Formalizing an informal quest of mine

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog know I like to take motorcycle rides which involve going over one or more mountain passes as part of the day's ride. Well, I discovered a site today by the Concours Owners Group or COG that lists many, many rides in Colorado that have now become candidates for rides of my own! Link to COG site.

While perusing COG's Colorado Rides site, I rediscovered that my own motorcycle club, the ColoradoBeemers sponsor the "Pass Bagger 50" achievement program. In their words:


The Pass Bagger 50 is an effort by the BMW Motorcycle Club of Colorado to promote riding your motorbike to the many, many beautiful areas of Colorado connected by roads that "Pass" over the impressive mountain ranges. Riders may choose any 50 passes within Colorado so long as the pass appears on a published map. The contest is perpetual and not year-specific, so contestants may take as long as they want or need to complete all 50 passes.

The COG site has a link to a spreadsheet listing over 400 "named" passes for Colorado so there's plenty to choose from in my attempt to qualify for a Pass Bagger 50 award of my own. Heck, I've ridden about ten of the passes so far though I don't have the required pictures of some of the ones I've ridden! For instance, the La Veta Pass picture was not doable when I rode it since it was snowing and dark at the time! Not safe for me to stop. : (

Or, I remember going across some passes but there's no signs stating their name....so sometimes it'll be a little hard to document such events.

Regardless, this program ties in nicely with my riding in this state, just have to be a little more concientious about taking pictures of Maria when encountering Pass signs.

Now to go back to my rides archive and see which passes I can already "document" from previous rides! I already paid the $15 the club charges for the stuff required for documentation and the eventual stuff you get for achieving the 50 passes.