for those who don't know, i ride a scooter...not just any scooter, but a 1983 honda passport c70. i got it a few years ago at a crazy price and love riding it everywhere! girlees love riding it, people giggle when they see it and surprisingly enough, i even seem to receive some respect from the big boys on the hogs:) i've cruised almost everywhere in the denver/front range area and continue to hunt out new places that might provide new adventures for me and the 2legit(that's my bike's name!) my good friend ryan suggested we up the ante and really see how far we could go by taking our scooters to cheynne, wyoming. for those who don't know ryan, he's a great guy with a wonderfully weird sense of calmness...when the end of the world is going down and everyone is freaking the fuck out, ryan will most definetly be relaxin' to talib kweli, drinking some pbr or bourbon and not really giving two fucks:) that's the type of character ryan is...a good guy to have when shit gets hectic:) it didn't take much for me to be convinced...he suggested it...then said let's do it, and i simply agreed! WHY NOT, HUH??? i mean this was a chance to star in our own low-budget version of easy rider! as the days led up to our event (event? let's face it, a motorcycle trip on a couple of scooters to another state is not a trip, but a full-blown event), the weather channel was saying that the day of our voyage was looking to be the hottest day all summer! a little worried i was, but with persistence, we continued to plan for our big day!
our day started bright and early on sunday, july 16th. of course we were going into this trip knowing that this would be the hottest day of the entire summer...the night before, i had to ask ryan one last time if this was such a good idea...i mean, we're riding 70cc motor-scooters from denver colorado to cheynne wyoming...great to get acorss the city, but to another state? ryan looked at me and with his zen-like attitude that he always displays, said something round the lines of "surrrrre buddy"....uhhhhhhhh, aight i said as i hung up my phone and went off to bed. we met at pete's kitchen(a local restaurant) round 8:30...ish. after a hearty breakfast, we pulled out from petes at 9:45am. it was gonna be a great day! the weather was definetly in our favor! the sun was blazin', the sky was blue as could be, but the air was hot and very dry! we weren't cruisin' long before we started to feel the heat radiating off the asphalt!!! it was hot from the time we left till the time we got home! this was by far one of the crazier things i had done in quite some time and while excited, there was still a piece of me that was like "ohhhhh shit!" it's gonna be a crazy-hot-long-ass-day! we proceed to cruise through denver then northglenn then thorton and then hit the vast, open land known as weld county. guided by a narrow, singled laned road, we headed north towards ft. collins in hopes of reaching cheynne

are those arnet catfishes?lol

you see, ryan and i aren't your average scooter jockies, we've put in crazy hours of ride time...we live for it! lol. and this trip was a great way to really push our bikes(and ourselves) and get the fullest enjoyment out of our scooter voyage.

the first photo....we got a long way to go!

ryan getting the artistic side of the trip.

wow...10:30am and i'm already rocking the undershirt!

...so we're not on the road long before we realize just how hot it's gonna get....and then...it gets hotter:) lol. for those that don't know, denver is connected to cheynne by a highway and a couple little frontage roads. on these frontage roads, typically the top speed was 45mph. while our little scooters would get killed on the freeways, we could still travel by way of frontage road and for the most part, have the entire road to ourselves, although most of the time we stayed in a tight single file formation near the median...ya know, safety first. on average, every car on the frontage was speeding and in a couple cases, had what i would call "wind-brushes". this was when cars would pass on our hard left, really close and REALLY FAST and the wind would just...fffeewww!!! the wind pressure would just push you over a little bit. you think to yourself...damn, just how close was that guy! as fast as they passed us, it was that much quicker that they just vanished from our vision.
...so we've been on the road for an hour or so and i notice little "quirks" happening with my bike...i'm like great, here we are, far enough outta denver, that if something happens, it would be a slight trip for anybody to come and rescue the 2legit. so naturally, thinking that it might be just the gas additive, we cruise through the next town with a gas station, don't stop and proceed on our way...a mile or so past the gas station and my scooter takes a shit! thinking that my scoot is just overheating, we relax for 20 minutes and then try to ride the scoot back to the nearest gas station for some roadside love. it's a sketchy ride BACK to the gas station and once there we did some first class investegating and found the evidence we were looking for...NO GAS!!! aha! they DO operate better with gas!!! DUH! as it seems, the gas i got the night before was not enough and pacing my bike with ryans made me believe that i was still good to go....whooooops, guess not...i was very relieved to learn that it was just me that was broken and not my bike:)

it's all good now!

...at this point in the day, it's hot...i mean, like...DAMN!! WHERE'S SATAN? i would say we hit 100degrees by noon...and it just went up! but it was that crazy, dry desert air combined with the heat coming off the cement that made it a very hot voyage!
ryan and i have been crusing for a couple hours now and everything is going really well...we had no worries! we were in great spirits and overall it was a great day and after the gas incident, the bikes were just hummin', ya know? the engines were running sooo smooth that when we rode next to each other, the sounds of our engines together were creating a harmonizing effect and it sounded like the engine of a jet fighter!!! remember that ryan???

*THAT'S MY WINGMAN AND VICE VESA!

i have to admit, there were two sections of road that i knew about from the map that if we were gonna have problems with the police, it would happen here...the first was this section where the frontage road we were on ended and to get to the other connecting fronatge road, we had to take our scooters on a 55mph road for at least two miles...this road had mad crazy traffic zippin' by us the entire time! we had to keep alert for traffic and police! if we were really gonna get pulled over for riding scooters to wyoming, this 2 mile strip of road could be the colprit...as it turns out, we make it past the speeding traffic and get back to roads a little more suited to our speeds...it was bout 1:30pm when we hit ft. collins. if you don't know, ft. collins is about 60 miles north of denver. normally, in a car, it takes 45 minutes.... from the breakfast diner to this point in ft. collins, it has taken us just over three hours:)

surfside 7...a ft. collins favorite!


downtown ft. collins...more than half way there!!!

zen-master of scooting!

after a short pit-stop in our ex-hometown, we leave ft. collins as rain starts falling...not really sure a thunderstorm was something we wanted to compete with, we got on the road and were out!!! from this point leaving ft. collins, i realize that we are pretty crazy for doing this, but...it was an awsome feeling!! i mean, here we are, cruising these small bikes, looking out and seeing the plains...the prairie. cattle! it was intense!!!

outside northern colorado...pretty much, middle of nowhere! lol


this is the last photo of ft. collins!

...we were using this map that indicated that at this certain point(which we were coming up on quickly!!!) the line that represented the road we had been following, turned into something else...exactlly, we wern't sure, but we know something was up! a couple more miles we go and we reach the point of the map that indicates the road goes from pavement to gravel and dirt and also in our case...rock! i think it was at this point we had a slight thought bout what we were gonna do next...the temp was probley around 105degrees and here we are, getting ready to make our final pilgrimage to the motherland of alcohol on sundays and fireworks and now gotta battle over 10 miles of dirt road and desert to get there!?! i also thought bout that movie "the hills have eyes" and thought to myself, "now, if some crazy psychopathic shit pops off, it's gonna happen here on this busted dirt road up here in these hills" my imagination sometimes:] but really, who knows how long we really have to be on this dirt frontage road? will there be somewhere to get gas right when we get into wyoming? after miscalculating my gas from eariler, i was a little, hyper-sensitive bout running outta gas...but of course a piece of me is like come on, you made it so far...and then ryan was like, let's just do it and away we go....i agreed to go to wyoming and so we had to keep the voyage going, so fuck it!!! it's not like we would've died if something went down, but it would have been such a BUZZZZZZKILLLLLLLL!!! this dirt road was insane! we could go maybe 25mph before the scooter would become squirlly and hard to control! so we always had to pace it, not to mention the road itself was awful! lol. it was rutted out and rocks were always shifting and flying all over...thought i might puncture my tire on some pointed rocks a couple times...the frontage road kept crossing under the freeway and each time we'd pop up on the other side, i would hope i saw some signs of any type of civilization, but it wasn't happening! lol. it was round this time that i was kinda having second thoughts bout this leg of the trip(this section of dirt road consisted of 22 miles of our overall trip, 11 miles there and back, cautiously traversing over crappy dirt and rock, going 20mph)
there were a couple times when the road just dissapeared into the land!!! it was just sooo far out that, hehehe, WE WERE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE! LITTERALLY!!! after our 4x4 escapade, we start seeing the telltale signs you're almost to wyoming...billboards advertising fireworks!!! yeah, holla!
...we were getting excited cause we knew we were close to our destination! after the dirt road ended, it was not long before we came across the colorado/wyoming stateline!!! needless to say, we were both pretty ecstatic!!!

wyoming? yeah, i've been there.

viva los pink panthers!

230 miles of pure 70cc scooting bliss!!

we just came from that direction...and the direction we needed to go looked the exact same!

look at the sky! you couldn't have asked for a better day!

after that dirt road, we were ready for the rest of our trip. we had some nice pavement to zip around on and i was very happy to know that i wasn't gonna be stranded in the wastelands of forgotten colorado! or have some radioactive mutated freak eat my brain(although we still had to go back this way to get home)... to get into cheynne, we had come to our next "high arrest" stretch of road...actully, it was a bonified highway! i knew that we had to get on and off of this thing LIKE QUICK!!! there were semi's blowin' past us and i knew that two guys on scooters on the freeway screams PULL ME OVER!!! I'M CRAZY!!! but in our defense, it was only bout two miles to the closest place to get gas!!! it was a risk we were willing to take!!! we were at the gates of scooter heaven! only the real scooter G's would bask in this light and by the looks of us, you'd think we'd already been soaking...we went for it and made it to our destination with ease, a random gas station for redbulls, gatorade and ice cream!!!

i was conducting an experiment to see how redbull tastes in cheynne...pretty damn good!

ryan is stoked, so he's singing me a song

it's funny...look at us...we're sooo worked!!! the sun has been beating down on us since 10am and you can see the slight fatigue settting in... after filling up, we searched out the holy grail of wyoming...a fireworks store! after a little browsing, we found what we needed


JACKPOT!!!

boys like things that explode!

that's a great deal! REALLY!

fyi ryan likes fireworks. big fireworks. small fireworks, er...no, actully just big fireworks!

after spending time in the fireworks store, listening to the employee talk alota shit bout their competition(another fireworks shop accross the street), we pack the scooters up and prepare for our long journey back to good ol downtown denver...as we're making our way back to the frontage road via the interstate, i notice the red and blue lights quickly making their way up to us...i look in my mirrors and can tell it's a cop and he's pacing right behind me...at this point, i'm like, "we're sooo fucked!" you see, neither one of us had plates or insurance, so i'm sure we're going to jail in wyoming. in denver, if your scoot is under a certain size, you can cruise it without plates or insurance...of course we're not in denver anymore. after following behind me for bout 50 yards, he zooms past me and rides right up on ryan and doesn't waste anytime before the lights turn on and he forces us off the road! so here we sit, pulled over on the side of the road in the middle of wyoming on a couple scooters, just trying to think of what to say for this one... the police officer gets out of his car and starts asking us for licence, insurance, why don't we have licence plates, blah blah blah...each time he asks, we just give him a more dumbfounded look than before, kinda shrug our shoulders and throw in the goofy smile each time...of course, this isn't the response he's looking for and with each question asked, he just gets that much more agitated! in a last ditch efffort, we inform him that we're just on our way back to denver and wyoming was just a quick visit. "now, wait a minute. you're telling me you rode those scooters all the way from denver to cheynne"? yes, i said, "and we're going back right now!" it was at that point that the police office changed his attitude and became very excited about our trip! he was asking all kinds of questions about our trip, how the ride was going, etc....but we weren't in the clear yet...ryan was packing enough t-n-t under his seat for a small, third world army, so we had to play it cool...and that's what happened and after a little more chit-chat, the officer wished us well and let us go...and didn't even run our info! we played it cool, but inside, i thought we were gonna get our asses handed to us...i mean, riding a scooter down the median of a freeway with no plates? STOOOOOPID! we took off and didn't look back until we got off the freeway. once off the freeway, we stopped and looked at each other with slight disbelief and started to laugh! that cop was mad cool and was seriously stoked that we had made the trip on just a couple of 70cc bikes...hell, so was i! after that, we proceed to make the long trek home. by this time, we're feeling it! the hot-ass sun beating down on us all day, the fatigue in our arms and hands. we could feel the dirt layering all over our body and ryan got a little burned, but i got fried so bad, it just burned into a really great tan(see photos below)! lol we were happy that home was only bout another 45 minutes from where this photo was taken:)
nothing major happened on the way home, although we did give our last supplies to a stranded duo who's beat-up truck took a shit on the side of the frontage road(hope ya guys made it to where you needed to go). the rest of the trip was smooth sailing and was the perfect way to end the day!


sunburnt...

just fried!!!

QUICK! strike a pose before the burn sets in! this is at about 6:30pm.

i get back to my store at 8:05pm and we started at 9:45 that morning! just over 10 hours on the scoot! in a car, that trip would have have taken 2 hours TOPS and the total distance according to mapquest is 100 miles...it took us a little over 200 miles to get there and back!!! DIZ-AM! it was a great experience and i look forward to doing it again next summer...just maybe a little bit cooler weather though:)