet law and allow police to stop and ticket you for not wearing a seat belt were both defeated.

Make no mistake, the two are connected. The nannies who think government has some right to poke its nose into private matters were behind these bills. I won’t argue with people who say not wearing a seat belt is stupidity. It’s just that stupidity is not illegal. The same with helmets. The job of government is to protect us from foreign invaders and polluters poisoning the common air we breathe or water we drink, those sorts of things. Helmets and seat belts don’t fall into that category.

Congratulations to the Colorado Legislature for showing some sense.

Today has got to be earliest in the year that I’ve ever ridden to work. I went in today on my Kawasaki Concours and even with daylight savings time started early it was a warm ride in. On March 13!

Speaking of riding to work, Ride to Work Day is set for July 18 this year. In case you’ve never heard of it, it’s a day for us all to ride our motorcycles to work to show our strength and make people aware that we’re on the road–so don’t run us down!

I saw someone today who needs to learn that lesson. I was leaving work and another guy came along on his bike and passed me in the left lane. Then he moved over to the right lane and right after that, in an area where traffic entering the highway was merging, some idiot streaked over two lanes to the left, almost clipping the guy on the bike in front of me. I was cursing at the asshole and I can imagine what the other rider was saying. Let’s face it, if we didn’t ride defensively we wouldn’t ride at all–we’d be dead!

But hey. It was a great riding day in March, and a lot of us took advantage of it. How sweet.

I keep saying this but it’s important for it to be clear up front: I am not and have never been a Republican. I used to be Democrat, but I’m not any more.

That said, I want to say a couple words on behalf of a couple Republican Colorado legislators, Don Marostica of Loveland and Greg Brophy of Wray.

Last week Marostica wore a helmet to the debate on requiring motorcycle riders under 18 to wear helmets. Asked to remove the helmet, he said, as quoted in the Rocky Mountain News:

That’s why I wore my helmet down here. I didn’t want to trip. I’m going to wear it on the way back to my desk.

His point was that people have a greater risk of dying or suffering a brain injury from tripping and falling than they do from motorcycle accidents.

As for Brophy, he is one of the leaders in the fight against allowing police to stop a driver solely for not wearing a seat belt. Right now, you can only be cited if the police stop you for another reason and you’re not wearing your belt.

Said Brophy, once again as quoted in the Rocky Mountain News:

I don’t believe you should be able to pull over someone in this country basically at will. It is another way government will be able to harass citizens.

Kudos, too, to Ron Tupa, Democratic senator from Boulder, who was the lone Democrat voting against the measure.

Every one of us who ride motorcycles hits or gets hit by things. Bugs are an obvious one, and if you ride without a helmet at times you’ve certainly been smacked in the face more than 101 times. Sometimes, as unlikely as it seems when you consider just how perfect conditions have to be, you’ll even end up with a bee or wasp getting scooped right up your sleeve. That’s one time when you stop and get off in a real hurry!

But what about other objects in the air? I encountered the question recently on a motorcycle forum that I frequent and figured I’d share here what I posted there.

Just last year, my friend Bill and I were coming down into Kremmling over Rabbit Ears Pass and a bird dove in close to his front wheel. Well, when we got to Kremmling and stopped for gas we found the bird stuck in right at the pivot on his kick stand. Extending the stand pinched it in and made it impossibe to remove so I had to hold the bike while he removed the oozing mess. This was not even the first time Bill has hit a bird. I’ve never done that.

Another time we were heading north from Laughlin, NV, and I was in the lead. We were pulling up on a semi and about the time I got close enough to think about passing one of his tires exploded. Big chunks and little pieces were flying everywhere but no one got hit by any. Very loud bang! Very scary to see big chunks of tread in the air.

Here’s another. John and Bill and I are the original three of our group, the OFMC, who first started riding. John and I were in Denver, heading over to Bill’s to start out on one of our very first week-long summer trips. On the way we were passing a golf course when a golfer hit his ball off the course in our direction. I was behind and I watched while it bounced off John’s rear wheel, right back onto the course. He didn’t even know it happened.

My latest issue of Rider magazine arrived yesterday and the irony was very heavy. There inside was the regular column on motorcycle safety by Lawrence Grodsky, who has been writing that column for Rider at least as long as I’ve been reading the magazine, about 17 years. The irony is that on April 8 Grodsky was killed by a deer that ran in front of his bike. Long lead times on hard copy national magazines mean this issue was already put to bed when he died. I’m sure the next issue will have the story.

You can read about the tragedy on the AMA site or at the magazine’s site.

Here in Colorado there are many collisions between cars and deer, though I don’t hear of many motorcycle/deer collisions. I know in other states there are riders who won’t even ride outside of the city after dark for fear of hitting them. I’ve had a couple close encounters and I’ll bet most of you have, too. It’s not a reason not to ride; it’s a very good reason to ride carefully.

Our sympathies are with the Grodsky family. We’ll miss you buddy.