Moto Blog

The monsoon season is over. The afternoon thunderstorm window that ran from late June through September 30 is closed for the year, but what monsoon left behind stays on the road for weeks. October's surface is post-storm debris layered over four months of sediment transport, and it reads differently than the surface you were riding in June. What Changes During monsoon, afternoon storms drop water faster than the roadway drains it. Water moves across pavement, carrying sand, gravel, and organic material from the shoulders and the surrounding terrain. When it drains or evaporates, that material stays where the water deposited it - typically at pavement edges, in low spots, and at the inside radius of curves. Four months of that accumulation is now baked onto the road. Without the daily flushing action of afternoon rain, it compounds. Dust settles on top of it. Morning dew or an overnight sprinkle puts a moisture layer underneath without washing anything away. A surface that looked cl...

The 54th Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta runs October 3–11 at Balloon Fiesta Park, and if your morning commute touches I-25 anywhere between Alameda and Paseo del Norte during that window, you are riding into what the city calls "severe traffic congestion." Hundreds of thousands of visitors over nine days, funneling toward a single park for mass ascensions that begin before sunrise. This is not background traffic you filter through. It is stop-and-go gridlock on the Interstate, vehicles changing lanes without seeing you, drivers watching balloons instead of mirrors, and surface streets near the park turning into parking lots by 5:30 a.m. The congestion peaks during morning mass ascension sessions — balloons launch at dawn, which in early October means crowds arriving between 4:30 and 6:00 a.m. If you are commuting or running an early session during Fiesta week, you need a plan that does not assume I-25 will move. The simplest answer is timing. Mass ascensions happen ...

You are cruising NM-14 at 35 mph through the curves south of Sandia Park, and an elk steps onto the shoulder sixty feet ahead. Your escape is right there — a clean lane to the left, no oncoming traffic, enough room. But when you roll on to move, nothing happens for half a second. You are in fifth gear and the bike is lugging. By the time the power arrives, you have lost twenty feet and the geometry of the escape has changed. That half-second delay is not a mechanical problem. It is a gear-selection problem, and gear selection is not a comfort decision. It is escape planning. The question the curriculum asks At your normal cruising speed — 35 mph, 45 mph, whatever your daily route actually runs — can you add 10 mph within two seconds without touching the shifter? If the answer is no, you are riding in a gear that keeps power locked behind a downshift scramble. You have given away the first half of every evasion before it starts. The Mañana Moto curriculum calls this the Goldilocks Zone ...

A car sits at a side street, nose out. You see it. That is observation. What keeps you upright is the next part — seeing why it is there and what that means about the three seconds ahead of you. The curriculum states this plainly: you don't scan for objects. You scan for reasons. The stopped car is not the hazard. The hazard is the parking-lot exit behind it, the brake lights two cars ahead that just lit up, or the driver's head turned away from you checking the opposite lane. Those are the signals that the car is about to pull out, and the signals arrive before the movement does. Reading the reason instead of the object is what separates the rider who reacts from the rider who acts with a plan. One sees a car. The other sees a car with a reason to move, routes around where it is going, and covers the brake while passing its window. When the car does pull out, one rider is startled. The other expected it and already moved. What "Read the Reason" Actually Means It mea...

This week was unusually quiet on the national motorcycling scene — no recalls announced, no major law changes, no significant industry developments that hadn't already been covered. But New Mexico riders had plenty to watch: late-season monsoon flooding, sudden wind, and peak elk activity made the week anything but routine on local roads. New Mexico NMDOT issues flash flood advisory for northern New Mexico Sept 22-23 The New Mexico Department of Transportation issued a flash flood advisory for northern New Mexico from noon Tuesday, September 22, through 7 p.m. Wednesday, September 23, as widespread thunderstorms and heavy rainfall moved across the region. The advisory warned of flash flooding in low-lying areas, arroyos, normally dry washes in mountainous areas, and locations with poor drainage. Source: NMDOT urges drivers to prepare for flash flooding , Los Alamos Reporter, September 22, 2026. What it means for a rider: Late-September monsoon surges are unpredictable. ...

Albuquerque's Balloon Fiesta construction moratorium went active September 26 and runs through October 11, covering major arterials from Tramway on the north down to Osuna, and from I-25 east to 2nd Street west. For the next two weeks, road construction that has been disrupting merge patterns and lane widths is paused, which means clearer routes and more predictable traffic flow on the covered corridors. If you have been avoiding a particular stretch because of construction staging, now is the time to ride it again — the moratorium clears the decks for Balloon Fiesta, and the pause holds through the event's close. But October 3 changes everything. The 54th Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta runs October 3–11, nine days of mass ascensions, Dawn Patrol launches, and evening balloon glows that draw hundreds of thousands of spectators to Balloon Fiesta Park. Dawn Patrol sessions begin before sunrise, which means heavy traffic on routes to the park starting as early as 4:30 a....

New Mexico's monsoon season ends September 30—three days from now. What that date marks is not a weather switch but the statistical close of the pattern that has governed afternoon riding for the last three months. The multi-day surge that brought flash flooding, severe thunderstorm warnings, and standing water across the state through September 23 was the monsoon's final push. What follows is the fall pattern: drier, cooler, more stable, and predictable in ways the monsoon never was. For a rider, the shift changes nearly everything about how a day is planned and how a surface is read. The monsoon asked you to check radar every hour, route around afternoon storms, and read pavement that could go from dry to wet mid-ride. Fall asks you to check the forecast once in the morning and trust it. The surface you start on is the surface you finish on, which means traction is consistent and planning is simpler. But it also means the habits that kept you upright all summer—continuous sky...

A parked car ten seconds ahead is not the same threat as a door opening two seconds in front of you. They are the same object , but the response one deserves would waste you on the other. Knowing which number to give something — and when that number changes — is what keeps a ride from costing more energy than it should. The Scale Itself 1 is notice, no action. The car is there. You saw it. Nothing changes. 2 is a minor adjustment. A small lane-position shift, a slight speed reduction. The kind of thing that happens without breaking your rhythm. 3 is a moderate response. Cover the brake, pre-position for an escape, widen your buffer. Something deliberate. 4 is significant evasion. Hard braking, a swerve, a real maneuver. You are actively getting out of the way. 5 is emergency action. Maximum braking, maximum steering input, everything the bike and your body have. The thing that would have killed you if you had hesitated. The parked car at ten seconds out is a 1. The same car, door ...

The Set and the Squeeze: Why Good Braking Happens in Two Stages A rider who has been braking badly for ten years is not experienced at braking. They are practiced at doing it wrong. The most common form of wrong is treating the brake lever like a light switch—zero to full pressure in one motion—which produces either a skid at the front tire or a hesitant, delayed stop that eats distance the rider cannot afford to lose. The answer is a two-stage process the curriculum calls the Set and the Squeeze: take up the slack in the lever and pedal until the pads meet the rotors and the suspension settles, then increase pressure progressively and firmly. Two stages, one motion, and the difference between a controlled stop and a grab. What the Set Does The Set is not preparation for braking. It is the first half of braking itself. When you take up the slack in the front brake lever, you are doing two things simultaneously: you are bringing the brake pads into contact with the rotor, and you ...

The curriculum states the standard plainly: your bike is always in the correct gear for the next likely maneuver. Not the current one — the next one. That is mechanical harmony, and it is a discipline rather than a habit. It means riding two or three seconds ahead of where you physically are: reading the grade, the closure rate, the gap in traffic, and keeping the gearbox positioned so power is available the moment you need it — not after a downshift scramble. Gear selection is escape planning At 35 mph cruising, can you add 10 mph within two seconds without reaching for a shift? If the answer is no, you are lugging — too high a gear, no response available when the situation changes. If rolling off the throttle makes the bike jerk forward abruptly, you are screaming — too low a gear, and the engine braking is binary instead of modulated. The Goldilocks Zone is the RPM range where your bike accelerates cleanly without hesitation and decelerates predictably without a snap. Find it on you...

Left-Turn Collisions: What Actually Fails and What a Rider Does About It A motorcyclist died Monday afternoon in the North Valley after a Jeep driver making a left turn at Menaul and Broadway failed to see the oncoming motorcycle and pulled directly into its path. The rider died at the scene. The collision happened at 4:30 PM—afternoon light, clear visibility, no weather, no darkness. A driver looked, decided the lane was clear, and turned into a motorcycle they never saw. This is the intersection collision that kills more motorcyclists in multi-vehicle crashes than any other type. It is not a rare scenario. It is not bad luck. It is a visibility and detection problem that repeats daily across every city in the country, and it happens to riders who were doing nothing wrong except being in the lane they had the right to occupy. What Fails in a Left-Turn Collision The driver making the left turn looks for cars. Their scan is tuned to the size, shape, and closing speed of a sedan ...

Your motorcycle has four confidence states. Only one is safe for the street. The rest will collect a debt you cannot afford to pay. The curriculum calls this the Confidence Conversation, and it is the most uncomfortable teaching in the program — and the most useful. Because the biggest obstacle on the road is not the surface, the traffic, or the weather. It is the rider. The Four States The Aggressor. Angry, aggressive, anxious. The rider who is mad at a driver, rushing to make up lost time, or carrying stress that has nowhere else to go. Affirmative braking degrades into reactive grabbing. Scanning stops because the focus is on the target of the anger instead of the environment around it. The blind spots go unseen, and the gravel in the intersection stays invisible until the front tire is on it. The Ghost. Disengaged, grieving, exhausted. Physically on the bike, mentally three miles back. The rider who showed up but is not present. Scanning stops. Stopping distance drifts. The surfa...

Flash Flood Watch Today: What Street Flooding Means From the Saddle The National Weather Service has issued a Flood Watch from 12:00 PM today through 6:00 PM tomorrow for Albuquerque and surrounding areas. Monsoon surge bringing widespread heavy rain, with torrential rates over 2 inches per hour and locally 4+ inches possible. Low-water crossings flood, arroyo crossings turn dangerous, and extensive street flooding likely across the metro. This is not a day for a session. What Flash Flooding Does to a Street Rain at 2 inches per hour overwhelms storm drains faster than the system can clear. Water sheets across pavement, pools at intersections, and turns low spots into wading pools. An arroyo that was dry gravel 20 minutes ago is now moving water three feet deep, carrying enough force to sweep a bike off its tires. Low-water crossings—the dips on rural roads that cross seasonal drainages—become rushing channels with no way to gauge depth until you're in them. Street floodi...

You've booked Morocco. Or Patagonia. Or the Trans-America Trail. The deposit is paid, the flights are reserved, the bike rental is confirmed, and the gear list is growing. And somewhere between the panniers and the insurance rider, there's a line most trip planners skip: readiness. What a Big Trip Actually Demands A multi-day ride through unfamiliar terrain — loaded bike, strange roads, no rescue nearby — asks for skills most riders don't carry on their daily commute. A loaded bike handles differently. Cornering dynamics shift. Fatigue compounds hour after hour. The surface you've never seen before doesn't announce itself, and the mountain descent that looked scenic on the map is 4,000 feet of consecutive braking. The gap between "I ride to work" and "I'm crossing a country" isn't just miles. It's craft. The Real Cost Comparison Let's put numbers to it. A two-week overseas motorcycle trip runs $4,000 to $8,000 once you count...

The early apex feels faster. You dive to the inside early, clip the apex halfway through the turn, and it feels committed and smooth. It also leaves you blind through the second half of the corner — and if the turn tightens, or there's gravel on the exit, or a car is sitting stopped just past the apex, you find out about it when you're already leaned over with nowhere to go. The late apex is the opposite geometry, and it buys you two things the early apex costs you: vision into the exit before you commit, and the room to tighten or widen your line if what you see changes the plan. What a Late Apex Actually Is An apex is the point where your line comes closest to the inside edge of the curve. Early apex: you hit that point halfway through the turn. Late apex: you delay it to roughly two-thirds of the way through, staying wide on the entry and holding the outside longer before you turn in. The line is outside-outside-inside instead of outside-inside-inside. You enter wide, stay w...

Elk Rut Active Through Tuesday: What Peak Wildlife Season Means From the Saddle New Mexico's elk rut runs through Tuesday, September 24 — three days remaining on the archery season that marks mid-September as the single highest-risk window for wildlife collisions in the state. The rut is mating season, when bulls abandon their normal caution and move aggressively across terrain they'd normally avoid, including highways, to establish territory and pursue cows. What you're dealing with from the saddle isn't an animal crossing a road; it's an animal with compromised judgment covering ground fast, often in groups, during the exact hours — dawn and dusk — when New Mexico's light goes from usable to compromised in minutes. The numbers frame the scale: October through December accounts for 41% of all annual wildlife collision insurance claims nationwide (State Farm, 2026 analysis). New Mexico identified 60 wildlife-vehicle collision hotspots across the state (New M...