Back before Al Gore closed the road through Rocky Mountain Park to day-drivers who used it to get back & forth to Grand Lake on the other side of the Continental Divide, this was a popular trip for the full-day rider and one we did every year: from the Denver metro area we'd ride up the Front Range (one of 3 ways) to Rocky Mountain Park, over the Divide to lunch in Grand Lake, then south down the back of the Front Range through Winter Park and over Berthoud Pass to I-70 back into the Denver metro. This is a little over 300 miles, IIRC, and took an 8 AM rally starting point to get home before dark in the summertime.
In the bunch was more than a dozen bikes, ranging from the 1980 CBX Six (the cafe' racer-looking one) down to the [then new] Honda 700cc V Interceptors (4 of them), my sole CB750 at the front, a CX500 at the tail end of the group (we both had CB radios on the bikes to track everyone) - this was the first time our church group rode together (other rides were even bigger). There was a BMW 1000cc and a big Yamaha Four (1100cc?) among them, no H-Ds in the bunch.
After rallying at the start, the entire Front Range suddenly socked in with a thick fog, so we decided to ride up I-25 to Loveland instead of the curvy Front Range roads, which would be cold, wet, and maybe snowing (this was the end of June, not quite summertime above 7000 feet yet), stopping at Loveland to reassess and get some coffee. Then we decided we'd ride thru the wet, if it was, to the Park, then over. When we came out of the restaurant the Front Range was clearing and off we went: it was about 70 degrees then, at 9 AM. When we hit the Continental Divide at 12,000+ feet about noon it was snowing anyway (from a clear blue sky, the clouds were below us) so we decided to skip the Lodge at the Top, but we had lost 3 of the V Interceptors to breakdowns while climbing through the Big Thompson River Canyon to Estes Park. Two of those rode back together, one stuck in 2nd gear only, and the 3rd one parked at a gas station in Thompson Canyon to phone home for someone with a truck. The 4th Interceptor was leaking oil at Grand Lake, so he bought some at a gas station and I carried his half-empty bottle in my Vetter until we got to Berthoud Pass that afternoon, when he used the other half. The west side of the Divide was beautiful weather at 60-something degrees, and the back side of the Divide was blooming in Mountain Spring, gorgeous views all the way. We got strung out over 5 miles of hiway, so I stopped at Winter Park to get the bunch back together because I was 'losing' the CX500's radio at the back of the pack, then we humped over Berthoud Pass, passing every truck and car up the steeper sections and coasting back down after stopping at the top for a stretch and to install gloves against the 30-degree weather again. As we rolled back down the east side of the Pass to I-70 back to town the sun was setting behind us, lighting up the steep canyon walls all the way down the hill again. We got back to the church at 6:30 PM and called the missing Interceptor riders to make sure they were OK, and we all ordered pizzas for supper.
That was our first big ride. I lost track of how many others we did, but we rode as a bunch for more than a decade. I miss those riders, more than 20 overall: only 3 of them (including me) still ride today - and, I'm still on that same CB750!
