Robin: Shout out to my sister, Christy, who is going to the Hives concert tonight. Love you, sis. Really wish I could be there with you for that. If you don't know the Hives, you're missing out. I really like the song, Hey, Little World. It's one of my favorite songs. Definitely part of my Robbins Road Ruckus in-ride playlist. Great track. Real quick, site updates. In-article ads are working again. We know you're amped. PageCash is active for anyone not logged in viewing an article or podcast episode. And I just cranked out 556 lines of code for anti-spam that will keep everything a little bit more secure. Yes, for everyone. As in, if you have a maintenance logs maintained on the site or weather preferences, we've got you covered. Now, on to the fun stuff. First off, Brian, how are you doing, sir?

Brian: I'm doing great. We have great weather here. Been doing a little riding. Looking forward to some great riding in Kentucky next month. Me too. Are you ready to rock on?

Robin: I'm ready to rock. We have an awesome surprise for everyone. Once again, returning to the show, Ms. Jasmine Islam, you were a hit the last time you appeared. It's really great to see you again. We missed you during the Trip Sevens episode. I know Brian's going to ask you about that. I just want to ask, did you hear that episode, both of them?

Jasmine: Heard of it. I was actually on my way to a track day and I started playing it and it went off and on because my signal wasn't great.

Robin: Fair enough. From what you heard, do you feel that you were properly slash appropriately represented? Yeah. Good. I did my best to make sure we sang your praises.

Jasmine: Yeah. No, I was just sad that I had to miss it. Things that give me money so I can go on trips or having issues. So just like I couldn't do the Kentucky trip that Brian put up just because I'm out of days. One day I'll retire and get all the motorcycle things I wanted to.

Brian: Brian's got a master plan here though. What are you up to, man? So everybody was talking, you know, everybody tried to mention Jasmine when appropriate. Kind of what was your summary of what were your impressions of the trip? What were the highlights for you?

Jasmine: I've been on other motorcycle trips. This definitely, in terms of roads, I think it's one of the highest. I think the only place I enjoyed more was probably Newfoundland.

Robin: Oh, sure.

Jasmine: Over the area.

Robin: Yeah. No joke.

Jasmine: I love that. But the rest of it and roads were awesome. Definitely loved the group. I think the group gelled. I think we had a lot of fun. Lots of fun pictures we took because of activities that we were doing. I think that's awesome. Like big trips, if you can. If you don't enjoy the people you're with, I don't think it's that much fun. So, and it's almost like the roads and the people afterwards, hanging out afterwards, having dinner or whatever. Or in the middle of the day, finding like great Mexican restaurants that looking at outside, we're thinking maybe it was not going to be great. And then to go there, it was like, this is awesome Mexican food. That type of thing, I think is awesome. What wasn't the best was thinking to myself, like, am I going to run out of gas the first day? And it's like, actually pretty much running out of gas the first day. I had fumes, so that wasn't the best.

Robin: That was one moment. Your logic on that, we commented on the logic of this. It's like the same tank is right next to you on a different bike. After the one instance, you weren't, it wasn't going to happen.

Jasmine: That, that funny thing is like, you know, he actually filled up with gas and it's like, cause he's pushing his bike to the thing and filling up his bike, but I looked at my, how many miles are Vernon is like, oh, this is perfectly fine. I have like 200 or a hundred miles left. So I'll be good. And then like, yeah, 20, 30 miles. And it's like, you have no miles left.

Brian: And what the ride leader does. When we recorded that, I kind of, I kind of offered everybody my personal apology for the, uh, for the last day, as entertaining as it might've been. Cause, uh, I loaded up the wrong route. And, uh, so that was a little more interesting than it might've been. Um, in some ways you are lucky you, you kind of bailed out the final night. The lodgings were not up to the standard of the rest of the trip.

Jasmine: Oh, okay. It was rough. That was good. So good. Good thing I, yeah.

Brian: So next year's route is completely different. That last day, much better part of Indiana. And everybody had a great at it, except Robin. I had a great attitude with the last day and, and Robin took it pretty well and so forth. But yeah, I was kind of like, wow, I need to apologize to everybody for that. So you're included in that.

Robin: I don't know that you did. And you helped us scout and perfect the Indiana route for the next go of it. I think it's pretty solid. I've written all of that already. It's going to be fine.

Brian: That's going to be great.

Jasmine: Something to look forward to for next year.

Robin: Oh yeah. We're going through Elizabeth town. Enough sevens. We've talked about, we've done sevens to death. This will be the fourth episode that goes out to sevens. By the time we finish talking about sevens, the next sevens will approach. I'll be like, wait, what I'm doing?

Brian: What? Ideally you would be running seven, sevens tours in one year. That would probably kill you actually.

Robin: Yes. I don't doubt it.

Brian: There's so much interest people be like.

Jasmine: Could do it to all different parts of the country.

Brian: Yeah. You'd have like 49 riders.

Jasmine: A little bit of Canada, seven States, seven provinces.

Brian: That's not a bad idea. Yeah. It's y'all's bankroll.

Robin: If I can make that happen.

Brian: Seven Mexican States. Yeah. Anyway. That's a possibility. So we're ready to dive into listener questions a little bit.

Robin: Let's crank these out real quick. And Jasmine, I think you'll have plenty to contribute to this for sure. Yes. MB asks, what earbuds do you wear under your helmet for audio? And what's your process in wiring? This person I'm assuming probably wears ear plugs and they want to know specifically about the electrics. There's an article on the site about. Plug phones. Plug phones. Thank you. So that was written quite some time ago, but the product's still around. I find they're comfortable for my ears, but everybody's ears are different. My process is I tested it sitting down with my helmet on and my gear on, and then slacked the wire. I tuck that into a breast pocket. So it's all exactly the right length. So what I have to do though, helmet is unstrapped earbuds go in. I put the helmet on over, pull the cables forward. So my chin strap can go behind them. The cables are in front of the neck strap. That way they never get tangled up. Otherwise they get tangled up. You start looking up and down and then you're, you're caught on the line. So when it's forward, there's no dangle. Tuck the excess into my breast pocket down the road. I go, that's my process with a Sina SMH 10 from like 1999. You know, it's like old stuff, but it works. What do you guys got? That's question one. Do you guys listen to music when you're going down the road?

Jasmine: I do. I find I get distracted and, um, start looking at other things too much. When I don't have music, I think that's it. I like having in the background once in a while, like listen to the words and things, but keeps me from getting distracted. But I've probably tried at least 10 different things of using wired headphones in different ways, and I've always ended up not liking it. So what I do is I have earplugs in, I think Sena or Sina, they don't make it anymore, but for a while, I think it was a 20U, uh, don't quote me on the model, but it was this very small Bluetooth, um, you know, intercom thing, um, that a little tiny piece that went into the helmet. And then you have the ear pockets, uh, the things that the, the speaker that went into the ear pockets, um, and a few other things. And it was designed to not stick out like most of the other Sena ones that you stick on the side.

Robin: Protrusion.

Jasmine: Yes, none of that. Um, but it wasn't very great in terms of like a communicator. So my husband actually has a twin, uh, one of the ones that stick out and his works well with other people, but it never connected to mine very well or connect and disconnect. Eventually I just gave up on it and actually yanked out the microphone part cause I was never using it, but pretty much use it as a glorified Bluetooth headset, but it's like in my helmet. I don't have to worry about it.

Robin: Okay. But there's speakers.

Jasmine: There's speakers. Yes. So it's designed to be a communicator with a microphone and all that, but I'm just using it for speech. Huh. And I really liked that. And I have the earplugs in my ear, so it actually works hot. Okay.

Brian: So you have speakers in your helmet firing through the earplugs, I guess. Yep. Got it. People have made that work. Yeah, it works fine. I've never found anything I get along with.

Robin: Yeah. You're about to make a strong point with that. And it's like, what I found was that the earbuds only worked for me cause I can hear better and it also cancels out sound. I've always had a problem with the speakers, but some people, the speakers are the way to go.

Brian: In which case, back to you. You were saying you've done. I've tried music in the helmet and in different ways, in several ways, you know, like Jasmine said, everybody has to try a lot of things before they find something that sort of works. Like plug phones didn't really work for me. They stick out too far. The other thing I found is like having music in my helmet, like you don't want to have Rammstein playing, you know, or something really heavy when you're riding on some really good roads. Cause you'll be, it has an effect and you'll be going way too damn fast.

Robin: Yeah. That's why I do it. Yeah. That's why you do it. Right out the gate. That's why I've got that music going.

Brian: It's superhero music. I got to save the girl. I sort of gave up on the idea. I'm hoping what I would like to find is I think technology is real close to the point where we'll get Bluetooth that can actually be reliable and actually sit inside the ear far enough to work. I do have friends that have like a Bluetooth. They're like little earbuds on a string and the string contains the Bluetooth stuff and that can work for some people. Maybe I haven't spent enough money on one, you know, $30 doesn't get you the state of the art. It would be nice on some trips. And basically I, but like if I'm really have to concentrate on some really tight technical roads, I kind of just use earplugs. I've got most of an article written on just finding earplugs because every damn year is different. What I use will cause actual pain in other people and vice versa. So you have to just try different stuff.

Robin: And given the number of podcast episodes I have to produce, people will hear you say that after they've read the article, which should be fantastic. True. Are you guys good for the next question? All right. This should tie right into why we brought Jasmine in. KB asks, for someone who's either not been on a big ride ever or hasn't done much riding this year or any given year, what can they do to make themselves more comfortable with it and build their endurance? Great question.

Brian: I want to get Jasmine's take on this.

Jasmine: I think with many things it's like, hey, just go out and do it. Meaning after the pandemic, when I didn't ride for a good long time, because I was used to doing very long rides, like pretty much seven days, those are my usual big, long rides before 5,000 miles. So after not riding very much for a while, I just started doing shorter trips. It's like, hey, do some day trips, do a couple hours. I just did things myself. So this way I didn't, I didn't have anyone that I needed to wait for or do any other things. I did rides my own self. So this way I knew, hey, when I want to turn around, I could turn around and things like that. Did a few of those up in, I live in Metro New York. So sort of once you go past Westchester County, there's some nicer roads there. Did all of those, did some Long Island roads, which is more straighter roads because you need both. Like when you go on long trips, sometimes you kind of go a couple of hours on boring roads to get to the nice roads. So it's like, hey, can I sit for an hour on a highway and be okay with it? I'm used to that. So I would just do those things because I did those myself a couple of years ago. And more than that is just like, depending on the types of trips you go, like try to practice those. So if you have to go a long one, do those, cause otherwise you'll be miserable. Full twisty ones have their own things. Cause especially, you know, if you're doing, if you're doing body stuff on roads, which some people like doing, you're going to get yourself tired if you don't get used to that.

Robin: Yeah. Body English, butt off the seat, all that. If you're working, then working is, it's work.

Jasmine: Yeah. Yeah.

Robin: I think that you just said it all and quite well. I'll add to it that like Brian and I's answer. The only thing we can contribute that well, that I'm going to contribute first is slow is fast. So go out there, pick a road that you're comfortable with low traffic to your advantage and just be smooth. Go out there and take a smooth pace, whatever that pace may be and practice smooth, calm, assertively focused actions and practice maintaining your calm. Brian, what'd you got?

Brian: My answer is going to be go ride. Yeah. Burn gas. Two words. That's most of it right there. Especially if you already have some experience, you know, you didn't, nobody needs to teach you the basic. You just need to get your body used to it. You need to get your mind used to it because that's the thing that will fatigue you the most. If you're overworking your brain, you know, if you're stressed out or whatever, you're going to be lucky to do a hundred miles in a day. If your brain is all stressed out and you know, like everybody's showed up on triple sevens. I mean, the brains were ready for 300, you know, 250, 300 mile days. Most of the really intense roads. And that's kind of mostly, yeah, it's work and it's fatiguing and you have to respect that and build up to it. But yeah, that's go ride. And it's like anything. It's like a, you can't run a marathon right off the bat. It goes, go ride and ride everywhere. Ride to the grocery store, ride to the lumber yard, figure it out. Bungee cords are amazing. Rock straps are amazing. Oh gosh. Yeah. Riding everywhere just as habit and so forth really helps build a lot of that familiarity that you need each need to build up again. Every spring knock the rust off.

Robin: All right. Enough of this listener crap. If you want to reach out to us, type into your next pile of crap. If you want to bug us next time in your web browser, visit email.tro.bike. That's in your web browser. The URL is email.tro.bike. That'll take you to our contact page and you can reach out that way. Or you can email us at podcast at tro.bike. So we love answering these questions. They're fun to field. It's just this one, this episode. We got so much cool stuff to do. Brian, let's kick its ass. Jasmine's here.

Brian: All right. First off, Jasmine, I need to see that mug again.

Robin: It's a cow mug. And it has udders. The feet are udders.

Brian: That is. And you are, yeah, you are a fan of talking to cows. So, okay. It's very on brand. I love it. So the whole reason we brought you here, the whole reason we wanted to talk to you, Jasmine, was you mentioned earlier, you like are in New York frickin' city, I believe, right? And your Metro, yeah, somewhere around there. And you ride and commute in the city on a regular basis. I live in Indianapolis, which is, it's basically, it's a pretty good size city. It's the 12th largest city in the country, but it's like cornfield, cornfield, cornfield, Indianapolis, cornfield, cornfield. So it's got, it's a unique, and I live like in one corner of it. I'm like at level A, Jasmine's at level Z, and Robin is somewhere in the middle because I believe you used to live in around, in Chicago. Yeah. Now you're really turning hayseed. You're like, since you've been a nomad, you know, you've, you basically have stayed away from cities as much as you can. But I imagine you have some leftover skills left. Yeah.

Robin: I love Chicago. That'll be enough of that. Yeah.

Jasmine: The one quick thing I did for probably about 13, 14 years, I commuted every weekday into the city for work. I live on Long Island, although recently I've been working from home. So I'm not doing it at the moment, although I commute right into the city because a lot of the good roads in this area, like you have to go through the city to go to the, but I did commute for, let's say, I say, started in 04, a few days a week, maybe once a week. Then probably in the 10s, it was every day, like Monday through Friday. Only time I wouldn't commute into on my bike would be if there's actual snow on the ground. But a few times I actually rode when there was snow falling on there, which wasn't the best idea because it ended up going over and over the pass, which was ice underneath and snow above it. That was not a fun day. Because even picking up the bike took a while and multiple people, because we were all sliding around on the ice. It's spooky. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't like it.

Brian: Yeah.

Jasmine: That was a lesson not to ride when there is snow.

Brian: And what brought me to this, I was starting to write an article on, like, I've seen another article that pointed out like all that obvious crap, like, hey, manhole covers are slick. Well, yeah. Okay. Everybody knows that, you know, keep your head on a swivel, you know, and, and really generic stuff like that. And it's kind of like, I wanted to dig down and get some of that really, let's put together the advanced class on city riding. Oh, I like your style. Like the stuff David Huff didn't cover, you know, we all know the greasy spot at the stoplight is slick. We don't need to cover that again. That kind of stuff's more obvious. You know, if it rains, wait a bit, you know, that kind of stuff is all, well, maybe we can put together, maybe we can talk about some of the stuff that's kind of the, well, you're not going to find on your average blog. And also I think the second half of this is why you want to do this universally is why you want to ride in the city. How do we make it fun? I've had a lot of fun riding, you know, blatant around Indianapolis and other cities too. I've, you know, I've, I've been through Chicago on a motorcycle at night and it was amazing. It's beautiful. Beautiful.

Robin: These are things that we, the three of us as experienced writers, I can't speak to whether I'm a basic writer or an advanced writer. I never would try to, but I can say that as an experienced writer, creating what you're calling the advanced terminology comes from us focusing on the things we do subconsciously and turning that subconscious decision-making into something we're aware of and words. Taking these things we naturally do because we've been doing it so much and gotten pretty damn good at, and then finding a way to bring wording out of it. First one that comes to mind for me, being able to watch and predict multiple targets that are making steady moves in a direction, all of them at different paces. So you're seeing your openings shift around in an amoeba. You can always see there's my space at all times. And when it closes up, you know where the next space is. You got to be calm while you are maintaining a sense of it. That isn't something you do by focusing on the minutia of it.

Brian: Little stuff.

Robin: So there you are in an urban environment. You know, you got the green lights. It's a Thursday night. People are out drinking, but you've got some beautiful destination on the bike. You're going to go ride down and see some friends for a moment. You just constantly see the opening and that opening is always changing, always having an escape path. That is one definite, robust technique that we all practice regularly as seasoned aficionados. Anything you want to add to that? Oh, protecting your bubble. I like this. That's a good way to put it. So how do you do it?

Jasmine: I think you need a little bit of aggression. There's some amount of defensive, but some amount of offensive driving as well, or riding.

Robin: I'm going to start an offensive driving school.

Jasmine: Because if, if you're sort of timid, you're going to be in trouble because people will cut you off, cabs will go across you to pick up somebody, no matter if they're the yellow cabs of old or currently, or even Ubers, they all do it. You need a little bit of aggression to go into that, going a little bit faster than the traffic around you, which comes into highway riding as well, I think, but it becomes more important in the city for you to be able to get through. And as Robin was saying is like, hey, finding those open places and getting there and being aware.

Robin: Follow the invisible snake.

Jasmine: Yeah. Being aware that, hey, if there's an open spot, probably a lot of other people are looking at that same spot, be a little flowing into those. So if someone comes from, if you're going from the left to the right, just be aware that someone can be coming from the left into the right and you're seeing a little bit of speed there helps. So you can actually go a little bit faster.

Robin: Two atoms cannot occupy the same space.

Brian: Yeah. You don't want to cause a nuclear explosion or anything.

Jasmine: That's where a little bit of throttle helps because you can hopefully get ahead of that person who's coming into the same lane as you.

Brian: That's a great point. You really have to ride with confidence. I took a dual sport riding class. So very different environment. But anyway, one of the main points the whole day is when you decide to do something, you have to commit a hundred percent. You can do absolutely stupid shit on a motorcycle. As long as you a hundred percent know what you're going to do and do it. There's an element of that, of aggression, assertiveness. And this is mine, damn it.

Robin: She used that incredible, inappropriate word aggressive. I think assertive is the proper word. Dang it.

Brian: No, I think aggression is part of it. Sometimes this is my turf, damn it. You're harrumphing old man. Old man yells at cloud. It's a turf battle sometimes.

Jasmine: Comes in with pedestrians as well because people will cross street in the middle of very large avenues because they need to get to the other side. So it's just not cars. It's bicycle. In New York now there's also scooters and little tiny mopeds and stuff like that. I'm imagining most big cities have the same thing. So you got to be aware of that as well. And people in essence crossing in the middle against lights even because they just need to get to that other side now.

Brian: Just like the chicken. Yeah.

Robin: I would imagine that's something you have that we don't really often have in Chicago lawsuiters, people who soccer injury every time they cross the street, rub their nose on a parked car and then fall back. Oh, yeah. Ambulance shows up, neck braces on, lawyers already got the cards out. I think New York is a little bit more prone to that just because of the jam-packed environment.

Jasmine: New York City police are a whole other breed. So running cameras is a very big thing. I mean, it's great in other places for the view and being able to watch your ride later. Look at that beautiful cow or the nice horse. But in New York it's actually prevented me from getting lots of tickets because I don't know if I mentioned this last time we spoke, but New York police will purposely give you a ticket and will lie for it. That's happened to me. So having a camera prevents that because lots of cops come like, I watched you lane splitting, no officer, and point to the camera right there because I knew they were ahead of me because I was running Waze as well, which is another big thing. You run Waze or some equivalent. Waze is probably the best one that I've tried. So, you know, there's a cop two blocks away or 20 cops. That actually happened last week going into Staten Island. There was, I think they had this dragnet of 15 cops off the Verrazano bridge, which is the bridge that connects sort of Brooklyn to Staten Island. And they were stopping every single motorcycle. If you tried to run, there was a cop 100 feet away to stop you. So knowing that you have Waze, you know, it's there. Calm yourself down. Be a good little citizen. Do the nice things. Run the camera. So when they stop, you can point and say, I was being a good citizen. And then they click.

Robin: Nice. I'm waiting for Dawn Beren to finish. She's writing an article about a two camera system, front and rear, that you simply press a button. It maintains a constant cache of about 20 to 30 minutes of material. And you just press a button and the last 10 minutes were saved.

Jasmine: For a long time, I was using GoPros. I had it mounted on my helmet and on top of my helmet and at various places. Eventually I gave up and got one of those dash cams that they actually have a smaller one for motorcycles and hooked it up using, like with the sensor on one of my headlight things. Turn on the bike as once the headlight turns on, because it's like the switched one, then the cameras turn on.

Brian: That's cool. Then the new thing I've seen is the Insta360 and it's everywhere on YouTube. Yeah. 360 view, but it also has a giant stick and anyway.

Robin: Yeah, it looks awkward to me. It looks awkward.

Jasmine: And I had issues with like keeping it charged.

Robin: Yeah. Yeah.

Jasmine: Oh, I forgot to charge it. So I covered that.

Robin: Well, this brings it to the fun stuff. You've got it in here that, you know, we've even learned that riding in the city can still, it is, it's still fun. We talked about that for a split second there. I've had a blast riding in Chicago at night. Plenty of view, plenty of people to see, places to go. Brian's asking how and why do we enjoy doing that? What are the hidden opportunities hidden in the population centers? I do have self-control. I can ride to a bar. I can go there and not drink. If it's far enough away that I know I can get back inside of a half hour. I liked riding in Chicago. There are, there's video of Travis Burwellson and I kind of being hoons back before I was an instructor, just being hooligans, which was a lot of fun. I was listening to Groove Armada at the time. And like Brian said, yeah, there can be a hell of an influence with the right music choice. Groove Armada really would cause me in ride trouble for the right reasons. But I loved that. What about you guys?

Jasmine: It's actually fun to ride in the city. Lot more fun at nighttime when the traffic is less and the city calms down. You see the lights. It's beautiful. New York obviously surrounded by the same thing with Chicago. It's like get near water and things like that. It's just beautiful. So that's one great part of it. From a commuting standpoint, there's a good amount of freedom as well. I know it's like partially being green and saving environment and all that. How to do that or as much as I can in places, but definitely love the freedom of me choosing when I'm leaving as opposed to looking for schedules and timetables or being squished with other people. It's like when you get into your, put your helmet on, yes, you're amongst lots of people, but in your own space and like, hey, today I want to go this other place. And it's just makes it much easier to go. You have that freedom.

Robin: One ride in Chicago specific is Sheridan Road, north of Chicago. Once you get to Rogers Park, Sheridan Road by the lake, due north is quite curvy, goes to some beautiful rich neighborhoods, but some woods and parks and things like that. You can ride all the way up to, I don't remember how far north we'd get. We should all go around. What's your favorite urban commute if you're going to ride the bike through the city?

Jasmine: In terms of views, I would definitely say sort of the ring road around Manhattan is beautiful from the views. So you can go down, let's say the FDR drive, you're seeing Brooklyn on the, Brooklyn, Queens on the left and sort of the skyscrapers on the right goes all the way to the bottom. And then you come back up the West Side Highway, which is on the western part of Manhattan Island. It's beautiful from a motorcycle riding perspective. It's straight road, but just the views and things are beautiful roads, beautiful buildings and all this other stuff. If you like watching people, you can watch people when you're stopped at red lights and things like that. From terms of roads, I'd say the Bronx has some, the western part of Bronx has some nice routes when you get to sort of Riverdale area, some nice routes there, sort of the northern tip of Manhattan has some elevation and things. So that's sort of fun as well. Making that loop's been great.

Brian: In Indianapolis, parking is just, is no big deal compared to New York. So it's parking easier. You know, if you have a motorcycle, you can find a spot for it at work or wherever a lot easier.

Jasmine: Depends a little on how worried are you about getting your motorcycle one stolen or two ticketed. I could probably speak a good long amount for this because I worked in different places and I needed to find parking in different places. Fortunately, I never had an issue with it. One, someone knocked my bike down. Yeah, which wasn't the best, but the doorman actually picked up the bike for me. So it was lying on the ground and somebody's going to knock it over again. And I actually had plates of my motorcycle stolen once. That was me being a tourist. Like on a weekend, I rode into the city to go to the natural history museum in Manhattan. So as I was watching, looking at dinosaurs and stuff, someone stole the plate off my bike. That's annoying. After that, I did. Which starred one? I don't know if it's the red or the blue Loctite on it. So I have to use heat if I ever choose a plate.

Brian: That'd be the red Loctite.

Robin: Yeah, that's the red one.

Jasmine: And I did that to all my bikes and I don't want the plate stolen again. It is currently an issue in New York, I'm sure in other urban areas as well, because you have all these illegal mopeds and scooters and things, meaning not the standup scooters, but motorcycle scooters. So they steal the plates and put it on theirs to look a little bit more legit. Legit, yeah. From terms of parking, I'm trying to be, I guess, outside of Manhattan or let's say downtown Brooklyn, parking is very easy, much easier on a motorcycle than it is in a car. You just gotta be careful where you park. Usually good with parking. If you find a place like near hydrant or near like a driveway, you're always fine parking. No issues. Manhattan depends a little on, which I'm sure is the same with Chicago, where in the city you are, like that downtown business district, they probably have like no parking at all. It's commercial parking, so you can't park there unless you park it on a sidewalk and hope they don't ticket you for it. Once you go 60th streets and above or below sort of the really downtown, there you usually can find park on the street and same thing applies. It's like fairly easy to find parking. For a while, I used to work downtown next to Pottery Park or close to City Hall. So there was on-street parking there, which was sort of easy. Working near the company, which I'd say is toward the edge of the business district, near 60th street, there's alternate side parking there. So there I could park, but then I got lazy and I didn't want to walk the five blocks to the office and I just started paying $220 a month and parking it a lot. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Robin: Which is like half. In parking tickets, like screw those people.

Jasmine: Yeah, yeah, worrying about it or walking.

Robin: It's as good as rent.

Jasmine: Yeah, so it's $220 a month, which is fairly, it's a bargain because cars pay like $600, $700 a month.

Robin: I just park it at the impound lot.

Jasmine: So I did that for a while. It was just easy because I can leave my gear or whatever on the bike. Don't have to worry about it. Someone's always looking for it.

Brian: Yeah, here in Indy, there's a couple of roads that have a few curves, you know, Pleasant Run Parkway, near creeks and things like that. And we don't really have any high spots, so it's kind of flat. But yeah, you do have some really fun, really interesting scenery and so forth. A lot of times I'll go out to the airport and watch planes for a while, watch airplanes for a while, because kind of an aviation geek. You mentioned people watching, and that's a lot of it too. Like on a Friday night, before it gets really too drunk out, go down to Broad Ripple, go down to Mass Avenue, just kind of downtown on the circle. There's always a bunch of people with fancy cars and motorcycles and stuff, and they park and they roam around and so forth. And it's something to do. You know, I commute all the time. And I think a lot of it is it just, if you're on the bike every damn day, it helps keep you sharp. I think it's worthwhile just for that. Back to one of the listener questions. Ride the thing every day, do something. You'll keep those habits sharp that need to be sharp. It's interesting, like in Indianapolis, it's a long story of weird politics. But anyway, yeah, there's, you know, like if you're in the city limits, there's really no such thing as a ticket. So you have to be very careful, like of people running red lights and things like that. If you're at a red light, it turns green. In Chicago, New York, you probably get honked at. In Indianapolis, you wait, you look, you look, you look again, and then you go because there's always like two or three people running the light with their lights off, you know, just it's kind of Mad Max in some areas. Dude. Wow.

Robin: Yeah, out of town, it's just like, well, it's another, it's just Indianapolis.

Brian: Yeah, that's rough. You know, in New York and Chicago too, you get, we call them tourons, tourists who are morons. You know what? Like I've been to Manhattan once and I, and we rented a car because my boss at the time was an idiot. I was driving in Manhattan and it was interesting. It was a little bit like being on a track because everybody was there. Everybody knew what they were doing. Everybody wanted to get where they were going. Kind of a high level of skill that you could see. Like it was very crowded, very fast, very intense. But people generally don't go over to Manhattan unless they know what they're doing. Although once in a while there'll be someone, you know, driving around in a rental car, looking at, yeah. I'm in a place, stuff and things. Look at that thing. And Indianapolis or city cornfields. So you get pickup trucks that wander downtown, have no, and they're like, look at all them tall buildings, you know, and it's just.

Robin: Red lights and dead lights. Keep me in check both of you, but here's my drill on the red light. If you enter the intersection before the light turns red, the intersection belongs to you. Doesn't matter if you're making a left turn, a right turn or going straight. I say this because the left turn, you have right of way as you exit the intersection to make your left turn. It's yours until you make it through. You shouldn't block the intersection. That's not allowed either. The other thing is those giant white lines that go across. Those are stop points. And the reason they are there, if you see one that looks like it's 30 yards back, why are you so far back? Well, I'm sure that that massive 18 wheeler will make sense of it for you as they try to make a left turn and you are in the intersection thinking that you're, you know, just jamming out to your tunes. I don't know who would listen to music while they're riding. That's just dangerous, but you get my point. Those heavy, solid white lines are a place to stop before so that certain vehicles that are allowed to make use of that road can in fact, maneuver the turn. Try to acknowledge that. The dead Reds. I don't care what state I'm in. If I have to wait more than three minutes and nobody's around, especially if the light changes like twice on me, I'm going to run it. And if a cop is looking at me dead on, I'm going to run it in front of the cop. It just, yeah. Bye. I'll explain it if you want to pull me over, but don't. And that just happened to me.

Brian: Yeah. There's a dead Red law here in Indiana, where if it goes through two cycles and doesn't sense you and doesn't turn for you, then it's legal to run it. I mean, if you cause an accident and it's on you, but I don't know if they have that in New York or not.

Robin: The dead Red thing falls under your breaking the law category, which I find fascinating because you got filtering and great escapes. Look, the deal with filtering is we're too stupid for filtering. Filtering is brilliant. Filtering takes the entire space that is occupied by a single or two person vehicle that is tandem as an inline and moves it into a space. It actually alleviates traffic. So that spot that you're in is space for a car to pull up forward and be that much closer to their destination, no matter what that means in terms of traffic. So is filtering a good thing? Yes. But society in this country is dumber than a bag of hammers. They think that we're winning. We are cheating or we are winning or it's like, I'm not going where you're going. I'm trying to make it easier for you to get to where you're going. And by getting out of your way and providing you with more space front side, I'm actually helping you out. So go ahead and stay stupid. I've spoken my piece.

Brian: But California, it's not illegal. And I think it was one of the states in the corner, Washington or Oregon. Didn't they just legalize filtering?

Jasmine: I think it was Oregon.

Brian: Minnesota.

Jasmine: Utah or Oregon had something recently where they're doing a trial.

Robin: Spread the word, right?

Jasmine: Yeah.

Robin: Yeah. Well, roundabouts, you are only responsible for the traffic on your left. The traffic on the right might be stupid. So you should take responsibility for their idiocy as well. But you're only legally responsible for the traffic on the left.

Brian: Yeah. Roundabouts are a great way to have fun, too, in the city at night when you're bored as hell. Yes. I live like a mile from the county line. And the next county north is the roundabout capital of the United States. Definitely. Hamilton County. I've had nights where I'm just bored as hell. And I'll just go twist around the roundabouts for an hour or two just to work off some steam. It's great. And they're starting to spread around quite a bit. Once people get used to them. I did get knocked off my Vstrom one time at a roundabout by this lady from Illinois who had never seen one before. But once people get used to them, it's fantastic.

Robin: These are stupid. Shouldn't put in bike paths or either. These are stupid. Put in a traffic light. Why didn't you put in bike paths? They're designed to keep you moving. You don't have to stop. You are not required to stop. You may continue moving so long as you acknowledge the traffic on your left. They are good for you. Yeah. You just wish you didn't have to work your arms. Get to work.

Brian: And Jasmine, I'll just let you describe your luggage setup on your motorcycle. Well, you know, I saw how you had it set up for touring. How's it set up day to day?

Jasmine: I've recently actually made a change from something from Travis from the triple seven thing. And then actually look up until a week and a half ago, I'm actually going on a tour, a medium sized tour, I guess.

Robin: Cool. Nice.

Jasmine: I'm leaving on Friday, coming back on Monday. Just going up to the Canadian border, I guess. Going to Lake Placid. So I'm going to try my new luggage and see if it works out. Prior to that, I sort of poked some holes in the, in the pillion seat from eBay. Actually bought like a knockoff luggage thing that comes with a base plate and the luggage. So I sort of bolted the...

Robin: To the extra seat?

Jasmine: Yeah. Yeah. On the passenger seat. So yep. I got an extra seat, put a, cut up a little piece of metal on the bottom and wedged it between the seat and then connect the seat to the bike. And then I used the ratchet strap so it doesn't go flying. Uh, worked well for a 15 year. Uh, did not have any problems, didn't break, no rattles, nothing worked great. It would actually would move around in there. That's why I had the ratchet strap, but I actually didn't ever need it. It worked great. Yeah. Just a week and a half ago, I ended up, I think it's a venture or something. Out of Europe where they actually do use sport bikes for other things besides going to the nearby or something. Um, I ended up buying sort of a thing where, and I don't know if I like it or not. So I still have my old seat. So after this trip, if I decide I don't like it, I'll just go back to the old luggage that I had. My commuting thing was, so touring would be that plus some saddlebags that I would stick in next to it, but I always would have luggage initially started when I was much younger and thinner where people would see, Oh, a girl's riding a bike. And I actually had a guy get on my bike while I was at a stoplight and lots of propositions. So I was like, after I got the luggage, I'll just point behind me. I was like, I have no space for you.

Robin: Yeah. Sorry. You got no shot.

Jasmine: Sorry.

Robin: Yeah.

Jasmine: Yeah. After I did that, this is awesome because I put my work stuff, whatever in my trunk, I can go shopping and things. So the bike became more, uh, tool plus fun.

Brian: Oh yeah. Yeah. Grocery shopping is the best.

Jasmine: Yep. Go get some things. I think at the U S like people think of bikes as pleasure things and fun stuff and not things that you can use for work that might lead more toward maybe more splitting or sharing or filtering if people saw motorcycles as a convenience, I guess.

Robin: You've got me eating my words because I just wrote an article about, you know, relating to different generations from one generation to the next and how like, basically, yeah, I do mention how motorcycling is a luxury. If they wanted to, they could take the bus. So if we want their attention, yada yada. So I actually said the opposite of what you just mentioned, and you make a great point that it's a method of transportation to anybody who treats us as such. You don't need me to tell you, you're right. I want you to know that I agree with you and thank you for pointing that out.

Brian: I actually make a point of parking my motorcycle in the front of my office. When I go to the office, our office is in this really cool neighborhood, you know, it's all funky and there's all kinds of weird stuff going on around there. It's great. But yeah, I started a while back. I started making a point of parking in the front, just so people would see a motorcycle being used every day. It's got luggage. It's got an ugly ass top case on it. I really don't care. I don't have to look at it. All my bikes have top cases on them. It's just part of daily life and that's how it should be. And I hope the people do notice, oh yeah, you're the guy with the bike, you know, or the UPS drivers like, oh, I saw motorcycle tires on the truck today. I knew I was going to be stopping here, you know.

Robin: Well, Jasmine was talking about ratchet straps. So I will say to start with that everything we're discussing in this podcast episode, yes, will be turned into an article on TRO written by Mr. Brian Ringer, possibly ghostwritten in combination with Ms. Jasmine Islam. Yes. So you should subscribe to TRO.bike by visiting https://tro.bike and subscribing to our newsletter. Just click the little icon in your bottom right of your phone as you scroll down. And also we did write an article about the trick is the rock straps. If you don't have rock straps, those are golden. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about, Jasmine. Are you aware?

Brian: Have you heard the good news about rock straps? Have you heard about rock straps, brothers and sisters?

Jasmine: I'm going to actually use some of those for my luggage tomorrow. Well, I guess I'm going to set up tomorrow. So I'm good to go. And then, cause I got to leave early, frankly.

Robin: You're going to have a great time. I want to hear about that at some point. You got to make sure you, yeah, fill us in on it. Maybe we'll do a segment. What else we got, Brian?

Brian: I was going to talk about, there's one little tiny, tiny, teensy, tiny, little bitty, itty bitty hint that I want to lay down and see if you guys have had this experience as well. Let's say you're riding North in the morning and you turn East. The car in front of you is going to go, all these bugs on the windshield, and they're going to hit the squirters on their windshield washers. And on about half of the cars on the road today, the squirters. They're going to go up over the car and they're going to hit you. If you're too close, that's the tiny, tiny little hint. So if you're headed North or South and you turn West or East into the sun, if you turn into the sun, they're going to hit those damn squirters and hit you every time. And it's annoying. And you know, what can you do? You know, you're, you know, you can. It's a gift. It's their right to wash their windshield.

Robin: Well, they're washing your helmet.

Jasmine: I mean, you'll cool you off for a moment.

Robin: Use the opportunity, Brian. It's a gift. It's part of flow. It's part of the overall Zen. The ebb, the flow of riding is to accept, you know, except for cow manure.

Brian: Yeah. Except the precipitation of, of methanol and alcohol and water on your head.

Robin: And it's for you, it's for you from up on high, literally over the top of the car, up on high into your face.

Jasmine: My piece. Good reason to have a full face with your shield.

Robin: There it is. There you go. They need to engineer a new version of Gatorade that does this job. You know? So he's like.

Brian: Yeah. So I had this written down as a skirting the squirtles. You know, the people who are going to squirt you when you turn into the sun. That's what that means. Okay. I get you. Yeah. That's what that's talking about. I had to bring that up. And yeah, I added a picture. I think we'll have to put with us with it's a picture of my V-Strom with an entire automobile, automobile exhaust system strapped to it.

Robin: What the hell dude? I just noticed that the thing I always notice about Brian's bikes. He always physically rips off the windscreen because his physique, his height, he just wants to, he would rather have clean onward air than like distorted dirty air. Like when screens work for me, I'm a shorty, but maybe not so much for him. And then I had no visible acknowledgement of that is a car exhaust fastened.

Brian: The point of that is that was kind of stupid and fun because I had to return this car exhaust and the guys at the warehouse were just thought it was hilarious. You know, I'm riding through town with this giant, there's, there's pipes hanging off the back of the bike. So that was kind of the fun, just doing inappropriate shit. Yeah. And you can see like I ripped the windshield off of any bike. I cannot stand it. I don't know why I'm weird. It's heightened physique. Dirty air sucks. Dirty air sucks. But anyway, the, uh, you know, just stuff like that. Just do all your shopping, do all your errands, figure out if there's a way to do what you need to do on a motorcycle. A lot of times there is a baby seat. Probably not. That's probably not appropriate. No, I've actually seen it. Their feet have to be able to touch the pegs. That's the rule. I've seen people with baby seats on the back of motorcycles. I've seen people with two baby seats in the back of a side-by-side on in the middle of nowhere, Indiana. Side-by-sides are legal on the road, on country roads. And so they had two baby seats in her.

Jasmine: Was that on one of those where the bed tilts down or was a four door?

Brian: It was the one that had like a big roll cage. So it had like two seats and two seats. And then they had baby seats in the back. And we're like, well, I don't know if I'm ever going to see anything worse than that. I don't know.

Robin: So it's a, it's a four seater. Yeah. They're going to the freaking, you know, they're going to the square dance. Yeah.

Jasmine: At least they had baby seats instead of just strapping them onto the adult seat. Yeah.

Brian: And I've seen, I've seen people with babies, like sitting on front of them on the tank, you know, and a little bobble head with the sketch, man, that's sketch. But anyway, that we're getting off topic a lot. I know. But anyway, it's, you know, I think you touched on this earlier. Both of you did, you know, in cities or events. So that's another way to have fun in the city riding places. There's a couple of vintage bike nights around here. So I go once in a while, I'll get bored on a Thursday night and I'll go down to the vintage bike night at some diner or the Triumph dealer has one every so often here in Indy. And that's kind of fun too. You see the same 12 Kawasaki Z1s, uh, every time, but still, and then somebody shows up on like a 1962 Vespa.

Robin: Somebody has some legit noise in the history to talk about. I know that there's gotta be, we had Chai Venmoto, Chicago vintage motor cyclists, Mad Venmoto, great name. Mil Venmoto, cool name. There's one in Minnesota, but Venmoto is a national thing. I would assume New York has one. I would assume that Indianapolis has one. But they're just a great place to go. We'll figure that out. Maybe you got to start it. All you have to do is approach the national and be like, I want to start the Venmoto for my city. And they'll be like, all right, you're on. There's nothing to it. It's not like anything special. It's garage nights, but going to a garage night, parking, knowing you're going to be there for three hours, having two beers right off the bike, hanging out for three hours until you get sober, good and clean, watching people work, talking about the history of it. You'll see some beautiful machines if anybody turns out. I loved that, Hank.

Brian: Good, warm night, hanging out, seeing some weird. Urals and urals and urals. And somebody showed up on a Bridgestone, a small motorcycle that was sold by Sears under the Bridgestone name in the 60s.

Robin: It was like a rebadged dream, almost.

Brian: Yeah, some weird person got this damn thing actually running somehow and got down there. For every Suzuki GS, you'll see like 10 Z1 Kawasaki's. I'll show up on my old Suzuki and nobody looks at it, but that's all right, whatever. It's a pristine machine. It's a way to have fun riding a KLR 650 around the city. A dual sport bike is really a great machine for bouncing around cities because you're mostly immune to potholes. You look weird, so people see you. You're up high. You can see everything. You've got a lot of maneuverability. You can hop curbs and all that kind of stuff. A friend of mine calls it rat racing around the city, buzzing around the back roads and alleys just for no reason other than to move.

Robin: Yeah, and that's completely doable. I mean, I thought we covered that a little bit. Just what inspired me to check that off the list was just that north route in Chicago, heading due north of the city off of Sheridan Road. If you look that up, it's a beautiful ride. I love that you have here, but stay classy in neighborhoods, park, industrial parks, all that. The three of us know it's like, yeah, we want to stretch our adrenal junkie-ism when and if we can, but all in all, you don't want to load up on that if it's going to represent us poorly. There's plenty of people representing motorcycling badly, and I'm certainly nobody to talk about speed limits. I am not that person, but I do very carefully pick and choose my ain't-nobody-lookins on my terms. I accept responsibility for that decision. That's my decision to make, and if somebody doesn't approve of it, that's their decision to not approve. That's not on me. I've made my decision. I'm committed to it, and I'm okay with myself.

Jasmine: I see that almost like when you're on your tour, right? You're out of villages, and you're having a blast, and you get into a village. You slow down for a moment. It's the same thing anywhere.

Robin: Breathe it in.

Jasmine: Yeah, take a moment.

Brian: Have some respects for their chihuahuas, and motorcycles, and dodges, and kids.

Robin: Which we got a whole helping of in the beginning of whatever took us to the dragon. Wow. That's true. Boy, did we ever absorb that neighborhood, and the jeep trail.

Brian: I thought you were done reliving that, but I guess not.

Jasmine: Was it where we kept coming back to the same place again, like three times?

Brian: Gotta have a little challenge in any ride. It'd be a boring story.

Jasmine: It'd be too professional if everything was like 100% work.

Robin: The great thing about urban riding, metro riding, suburban riding, you're always a phone call away from rescue. Gas situation, a breakdown situation, a drinking situation. Chuck the keys, get the ride. If I'm in Chicago, this has gotta be the same in New York. Just stop the bike, get on the train. You're going home. It's done.

Brian: I once had a battery that just failed in downtown Indy. We used to have, up until about a year ago, we basically had a fleet of these little tiny electric cars all over town. You could sign up for a membership, and then you could go up to one of these cars, scan your little card. Basically, I parked the bike, took the battery out, hopped in one of these electric cars, went home, grabbed the battery out of my GS, same battery. Drove the car back downtown and put the battery. So yeah, you have resources like that. You mentioned escape routes here in the list. Stuff like using parking lots, sidewalks. If you need to get out of the way, if there's something going on behind you and you need to get out of it, filter through and get the hell out of there. Stuff like that. Pick your times and places and be justified in some ways. If there's some kind of mess going on, duck into a parking lot, get out of the way, get on a sidewalk if you need to, that kind of thing. That's one of the reasons the dual sport bike gives you a lot more flexibility in the city. Not to mention it's really narrow. Wiggle in between stuff, duck down an alley, get away from something you don't want. It's a lot of fun. How common is this? It's very common in Indianapolis. I don't want to make us seem like a lawless Mad Max wasteland, although it kind of is. Indy 500. Yeah, we have 465 as our track. One of the most common things around here is like there'll be someone who with a pickup load of everything they own, and it'll just be dropping crap all over the road. There'll be guys on landscape trailers. There'll be mulch everywhere. Lawnmowers falling off. You have to be so incredibly careful about all the junk people lose out of their cars and out of their trucks. Is that kind of a common thing too? I guess it probably is anywhere.

Jasmine: Yeah, definitely see that. A lot of people throwing stuff out of their cars. Coffees and whatever.

Robin: Garbage.

Jasmine: So definitely have that. Definitely have unsecured cargo where you got to be like, OK, this is one I got to go faster and get in front of rather than stay behind. So you just got to be an eye out. But yeah, and you have that like very old ratty cars or ratty trucks and pickups and vans. I think the New York, you get more vans than pickups, I'd say. Used for work trucks, I guess. Definitely. I think we have more work vans than work. Definitely still have lots of work trucks, but I think vans more.

Brian: Probably so they can lock them up. Yeah.

Jasmine: But then you have like ladders and other things on top of the vans to usually mostly secure, which I think helps a little. Like things don't blow out as much because they're in vans.

Robin: Nice.

Jasmine: You definitely still have people, I guess, throwing stuff out. Definitely seen a lot of that. I used to wear an arrow stitch when I used to commute. I regretted getting a gray arrow stitch because it was very dirty.

Brian: Today I got hit by. Yeah. So you've gotten a cigarette butt in the chest. You know, I've gotten that. Oh, yeah. I mean, once in a while they'll look right at you and they'll people just roll down their window, chuck out their cigarette butt without even and it goes ka-boink, you know, off your helmet.

Robin: I saw a suspicious situation in West Virginia. We were all riding behind a truck and I swear they had weaponized the tow outlet because as we would approach the back of the truck, something was rolling out of that tow outlet. Marbles or tacks or, you know, jacks. I don't know what they were. Oh, it was an instance with, you know, some podunk driver who didn't like that. You know, you ain't going to pass me. I'm winning this. Like, okay, fine. But I looked and it looked like something was being expelled by the tow hitch connection. Wow. And one little thing at a time. I was like, I don't know what that is, but we all changed position.

Brian: We're going to not be there. That's kind of the big thing is when stupid stuff happens, just not be there is kind of the overall principle. You can't change what's happening. You can't change the person. They're in an armored, don't be there. It's not your job. I'm going to ask Jasmine one more question. One of the things I find myself doing, and I want to see what you, if you guys do the same thing, I use blockers a lot. So basically if I'm going through an intersection, I will like change speed and position so that if I'm going straight and there's a truck in the left turn lane, I'll wait until that truck is halfway through the intersection so that nobody from that side can get me. And I find myself doing that quite a bit. I'll use other vehicles. They also block your vision. So you have to know what's over there and that kind of thing. But a lot of times I'll use a vehicle next to me just to, as a shield. So do you find yourself doing that too, Jasmine?

Jasmine: Yep. I definitely do that. A lot of intersections, I try to naturally like slow down or speed up just to have someone there to protect you, but also use that a lot for prevent left turn people. Like if I don't have a car next to me, if I'm coming up to an intersection where someone's waiting to make a left, I think I slow down a lot more than if there's a car next to me. Cause then I know, hey, they may not see me, but they see more likely to see the car or avoid turning in front of the car. So that's definitely, I think, saved me a few times.

Robin: Agreed. Jasmine, having you on the show is always fun. Thanks for setting up time out of your day. Time is a big deal. Just to hang out with us.

Jasmine: Yeah. I was looking forward to talking to both of you. Come up with a topic that I could actually say anything about. I'd be happy to.

Robin: Oh, like we're doing that ourselves. We don't know what we're doing. That's why we called you.

Brian: And we definitely want to hear about this trip you have coming up.

Robin: I would very much appreciate you keeping track of the experience and how you feel over the course and coming back to us and telling us all about it. How do you feel about that? Good. I can do that.