Brian: And today we are talking about Baby's First Track Day, and we are welcoming TRO author and podcast emeritus alumni, whatever you want to call them, Travis Burleson and TRO cult member, Neil Sullivan. I like the sound of that. You want to make some real money, you want to start a cult, yeah.

Robin: Because this episode is about track days, we got to go lightning fast because track days and we like to go fast. And as you said during that track day, I like this quote, I believe ass was hauled is what you said.

Brian: I was starting to feel like there was the possibility of perhaps maybe some hint of ass was hauled by the end of the day. I don't want to make claim to hauling ass. That's kind of a whole claim. I want to make claim to a fraction of glimpsing the hauling of ass, which is great. Come on. I was in the yellow group. That's all you want. I got to go around you on this.

Robin: I got to go around. See, I got to pass you in the street here. Okay. I'm around. Opening banter, corrections, and website updates. The name of the tire inflator that I was speaking about in the previous episode was the RoofPax tire inflator. They are the ma and pa company that every time I call them up and say, I'm sorry, I broke something, I broke it. It wasn't your fault. And I need to buy a component. They say, sure, here, we'll just send you an entire new unit. That's the RoofPax tire inflator.

Brian: Can you spell that?

Robin: R-O-O-F-P-A-X tire inflator. They're really good. So it's a set it and forget it tire inflator that runs on battery. It's a rechargeable battery or by way of your cigarette lighter adapter in a car or by way of two prong plugin, but set it and forget it. I really like it. And they're the ones that were just like, here, I have another one. Whereas, you know, Alpine Star was like, screw you. We'll take more money. Go get some more boots. Next up for bid on the opening banter, corrections, and website updates. I'm going to try to calm my wording for this. I've updated the buy GPX buttons on the website so that you are presented with a message. Now in my notes here, it's called a don't be stupid message about what a GPX file is. So when you make a GPX download purchase on the website for one of our maps, it literally says, Hey, no, what you're buying. And then gives you a brief description of what you're about to buy. And that it's not a beautiful map brochure of something we did. It is a GPX file. It is a series of coordinates in a basically an XML style format that you can plug into a variety of different applications and use to make your journey more digitally enhanced. And the last opening better corrections, the website update, I'm going to be updating our tour difficulties. I actually put it that I've updated our tour difficulties, but I did not update our tour difficulty. The Lake Michigan circle tour is a level two tour. The Texas hill country tour is a level three tour. The Wisco disco extravaganza is a level four tour. Would you agree, Brian? Yeah, I think so. The New Mexico true through consequences tour is a level four option five tour. We'll be riding a level five route. And at the beginning of the level five difficulty, can I get six? No. Can I, can I hear six? Can I get six?

Brian: This is not an auction. Who's going to give me six, six elements. Come on. Come on. So for it's four out of five elements. Okay. With an option for five or something. Yeah. I'm going to come up with a way that the five will be blinking.

Robin: And then of course, trip sevens is a level five tour on, on the downbeat. Now we are missing a member of this chat. I'm going to bring them in here in a moment before we get Neil in here. We got to get a Travis, Travis, where the hell are you?

Brian: Oh, Travis, Travitron.

Robin: This was your idea. I don't even like podcasts. The fuck. Get your green haired ass in here. I've been to several track days. You went to your first track day. I did. Let's bring in another person who has been to several track days. Neil Sullivan, longtime friend of both of us. Who's been to a many rally just so you know, you've been introduced as TRO cult member, Neil Sullivan. Cult member was it? That's you. I'll take it. You and I've been to what, four or five track days together? Gingerman at least twice, maybe three times.

Neil: Yeah, I did my first one. That was why I met you. And that was 10 years ago. I just looked at the date. It was August 11th, 2014. We've known each other quite some time.

Brian: Dang, am I mistaken? Was this Travis's first track day too? This was Travis's very first track day.

Robin: It was a birthday gift from his wife, Laurel. She made it happen for him. So yeah. Happy birthday, Travis.

Brian: Glad I could be there for it. Yeah, it was an overwhelming experience in a lot of ways, but a hell of a lot of fun. One of the points is I've spent a shitload of money, or at least what looks to me like a lot of money, on leathers and boots and preparing and all this stuff. And now I've got all this sunk cost. I got to make use of it now. So the only financially correct decision to make is to go to more track days. I've made a lot of investments, so the only responsible thing to do.

Neil: That's just logical there. That makes all the sense in the world.

Brian: It's good to know I've got a support system here. There's a quote from Peter Egan, who wrote about motorcycling, and he also wrote about cars and crap like that sometimes too. It said racing, and we're going to say track days, but makes heroin addiction look like a vague wish for something salty. Doing this can get really, really addictive.

Robin: Travis isn't here yet, so I'll speak for him when I remember the first thing he said. Nobody else was there at the park. Everybody had gone, and we had the garbage to take away. It was quiet and peaceful. You can smell the late summer breeze. It was just super chill. Get into the truck, door slams. Very first words he says, this is a problem. Like what? The track day? Yeah. No. This is bad. This is a problem. He's newly inspired to take a junk bike he has in his garage that it's refurbished and running. It just needs paint and kind of dinged a little bit. He's now heard the big shouting through his phone of track that thing. Lose the headlight, prep it, run it on the racetrack. You're gold. It's done. Now he's actually thinking about it.

Neil: Nice. That's a nice strategy there.

Robin: It just fell into place for him. This podcast episode was brought to you by Travis Burleson's mouth. Right after that, Brian was like, hey, I'm feeling pretty hyped up about the track day. We should do that. I was like, Neil, are you free? Hell yeah. Let's do this. Where's Travis now? But I will tell you that all day at work, the day after, all I was receiving was video messages from him. So I've been looking at leathers. He's on the shopping cart.

Brian: Yeah. It's pretty, yeah. It was pretty amazing. I'll start at the beginning. When I got there, it's just, it's just chaos. Everybody doing everything all at once. No idea what's going on, where to go. There's no signs. I don't know if that could have been better if I was just like, what the hell? I should have just relaxed and just asked somebody what was going on. We're going to camp, but there's nobody who's interested in talking about camping. Where do we go? Who do we pay? Nothing. We got over that pretty quick.

Robin: Something happens when, Neil and I have run into this before, when you've got two people who are experienced with a particular situation, who have different takes on it, different approaches, and then they're trying to coordinate those things and the cogs don't quite line up. And you're just like, well, okay, now, if it were the two of us, it would have been, we would have gotten through it. Right. But with both you and Travis in the mix, everybody was taking deep breaths and then typing their response to something in the Google doc. So it was, I was just like, I'll bring a cooler, a nice little tent, I'll bring sleeping bags, we're going to camp.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: I have a truck. Well, I have a truck. I have a truck. I'm drunk. We're all going to bring our tools. Everybody had everything all at once.

Brian: Oh yeah.

Robin: Now, I will say we got lucky. Neil brought just the perfect amount of water. Yeah. Like exactly the right bottle count.

Neil: It's funny that you say that because I was a hero at the last track day I did for bringing water. So apparently anybody who wants to score points at a track day, bring a lot of, you know, go to Walmart, get yourself a big thing of 48 bottles of water.

Robin: Yeah. Just get a pallet, throw it in the back of the truck.

Brian: Yeah. You're off to the races. I had every intention of hitting Costco for 48 pack of water and just kind of forgot all about it. I brought like all the tools, like major, like I brought an angle grinder. Why did I bring an angle grinder? Like if something goes that shit shape that you need an angle grinder, you're not going back on the track. You know, it's going to be a while. Why did I bring that?

Robin: So yeah, I brought a Nomar. I also had a grinder, everything that we bring with us to travel. It was all in the truck. You brought a grinder too? I, well, I, like I said, everybody went blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Deep breath. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was like, I don't know who's bringing what. The thing that I was surprised that we did not have on arrival and I had to steal from Mr. Herrheim, beer. I walked to his trailer, walked through his posse, went into his stash, looked at his son, Michael. Hey, how's it going? Grabbed a bunch of beers out of his fridge and just started talking and drinking. Right to it.

Brian: I brought a spare set of tires just because I had them. Like we caught a really good deal on those Pirellis and I just ordered another set. Like, ah, throw it in. I've got a, I've got a minivan. What's the consensus? I think the tires did great. They looked all nice and crispy and shagged and everything, but yeah, I had absolutely no, no worries about the tires all day.

Robin: Did you have any tar balls on them? Some rubber fry balls on there?

Brian: Oh yeah. I got some good crispy closeups I can send you. That tells you you had a good time. You've gotten tires fried pretty good in Missouri and new North Carolina and stuff. But yeah, all, all day on a track will give you a higher level of crispy. We set up a Google doc for everybody that was going and we use that to kind of coordinate.

Robin: That immediately became diarrhea of the typing.

Brian: Oh yeah.

Robin: There's tons. I couldn't stop it. I was just like, okay, I'm going to create my own little cul-de-sac here of basic information. Little things I might've forgot. Like beer.

Neil: Yeah. The one thing everybody always forgets is just having a garbage bag. And that's, that was another thing I try to remember. Everybody remembers to bring the tent or whatever, the canopy that you can hang out under. The pop-ups. And when you have to strap your kickstand up, you got to bring something to keep your bike upright.

Robin: I do remember that like, that was a foggy morning. We're like, let's camp.

Brian: And I'm thinking it's going to get down. It was 46 in the morning when I, when I started moving around or six, that was the deal.

Robin: Like I looked at the temperatures, you know, on the weather forecast at TRO, which is a ride weather forecast, meaning daylight hours. I know because I built it from the ground up myself. It said 58 degrees. I'm like, that's fine though. I can handle that. 58 degrees during the day. And then overnight it got down to 40 what? And I got up in the middle of the night, I think twice. Would not recommend it as a pastime. Not a hobby worth doing. So when I got up in the morning, I saw Brian wearing a, like a shawl and I looked over at Neil and he's just, Neil's just got that, like that smile of tolerating.

Brian: This is fine.

Robin: That morning started rough for all of us.

Neil: I was trying to get the caffeine level up.

Brian: Yeah. For things like this, where you're going to have a really challenging day, uh, you got to stick to your normal food and your normal routine as much as you can. You know, so Robin had his hot coffee, you know, I had my, I had my iced coffee. Neil had whatever gas station abomination he drinks. Uh, forget what it jolt, some sort of, some sort of can of whoop ass. I don't know what it is.

Robin: I threw three packets of instant coffee into one of my camp bugs and then slammed that At any rate, this is about a track day. We made it through that morning. I did receive word from Travis in Travis's own inspiring words. I'll fucking be there when I can.

Brian: Poor guy.

Robin: Thinking of you, Travitron.

Brian: So I had a new set of leathers, new boots, had never worn them before. Like I tried them on in a living room and show up and I'm going to go ride motorcycles fast with this on. So fortunately that worked out. It's a good thing. There wasn't like some sort of like pinchy, horrible, whatever. And overall I had to say like Motovid did a amazing job of feeding just enough information to keep everybody from overloading. You know, here's what we expect on the track and things like that. And also I'll go back the night before we did the track walk with some like surfer track rat racer dude. I forget his name, but he was awesome.

Robin: Was he generally a cool guy?

Brian: He was like awesome dude.

Robin: Like was he kind and polite? There you go.

Brian: He's very kind, very polite. You know, showed us where the line is and explained a lot, showed us a lot of visual reference points. You know, he had us do stuff like turn around and look back and see why we just did what we did. That kind of thing. It was extremely valuable. I mean, I know, you know, but you know, Blackhawk Farms pretty well already, but it was pretty valuable to do that. So that helped a lot. But yeah, they start out with a training session in the morning where they kind of explain what's expected of you. No passing, blah, blah, blah. And everybody got a cute little pony to unicorn to put on their, uh, their stickers. So they know you went through the class.

Neil: And of course the four of us proudly kept it on our dash the whole day. You know, I'm sure most everybody else got rid of that thing immediately.

Brian: Oh no, no, no, no. I kept my unicorn. My unicorn was the sexiest unicorn. That was awkward. That was awkward because it was a little awkward. Yeah.

Neil: He was certainly the hairiest.

Brian: Whoa. Next level, Neil. There you go. Uh, the second session we were allowed to pass on the, on the back straight or after turn six, whatever you want to call it. What was fun about that was I wasn't sure, like they said, I thought we had to wait until the second lap. And so we go around turn six and then Neil comes motor and pass. I'm like, oh, I guess it's time to pass now.

Robin: Two laps got us through the hot pit. And then after we did that twice, we were good. But then at the third session was when there's, we'll go around one more time and then everybody can go ahead and start passing and rock and roll.

Brian: Yeah, that was fun. Take away your mirrors and, and you know, street writers are confused. And I know I was for a while. Just the way all these, you know, zip tying your kickstand, all this stuff just takes away every distraction. The lights are taped. It takes away absolutely everything that's not necessary. And I, I started to kind of figure that out. The biggest change was learning to cross the street. You know, I can just go from left to right and that's okay. That's what we're all doing here. That was a mental leap.

Robin: Yeah. It's yours. They do want you to be smooth and predictable. That's kind of the game is if you're coming in at novice, which we all were hanging out for, it's really a great opportunity. There's no group that you can get assigned to that won't come with one speed and two, an excellent opportunity to smooth your methods. I mean, I had my own trick up my sleeve, which I'll get to in a moment if you guys are open to hear about it. But the idea being that your real estate is everything ahead of you, unless you're in a main straight and you're being considerate enough to let anybody by. The straight isn't your opportunity to catch up. It's your opportunity to chill out and let everybody get by that you might be bottlenecking. But other than that, when you enter a corner, that is your corner. It's yours. No passing on the inside, no passing on the outside. And when you make signals that you're leaving the track, there's no super tight formations happening. Now, what I was saying before that no matter which group you get assigned to, you just sign up. If there's no spaces in orange, green, or some other color that's not been invented yet. If you end up in novice as we did, we had a blast. I'll tell you what I did was everybody thinks they're fast, everybody. So nobody gets in the slow line. Great. Good for you. You're all fast. Look at that. This massive line of people. There are two lines at the gate, the I need training and I'm timid lane and the I'm feeling spirited and I know what I'm doing lane. And it seemed like the I'm timid lane was always just this void of opportunity.

Brian: Yeah. I just went right up in there. Didn't care.

Robin: I would line up in there. I would do a single half lap, hot pit. And then I owned the entire track, half lap, hot pit, nobody. It was golden. There was, there was nobody to say, Hey, you might want to work on this. I might want to work on that. I was too busy being like, I came here to ride. And I did. That was fun.

Neil: Yeah. Yeah. That novice group, we were lucky. I mean, I've been in some novice groups that are way too crowded or you've got some meatheads that are doing all kinds of awful, unsafe passing. There was like a little group of people that were slow and they were the most polite people. They kind of hung together. And then there was a handful of people that were very fast and then, you know, everybody else was sort of in between. And we had so much space to work with. It turned out to be probably the best track day I've ever had. And really you could ride your own ride, whatever it was and be happy out there and safe.

Robin: It's really important to me that you had a good time. That was really great to hear. They were grateful that we were there. The fact that Neil's been to several of these and eyeballed this one is no, this is, this is great matters. So very cool.

Neil: Yeah, it was cool. I mean, we lucked out with the weather. We lucked out with our group, you know, being so light, having so much space and then a pretty good crew. There was only a couple of people that were, you know, the, the slow and the curves and fast and the straights. Couple of them. Maybe two. Yeah. Two guys. But other than that, nothing to complain about. And the control riders were outstanding.

Robin: Yeah. Shout out. The ones I do remember specifically, I know Hirheim was there, Jason Hirheim has been on the show several times. Shout out to Jason Homer. Great guy. Fun to chase around. Great to manipulate. If you get up close to him and he can't see who's behind him and you can just push him faster and faster until he realizes his line's gone. And then he's like, what did you do? You know, that's always fun, Dan. And I can't pronounce his last name very well.

Brian: I don't remember his last name, but yeah, I know what you're talking about.

Robin: Shout out to bad-ass Dan and Jen, his lovely wife, who I hadn't seen in a long time. I didn't even know her through vintage motorcycle stuff in the past. I wanted to bring up, Brian, you've got this thing in here in the outline, this Magazine Cycle World article from 99. What inspired you to paste that in there?

Brian: It's an article from Peter Egan about getting track time, doing track days. And remember, this was 1999. One of the things we talked about with Hirheim a little bit was it used to be there were no such thing as a track day. You could show up and race in a novice class. It was just racing. And you had to go out there and you had to figure it out. Track days didn't used to be a thing. And there was so much less training back in the 90s and so forth. So that article is, it's an old Cycle World article, Peter Egan, and it talks about getting ready and doing a track day and getting into it again without the pressure of racing. Track days have made the world a better place. They just have. Yeah, just a great opportunity. You know, like there was a guy on a Triumph Bonneville, Chris, he owns a dealership or something. I don't remember. MCC. I think his daughter works for MCC. MCC guy. Yeah. So he shows up on a Chrome, you know, on a Triumph Bonneville with a bunch of Chrome and he's out there hauling around and having a good time with everybody else. That's what's cool about it. You know, you see a variety of machines. Most of the machines I really could not tell apart because a lot of the track dedicated bikes people have are just like beat up and, you know, they've got like plastic fairings and they're painted with house paint and then they go ride, you know, they don't care.

Robin: And he had this lovely Chrome, shining, elegant bit of a pig. That's a heavy bike, but ready to go on the track bike. And he was elegant. By the way, shout out to Motorcycle Center. That's MCC. Motorcycle Center is a great dealership. They're renowned. They're well known. He and his daughter were there for the entire duration. That's MCC at 443 East St. Charles Road B in Villa Park, Illinois, 60181. And be sure to check out their website. They were really cool. Very personable. Good time. It was funny to me. I didn't know he was an ex-racer. We were discussing chin over wrist riding, the different terms, you know, kiss the mirror, chin over wrist, angle in, you know, all these different, everybody says something different. It's like it's the same curriculums bleeding on top of each other so that nobody understands what the other person is talking about. Funny to find out that, oh, wait, he knew all of that and was already coaching his daughter about it and things like that. Moving on, we were just talking about the low meathead count in the yellow group. Everybody acknowledges we had a polite group. Now, I will say that the most typical meathead group would be the next level up. The first level intermediate. People who are ready. I'm ready. I'm free. I'm ready. I'm freaking ready. Ready is what I am. There can be a lot more disciplining going on with that group. I know that we heard that another group was being, if you hear him say, we have a mandatory meeting, something may have gone down. I highly doubt it was green. Somebody must've made a legit mistake in green, a very pronounced mistake that none of us in this room know the techniques of, right? We're not there. These three people who are talking right now aren't at that level. And I guarantee you that whatever happened was something like, you know, you flinched your pinky finger and create a wind drag. And we need to talk about that. Cause that's unsafe when you're passing on the inside at 95,000 miles an hour.

Brian: Yeah.

Neil: I don't know what happened there. Jury meeting to talk about pinky drag.

Robin: Right. It's like you've got to reel that in, man, three inches of space between you and the bike next to you. Three inches. Make sure, man, you were down to 2.5 inches, but it brings me to what's in the outline here. Brian's got of douchebags and meatheads. What do you want to talk about?

Brian: I think we talked about this a little bit. There were, there were, there were people who caused frustration by riding really shiny, extremely capable Italian bikes, very slowly in the corners and then very quickly in, in between the corners. That was supremely annoying. And the official term we learned was, oh, we call them douchebags.

Neil: Now, to be fair, that's the first time I've seen control riders call that out in a class. Well, that's got to be called out every time.

Robin: He called that out before they did it. Yeah. That's the best part. Like maybe, you know, they didn't understand. We've got one, Mr. Travis Burleson about the end of the room. Why hello, Travis.

Travis: I have an entire half liter of giant Jones beer in this glass and I'm going to drink it.

Robin: Yeah. Shout out to giant Jones beer. We are looking for sponsor. We were just discussing some of the slow in the slow in the corners, fast in the streets. Gentlemen, we will pick up in a topic where you might enter more briskly after we get through this next bit. What were you saying, Brian?

Brian: The poor things, you know, they probably didn't really know they were douchebags because you don't know who's behind you.

Neil: Yeah, that's entirely possible. That's entirely possible. They have no idea how much that messes people up. Like that slow entry speed into the curves. Yeah. Such a hot mess, especially if they speed up when you're passing them in the streets and now you got to deal with them at the curve and they're slowing. It's like, oh man, this is a hot mess. We got to get around these people.

Robin: Now I did find that I was able to pass that guy. That was not a big deal. I observed him for one lap and I was, this guy really sucks and that's okay. We're here for the same reasons. So I dropped it into third gear, screamed up to 13,000 RPMs and bailed on him like, goodbye, get out of my way. It was doable.

Travis: I was talking to Jason about this too. It's just like, yeah, follow someone for a couple of corners, see how much they suck and then just like make sure that you're not following them into the corner when you want to overtake. Right. So leave yourself enough gap so you can do that corner at your speed so that, you know, they enter it, they're halfway through it or three quarters of the way through it by the time you're entering it, but then you're coming out just about the same time. So you got the, you got the lead to pass, especially if you're, if you're equally gunned or outgunned under throttle, that's the only way you're going to get around them.

Brian: Yeah. In a way it was frustrating, but it was also kind of fun to figure out, you know, if you had, if you had the time, you know, there were short sessions, you had the time to figure out how to get around them. I do know there are a couple, I can, I can't name them. I know what bikes they're on, but I can, I do know there are two douchebags who know they're douchebags because we come out of the corner. I've got more momentum coming out of the corner and they look over and they're twisting it, you know, and I'm outgunned being a large dude on a large bike with probably about the same amount of horsepower and 15 times the skill. There was one guy who I, I really thought I was going to get like pulled off and lectured because honestly I passed them on the inside on the corner we were heading into is where I finally completed the pass. Which corner was it? Five. Ooh. Okay. Yeah. Diving into five. I basically waited, you know, he hit the brakes early because you know, he hit the brakes early and I squirted ahead of him. Again, it was all well within reality and normality, you know, and all that. But I was like, I am going to get flagged and pulled over and talk to like only if there's a control rider there to see you.

Robin: I don't know. There's a possibility that a control rider may have said, Nope, I'm letting that one go. They seem to see everything. This is one of those moments where even if you feel that angst about that rider, who's slow in the curves and fast in the straights, and you can feel the grunt in there, you're still laughing giggly sport. I mean, you're just losing your fun, even at the worst moments, you're just laughing your ass off. But it does bring, when you pass that guy on the inside, you have a great question here too. I wonder if we all wonder this about ourselves. Was I someone's douchebag at that track day, personally?

Travis: I mean, was Robin Dean someone's douchebag? Almost certainly. I mean, I think you were, you know, I had to sleep in a tent with you. You were my douchebag. You're our douchebag there, Robin.

Brian: It's official, right? Yeah. The one thing I really noticed, started noticing later in the day was the control riders did a really good job of seeing that sort of thing happen. And then they would go, get in front of the douchebags, tap, tap. And so the douchebags following them, and then, you know, then the rest of us can go do the thing. I thought that was really, it's almost like they're seeing a lot more stuff than I'm even aware of. And it was really interesting and cool to see how that works.

Travis: I was surprised there was so many, like, I mean, not surprised, I guess, but yeah, there's only so many slots for each group. And you know, if there's no orange or green slots, then you got to sign up for yellow slots or whatever. But there's like dudes in the novice on, you know, Ducati Street Fighters and Gixxer 1000s.

Robin: And yeah, something will happen if you go to sign up and there's no space available in orange. What are you going to do? Well, I guess I'm not going to track day. No, you just go ride novice and suffer through the first two sessions.

Travis: I don't know if that was the case or if they're just like the more money than brains club, you know?

Robin: Oh yeah. Buying this bike stipulates my skill.

Travis: Yeah. Yeah.

Brian: Those were precisely the guys going slow. Believe me.

Travis: We also had some fast guys in our group. I don't know if we've gotten to this point yet. So the last session we go out, everyone's in the fast lane. And so I go, so I go in the slow lane again, because like, yeah, there's one person in the slow lane. And it's this woman rider who I bumped into at the end, like after when we were tearing down and she's on this like white little Kawasaki and I'm like, oh, that's gotta be like a little Ninja 400 or something like that. And you know, we go out and we kind of, you know, do an easy lap, warm up the tires, you know, and I'm not douche bagging it down the straight on my 650, you know, I'm not maxing it, but it's like, I'm not passing her, like I'm not catching her. It took me like three laps to like line it up and pass her, you know, out of a corner. And I don't know if she just bifted or something, but man, she was fast. It came up later where she was, uh, we were breaking down and Jason was like, I think he was talking to Homer right next to us. And she came up to talk to Jason about something. And I recognized her. I was like, hey, you were on that, uh, that white Kawasaki 400. She's like, actually it's a 250.

Brian: And I go, you're fucking fast.

Travis: And she just like giggled and it's like, thanks, thanks. But she was like, she's on a, she's on a Ninja 250. I'm on a Honda CB 650 and she's got me. She's got me paced.

Robin: She paints a really good line.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: So I followed her for a quarter lap and every single turn, the angle, the cut, the turn in points, it was all butter quite graceful.

Brian: One of the things, and this is my habit on the street too, but I was like, I would really concentrate on the corners, but I wasn't most of the time I was not a thousand percent on the straights. You know, I got past quite a bit and I passed some people, blah, blah, blah. Neil pulled off a beautiful pass on me. It was, it was, I was like, Hey, that looks like Neil. Well done, sir. Well done indeed. So I, that was kind of like, I don't want to be anyone's douchebag. So I'll just, if somebody wants to pin it in the streets, cause that's not, and I do the same thing on the street, you know, I'm not pinning it on the streets at all. I'm here to, I'm here to get some lean angle practice in. You mentioned this, the riding skills part. Actually riding the motorcycle around corners quickly was, was not the hard part at all. I know how to do that. And I did that. There's a lot of little things about technique that you really, you know, the track really highlights that you need to like one of the control riders is like, Hey, you're doing great, but you know, pull in your toes, you're getting real close to like banging your toes into the ground long before you need to, because your feet are out flapping around. And I'm like, yeah, you're right. Thank you.

Neil: I'm with you, man. That, that tip spoke to me. You know, you mentioned earlier when I was following you, Brian, it was like the third session. So I saw that you had totally loosened up and you started to get aggressive and just go after it. Which I knew like you guys were probably as far as first time track day guys. Both of you guys are way over qualified. You know, for the novice group, but it was fun to watch you attack it. I don't think I ever got a chance to be behind Travis, but I got to see you, Brian, which was fun, you know, like just totally do your thing.

Brian: Yeah. I was behind Robin for a while at some points. I don't remember. I don't think I was in Travis's.

Travis: I passed you one session, but I think it was like the last lap or like it was real close to the end by the time I like caught the rest of the group.

Robin: Zone photo will have the previews of their images available within the week. So you'll be able to see a full preview of all images. That'll be fun. Yeah. I'll, I'll check that out.

Neil: That toes tip spoke to me big time because I had trouble with that. The other thing that was great was that track walk changed the way I handled the whole track because the dude told us, yeah, when you're coming in, uh, you know, out of turn two, turn three and three, a, you're going to be leaning to your right with three B don't lean to your left, don't move your body over, you don't have to disrupt your bike, just counterbalance and put, lean your bike over to the left. So I, I implemented that and holy crap, it changed the fricking track for me.

Robin: Neil, there's a well-known phrase about why do when you can don't.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. It's neat because yeah, three a and three B you're on a motorcycle. You can, you can, it's a straight line and the aiming point for, you know, coming out of two, the aiming point was really weird. Like there was like this big skid mark from some four wheel contraption. Anyway, there's a huge skid mark on the track. So like I aim for that and it's just a straight line, even though there's a little bit of elevation change, so you can't see the, you can't see the curbing on the inside of three or three, whatever the hell it is. So you can't really see, but you can aim for this distant point and it'll work out in a straight line and stay hanging off to the right so you can dive into three C or four or whatever the hell that one is, the one with the weird surface, like where the inside was slippery and the concrete was bumpy. Yeah.

Travis: That took me forever to wrap my head around. Get on the line between them. That might actually be like turn four at that point.

Neil: There is some concrete on the inside of turn four.

Brian: Yeah, that was fun. That was fun.

Robin: But if you enter that with reckless abandoned, I want you to trust me.

Brian: Yeah, it'll be fine.

Robin: It's fantastic.

Travis: Oh yeah. Cause I mean, it would just kind of move around on you a little bit.

Robin: It was just a little bit of front side shift, but it was like that thing where you're leaned over and all of a sudden you're, you're feeling rise on the side of the bike, so that can be a little nerve wracking, but I learned a lesson from some people about how, like, you've got to accept bike chatter in both tires. And my immediate response is no, I don't. I don't have to accept shit. I'm going to slow down now.

Travis: I eventually found a line for that, for like that right-hander, whatever it is, three D because I think first left-hander is four. Yeah. Yeah. Four is the left onto the, onto that one minor straight before five. Yeah. So that where like you had the concrete patch in the middle. Cause yeah, it's like it kept, I would aim for the, what the apex or what I thought was the apex. And it would always kind of give me a little, a little wiggle, a little bump, like going in, coming out as you kind of shift between that, like where all the cars lay the rubber down on the asphalt and the concrete patch. And eventually I found a smooth and it, and it like, and it dips, it's like cantered in a weird way. Like the, the grade is weird and the curb's really steep and you're just trying to like hit this V. And it's, and then I found if you, if you just shoot at for it later, if you apex it later to like go in on the concrete and apex it later, I got, I found a smooth line and it was like, oh, that's smooth. That doesn't upset my bike. I can, then I can transition to the left-handers, which is like the three left-handers there that you link together.

Robin: You can, but three B all the way to six is one turn.

Travis: Yes.

Robin: Same goes with six all the way to seven. One turn.

Travis: Six. Like if you look at a drawing of the map, looks like two corners, but it's one.

Robin: You take a right at six and if you're just on the gas full heat, you will arrive at seven. All you're doing is leaning the bike up slowly.

Travis: Oh yeah. Cause yeah, cause you go into six and then there's six silo right before seven, you're upright. And then there's the big straight, but then there's the 6A, like the little kink. And yeah, but you just, but same thing. You just kind of stay on the right side of the bike and sort of stand it up. And why, why, why moot?

Robin: Yeah. That's the, I love the mind fuck of a track designer is just like, okay. We're going to discuss a 3A and it's like, wait a minute. Gingerman does that. There's a corner in Gingerman. I don't remember which turn three, four, 17, but there's one that is very particular about this is the apex of the, the mid corner of this, you know, it's like, no, this is one turn and you start here and you're going to make it through the whole thing. And it's a lot of curves will do that.

Brian: One thing that surprised me a little bit was that I didn't even really think about the suspension all day. I was like, oh, you know, I'm going to, you know, want to make an adjustment or think about that and so forth. I didn't really think about it once all day. The bike is what it is. You ride it, you do stuff with it. I think there was maybe one lap where I really poured it on a hundred percent throttle on the front straight. Maybe had 120, something like that. Probably something like that. I was, yeah, I was near red line in force. So that would have been about 120. And the rest of the time I kind of loaf down that front straight. Like if somebody, I don't want to be anybody's douche bag. So if they wanted to pass me, they're welcome to. And also on the back straight on between six and seven, I don't think I really gave it full beans. Like I hit the rev limiter a few times, which I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot that was there, I didn't, you know, I didn't give it a hundred percent speed on, on that back straight, kind of the same reason. And also just because that's kind of how I do, you know, on the street. So you're not going to set a lap record, but it's not what we're there for. We're there to learn.

Travis: Like, yeah, one time on the front straight, I cranked it out, got shifted into fifth before I, you know, decided to start braking and get ready for one. You know, it definitely did not like take race speed into one or someone who has ridden this track more than just today into one, so plenty of braking time there. And then there was like one other time where I was like, yeah, I'd caught up to like a pack and then there was like some slow people, like mid pack and some fast people and it was all just a big cluster. I think I caught up to them like around five, I saw them through four and sort of caught up through five and then like backed off through six and stayed backed off down the back straight so that I had room, took seven the way I would take seven, the slow people sort of filtered out and then I just like, you know, we're like four wide down the main straight cause everyone's going for the pass now. Like there's the fast people and then there's the people with power and then there's the people who are just like, huh? So like I came out and I got on it, but then it's like, okay, now everyone has changed positions and the fast people and the people with power sort of filtering. So it's like, okay, I got to pass like three people. Okay. Now I got to get back in line and hit one. So it was like, that was the other time I like really maxed out the straight because I didn't have a choice without getting in someone's way.

Robin: Brian brings up the idea that like an awful lot of people aren't used to cornering hard in any context, but they did the opposite. They just reverse the process. Fast gunning, slow turning.

Brian: What is this about a Condor clone? The motorcycle stand from Harbor Freight that I used and you used. The Pittsburgh brand wheel chalk. That worked out.

Robin: Worked great. Push it in, walk away.

Brian: Mine kind of slid around the Pittsburgh potty. Yeah. And, and Robin, thanks for helping me out with that. I, you know, with my mobility and stuff, it, it was much better to have someone there to spot me and to yank it out in and out of that thing.

Travis: Glad to. Until once I think the, um, it got warm and the ground dried out from the dew, then they started sliding around on us a little bit. I did find some, I just, they just came in the mail. I just opened them up right before I came down here. Some, uh, spool adapters for the CB, which, which somehow does not have bungs for spools, like welded onto the swing arm, just get axle bungs. Well, so there's a couple ones that exist. There's, um, the T-Rex has ones that like clamp. They're made to like slide over the swing arm and then clamp onto the swing arm. Well, that's wild. And then there's ones, those are the ones that I got, which were just like, there's expensive ones and there's cheap ones, but they're all the same. And they're all this machine out of aluminum. So like, might as well just buy the cheap ones. And what they do is you actually like take the wheel off and you thread them over your axle adjuster. The tension adjuster screw holds it in place and it fits right in that slot and then you lift it up. And then there's ones that replace the like slider spacers for the axle itself. So the axle goes through them and then they kind of like kick back and have little spools that hang off the back. But then someone had mentioned like, oh, these are great for lubing your chain, but you have to, you can't use them to change the tire because the axle goes through them. It's like, oh yeah. Why would I get those? Those seem useless. So the other ones at least, you know, cause they're, they're on, they're in the channel, but they're held on with the adjuster, you can in theory, take the wheel off still.

Brian: Yeah. That's wild. They didn't build that bike with the, with the threads for spools.

Travis: I'm pretty sure the CBR version of it, it has the same swing arm. Like if I look at the pictures, there's no bungs there for it.

Robin: Well, it was a kick-ass tire, all in all. And I think Neil should definitely be the guy to hold the mic for a long time on this one. I'm going to say, I knew what I was getting into. I had a great time, done it before. Great track. Strangely enough, when I get to Blackhawk Farms, I still got to relearn it. I don't do enough track days in a given year to just, oh yeah, no, of course. It's like the guys that motivate, the writers that motivate all the writers that motivate. They've done every track a number of times in a given season, especially Road America and such. So I really had a great time just getting to know it again, especially among people I trust, writers that I trust and novice writers that were dipping their toes into the whole scheme of it, I had a great time. You guys go around, speak your mind, how'd it go for you? Let's round it out and then get this thing packaged up and wrapped in a bow.

Neil: Like I said earlier, it, it was my favorite track day. I've probably done seven or eight total, I think. And first of all, having a crew like you guys that you can hang with between sessions is fun and you get the help when you need it, obviously, you know, that was great. And then the weather was fantastic and I really was nervous about being in the novice group cause I thought, oh no, is this going to be a traffic jam? Is this going to be slow? Um, and then sometimes you get meatheads. We did not have a single meathead. If anybody was a meathead, it might've been me because I had to pass that one slow in the curves, fast in the straights guy.

Travis: We all had to pass him at some point. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, but we all passed him according to the rules, right? Like sort of pretty much in the straights, middle finger extended.

Neil: Just past that passing zone. It was already at the point I'm like, all right, there's only one or two more sessions. If I get put in jail, so be it. I got to do this. And sure enough, he taps me, come talk to me. So I thought, all right, that's it. I guess this is my day. And he goes, yeah, I saw you grab a lot of throttle all at once. You know, your back tire skipped a little. If you do that, it's more smoothly. You'll accelerate faster. And I'm like, yeah, that's a great point. You know, the control rider with the chin beard, I think Dan yeah, in my mind, Dan saw it all. And you know, you were saying earlier, Robin, like they decided, yeah, that's just fine that you have to pass this guy that late.

Robin: I don't like that guy either. Let him do that. Go ahead.

Neil: Exactly. I think he was telling me, yeah, I saw it all, you know, and he knew I parkered a little when he pulled me over after the session, but he actually had a great tip. He's right. If I could be smoother with the throttle, rather than just abruptly grab it all, I probably could have accelerated a half a second or a second faster, you know, could have disposed of the douche bag sooner. I gotta say my Dunlop's were fine. I was, I had nothing to complain about. What are you rocking? I don't know what they are. They're the stock things that come with the Kawasaki versus 650 LT. So they were Dunlop something. Whatever comes with it. Yeah. They did fine. I would prefer what you guys were rocking. I love Pirelli. I find those things.

Robin: You know, originally Pirelli had upset me because I bought two dents of a tire for my size bike. I bought their GT something, something when it was still as Brian would call it the Sumo class bike tire. And it felt like I was on Flintstone wheels, like rock. They treated me horribly. So I never went back. And now with these STs, we got to stop talking about it because we've got a source and we got to make sure that we don't lose them all. I want to buy them all. They're amazaballs. Yeah. Who's up next?

Travis: I was going to say, speaking of tires, uh, Robin alluded that people were talking behind my back about my tires, but my tires did great. I had no qualms about the Kenda KM ones. Uh, they, they performed. I mean, I got an 80 horsepower bike with trash control. I never saw the trash control light come on. I didn't see the ABS light come on.

Robin: I believe you. You got to look at the source. It's you riding the bike. It's Travis motherfucking Burleson. Of course, you're going to make the best out of any tire. It doesn't matter what the tire is.

Travis: And so far we're looking at like, what, like way more miles than you got out of the continental kind of sports. You're correct. Granted on a lighter bike with less power, but with the track day in there, they still look, I mean, they were all rubber Bali and I had to get that off, but they still look good.

Robin: But your track day, it was great.

Travis: Like I'm totally addicted. Like I'm like looking at leather suits online. It's like, wow. You know, it's like a spy one, right? Like that's going to save me a little bucks. Like if I can do two a year, okay. Let's see. Maybe I can find like a deal. Is the Labor Day sale still going on? I'll look on eBay, find some used one. I got it all planned out. And I'm like, oh wait, I ain't got no money. I got kids. What am I talking about? Daddy needs some leather jammies. And two it's like, they're great. Like, again, I feel like it falls into the, if I knew then what I know now, it's like, man, I probably should just like, when I started riding motorcycles 14 years ago, I should have bought an arrow stitch suit and a leathers race suit. And then I'd be fine. And that's all I would ever need to have ever bought. You know, I, in retrospect, you know, the first session was like, really? We're going to do this?

Brian: Okay.

Travis: But it's like, oh no, you know, I haven't been down this road before. Right. We're just looking at it and, you know, seeing where it goes. I mean, even after walking it, it's, you know, it's way different on a bike, even at slow speeds. And I'd do it again.

Robin: I know Neil and I knew this. We were both kind of looking at each other like, come on, session three, come on, session three, come on. We knew, we knew what a novice, okay, session one and two, session three.

Travis: If I came back though, like, I think having done it before and I would definitely do it in novice again, now I know how to use that time. Right. So like going out. That's a great point. Slow is fast. Yeah. One, just like having never done the track at speed before, like, yeah, it's great to go out and look and it's like, obviously you're like imprinting in your brain, like where the track just actually goes, but now that I've ridden at speed, now I know it's like, oh yeah, if I can ride this at 40 miles an hour safely, which you can't do when the track is like hot, now I know what I'm actually looking for, like now I know where I'm looking at the pavement and trying to find that like, oh no, see, this is where you'd think the line would be, but it's not because the pavement's all fucky or something. Now I'm, I know enough where it's like, oh, actually doing this at 40 miles an hour is going to be way more useful. Whereas at the time I was like, well, I'm trying to like practice my, like looking through the corners. And when I look through the corner, I'm going to ride over the curb and the grass and cut the corner like three quarters short because I'm looking through the corner and going 40 miles, I'm looking through the corner for 80 and I'm going 40. I remember this. And then, yeah, it was just, it was so much fun. Like I, again, I, I feel like Neil has like warned me, portented me for the meatheads and the douchebags saying like, this is the best novice group he's ever ridden in because yeah, I had, you know, I had no complaint, I mean, other than the one, the one guy who was easy enough to handle once you, once you knew him and you saw it and you timed it, you could just pass them and that was fine, you know, and then there was like one other guy who was like kind of slow on a multistrada, but he was consistent.

Robin: He was polite and consistent.

Travis: Yeah. He wasn't a douchebag. You wait for your moment and you pass them and you just keep going. So it was, it was so much fun and I would do it again. It is, is way different. I try not to have too many expectations. So I don't know what, like what I was expecting, but you know, I wasn't kind of what I had in my mind, but it was really good and it was really fun. It was nicely controlled. It was nicely organized. The pacing was pretty good. Like, I feel like you had just enough time to kind of socialize and hang out a little bit between sessions. Uh, but you got plenty of sessions in though. I mean, I would have ridden until the sun went down if they gave me an opportunity. It'll be interesting to get back out on the street.

Robin: I'm going to talk about that.

Travis: Yeah, I have a thought on that too. Yeah. I've got words. And kind of see, but we'll, we'll do that now. I'm definitely doing it again. I, if I, I want to do one a year until I can't anymore, at least if not two or five.

Robin: I love that. And we'll do this right now, real quick for y'all. I'm going to tell you, Neil knows it directly after a track day. Your street riding is compromised.

Brian: Yes.

Robin: So I took a ride two days after I rode the back quarter of the Wisco Disco route from the Helix. Found myself a lot of patch gravel, a lot of unmistakably. I have to deal with this pavement and it really slows your role because you don't want to apply like that track day mentality to street riding. That's just not how it's done. I really had to dial it down and find my way back to my street riding for an entire day for 150 miles of that's how you corner in public. That's how you corner in public. Now I'm back. Okay.

Brian: I'll do the same. Like I've only just errand running and stuff around town, but yeah. At first it seems like, wow, there's so much room. I could totally pass this Mazda. Oh yeah, no problem. You know, you gotta put those thoughts out of your head and get back into survival mode. How was your track day? It was great. Again, I didn't know what to expect. I tried not to expect anything other than we're going to ride in circles for a while, which we did. And I was very happy with that. We had talked about this before, but there's a thing called beginner mind and I was really striving to just empty out, expect, do what the nice man in the yellow shirt tells me to. Listen to what he says. Don't touch other people's motorcycles or other people with your motorcycle. That was one of his rules. It's almost like the riding part was on autopilot. You know, I know how to ride. Absorbing all the rest was really difficult. Remembering what to do when you saw the checkered flag here, but not here. The second to last session, something like that, I was the first time I had seen them waving the checkered flag on the front straight. And so I could not remember if you do the rest of the lap on the right side with your hand in the air like you just don't care, or if you just keep going. And Jason immediately knew it was up. He went right around me and he tapped. And later on, he's like, yeah, that just tells you it's coming. You keep going. Have fun until you get to the back checkered flag. You know, just details like that. Just this new environment. All the details are really difficult to keep it all in one place. The overall pace of how they kind of ladled, they spoon fed you information.

Travis: Well, that's why you got the prettiest unicorn sticker. They know you did the class.

Brian: Lavish. Must be, yeah. Lavicorn. Yeah. It's like a Taylor Swift unicorn. I mean, anyway, she's got a place of honor in my garage.

Robin: That was the first thing I saw when you showed that. I was like, I'd smash that.

Brian: But they spoon fed you information at a pace that took all my attention. Anyway, I don't know about you guys.

Travis: Yeah, it was definitely a little bit of drinking from the fire hose.

Brian: Robin's back there bored, but you know, whatever.

Travis: But he's done it before.

Robin: I had a great time.

Travis: The last session I had a little bit of like executive dysfunction and where I'm like, okay. Like, you know, like the, especially like the first, like maybe like the third session, fourth session, like when they kind of cut you loose a little bit, it was just like, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. But like, after that I was like, okay, wait, no, I need to like use this time productively, pick a thing to focus on and like build a skill and do that. And like by the last session, I was like, what is the thing? What is it? Like I'm on my warmup lap and I'm like, what am I doing this lap? What is my goal? Like, what is my one thing? Cause like, I can just go fast, but it's like, then I'm just going to kind of fuck up and fudge every corner and that'd be fine. But like, no, I want to have like a goal. I want to accomplish something. And that was like really hard. Cause you can't do it all. It's like, even on a small track like that, there's so much to learn.

Robin: That's an interesting comment. I want to conclude it there. But at the same time, my goal was to lower the number of curves in the track. Each session for me was reducing the number of turns. Once I do that feeling confident in every line point and turn in an acceleration point.

Travis: There's turn one, turn two is basically a kink. So that doesn't count. There's the whole turn three complex. There's turns four and five. There's six. There's seven.

Neil: Not in my world.

Travis: Four and five are like one. Yes. Yeah. Four and five are one. That's what I said. So there's turn one, the turn three complex, four, five, six, and seven. It's right-hander, right-hander, left, right-hander, right-hander.

Robin: Okay. I hear you mind this. I'm going to say that there's turn one. There's turn two, turn three goes all the way to three B. If you do it right. Turn four goes all the way to six and then turn six goes all the way to seven.

Travis: Are you like linking six, six silos, six A and seven into one turn?

Robin: Six all the way to seven is one turn because it's six. I'm punching it. Full tilt, grinding through that full force all the way to the turn in itself. And by the time I realized all of that, that's when the bike wouldn't start.

Travis: That's true. My goal last session was just to have loose hands to not tense up at any point. And I did really good until I hit traffic and had to figure out how to fucking pass someone. And then I would tense up again. And then I'd be like, oh, just fucking relax, you idiot. And then I would relax for a little bit. And then I caught some people and I had to pass them and I tensed up and then I relaxed again. But the reason I was catching people is because I was relaxed. I think I was going faster, even though I was trying less hard.

Robin: Sitting on a bar stool, typing an email. Can't type an email if you're leaning on the keyboard.

Brian: One of the thoughts I wrote down, I think this was the right attitude. I hope it was. I was focused on doing everything correctly and not worrying about the speed. I sold it to my wife as a training day and that's how you go. I'd recommend it to anyone. You sure are doing a lot of training days this year. I'm so stupid. I need so much training.

Travis: What did the track walk guy said when he was a racer? He owed Michelin $24,000 in tires at the end of the season.

Brian: Yeah. He had to pay off Michelin $24,000 in one winter. Jeez. Yeah. The guy was nuts. The biggest leap of faith in the whole thing was heading into turn one. Because you're at the end of a big straight and you're going all the way from the left to all the way to the right. And hopefully everybody behind you has got their poop in a group.

Robin: Yeah, I get that. But on you, 115 miles down to 15 miles an hour, whatever you want to take that corner at. It's all about the flag booth.

Brian: Yeah. I knew I had my shit together, but I knew there was a bunch of people coming behind me who didn't know how to do anything but yank the wires. And so that was a little nerve wracking every time you dove in. Every time you dive right into turn one, it was on my mind.

Robin: We got to wrap this up. Anything else anybody wants to say real quick?

Travis: I just like to be talking about the guy who blew turn one into the grass the last session of the day.

Robin: We don't need to because I got a video of Neil making a gorgeous turn and then slowly cinematically panned to that guy sitting in the grass. Neil has just owned the turn. It was a thing of beauty and is going not the way that guy went. And I wanted to make sure the guys and he looked up and he saw me with the camera.

Neil: That was one of the douchebags. And the funny thing, he passed me after turn six, just past the silo. And I was like, oh, crap, is that one of the douchebags? And when he made it down to turn seven, he nailed it. I was like, wait, maybe that's not the douchebag. And then when he hit turn one and actually didn't turn, I was like, oh, that was the douchebag.

Travis: He didn't listen. Everyone, everyone said last session, dial it back 10%, dial it back last session. You're tired. It's hot. It's a long day. He didn't listen. Didn't listen to a lot of things.

Brian: Is that a douchebag? No. Yes. No. Oh, we have in the grass. Houston, we have douchebag.

Neil: He had his high moment and his low moment within one minute of each other because he nailed seven.

Robin: Well, maybe he's not a douchebag. Maybe he's narcoleptic. At any rate, everybody good to rock out?

Travis: Sure. I did finish my half liter of high proof beer.

Robin: Brian, you want to take us out of here?