How Badass do You Think You Really Are?

How Badass do You Think You Really Are?

        Recently a friend of mine shared an interesting photo with a group of likeminded individuals of which I happen to be a proud part of. The photograph was of a motorcycle towing a trailer with what appears to be a female companion seated on the bike. It was parked alongside a snow-covered road somewhere in the Midwest.

The photo brought back memories of my share of extreme weather riding. My record low temperature for riding was 20 degrees. I did that several times while still working full time when the afternoon springtime highs would get up to 50 degrees and above.

 My first unplanned snow ride was back in 1980 on my Kawasaki KZ650. It was early spring and a warm day. I wanted, no needed, to ride and hopped on the bike and took off for wherever I ended up. I ended up about 60 miles from home when an extreme cold front blew in with high winds. I turned around and headed toward home. As the wind blew the temperature fell fast and I had about 40 miles to go when it started to sleet. At about 30 miles to go the sleet turned to snow and I rode the berm of the road the rest of the way home.

I remember riding to a reunion in Montrose Co. I was up on Monarch Pass at the divide between Gunnison National Forest and San Isabel National Forest taking pictures and worrying if my bike was going to make it down off the pass without fouling the plugs out due to the low oxygen at that high altitude (about 11300 ft +/-). It was June and I was taking pictures of the snow that had been plowed up along the road when some other travelers told me of rain coming. I got on the bike and headed down the mountain right away. I stopped for gas and a quick bite at a place about halfway to Montrose and I was about halfway done with my gas station supper when it started to rain. I had a rain suit with me, but it was buried at the bottom of my luggage, clothes and other stuff (that’s a mistake I’ll never make again) so I just hopped on and hit the throttle and prayed.

The rain came down hard and turned to sleet and I remember the feeling of loneliness and panic. I had unknown miles to go before Montrose and if the sleet started to lie on the road, I would end up cold and wet high in the Colorado Rockies with nowhere to wait out the storm. It would be dark soon and I had no desire to put my survival skills to the test.

It was about that time I rode past a road sign that stated Montrose was about 60 miles ahead. “I can make it. It’s about an hour and a half.” I remember thinking as I kept getting wetter and colder. Now even my boots were soaked through, and my feet and ankles were so cold I had to lift my whole leg to shift gears. By the time I rode into Montrose it was dark and my knees were so cold they hurt to put a leg down at any stop sign or light. When I got to the little hotel I was booked into, I could barely get off the bike without tipping it over. I couldn’t straighten up or bend my knees. When I walked into the hotel, I must have looked like Quasimodo to the people I rode three quarters of the way across the lower forty-eight states to see.

Then there was the time I got caught in one of Mother Nature’s most violent events, a Tornado.

I was on my way to Jackson Wy. for another reunion with those guys and gals of like minds when just west of Chicago on I-80 I ran into the darkest mass of black clouds I had ever seen. Debris and tree limbs were blowing around me and the interstate highway had turned into a stream of running water and a sudden wind gust swatted me from one side of the highway to the other. I was certain my life was going to end there until I found solace and cover under an overpass.

There are other similar weather events I could mention. But would any of them make me a “badass” biker? No way! I am not, nor have I ever pretended to be such. But looking at the picture of the trailer towing motorcycle sitting along a snow-covered road, I can only think of one thing… I’m not *THAT* crazy!