Passes & Canyons Blog

Have you ever had a problem on the road? Or have you gone out to start the bike and it wouldn’t, and it’s not the battery?

At times like this it can get expensive. Having your bike hauled somewhere to be worked on can easily cost you $100. Unless you’ve had the foresight to sign up for MoTow.

MoTow Roadside Assistance is offered by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) for the piddling fee of $25 per year. You have problems, you call for assistance, and they have “people who know how to tow motorcycles” available to help you out 24/7. The service covers all your bikes and it doesn’t matter what you ride.

Now, maybe you have a pretty new bike and don’t generally have mechanical problems. Good for you. On my old bike, my 1980 CB750 Custom, it can get dicey at times. There have been a couple times that bike has just quit on me. But the MoTow guy has showed up quickly and hauled the bike to the shop. Not a dime out of my pocket (not counting my annual membership).

It doesn’t have to be a problem on the road. A buddy of mine called just yesterday hoping I would have some great idea to get his bike running so he wouldn’t have to spend a bunch on it. He has a newer, more dependable bike, but it seems he left it parked all winter, never fired it up, and didn’t put in gas stabilizer. Bad decision. I’m no miracle worker. But he has MoTow so he called and got the bike hauled to the shop. He’ll have to pay for the carb cleaning himself. That one use of his MoTow membership will pay for his membership for three years.

There is a catch here. MoTow is only available to AMA members. AMA membership is $39 a year. So that’s not quite such a savings, right?

Well, you get a lot more from AMA than just access to MoTow. You get a monthly magazine, American Motorcyclist, which has a lot of good reading, but that’s not really the important thing. What you get with AMA membership is representation in government. We all know the limitations non-bikers continually try to put on us and it’s not pixies who fight those battles to protect our rights. It’s the AMA.

Here in Denver they recently passed an ordinance that allows the police to ticket bikers whose exhaust pipes are not OEM. The idea is to fight noise but it is so wrong in its implementation. It basically says that it doesn’t matter how quiet your bike is, you can get a ticket if it is not an OEM muffler and pipes. Never mind that while the cop is writing you a ticket, a really loud car or truck may pass by, ignored by the cops. The ordinance is clearly discrimination against motorcyclists. And the AMA is on the case. They haven’t gotten it changed yet but they’re still working on it.

I could talk a whole lot more about what the AMA does, I’m a real believer in the organization. But I’ll save that for another time. Right now, just think about the fix you might find yourself in if your bike breaks down on you and how good it would feel in that case to know that help from MoTow is just a phone call away.

Biker Quote for Today

A friend is someone who’ll get out of bed at 2 am to drive his pickup to the middle of nowhere to get you when you’re broken down.

Do you ever spend an extended period of time away from home? And more importantly, from your bike(s)? For example, your job sends you somewhere for weeks or even months. Sure, that doesn’t happen to most of us but it does happen to some, and it did happen to me once.

So what do you do to feed your motorcycle need while away? I’ve mentioned this before in passing but want to spend a little more time on it today.

Certainly, if you are just gone for a week or a few days you ought to take advantage of the opportunity to ride somewhere new. That’s getting easier and easier thanks to there being more places that rent motorcycles. I did that when my company sent me to Nashville for a day, and I stayed over the weekend and rented a Harley.

But as we all know, motorcycle rentals don’t come cheap. You can pay that high price for a day or two, or even a week perhaps, but there gets to be a limit to how much you can justify spending.

Here’s a better alternative, and it’s what I did when my company sent me to Sacramento for a month. I bought a bike in Sacramento with the agreement that the dealer would buy it back from me for a specified price when it was time for me to go home.

Think about the options this opens up. Most rental companies have a fairly limited selection. But what if you walk into a dealership and make your selection from all the used bikes they have for sale? And if one dealer doesn’t have anything you’re interested in, move on to another. You ought to be able to find exactly the bike you want at a price you can manage.

So how does the repurchase arrangement work? First of all, both parties agree up front that if you drop the bike or bring it back in any condition different than when you took it, except with a few more miles on it, then the whole thing is up for reconsideration. You have to understand that there is a possibility that you will have acquired a new bike, or that the repurchase price will be less than you originally agreed upon.

The other key is finding a dealer to agree to this. Not all of them will. I got lucky that the first place I walked into, when I asked to speak with the manager and told him what I wanted to do, he was willing. He told me that not all dealerships would do this.

The key was, he rides and is a motorcycle lover himself. So when I presented myself as someone who just had to have a bike to ride while I was out there, he understood. Of course he wasn’t just being altruistic. I paid full price for the bike and if anything had happened to it he would have had a sale. As it was, he got a nice chunk of cash and put the bike back on the floor for the same price it was listed at before.

And my benefit was that I had a bike to ride for a month at a fraction of what I would have paid for a rental. As I recall, he made $400 off the bike for the four weeks I had it. I’d call that a bargain. And because I only had it for four weeks I could ride with just the dealer tag and didn’t have to get plates on it. Of course I contacted my insurance agent and had it insured.

As I said, I got lucky because the first place I tried I found someone who was willing to do this. If I was going to do it again I would call the local dealers in advance and see who might be willing. I’d be prepared to give all the reasons why it would benefit them, in case they were reluctant. And who knows, maybe you wouldn’t find anyone. But it doesn’t hurt to try it, and boy did I love having that bike for that month.

Biker Quote for Today

Every day is a good day to ride! Some are better than others.

It’s getting toward that time again, so as I always do, I’m cluing you in to this year’s Ride Your Motorcycle to Work day.

This year the date is July 16. As always, that’s a Wednesday, the third Wednesday in July. This is a day to get as many bikes out on the streets and highways as possible, to make an impression on the non-riders as to just how many of us there are. Not for intimidation or anything negative, just to let them know we’re here and that they need to be mindful of us as they drive. I mean, have you ever been on the highway when someone in the next lane pulled into your lane without looking over their shoulder to see if perhaps someone might be there? No, it’s never happened to me either. Right!

So the point is to get out in force and impress upon them that they MUST look, MUST be aware, and MUST share the road. Maybe their lives don’t depend on it, but ours do!

If you really want to get into this, you can go to the website at www.ridetowork.org and download logos and artwork, public service announcements, and various other things to pass along to the local media or put up in public places. Here’s the logo.

Who knows, maybe this year I’ll be able to take part. The funny thing is that each year as I’ve promoted this thing, I’ve not been able to participate. Last year I was working a job that had me working at home. The year before that I was on vacation. This year I may be unemployed on that day, but if so I’ll at least get out and ride a bit just for the heck of it.

Anyway, I’ll bring this up again just before the date. In the meantime, take today’s quote with a grain of salt. Maybe.

Biker Quote for Today

If the person in the next lane at the stoplight rolls up the window and locks the door, support their view of life by snarling at them.

Please excuse the self-indulgence but I’m really pleased and want to share this. Cue the fireworks.

I just want to announce that this month, March 2008, is the first time in its history that this Passes and Canyons, Motorcycle Touring in Colorado website has exceeded 3,000 unique visitors in the space of one month.

Now, that’s not a big deal for a lot of sites. Heck, if Google got only 3,000 visitors in one second they’d probably be checking their systems to see what was wrong. But I’m not Google. I put this site up about two and one-half years ago and I’ve been pleased to watch its growth. Traffic generally trends upward from January through July and then trends downward from August through December. Then the cycle starts all over again.

What that means is that this is only the beginning. Although it has already — thanks to you, by the way — set a new record this month, the trend suggests it will continue to set a new record each month for the next three or four months.

The bottom line here is very simple: I’ve put an enormous amount of work into this site and it just makes me feel good to see that that effort is appreciated. Thanks to all of you for making this possible.

Biker Quote for Today

Motorcyclist are all bound together by a brotherhood tie through their love of the sport, and what difference does it make what make of machine he rides as long as he belongs to the clan. – Walter Davidson 1920

I’ve started adding something new to the website, a listing of good-quality unpaved roads that you can ride even on a street bike.

The instigator for this was Larry Matkovich, who runs Larry’s Custom Cycle in Canon City. He asked why I didn’t have any and I replied that the website was primarily for people on cruisers and street bikes. Larry said he knows of some very nice roads that may be gravel but are easily navigable on street bikes just the same. I told him I don’t know many of these roads but if he could supply the info I would be happy to get it up on the site. Can do, he said.

Well, Larry’s coming through on his promise so I am, too. Check out the Dirt Roads and Side Trips page for what we’ve got so far. And then keep checking back as we add more. Also, if you have any to suggest, just send me the information at ken at motorcyclecolorado.com. Thanks.

Recap: Steve and some buddies are coming from New Zealand in 2009 for some motorcycle touring in Colorado and Utah. This series of posts lays out their proposed routes, with my comments. Your comments are welcome as well.

Day 10

Oh no! This 10-day motorcycle ride around the Rockies is coming to an end. Today is the final day. Dang. Oh well, Steve and the gang are in Golden and need to end up back in pretty much the same place in order to turn in the bikes and head home. Today they’re going to cruise the Peak-to-Peak Highway and check out the canyons leading up and down between this road and the flatlands. They don’t have a detailed route in mind so this can be taken as a possible route. Here’s the map, and the enlarged view.

At day’s end yesterday, our group came down US 6 through Clear Creek Canyon, so we don’t really need to backtrack today. Going north out of Golden on CO 93 it is just a couple miles to the turn-off to CO 46 up Golden Gate Canyon. This is a favorite ride and a great way to start the day. Winding up the canyon, you reach CO 119, which is the southern portion of the Peak-to-Peak. From here we’ll turn north, to the right.

Now, there are any number of ways you could do this ride. I’m going to suggest that they just go all the way to Estes Park in the beginning and then work the canyons on the way back. That means CO 119 as far as Nederland, then CO 72 to where it terminates into CO 7, and then CO 7 to Estes Park. Don’t be surprised coming into Estes Park if you come upon a traffic back-up, there are herds of elk around here that are not shy and everyone stops to look.

From Estes Park we now turn east on US 36. This road goes down the North St. Vrain toward Lyons. At Lyons you just cruise through town and out the other side and you’re back on CO 7, which goes back up the South St. Vrain to where you met it before. At that point it’s time to head south on CO 72, the road you came north on.

Heading south on CO 72 you come (again) to Ward, and the intersection with Lefthand Canyon Drive, or Boulder County Road 94. Go ahead and take this turn. It runs down (surprise!) Lefthand Canyon and comes out to US 36 north of Boulder. Head south toward Boulder but when US 36 jogs to the left, stay straight on CO 7, Broadway. This will be a nicer ride through town.

Broadway leads you right into the middle of Boulder, where you take a right on either Walnut or Canyon and on out of town directly into Boulder Canyon on CO 119. There are a number of places to stop on your way up this canyon, and one of the best is Boulder Falls.

CO 119 reconnects you with the Peak-to-Peak at Nederland. Nederland, by the way, is where the Caribou recording studios were located, where a lot of great music was recorded in the 1970s.

At Nederland we stay on CO 119, which heads south, but very soon turn off onto CO 72, which goes down Coal Creek Canyon. Of course, before it goes down too far it first has to go up and over the crest at Wondervu. Nice switchbacks along here and Wondervu is a good place to stop for a break. Coal Creek Canyon comes out CO 93 at the former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant. This plant used to build the plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons, but has been decommissioned and is now undergoing environmental clean-up.

We head south on CO 93 and another short jaunt brings us back to Golden and the end of the last day of this terrific trip. Now — darn! — they’re going to be stuck riding the terrific roads in New Zealand again. Until the next time! See you then.

Recap: Steve and some buddies are coming from New Zealand in 2009 for some motorcycle touring in Colorado and Utah. This series of posts lays out their proposed routes, with my comments. Your comments are welcome as well.

Day 9

Today is a bit of a contradiction for our riders. It will be one of the shortest days in terms of miles but it will be one of the biggest days in terms of where they’re going. Today’s ride will go over Trail Ridge Road and to the top of Mount Evans, along with some other pretty good stretches. Here’s the map and here’s the enlarged view.

Right off the bat, Steve and the group head out on US 34 up the Big Thompson Canyon. What a nice way to start the day. This beautiful canyon goes up to Estes Park, which, despite the name, is a town, not a park. The park people sometimes get it confused with is Rocky Mountain National Park. We’ll get to that later.

Because this will be the first time for these folks going up the Big Thompson, they’re proably going to want to just ride the whole canyon. If you’ve done it before, however, and are interested in an alternate route, you can take CO 43 between Drake and Estes Park. There are some hairpin turns on this that might make you think you’re in over your head.

At the head of the canyon is Estes Park. This is a very nice town but it has gotten very crowded. Count on slow going through here as you make your way to the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. Oh, and that big old lodge you see on the hillside? That’s the Stanley Hotel, where they filmed “The Shining” with Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duval. Red rum anyone?

US 34 continues through Estes Park and into Rocky Mountain National Park and then winds its way up over Trail Ridge Road, the highest through road in the U.S. This road closes for the winter but should be open by the time Steve and crew get there. Trail Ridge Road is one of the must-do rides in all of Colorado. Plan to take your time. You really won’t have any choice, but you won’t want to rush anyway.

The highway comes down from Trail Ridge Road into the town of Grand Lake. This is a very nice town and well worth a stop. From there, US 34 goes on down to where it hits US 40 just outside of Granby. Here Steve and the others will need to make a decision. He’s considering taking a quick run west on US 40 to Kremmling and then back. He just doesn’t want to miss anything. What there is on that stretch is Hot Sulphur Springs and a nice bit of canyon. Is it worth the extra time and miles? I don’t know. They probably ought to check the time and see how much of the day has already elapsed. This may be a short ride in mileage today but it’s far from done at this point.

Whatever they do, eventually they’ll head south on US 40 to Winter Park and then up and over Berthoud Pass. Berthoud is another very nice pass, and the road is in very good condition thanks to a lot of money spent on upgrades in the last few years. From the pass, US 40 runs down to Empire, where it meets I-70.

A short jaunt east on I-70 brings the group to Idaho Springs, where they will get off the interstate onto CO 103 over Squaw Pass. Squaw Pass is a nice ride on its own but the real draw here is that this is the route to CO 5 that takes you to the top of Mount Evans. If you thought Trail Ridge Road was a slow ride, be prepared to go even slower. I don’t recall for sure but I believe the speed limit on this entire stretch is 10 mph. There is also a toll, by the way. That’s OK. It’s worth it, and you pay less for motorcycles. And no matter what time of year it is, don’t be surprised if you get snowed on a little.

After Mount Evans the route continues on CO 103 toward Bergen Park. A left onto CO 74 a few miles brings you to another left onto Jefferson County Road 65, which meets up with I-70 a little east of Idaho Springs. More importantly, it meets up with US 40 at the same spot and it’s really US 40 that we want. US 40 parallels I-70 on the north as it goes down the west side of Floyd Hill. At the bottom of Floyd Hill both roads intersect US 6, which is our ultimate goal.

US 6 winds down through Clear Creek Canyon, coming out at Golden. One of the first things you’re sure to notice is the Coors Brewery. You may even smell the malt before you see the plant. Golden is tonight’s stopping point, so this day’s ride is done.

Recap: Steve and some buddies are coming from New Zealand in 2009 for some motorcycle touring in Colorado and Utah. This series of posts lays out their proposed routes, with my comments. Your comments are welcome as well.

Day 8

Today is going to be a bit more relaxed for our riding crew, as the distance is less than 300 miles. These guys have been racking up more than 300 miles almost every day. Assuming the start is indeed Eagle, they’ll be heading up to Steamboat Springs, over Rabbit Ears Pass, across North Park, and then up Cameron Pass, down Poudre Canyon and eventually end up for the night in Loveland. Here’s the map; click to see it enlarged.

Leaving from Eagle, Steve and the gang will head east a few miles on I-70 until they get to Wolcott. Here they turn north on CO 131 headed for State Bridge. At State Bridge they will have a decision to make. The original plans called for taking the Trough Road northeast through Radium to Kremmling. What they had not counted on, however, is the fact that this is a gravel road. They’re not fond of gravel on big street bikes, and Steve said he’s also unsure whether their rental contract allows riding on gravel.

While I don’t know about the contract, I do know about the Trough Road. It is very good gravel and a very nice ride. The guys I ride with don’t like gravel either, but it was one of them who showed us this road in the first place and we took it. It was great, no problems at all.

So if they take the Trough Road, our riders will come out at Kremmling, where they will pick up US 40 west for just a few miles to CO 134, which crosses Gore Pass and reunites them with CO 131 at Toponas. The alternative would be just to stay on CO 131 at State Bridge, skipping the Trough Road and Gore Pass. It’s up to you guys, but it’s a short day anyway, so I’d say do it.

Either way, the route now continues up CO 131 to meet US 40 a little south of Steamboat Springs. They’ll ride on into Steamboat, probably have lunch and get gas, and then backtrack a little as they head east on US 40 over Rabbit Ears Pass. This is a good one and will be an enjoyable ride. Descending, they will reach Muddy Gap Pass and the turn-off for CO 14, taking them north into North Park and to Walden. At Walden they stay on CO 14, which turns southeast and passes through State Forest State Park and up over Cameron Pass. There’s some mighty good scenery on the way up.

On the way down the highway passes through Poudre Canyon. Poudre Canyon is one of the prettiest canyons in Colorado so this will be a treat. Be sure to stop a few times and enjoy it. Sleeping Elephant Mountain is particularly interesting.

Moving on down the canyon they will eventually come out on US 287 north of Fort Collins and follow that highway to Loveland and the end of today’s ride. That will mean doing some city riding but Fort Collins is a nice town so it’s not a bad thing to do. However, there is an alternative.

Alternate Route

It just happens that I know an excellent alternate route that will allow the group to totally skip Fort Collins and enjoy some more mountain/canyon riding. As they get down close to the mouth of the canyon, there is a turn-off for Larimer County Road 27, otherwise known as Stove Prairie Road. This is a nicely paved, very windy two-lane that rises up over the ridge separating Poudre Canyon from Buckhorn Canyon. The Buckhorn then carries you down to Masonville. At Masonville you can either go up around Horsetooth Reservoir and drop down into Fort Collins on the south side or take CO 56 down to where it meets US 34 coming out of the Big Thompson Canyon. From there it’s a short ride east to Loveland. Enjoy.