Brian: It's been a while. You've had an epic journey. Tell the people, the teeming hordes, where are you this week?

Robin: Greetings from Lone Rock, Wisconsin, beautiful, beautiful Lone Rock, Wisconsin, at the dead center north section of the Driftless region in the Great Riding that is west of Madison. That's where I'm getting here. That's a tale to tell. And having arrived, I'm a victim of my own calendar and just cannot keep up with all of the things I need to do. It's a tough life. I know. It's rough. Got to get my bike ready for sevens. The truck has a coolant leak. After some heavy positive modification, we arrived here having overheated twice. Oh, I got to get that taken care of. And I'm going to be leading some demo rides for Suzuki in just over a week. Oh, sweet. While I'm doing that, the wife is going to be coaching an MSF course. I need to make sure that there's some lodging situated for both of us in two different locations. We also made a bunch of repairs on the RV. So she seems to be a lot better back up to snuff. Got a whole cord, an entire face cord of firewood. So we're burning here. This is going to happen a lot. That's how I'm doing. How are you doing, Brian?

Brian: I'm good. Well, I haven't been as busy as you. Just trying to catch up with work after all the travel this, uh, after all the travel and all that, this, this spring, like I still haven't caught up at work from being gone to New Mexico, but it's totally worth it. Can't complain. Okay. And I just pulled up a map. Uh, let's see. Lone Rock. Okay. I'm, I'm looking at it. I I'm picking up what you're laying down. Been there, done that. Can't wait to get back. Yeah. Muscoda, Bosco Bell. Yeah. Baroqua.

Robin: Oh yeah. Right in the middle of it all. Really well-placed, you know, really good location.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: And big shout out to the park here, Fireside Campground in Lone Rock, Wisconsin. What a lovely business in general. We've come here third time returning to this park. We've been away from quite some time and they've got new ownership. When we got here, there was some tension about, you know, we have a canopy that I had basically used elsewhere and wanted to use here. And I was making a point about it and via emails and they were like, yeah, yeah. You know, and it became kind of a little bit of tense tension when I got here realizing I couldn't use this kind of canopy. So what did they do? They gave me a garage. Oh, so you've got like an actual structure. Yeah. So everything's set up, bikes are next to each other. I can lie on my back on the floor just because I want to lie on my back on a garage floor. It's been so long. You know what I mean? Fantastic.

Brian: Nice. Hey, a garage is a good thing to have, but the problem is you'll get used to it and you'll fill it up with crap and then you have, you know, the next move will be you grow into your space.

Robin: Oh yeah. If I'm looking at the opening banter corrections website updates, there were some things I wanted to talk about right quick. First thing, wonderful discovery in Ride with GPS, rwgps.com when adding a POI point of interest. That is instead of scrolling through the menu, trying to find gas, food, scenic view, whatever, you can start typing the names such as gas and the POI marker will automatically appear. I didn't know this. So every time you and I've been working on this and making the listeners hear me, okay, that's the lodging scenic view restroom, you know, just scrolling through the maps.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're scrolling, scrolling. Yeah.

Robin: All I have to do is type G a gas and I'll find it.

Brian: Nice. Efficiency. Overall, it's just incredibly well-designed. Like I said, few things I'd like him to add at some point, but you know, just little details like that will matter a lot.

Robin: We are expanding our social media outreach. I've been working on some things with that, trying to get our feed working correctly. Our feed is now working correctly and we have a separate podcast feed as well. I talked about that last episode, maybe even the episode before that, but it's good to see. I also developed a social feed that is specific for social announcements and we signed up for an, if this, then that's.com. We signed up for their service and now I've got everything to automatically trigger our social announcements to a large variety of destinations. So been expanding that, still working on a bug or two, but we're all over it. It's going to be a lot better as time goes on. So keep an eye on the socials, go to the site, click on the thing. That's it for our website announcements correction and updates.

Brian: Isn't that enough? And it's all your busy schedule. You've had time to do that. Ah, good tea. Yep. Any bourbon in it?

Robin: Not yet. Not yet. Okay. I bourbon is a verb. I do bourbon. Bourbonotize.

Brian: Whenever I bourbon, I wanted to handle this quickly and I wanted to rely on the voluminous amount of knowledge in your bulbous head. Yeah. You fooled. Well, I don't know whatever's in there, but anyway, I'm seeing different sales pop up for Cardo and Senna communicators. And you know, one of these days I might, I might jump in. I'm kind of just an earplug and silence and Zen of the road kind of guy. Usually you're more of a music kind of guy. What can you, what can you say about the differences? Because it seems like you have to pick a religion. You have to pick Apple or Android and you have to pick Cardo or Senna. Am I getting it wrong? How's that work?

Robin: It used to be kind of like that because they were both getting their footing. But I think it's since become a lot more like, wow, we are both very alone in this game, let's at least be adaptable. So they don't, they don't glare at each other as much as they used to. They do work together. Some of them based on whatever it is that they've catered to their demographic. Like there are times when, because of the choices they made in their designs, they've had to appear as the electrical oppressor of the other one. Oh, you want to sync with a Senna? Well, first you have to set their equipment, the, you know, the enemy's equipment on fire and burn away the solder on this, you know, like, no, it's not like that. It, it's more just like, well, we build for this purpose, but we realized these should, these should be able to bridge, you know, and they do now they, they do. Sometimes it's haphazard. Sometimes it's impossible. But for the most part, if you find a way around it, it'll, it'll work. So that much has changed. I think I do remember when you clear was out, what a awful, uh, they're not around. I'm not going to be negative about it. They're gone or maybe they're still out there, but they're clearly the, you know, great value brand of communicator.

Brian: Yeah. The, the plain label, if you're old enough to remember that. I don't know if that really fielded any question. What, what's your prerogative? Well, that's the thing. I guess if, if like, if I were going to buy one, then I would need to check with people who have them, like, I would say, Hey, Robin, what do you got? And what should I get? That would talk to it. I know a lot of people with both.

Robin: Really? No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. They didn't buy both. I mean, a lot of, I know a lot of people that have, it's fairly 50, 50 in which what, what somebody is going to have bought. I see.

Brian: Okay. So the, there's no answer here.

Robin: Is there not really? Yeah. I can tell you this. It depends on what you want. I personally, I've always deferred to SENA. The reason I like SENA and more specifically their SMH-10, which is grandfathered, antiquated out of the picture anymore, but you can still find the modules here and there. The SMH-10 had all of, on the obvious side, two buttons. It had the jog dial, that's one. And it had the tiny phone button, which was not hard to find. It was right on the back of the unit. So you could feel it. So you got two buttons and they all do amazing things. If you know how long to hold, when to turn, whatever to do. But it's like, so long as you know the gestures you're in, like Flynn, you really got no problems doing whatever it is you want to do. So like switching between com and my phone was a tap of the jog dial. The volume was the jog dial. If I wanted to change tracks, press the jog dial while listening to music and roll it forward for, to go back to the original track or roll it backwards to switch to the next track. Nice. A lot of really good logical ergonomics, right? I liked that. You get a phone call, you just tap the back button and it'll answer the phone. Want to hang up the phone call? Do it again. Your music will start playing again. If you are paired with somebody, two up and you're talking to them and you both want to listen to the same music, the newer models let you talk while you're listening to the music, but the SMH-10 didn't do that. However, you can listen to the same music together. So if I'm talking to Maggie and I press and hold the jog dial, it will switch to my phone and play the music for both of us. We're both going down our own bop in our heads, listening to the tune. I loved that. It was just, if you knew the gestures and took the time to work it out, it got ergonomically friendly pretty quick.

Brian: Nice.

Robin: Onto the Cardo. Okay. Cardo is also brilliant, but then you're getting into a lot more, wow, you got an entire keyboard on that thing.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: There's a lot more button action, a little bit more involvement in what to press when, how to press what, and where to find the feel to the thing, to the press, the, yeah, you know, there was, for me personally, that's where it got involved and a lot of other people were just like, nah, I got it. I got it down. I will say for Sina, a lot of my friends who bought the Cardos at some point watching me use the Sina, they would say, I wish I got the Sina.

Brian: Okay. That's an answer, isn't it? Excellent. We don't rant very often here, but I'm going to take, I'm going to take time just for two very short little rants. Bring it. Cause we also got a fight coming up. A good one. Oh, excellent. Good deal. I love, I love a good, I love a good. A tussle, a scrape. Um, yeah, this is short and sweet. Uh, if you make motorcycle boots, I would like you to get your poop in a group and get your sizing consistent. Thank you very much. I have, I'm looking right here on the floor. I've got a beautiful set of Alpine stars and a beautiful set of, uh, Forma adventure boots in size 47. I'm a U S size 12. And apparently in Alpine stars and Forma and tour master, I'm a 46 in Garnet. And I think CD, I'm maybe I'm a 47 figured out people get consistent. That's all I'd ask for. It's annoying. And now I got to deal with these boots and returning them and blah, blah. It's annoying. Are you going to return them for the same thing on the right size? Well, the one pair was used, so I can't, so I just had, I basically had to sell both the pairs. The other pair, like I ordered them and then months went by and I, I, yeah, I should have returned them and I didn't. Now that seeing them in the flesh, I kind of want something else now. So I'm, I'm just going to sell them for, I'm going to lose 50 bucks or whatever. And just sell them on ADV rider or something. Somebody will buy them. There's some Sasquatch with bigger feet. Yeah, it's unpredictable whether I'm going to be a 46 or 47 and Euro size boots and just get to get it together people. And we haven't even talked about glove makers who are even worse.

Robin: Don't even get me started on glove makers. Don't even get, yeah, yeah.

Brian: The people who, yeah, they, yeah. There's a little spider fingered, weird people. I don't know who's making these. And then, and then finally I've got a section on, I wrote it down in our outline and I called it goddammit Google.

Robin: I could do, I could tell you about that today, getting to my freaking auto appointment going.

Brian: Yeah, no kidding. Uh, Google just murdered Google podcasts in early April. I think we talked about that earlier that it was coming up. It was just the simplest, best thing. It was an app to listen to podcasts. You put in the podcast you want. It finds the podcast and it handles everything, you know, handles the subscription and tells you when a new episode, it did everything. It did it very simply. There was no BS, no advertising, no nothing. It was wonderful. And of course they killed it. Murderers.

Robin: Well, Antenapod is open source. Anything open source for me will reign supreme over as good as Google can be. It'll reign supreme over Google. Open source is the way to go. And the best part is you don't have to subscribe to a service. You can subscribe directly to a feed. It's basically like a feed reader that plays podcasts, which I think is pretty solid. I'd say, yeah, Antenapod, it works fine.

Brian: The bad part is I could, I don't know. There's supposedly a way to export what you've listened to. And I don't know all that from, from.

Robin: You just got to go into Google podcasts, export, then look at the list and look for the feeds. Cause all you need is the feed URL and your gold, which by the way, fucking motorcycles podcast, the fucking motorcycles podcast with Anders Carlson, recent guests on the show, what's it called again? It's called fucking motorcycles. And it's a great podcast. It's out. It's happening.

Brian: Excellent.

Robin: Uh, one beef I have though, is that he is chill and loose. That comes with disorganization. I asked him, so podcast, what's your feed URL? And his response was something to the effect of, I don't know how to do that. I'm not, I'm not good at whatever it is you just asked. And, and I laughed a little bit cause he's on Spotify. He's looking at Apple. But if your podcast is hosted, you, you're going to want a way to broadcast the feed to all the services to get the word out, but we need to get, we need to get that taken care of, but if you look up fucking motorcycles, which is by the way, the title is fucking motorcycles. Anders Carlson is doing a hell of a job.

Brian: Yeah. I'm not fine. I'm not finding it on antenna pod. So yeah, he needs to do something different.

Robin: Yeah. You can find it on Spotify at this point in the game.

Brian: Well, you know, we wouldn't want someone sucking up all the sponsors. Yeah. And the other thing I've noticed, like I have a certain set of skills in, in a few different domains. And, and, uh, Google is doing this thing where they do AI search. So you put in a search query and much of the time, what you'll get is a supposedly AI compiled summary of the answer is the first thing you see. And then below it, you'll see actual results that go somewhere. And it's like watching TV. If you like, if you're like, if you have expertise in something, don't watch a TV show about it because it's wrong. And that's what's happening. The Google AI, it'll put together. Yeah, it looks plausible, but don't rely on it. It doesn't. People are going to die because of this.

Robin: No, well, I got nothing on that, but if you flip the coin to the positive side of it, it goes into, don't forget to confirm your own information based on actual human input. I do remember that before we started this episode, we were just catching up for a second, saying hi, and all doing all that stuff. And I was mentioning how the TPMS sensors on my BMW R 1200 RS have failed again, because that's what happens. The batteries die and BMW went with a product that does not have a swatchable battery is covered in a rosin. You have to dig out a try and then eminently fail. If you're not really, really careful about it. Their going price is $240 new from BMW, which is atrocious and insult. It's re oh yeah. Each that. So it's $480 for a pair, which is downright rude. I wanted to know, can I find a cheaper version? And in the past, what happens is this here's the frustration is I'm not going to pay $240 for this. I would sooner glue the yellow alert from my dash to my eyeballs and just accept them in my sleep. You know what I mean? I'm not going to pay that much for this. And I'm also not going to buy another BMW. It's just offensive, right? The parts were always hard to find. Let me see if I can find the next 25 to $50 version of it. That would take me a day to make sure it was going to be compatible with the K 54, not the K 53 or the K 50, but the K 54. Okay. I find that cool. Buy it bookmark it. Now I know where I can get them. Come back. Nope. They're gone. That manufacturer no longer exists. It's off eBay. The store seller is gone. All of a sudden it's, you know, somebody is a whistleblower and they've been disappeared. I'm thinking to myself, I want to get rid of this TPMS. If I'm going to go with TPMS, I would sooner go with an outboard. Like a, like a FOBO back in the day. FOBO was the way to go is once you screwed onto your valve cap, which people question, does that depress your valve stem? Yes. Okay. I don't know if I want that. I don't care if you want that. I want that. I'm going to do that. So I'd rather have something outboard with a swatchable 2032 watch battery or a 20, what is it? A 2056. I don't remember.

Brian: Yeah. 2032. Yeah.

Robin: Yeah. Issue is that if I do this, I still have an alert on my dash. I'm ready to get rid of the alert on my dash. Tying this back to the Google search and AI results, the only result that came up with a true to form answer. Can I disable the TPMS on my 2016 BMW R 1200 RS question mark answer? It actually, the AI is summarizing answers that appear to be confident and upvoted on like stack overflow.

Brian: Mm-hmm.

Robin: I find something in a motorcycle forum that talks about if you have a GS911, bing, I do, I have a GS911 and you download the latest software, bing, did it, done it, and you log into your bike and you enter into the ID code numbers for your TPMS sensor inserts, you enter 777-7777 or add another seven for the other one that tells the ECU to shut down that alert. I very optimistically and hopefully and nail-bitingly did this. And at first it seemed fine. Took a ride with mags and no problem. Came home. Hey man, you know, your tires are over pressure. It says they're 74 PSI. So apparently, apparently I can also go in there and set the min and max PSI. So I'm going to set it to like minus one and nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine. You know, get John and Lennon in there. Number nine, number nine, number nine. That is obscure. I forgot where, oh yeah, Google, Google's answer. Yeah.

Brian: Not where the hell were we talking about? Yeah.

Robin: Anyway, we were talking about, are these, is this technically correct? No. Yeah. It's not. And that's okay. Yeah. So just, just be careful before you take Google's advice, please. Yeah. It's part of the adventure, really. A very useless adventure. So you know what? Life's good, man. Keeping it positive. I'm just, I'm getting ready for seven. So I'm happy to be getting ready to work on the bike. The only thing is I keep on not working on the bike because I'm afraid I'm going to break something. Like, oh, if I fix the thing that needs fixing, it's going to be broken.

Brian: Yeah. You kind of have to stop the thing a couple of weeks before the, before the thing, you know, you have to stop working on it before you like the night before. No good. No, no boy.

Robin: No. Tomorrow's a big day. Travis Burleson, the man, the myth, the legend will be arriving here with his family to hang out. We're going to work on bikes and goof off. So you have supervision is what you're saying. Excellent. I will have supervision to an extent. Let's do a listener question. Interesting question. This has been done to death by you and I. So we have to come up with a unique way to answer it. You know, maybe we'll speak a different language. I don't know. JB asks, what kind of miles are you getting out of the Dunlop Road Smart 3s? Reason being that there's an article here and I'll click on this article. This article is using the same year make model, uh, my motorcycle, the 2016 BMW R 1200 RS to test the Dunlop Road Smart 4s and this guy is getting somewhere in the area of, I think, 10,000 miles on a set of tires.

Brian: Basically. Yeah. It looked like he got around 8,000 out of the, out of the threes and he got 10,000 out of the fours.

Robin: Okay. And those are uniform miles. What my first response is rude. And I didn't mean to be this rude, but I immediately told my friend who was asking me about it. That guy's not riding. He's hyper-miling it. He's starting out in sixth gear and he's just like barely, no torque, no lean, just gently coasting along and only going to where the temperature is 73 degrees with relative humidity, like, like where there's no bake on the pavement. He's not grinding anything out. He's just kind of cruiser, which is bike. I feel bad for the bike.

Brian: Yeah. And, and one thing I'll say, like, and like, I've been getting somewhere over 6,000 out of the threes. That's pretty good, man. It's a much lighter bike, but I'm, but I'm heavier. Maybe it comes out about the same. The Yamaha J09, but like I posted a picture, uh, we posted a picture a while back of the rear tire afterwards and they're, they're, and they're even more, he didn't really have a picture of the after aftermath on, on the fours here. Yeah. Got to say, I would have loved to have seen that.

Robin: That's an impressive mile count.

Brian: Yeah. And, and they were at 6,000, 6,300, something like that. They were, you know, the, the ones on my bike were very well shagged, you know, still safe and everything. I thought it was interesting. A couple of things are interesting here is that he, you know, it's the same rider, same bike, so you can use the data, I think, and it looks like the RoadSmart fours do hold up better. And the second thing that has happened is the RoadSmart threes have gotten one hell of a lot more expensive since I last bought any, you know, last time I bought some, the rears were about $140 and it was an absolutely screaming standout deal. And they've gone up considerably since then. So it may be worth thinking about the fours. Yeah.

Robin: I'm looking right now. So I've got, I've got a source of my own. Well, I'm not mentioning my source, but I'm looking at 180 over 55, zero 17, 73 wide, I'm looking at $198 for the Denlop RoadSmart three.

Brian: Dang. Yeah. And I'm seeing two, I'm seeing like 212 on to my door.

Robin: All right. Yep. And then I've got 120 over 70. The front is $167. Confirmed. You're right. The prices seem to have risen. Why?

Brian: The RoadSmart three, like I'm seeing 212 for the three and I'm seeing 270 for the four, you know, it's hard to say. Even if you get more mileage, is it worth it? The other thing he mentioned was that the threes seem to have a more compliant feel, which I think would be a good thing.

Robin: That starts to speak to the, the Pilot Road twos. It gets into the PR twos from back in the day. They just lasted longer. They were more brass tacks. Here's your tire, go ride. And I do like that. I like a simple dual compound tire that I can rely on.

Brian: Yes. So if they feel a little better and they last 20% longer, then it gets to be close to worth it as a cost per mile. And then there's also just the question. So let's say if I'm getting 6,000, I might, I might end up getting 7,500. And then there's a question, you know, you can go a little longer without having to fart around with changing the tires, even if you don't have to spend money to do it. I'm doing it myself. I can go a little longer. So yeah, I don't know if it might be worth it, worth the difference or not. The difference in feel is intriguing though.

Robin: One change in the siping for that price though. There's only one new mark in the rubber. Seriously, there's only one new mark in the design scheme for the price they're asking. Cause we're all about fashion around here. So, well, we've noticed that if we add this tear in the rubber, that the water is displaced in this way. Okay. All right. Sure. And maybe they changed the gradient with which the rubber transitions from hard to soft compound. Maybe it's time to bail on Dunlop. Maybe it's time to go. I mean, we've always been the people as sport tourers, especially the ones that are just like viciously sport touring, we've always been the ones who mangling every corner, looking back and being like, now that one's done. They were the people to find the next tire because the prices become less and less worth it right here. Right now. What are we looking for? What is the cheapest dual compound sport touring tire on the market? What do we know about Kenda? Are they Chinese? Are they low on the totem pole in terms of reputation? Have they caused a lot of damage to people's lives? Have they been a problem? Kenda comes up a lot, strangely enough on the website too.

Brian: I will tell you the Kenda tires for vintage motorcycles don't go there, but word on the street is that they've turned over a new leaf and then they do have a new sport touring tire that is actually holding up well and performing well for people. So for that kind of money, you know, you're talking about $270. You're getting into, and again, it's really hard to get, you kind of had to get past like there's race tires and stuff like that, but you're competing with basically the Michelin road, road five and road six and the road five is 247. What's the road six these days? It's a reverse mortgage. Sorry. I don't even see it here.

Robin: What I'm I'm looking at what I'm looking at. Kenda is making this K M one. And I'm just curious enough. I want to know sport touring rear motorcycle tire. One 80 over 55 ZR 1773 wide TL with key chain. I don't know what the hell the key chain crap is. $119 for a rear.

Brian: I'm looking on, I'm looking on that, that newfangled Amazon. So, so yeah, you can get a set of both the front and rear KMO one or KM one, $208 on Amazon right now with a, with a bottle opener.

Robin: Now price does not speak to survival. We want to be able to survive. We want to arrive at the destination. Even if there isn't one, the question is, what are they doing here? Are they doing dual compound? Is it a gradient compound? All weather performance provides excellent track. Here's the, here's what they talk about their own noise. All weather. Excellent traction, stability, varying weather conditions, wet and dry, blah, blah, blah, blah, optimized apex geometry. I really wish they had said technology. Grape nuts is using new serial technology. The overused word advanced rubber compound enables fast warmup from cold temperatures and sharing. Okay. Advanced rubber compound, newly designed tread, versatile compatibility, high-speed stability, responsive handling. I don't see anything on here about, you know, it is, it is a dual compound. Is that the deal? What are we going to get on longevity? I'm curious to find out. What's more inspiring is that if this is out there, this means maybe there's something that is a halfway point to the growing cost of an older model of Dunlop. I think that we've always jumped ship whenever the companies were like, Hey, the people really like these things. Let's get more of their money. I'm just not going to do it. So we, we jumped ship with Avon and then it was Michelin and now it's Dunlop. And I think that there may have been something between Avon and Michelin. I don't remember. Now, cause we went to the PR2s from Avon.

Brian: Yeah, it's worth looking around and I've, you know, like on my KLR and on, and actually on my vintage bike, like what's sitting on my vintage bike right now is a set of Shinkos because they work really well. They don't last, they last about half as long as spendy tires. But since I don't ride that bike as much, you know, I may put 3000 miles on my vintage bike in a year. That's about how long the Shinko tires last. They work great all the way down to the wear bars. They work fine in the, in the rain. Throw it, you know, and they're fairly cheap. So I just throw a new set on every year. And that way I always have fresh buns, you know? So they have, they have their place, you know, they work well. So the Kenda, I don't know, Kenda, just by the way, Kenda originated in Taiwan. So they're a Taiwanese company. Which does not like to be affiliated with China. I, well, I think they may have factories in China. I don't know where the tires are actually made that in case anyone's wondering. A Shinko is a Korean company. So the tires are made in Korea. Okay.

Robin: Maybe I should look at the Shinkos.

Brian: Yeah. And I've heard some really mixed reviews on the Shinko sport touring tires. Some people say they're fine. Some people don't. Maybe it's time for a torture test.

Robin: They're North Korean sport touring motorcycle tire.

Brian: Oh man.

Robin: No, that would be damn. That's cold. That'd be rough. Well, on another interesting note, I don't think I get more than 5,000, maybe 5,500 out of a set. So you reaching six to me sounds like you were trying, you know?

Brian: Well, yeah. And they're, they're pretty roached. There's also one thing people don't talk about much is there's a, everybody has a different tolerance for how much tread they like to see. I, you know, I was fortunate enough on my last set, for example, to really, there's really no flat spot. You know, there wasn't a lot of highway droning on them. They, they had a very, very happy life. It was a short life, but they had a very happy active life and spent a lot of time on their sides. Some people are like, you know, as soon as it, as soon as it starts to feel that step, you know, from the flat spot or whatever, uh, they get a little freaked out or the sipes start to disappear, that kind of thing.

Robin: I get down to the where bars and I just started thinking, once it starts flattening out, I started thinking, Oh, belts. Cause it's happened in my early writing career. You were there to save my ass from myself.

Brian: No more, no more.

Robin: I say, Hey, is that tape on your tire?

Brian: No. What's next? All right. I'm going to, I'll shorten this up a little bit. One of the taboo topics, the things you don't talk about in polite company, you know, you have sex, religion, and money, and we're not going to talk about the first two, although we did touch on a holy war when we actually dared to speak about tires. They can touch off the faithful in a certain way. But anyway, uh, we're not that kind of podcast. We're not going to talk about the first one, but talking about money, it's something that people don't talk about. Motorcycles cost money. Uh, it costs money to operate motorcycles. And the dirty secret is you don't save any money at all. Like, even if you throw away your car, you don't save any money with a motorcycle. It's, you know, it gets better mileage on average, but that's about it. So rather than talk about, oh, here's some money saving tips, you know, you've heard before. There's some, there's some ways that people don't talk about. I think that we can talk about maximizing the bang for your buck. You want to spend motorcycle money on, on having great experiences, going great places, doing cool things. You know, how, what are some ways to do that? And maybe we can make this a recurring section. I don't know the money in my money in motorcycling stuff. The first segment I wanted to talk about what was, I called it weird and cheap. What are your kind of weird or unusual tips for spending less on motorcycling, spending less on stuff that doesn't matter. So you can spend more on stuff that does matter like tires and gas. And this is, maybe it's just me, but one of the biggest I found is when I'm on a motorcycle trip, if you sit down at a restaurant three times a day, you can blow through 60, 75, a hundred bucks a day. Easy.

Robin: I'll have the diamond encrusted lobster, please.

Brian: Yeah. You know, and I, you know, when you're on vacation, you're having fun, spend money, spend that if you want to, but any other thing is you can spend a lot of time sitting around in restaurants. Yeah. If you want to go have a nice breakfast, fine. But understand you just, you just killed off two hours of prime riding time. And this came from during the, all the crap and all the stuff during the happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like I I'd ride with like a small number of people. They were kind of, you know, member bubbling. You'd only be in the vicinity of a certain small number of people. So that way, if, if COVID couldn't come into your bubble. Yeah. So the guys I rode with were in my bubble. We would carry like a little cooler on the bike and we pack a picnic and all our beverages, so we didn't have to, we didn't have to go in anywhere. And that actually, that's a great way to save a lot of money for one. It's also a great way to do more writing because you're not sitting in a restaurant waiting on the waitress, you know, and it's, it can be, it can be better for you depending on what you pack. And, and yeah, we did that. Like on the, on the New Mexico trip, you said, make sure you have an energy bar because we're not going to sit down and, you know, and waste two hours eating breakfast or whatever it was. You said there's no, well, there's no place to eat breakfast. We were in the middle of nowhere.

Robin: And we kind of learned otherwise. We did find that there was a restaurant on the way back, but this was a first scouting run and it taught us that, yeah, we have options. We just need to know about them because they're not going to broadcast.

Brian: I still think the time saved by just skipping the breakfast stop.

Robin: Absolutely.

Brian: It was an epic, wonderful, just slightly cool morning.

Robin: I've gotten a lot of benefits out of carrying two types of vegetable base or whatever protein bar. Like, oh, I got cliff bars. I've got cliff bars. I've got, I don't remember. There are a couple other brands or the kind of bars that you can get to like pretty much anywhere. Um, and I've got the softer high protein something bar that's just, you know, I'll eat one of those, maybe have some apple, drink a bunch of water and I'm out. The real issue for me is coffee. Cause I love caffeine. You'll hear a podcast where I definitely had to have my coffee early, you know, and stay, that's all rambly. And the other one's like tonight where I'm just like, man, I don't even know where my world is just kind of slowing shit down, but getting that on the bike, that's a little bit more of a hassle. So take an instant coffee is the way to go. Um, or anything cold brew that you can access at the gas station, throwing one in there when it's getting to be that time. Yep. That's a lot more portable. It sustains me every time I'll eat one protein bar. And despite having a hummingbirds metabolism, only one of those protein bars and cause of just sitting, uh, tucking in riding the bike, I don't really lose my noise. I don't get hangry anytime soon. When I do, I realize how to handle it.

Brian: Yeah. There's not a lot of volume in, in a bar like that, or, you know, really compressed food. You know, they, they'll, they'll fuel you. And, and, and let's face it. I mean, we're grown ass people in the United States of America. We could probably go for like a week without food. I mean, come on, you know, nobody's going to starve skipping breakfast, even if they don't eat anything.

Robin: If you carry the snacks in bulk, you will always have an emergency source. So I keep like five to seven of them and they're just right there. They're not, they're not big.

Brian: And if someone else needs them, great. You know, that's fine. Yeah. And especially like you can also like, if you carry something, like grab a sandwich or something. And, and, uh, I, there are times that I've made where I know the route and I know what's, what's coming up where it can be just a really great experience to just stop and have a little picnic for lunch, rather than, you know, going to the diner and dealing with all that noise, grab a sandwich, you know, blah, blah, blah, do this, grab, you know, something to eat. And we'll, we'll go to this overlook. It's got picnic tables and blah, blah, blah. You have to know your route really well, but that's, that's a great way to do it. Saves money as a side effect, but it's actually just a better experience sometimes. Agreed. I'm going to bring up one more and it's kind of touches on what we just talked about, but there are certain things that you should spend the money on, which is. Uh, brand name tires, brand name chains. Uh, Hey Robin, some, some bikes are propelled by these primitive chain. Anyway, I'm not, I'm not, I've had, you're not ignorant of this. Okay. The band. So, so by the expense of tires, by the expense of change and by the expense of brake pads.

Robin: Well, you say that now, but we were just talking about trying to find a cheaper tire.

Brian: We're trying to find a cheaper, expensive tire, you know, a reputable tire. Yeah. A reputable, that's a better way to do it. You know, and part of this is the cost per mile, uh, like cheap brake pads, cheap chains wear out very, very quickly. Cheap brake pads, throw dust everywhere. Um, the last pair of cheap brake pads I tried, uh, they actually worked okay, but they wore out very quickly. The first time I was in absolutely, you know, buckets of rain, they didn't work in the rain at all. You'd get like three revolutions of the front tire and then they grab suddenly, you know, your eyes are getting big and you're, Oh, you want to stop?

Robin: I gotcha. So they're drying off the rotor first. Hold on.

Brian: And then they suddenly grab. Yeah. It's just sucked pony up for a pony up for a set of EBCs pony up for a set of, of, uh, golfers, uh, maybe original equipment. You know, there's some, there's some top line brands. Yes. They cost way too damn much, but it's really worth it. And if you look at the cost per mile, it's going to be worth it. Any opinion on DID chains? Yeah. DID is, is, is, is, in my opinion, DID chains are upper tier. I've actually had the best luck with EK chains. Okay. They have a top of the line and I can't remember the initials of it. EK chains. We're looking for sponsors, tiara.bike. Yeah. EK if you want sponsors. But for example, the, the, the OEM chain on my Yamaha was absolutely shagged when I bought it at 21,000. It was pitiful. I mean, it was just a crime put like 23,000. I changed, so I changed them out and I put a good EK chain. So I, I basically went to the top of the line and it went down just one step. And this chain is like, it's visibly beefier than the one that was on it. I mean, it's, it's a chonker chain. It's a meatball. It's a meatball chain. And I've not had to adjust it once in 23,000 miles. And I don't expect to, I fully expect this chain will last 30, 35,000 miles. Even on break-in?

Robin: Cause I know Maggie's changed this time to adjust hers again. She just got that one.

Brian: When I install a chain, I put it on and then I go ride maybe 50, maybe a hundred miles, something like that. Uh, adjust it one more time. And then pretty much it's done until it starts to actually go bad. Yeah. And then you get the thwack, a little bit of a kink, a little bit of a rubber band motion. Start seeing the red death, you know, the little, uh, the rust coming out from the O-rings. You know, I've seen on online forums, you know, people buy, Oh, I got this. I got this green, this chain for $60 on Amazon. And I'm like, well, that's for an erector set. Yeah. That's not a bargain. That's space Lakers rider. Yeah. It's kind of like, stop just pony up for the good stuff. It'll last a year. Cost per mile will be lower and the same with, and the same to a degree with your tires. You know, your cost consider your cost per mile and your, I don't know what you'd call it, but the cost of your labor, even if you change them yourself. You know, it's still a couple of hours of farting around that you could be out riding, you know? So the more the better.

Robin: Well, I demand that you talk to me about the DuPont chain lube and cleaner polish. Is this a real thing? And is this like the shellac that a new chain arrives in? No, it's not. That's not that gross shit, but is it something that's a lot more easy to deal with or what? Yes. Okay. I want that to be the priority in the next discussion. I got to know about that. So yeah, let's do a segment three. Actually right now I demand that we have an argument. Oh yeah. For one split second. This is, this is our anecdotal chitchat trail breaking. Okay. You said something during the last episode that I heard somebody that I don't know as well as I know you say, and that person is boring and you're not. So when you said it, I was like, oh, this has to happen because this is gonna be a lot of fun. Trail braking is braking beyond the entrance of a corner. If you're doing it in a way that is as a utility for your riding, you are compressing the front suspension while braking, and that allows you to turn in more tightly should you decide you want to do so now I've made a point about how one of our mutual friends has said, they don't necessarily want to have to do that. They know what it is. They've done it. They're good at it. If that's the kind of writing I'm in the mood to do, it is not because in Brian's words, I made a mistake with my riding and braking before the corner was there, it was a conscious decision to do so, and you had said something to the effect of, yeah, I mean, it's, it's a thing, but honestly, if you're riding right, or something like, uh, it was like, yeah, but if you're braking beyond the entry of a corner, you're doing it wrong anyhow, and I disagree.

Brian: I wouldn't have said that. See, that's, that's a good thing. We don't have recorders everywhere we go. I think it may have been something more along the lines. If you have to brake in the middle of a corner, something went wrong.

Robin: Apology accepted. Now that makes perfect sense. If you, if you find yourself, if you have no other choices than to break.

Brian: Yeah. What, what you're talking about is, is a, you know, it's a decision about how you're going to handle what you see in front of you, and that's a different thing than in the middle of a corner and something spooks your whatever. And then you stab the rear, you know, you stab the rear brake and off you go to the weeds or both breaks, whatever you do.

Robin: But I get what you're saying. Yeah, no, this makes perfect sense.

Brian: It's a difference between planning, you know, planning and executing what you're going to do. And then the second part of the equation is unless someone is at a certain level of writing skill, having them totally separate cornering and braking is the better way to go. It's, it's thundering here. Can you hear that? Or it's to me, you know, like there was a stroke of, there's a stroke of thunder right when I said that. So it's gotta be right. There's a certain level. Someone's like learning to ride and they're, you know, and they're getting more and more advanced. And they're like, you know, should I trail break? And it's like, use your brain power only when you have the brain power to spare. I think would be a good way to put that only when you have the bandwidth to spare for that thing. But it is, it is one of those things. You know, it's, it's Brett Cox had a, had a good video on trail braking and, you know, people call a lot of different things, trail braking. But yeah, but the uses, especially when you're talking about street stuff, I don't know anything about track racing or anything like that. The whole idea is maintaining control of your speed. And he gave a really good example of if you're in a downhill or decreasing radius corner, which is really fun shit that happens in the mountains, you know, you set up for the turn and you finish your braking, you're in the turn and you're in the throttle, well, you're going to be increasing your speed. And that's not really appropriate for what the corner is. So it's a way to control your velocity for things like blind corners and things like downhill corners, decreasing radius corners with crap in them, that kind of thing, you know, it's like a blend and a mix. So, you know, at some point you get the mental bandwidth to pay attention to what you're, what these are doing, you know, in a, in a fast corner, it's not, it's a complex question.

Robin: It is. And I custom sculpted this debate for you as a missed you man, kind of a gift and brought it to the table so we could have some fun with it. Does that have to be like, we actually agree and it was all just a big misunderstanding, like that one episode of three's company, that one nice segment three, this was a weird idea.

Brian: I had see what happens. You want me to put the link in the chat for you?

Robin: Well, TRO is banned from ADV rider. I did that. I made that happen.

Brian: I can't imagine. We kind of talked a little bit, you know, like, like Robin cringes at the term adventure and I kind of do too. But anyway, advrider.com is the world's largest gathering, online gathering of motorcycles by far worldwide, huge, whatever. And I've actually purchased two motorcycles from advrider.com, Vstrom 1000 and my FG09 and I've sold the Vstrom on advrider.com. I don't think I've sold any other bikes there. The point is all these, all these adventure riders, a lot of them have more than one bike, you know, it's not all just BMW GSs and KLR 650s, you know, and stuff like that.

Robin: I will interject that I don't actually have a problem with the term ADV. I have a problem with riders of the ADV platform who are like, this is sport touring. It's not, it's ADV and I'll back it. I actually don't mind it. But then I also think to myself, if I were going to do ADV, I'd go straight to dual sport, I would just go right to it. Like a KLR, get some knobbies, knobby out and do some real riding and camping. That's how I would do it. I'm not really into the whole, like we discovered a gravel road that's been here for 50 years.

Brian: And, and yeah, the whole prairie dog thing where the, you know, any, anything that's not pavement, you've got a prairie dog, you've got to stand up. Welcome to stand up on your motorcycle.com. Makes me tired, you know? So the idea I had was let's go to the flea market and the motorcycle flea market on ADVradar.com, go to the first page and pick out what bike you want to buy. So we've got some interesting stuff here. There's a Harley Davidson Heritage Classic. That's a no. Truly ADV. Yeah. Uh, but we've got a KTM 990 Adventure. That's interesting. The DRZ 400S all over that. Yeah, that's interesting. That's the, uh, that's the super moto, isn't it? And that's a super moto.

Robin: That's the injected.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Also the Tenor, the Super Ten. There's a Ten, I'm sorry. There's a Tenere 700, which I think would be pretty cool.

Brian: Yeah. Like I, and I was, and there's a Royal Enfield, a real Royal Enfield Himalayan, which would be, I, that's one of the bikes we talked about earlier, several episodes ago. I would like to ride one around for a while, but I wouldn't want to own one. But I think it'd be cool to ride it around a while. Now there is a sport tour here. The Yamaha FJR 1300 with extras in Texas. Take that on the gravel roads. There's a couple of BMW GSs. Yeah. Whatever. Blah, blah, blah. A couple of, you know, the Triumph Tiger, a couple of those lying around and stuff like that. Honda Goldwings. There's clearly a list. Why are we looking at this? These bikes are for sale somewhere in the, probably usually in the United States. Which one are you going to pick out? Gun to your head. Got to go buy a bike. Okay. Which one are you going to go buy? Any purpose? Whatever appeals your banana, whatever blows your dress up. I mean, whatever floats your boat. You like that DRZ?

Robin: I do. If we're going to go off road, I want that DRZ. I want the, the 2015 DRZ in San Diego. I'll take it. I'm in. If we're talking about pavement, I'm going to go for that FJR. Of what I'm seeing here. Yeah. FJR. Yeah.

Brian: Yeah. And the thing is the DRZ, that's the supermoto one. So it's got street tires, 17 inch wheels, front and rear.

Robin: Dual 17s.

Brian: Yeah. The S that's the S model. But I think that's not a default. Is it? No, the D the default is a DRZ. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So this one, yeah. Like this one is, oh, it's a DR. Okay. He's got the, he's actually got knobbies on it. So it is an off roadie. So nevermind. It's not the Sumo. That's the default state. The, so the listing was a little off, but anyway, the one that really intrigues me is there's a Tenera 700. Not there, there's a super Tenera, but not the, but the Tenera 700 on the home, on the front page of the ADV Rider flea market, like I ride a KLR and this is basically the size of a KLR and I think it's a little lighter and it's got like at least double the power. Wow. And to me, this really would, this would be like, okay, you're new in a garage and I'll, and you're going to be over here in a corner or whatever, you know, this thing, the Tenera 700 would be really interesting. I would really want to ride one first to see if it, if it's all that, but that's the one that intrigues me the most. Yeah. He's, it could use some new tires, whatever, but yeah, it's, it's narrow. It's light, 700 CC parallel twin. Great suspension. So yeah, this, this would be my step up for my off-roader. So my dual sport bike. It's a good, I mean, it's a good machine. Yeah. And see, by the time people listen to this episode, there'll be like a completely different batch of bikes on it, on, on the web, on ADV riders.

Robin: So, you know, so if I read the URL, if you wanted to go look at what they got in the listings, it's advrider.com forward slash F forward slash forums, forward slash bikes dot 52 forward slash. It's a catchy title. Yeah. We're writing songs about it. Catchy, legendary, catchy, catchy. And I like that you brought up having another bike too. So I have to talk about that at some point as well.

Brian: Yeah. It's a fun game to play with your friends, hit up your favorite online flea market and, uh, BS about bikes when it's thundering and raining outside. What's the name for this? It's like a bullet round, a, uh, lightning round, lightning round.

Robin: There's lightning out there. Yeah. Timing's perfect. So you just got to have a code for it. And you text everybody. It's like being lightning round, go. And you find out what's out there. And everybody compares notes. You know, what may come of that is people may discover that the bike that their friend was looking for is out there and they might be hooking them up with. That's not a bad thing.

Brian: That's true. Yeah. You kind of get to know someone. You kind of get a glimpse into their soul a little bit. You know, somebody is looking for like a, here's a Yamaha T max. What the hell? Which is basically a giant. That's a giant weird looking scooter. Sports touring scoot. So if you have a friend who's like, I want that T max, I want that scooter. Then, you know, something you didn't know before. Probably. I don't know. Are you going to wind it down? I'm going to wind it down. Let's get out of here.

Robin: If we wind this down, then on Sunday, we'll do a long, ultra boring episode of radio TRO at TRO dot bike about map testing, mayhem and planning the Wisconsin tour, the Wisco disco you'd like it. I like it.