Published in "Motorcyclist" Magazine!

Click here to see the online version of this magazine:  LINK

Image courtesy of Scooter in the Sticks

Denver Area Tech Day for Airheads - April 16, 2011

Do you have a BMW Motorcycle from the late 70s (or earlier) to really early 90's?  Want to gather with others who share your love of such simple and reliable steeds from Bavaria?  Come join us then at the planned Tech Day in the Denver Tech Center this coming month!

Tech Day: Where riders of a specific marque gather at a location to share their knowledge, experience and expertise with other riders as to the care and maintenance of their particular motorcycles.

It has been quite a while, that I know of, that a Tech Day for BMW Airhead motorcycles has been planned for the Denver Metro Area so I thought I'd help spread the word about one coming up next month.

From the host: Richard Paschen:

Bring your old BMW Airhead to the Denver Colorado Airhead Tech Day and Chile-Meat, 16 April 2011 at 0900hrs.  

We have never hosted a Tech Day before, nor even heard of one in the area so here we go!  The fun starts at 0900hrs and available for general use will be a double garage and large area of concrete driveway.  

Spring tune ups and refreshers will consist of setting valves, spark plug changes, timing, carburetor synchronizing, fluid and filter replacements, exhaust nut service as well as anything else you'd like to try.  

We will be able to collect your used oil for proper disposal.   We've got molly grease if you want to do a spline lube.  Tools on hand include a steering head wrench, hand tools, an exhaust nut wrench, timing lamp, torque wrenches, swing arm bearing puller, a small air compressor, an airhead manometer as well as a colormetric device, a multi-meter, grease, and anything else that you would like to bring along yourself.  

There will also be a Clymer’s Manual and a Haynes booklet on hand for reference and online access if you want to visit Snowbum’s or Dwayne’s sites.

As you may imagine, work is first come first served but we will try to group like things together as much as practical.  Shutdown will be at 5:00PM. If you'd like to try something ambitious please let us know in advance.  If you would like to offer some particular expertise to the others, let us know that too!  Parts, oil and oil filters and any tools you might need beyond those already mentioned are up to you.  If there is something nifty you’d like to share – Bring it!  

We'll have Texas style Chile, some sodas and water available.   Donations for anything other than that can be taken on the spot.

The address is:

7734 South Poplar Way

Centennial CO 80112

303 721 6993 H

210 365 0677 C

   This is off of Quebec St. between Dry Creek and County Line Rd near Quebec and C470.  Google it or call for directions.    

I am planning to be there to take photos of fellow Airheads communing with their fellow enthusiast, hoping to see a transmission input spline lube as mine will be due in about 8000 miles or so.  I hope to see you there.

Ride Safe.  Ride Aware.

Prairie Wanderings

Mostly cloudy day today here on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains with a forecasted high only in the mid 50s at best.

I spent the morning doing checks and maintenance on the girls in the garage, just basic TCLOCS stuff.

After lunch, no chores remained undone, I headed out on Vikki to see what we could see to the East of us.  In less than ten miles, I was pretty much cruising on dirt and roughly paved roads with prairie grass and the occasional house or ranch lining the horizon.

The winds were intermittently gusty but bearable at first, it would get much more overcast and cold about 90 minutes into the ride but the start was quite pleasant for early Spring here in Colorado.

Steve of Scooter in the Sticks had commented to me during his recent visit that he always liked shots of motorcycles with a road leading off into the far distance and wide open spaces all the way to the horizon.  I pretty much road while looking for just such photo opportunities.

Along the way, I found that the Bridgestone Trailwings on Vikki are pretty crappy on loose dirt/gravel roads, especially where gravel had built up even just slightly.  I'll have to get more more aggressive threads when it comes time to replace the current tires.

The following shots are spots I liked along the big loop I rode centering things roughly on the small town of Bennett, CO.

 Heading North on County Road 137

 R.R. Crossing East of Bennett, CO along CO36

 At the Watkins National Guard Armory, located at the Front Range Airport 

"On my Cayuse, I will wander over yonder till I see a Mountain Rise...." 

 On Hudson Rd, spotted strangely shaped objects on the horizon

The objects turned out to be solar panel arrays at some Solar Energy Research Facility

By the time I'd taken the last picture above, things had turned a bit cooler and I motored on homewards to a warm house.  About 80 miles of wandering the Eastern Plains of the Denver Metro Area.  Looks like we've got some kind of weather front coming in, hopefully it'll bring some much needed rain for the area.

Hope you got a ride in this Sunday!

Riding with Scooter in the Sticks and also meeting RichardM

A happy confluence of events led to my meeting two fellow moto-bloggers yesterday and today.  Steve of Scooter in the Sticks fame and RichardM who writes about riding in Alaska on his Airhead Beemer among other subjects on Richard's Page.

In Steve's case, he was attending a conference of magazine editors here in the Denver downtown area this week and had blogged about it.  A few postings/emails later, we'd arranged to meet on Friday afternoon after he was done with the conference.  He took the light rail to the station closest to my home and I picked him up in Martha's BMW cage.

A cage you ask!  Yes, for when I asked Steve what size helmet he wore, he said it was XXL!  I had nothing like that and didn't want to risk picking him up via the Ural sidecar and not having my spare helmet fit him, ATGATT you know.

I made it up to him though as I had still some work to do after we got back to my house.  I turned him loose on Vikki, the V-Strom after ascertaining my spare helmet did indeed fit him and my spare riding jacket would fit as well.

Scooter in the Sticks, pioneer moto-blogger and photographer par excellance!

Steve asked when I wanted him to return home, I told him 4PM, which would give him an hour with Vikki.  It would actually be closer to 2hrs before I'd see Steve again, he managed to get himself "lost" in the cookie-cutter neighborhoods amidst which I live.  : )

Still, it was time on a motorcycle, I am sure it was not time wasted.  Hmmm, come to think of it, was he really lost?  : )

My loving wife fed Steve and I dinner and then she headed off for a meeting with friends.   Steve and I, after he'd found out he didn't have work in the morning, headed off  on the Ural so I could show him that not all sidecar rigs were bad things to ride.

As we were taking pictures of a nearby photo-op spot, a rider on a 2003 Royal Enfield had spotted us with the Ural and he came over to get a closer look.  He seemed quite excited about Natasha, and looked her over while Steve and I took a closer look at his ride:

Note Steve's stylish riding gear, he was only in a helmet as he was riding Monkey.

As night arrived, I had him get a feel for riding Natasha in a local school parking lot, and once he seemed comfortable with her quirks and noises, he rode her all the way home from the school while I rode Monkey.  Steve did great and commented how much smoother the ride was on the Ural.  Noisier and tractor-like of course and yet a better experience than on the Piaggio with sidecar rig he'd recently tried out.

Steve was now free to spend the night at my house but we needed to retrieve his stuff from the hotel.  So of course, we set off on the Ural and cruised into the Denver Downtown area via side roads.  Steve seemed to quite enjoy riding monkey and he did a great job of leaning outwards on right-hand turns as I would slide towards him to counter the centrifugal forces involved.  Or perhaps he was trying to just move away from me?  Hmmmm.

We rattled and rolled our way to Steve's hotel, the Grand Hyatt on 18th and Welton Street.  The valet seemed quite interested in the Ural and we chatted as Steve went to get his stuff and settle the bill.  My pictures of the area in front of the hotel entrance didn't turn out, go see Steve's blog tomorrow for a picture of Natasha in front of the hotel.  He won't get home till late tonight so I doubt he'll be blogging when he gets there.

I got us lost on the way back out of the downtown area and elected to use the I-25 super slab, on a Friday night, to speed our way back towards the suburbs.  It was a bit nerve-wracking as I was the slowest vehicle out there that night but thankfully we were on the southbound side, the northbound side was all clogged up with construction!

Oh and as Mr Jack Riepe had commented in Steve's blog that he figured we'd be out carousing "all the way to even 10PM), here's a picture for him:

It's past 10PM Jack, heck we were up till almost Midnight!  

(the scantily clad girls were in the other room, Jack, really...)

All the above was Friday, on Saturday we woke to beautiful blue skies and somewhat brisk temperatures.  After breakfast, Steve and I headed out towards Red Rocks Park as he had a whole morning to kill before his flight in the afternoon back to Pennsylvania and the snow.

Steve elected to ride on Brigitta, my 1987 R80 Airhead Beemer because she had heated grips.  The temperatures were slightly below freezing so I understood completely.  I rode Vikki, the V-Strom and we made our way across Denver using US285.

Less than an hour later, we cruised through Morrison just shy of 9:00AM, past the 20 or so BMW motorcycles parked in front of the Red Rocks Grill (meeting time/place for the ColoradoBeemers Club) and onto the entrance to Red Rocks Park just past the edge of town.

I signaled Steve to take the lead at this point and we would spend the next hour or so slowly wandering about the park, Steve stopping where he wished to take pictures.  Here's some of the shots I took while he did his thing:

 Vikki at the rock tunnel leading to the North Parking Lot at Red Rocks

 I believe the above is Picnic Rock

 That's Lookout Mountain in the background.

A view of the valley from Red Rocks Park.

A short video of Steve, riding in Red Rocks Park, his riding jacket is underneath the stylish plaid jacket in order to stay warm.

Once Steve was satisfied with the amount of photos he'd taken, we headed out to Lookout Mountain.  A had myself a "senior moment" however and we ended up taking an hour long detour by way of Parmalee Gulch Road, which while enjoyable in terms of twisty canyon road riding, cut into the time we had left before we had to get back to the house and ready Steve to go to the airport.

Still, I finally found my way to the right roads and up we went to the top of Lookout Mountain.  We took a short break and visited Buffalo Bill's Grave which is located at the top of the mountain.  We then made our way down the "twisty" side of  Lookout Mountain road.  There was some bicycling event going on apparently as the place was swarming with bicyclists.  There were also clueless cagers in the cars, passing said bicyclists on double yellow areas, muscling into our lane as we descended!  Steve handled it all with aplomb.  

Once down from the mountain, we found a gas station in Golden (after I had another senior moment and ended up riding the wrong way on a one-way street); Brigitta had hit reserve in the gas tank while up on the mountain you see.

The rest of the ride was a race home on C-470 and E-470.  No issues, and the wind was noticeable but not making life "interesting" as it can do this time of year.  Got Steve home with one minute to spare and we both piled into the cage for the ride to the airport.

After a late lunch, I said my goodbyes to Steve and he entered the secured area of the airport.  He would be meeting with RichardM who was coincidentally transiting the airport on his way back to Alaska from a conference in Arizona!  

Once Steve left to catch his flight, RichardM was gracious enough to come out to the main terminal and we met up and chatted for almost two hours.  Turns out both of us have something more than Airhead motorcycling in common, we're both Network Engineers.  Richard however has been doing it a lot longer than I have and holds a very senior architect-type position with the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

I asked Richard on life in Alaska, we talked about our motorcycles, sidecar projects we're both working on and just network geek stuff in general.  It was a good time and I was glad to have physically met Richard:

RichardM at DIA

So, a good ride with fellow blogger Steve and a nice conversation with fellow blogger Richard.  Quite the last two days.   I hope they both had smooth flights back home.