Robin: In this episode, terminology, dermatology, the null and void wrenching and writing word salad techno jargon that can often reverse engineer the goal of any writing and or wrenching conversation.

Brian: Opening announcements, corrections, and banter. What do you have, Robin?

Robin: Lots. For starters, I don't know where to begin with this. We lost a great jazz musician. I believe it was two days ago. Rest in peace, jazz legend, Jack Dejanette. This is one of the great drummers who inspired my playing for sure. I was never going to become the incredible musician that he was, but he inspired me to at least try. Uh, there's a picture of him that you can find. If you look up Jack Dejanette motorcycle, you'll see a great photo from jazz times. It's just him on, I think it's a Virago. I I'm not sure what that bike is. Jordan would know. He, he saw this picture and already wanted to interject about it. And I thought it'd be great to have him do a piece. Uh, but there's a picture of Jack Dejanette on this motorcycle in the middle of nowhere by his cabin with his dog, who is appropriately named magic. Jack Dejanette is and was a beautiful, humble jazz musician who was on countless records. He has two Grammy awards, one's for a jazz instrumental album. The other for a new age album. Those are 2022 and 2009. But no matter his music blanketed, the entire jazz community with the perfect sheen, anybody who knows their weight in jazz, he was on Miles Davis's bitches brew and live evil. Enough said my personal favorite album. He was on his Bill Evans live at the Montreux jazz festival, which I played to religiously in my practice youth. And when it's time to go practice, I put that on, but the headphones on that was the album I was playing too. So if you look up Jack Dejanette, Pat Metheny, Herbie Hancock, and Dave Holland, Shadow Dance, it has a most excellent drum solo in its opening by Jack. A lot of people may look at this as we've suffered a huge loss. Of course we have, but there were incredible gains in being able to say that we had the opportunity to hear him. So look at that, put on a record, put on a big smile and get to it. Nice. Now onto fun stuff. Next off, goodbye, Cloudflare. GFYS. If you know what that stands for. I mean it from the bottom of my heart. What's wrong with Cloudflare? The podcast was down and it was only down with independent apps that could accept podcast feeds. The kind of app where you could actually enter the feed. Some of them were lucky enough that they would actually have a directory where you could search for podcasts and check out different things. You know, my personal favorite playback app is Antenapod. I just think it's a great app. Yeah, that's what I use. Shout out Antenapod if you want to sponsor us. The other day I go in to play back our latest episode. The feed won't refresh and I can't play any episodes. I test other podcasts, plays fine. I test the waters with some other independent players, no go. The big ones, the megalith companies that just bludgeon the feed into oblivion, namely Amazon, Spotify. Apple, yeah. We didn't suffer under those. They did still work. That really got my goat. So it turns out after I talked to our host, they said, well, everything's installed correctly. And then I talked to Antenapod and they said, I mean, it plays fine on my modern device. It turns out for older devices, Cloudflare is using SSL.com for their certificates. This makes use of an older protocol that is becoming less and less accepted throughout the internet. Cloudflare alone is what buckled the feed. And to fix this, a person chimed in and said, what you need to do is use the API. A bunch of server talk basically to tell it to start using Google for the SSL certificates from here on. Interesting. If I had to get this far to try to figure out what the problem was, that's a bigger problem than the problem itself. Let's just juke the issue. So yeah, no more Cloudflare, more pessimistic negativity with this next bit.

Brian: This one's fun. If you want to write for TRO.byte, just visit write.tro.byte in your web browser. You have to know how to spell right in order to write. The non-bot, non-spam we receive asking how much we charge for articles to appear. This is not how we operate, but if you email us directly asking how much we charge to publish your partnership post, the price is somewhere between five grand, $237,428.89, but if you visit write.tro.byte, it's free. Funny how that works. We get a lot of that too. You know, how much for this or, you know, yeah.

Robin: Hello, my name is John Smith and I am article right. I like podcasts. That is your parentheses tro.byte and then some tags that are clearly this is a bot. Right.

Brian: I am totally not a bot. I'm not even an AI. An AI would be an improvement.

Robin: Yeah. I'm Prince yada yada. And if I give you a hundred thousand dollars, first, I need you to deposit 50 cents into this account. Also, here's an announcement. We're on YouTube now. The podcast is on YouTube. That's going to be a bear to maintain, but I do know how I'm going to handle it. Well, there we are. We're on YouTube. This was a heavy handed move as they copy every single episode and it's an all full ingestion. They don't just use the feed. They actually bring in the audio file with our ads. So if you hear any advertisements for like castor oil or something like that, yay, YouTube, we're on YouTube. Cool. Real quick corrections. This one's on me. Shout out to listener KB. You know who you are. Who reached out to let us know about a conversation flub on my part, whereby I claimed to use noise canceling earbuds in my helmet, my earbuds are audio active, yes, but noise canceling. Not so much. Oops. Edited that out. KB you rock. Thank you, sir. What's been going on, Brian? Tell me everything.

Brian: In last week's episode, I left out a big part of my winter madness routine. I wanted to just touch that briefly, just lightly. But a large part of that is it's time to reconnect with family because in the summer I'm always off doing something and blah, blah, blah. I mean, I kind of lose track and I consider winter a good time to, you know, lit up the wife in the minivan and head out and tour the relations. See how that's going on. And that's kind of a big one. We kind of talked about reconnecting to old friends, but yeah, connect the family, you know, those people you haven't seen all summer because you're out running the roads. And I don't know why, but I read, I reread Lord of the Rings and Moby Dick every winter. I don't know why, but that's part of my routine.

Robin: Long pages.

Brian: Yes. Yeah. You have to read Moby Dick once. And then the next time, next time you read it, you can skip the stuff in the middle where he goes off on tangents and just stick to the fun parts and it makes it go a lot faster and it's a lot more fun, you got it, you got to soak it in completely at least once.

Robin: That's big and bold. I was telling somebody I needed some heavy reading at one point. They're just sort of casually said, Shogun, and then just walked away. Oh, damn.

Brian: I'm like a little heavy handed. That's a little, that's yeah. I, I need to do some exercise before picking that up. The gigantic cruiser Boulevard motorcycle in my garage is done and gone. It's charging. It's got a phone charger on it. Everything's changed. It's not leaking oil. Tires are changed and a million other things. A bunch of fasteners were replaced. I got rid of the five 16th and quarter inch crap that somebody crammed into many spots. Test riding a cruiser is always weird because you actually have to use the rear brake. You know, you got to stomp that giant rubber pedal. It's very strange. It's not natural. Lots of room in the garage now. It's crazy. One thing that bopped up a few days ago is a Blackhawk Farms Raceway is getting repaved. I don't know. Maybe it's cause I do a lot of dual sport riding, but it was kind of fun, you know, cause it was all jacked up. I don't know. Yeah. So supposedly they'll, they'll be done with the repaving by the end of the year. And yeah, there's some pictures on their website. Uh, it's pretty cool.

Robin: I got to add this to the super slick, ultra badass motorcycle mega positive, incredible power, which is super slick, ultra badass. And as a sidebar, incredibly powerful.

Brian: In case you're wondering, I can see why it was time though. It was pretty jacked up and I would have. And, and, and from what I understand, I haven't ridden there in the rain, but from what I understand, it's, uh, it's problematic in the rain. And there, and so they're, they're kind of dealing with the, uh, with the slope of the pavement a little bit better this, this time around. So it's good to see. Good to see. Yeah, man. Glad, glad some of our money went to a good cause. Cause like when we went to road America, it was raining and I'd never been there in the dry or whatever, but, uh, road America was mostly new, except there were a couple of sections where it had some old pavement going on and that was, it was kind of squirrely and weird.

Robin: It was dramatically obvious too.

Brian: Cause of the transition is so exacerbated. So Robin, what about you? What you got going on? What's happening? What is on your mind? What is in front of your eyeballs these days?

Robin: Well, in order, you know, it's starting to cool down here too. Surprisingly enough, that just started today. What? Yeah, I'm talking like sixties. Oh, you poor babies. Yeah, I'm not going to lie. I, it's nice. And it's going to be, it's going to warm up again. So reading, I've been trying to find more time to do it. And that time just kind of gets away from me every day, just with work and hobbies and general excitement. So, uh, I've been reading Rick Rubin's, the creative act, a way of being. Shout out to Steph for that, our friend, Steph and Paul, it's a great book. I'm slow and lazy and self-indulgent before it's time to read. So it's always 50, 50, whether or not I'm going to do it or not. But the whole book, it starts out being very, how do I say this? If anybody doesn't know who Rick Rubin is, he produced Licensed to Ill, or at least had a hand in it. He's the guy with the beard. He's the dude with the beard, Metallica's Black Album. He weighed in on a lot of Nirvana stuff. The whole thing starts out with everything I didn't expect, which was a lot of, like the $10 word drop from the beginning, branch off of the word eloquent and keep adding syllables, how many syllables can I reach by the end of this paragraph kind of thing? So at first I was like, yeah, all right, sure. Arty art, art, art, art. And then by the third entry, and it's kind of like a journal entry. I realized these were getting short. They were just short, meaningful things. He blatantly tells you in the beginning, you can take it or leave it. It gets better and better and better. Seems like his mindset and his writing develops over the course to where it's like, okay, look, I know I'm using a lot of $10 words here, but it feels good. I like doing it. So can you just try to find the message in this? And I did. It's a good read. It's inspiring. It helps you tap into sensitivities that could figuratively apply to writing. I kind of dig that. Also shout out to Steve last nameless. So I had a first go of changing tires on a 1970 Honda CB 350 with spoke rims. We did confirm it does have tubes. Well, yeah, immediately backtracked so that he could order spares. I'm not going to change those without spare tubes. Yeah. We were reminded of a lot of nuances from my 1982 Yamaha Seiko 400 from way back when analog everything, the rear drum brake adjustment and bracing set up that, that was something I had to call Jordan on video for a 30 second itemized reminder of how to do what. So that tiny itty bitty little dot on the rear brake actuator. Gotta love that. Uh, I forgot the, you know, loosen it all the way, line it up, get the bite on, buckle it on, then start the adjustment. Just hadn't done it for a while, but it all came back really quick, way quicker than like updating firmware on a TFT display from a modern bike, you know? Yeah. Here's how it went. Just so you know, and I would love for you to weigh in on this. Pulled the rear wheel, got it on the Rebiconda no bead to break. There's just no beat. It's a tube tire. So the bead and the dry rod on the tires just sort of went flat and it was just like, what do you want to do? So tire iron under the rubber, got it up, got the duck bill on, managed to, uh, lubricate the entire rim. Got the wraparound done, reached in, felt the tube and realized, okay, no. Now my plan is, cause he's now got two new tubes and spoke weights. Remove one side of the tire, remove the tube, remove the other side of the tire, and then reverse that process. No spoons. Get one side of the tire on, get it to the edge, feed the tube in, feed the nozzle through, carefully. Make sure I don't pinch it. There's not going to be any tire irons really involved. It's all going to be the duck bill and soap, technically baby shampoo. So I feel like that should go just fine. I don't want to damage the tubes. I don't plan on it. I think this system will work. That'll be good to go. Then he'll have his bike back.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. The big thing to avoid pinching tubes is never, never go past vertical on your tire iron. If you're going to use the Ravaconda, then that shouldn't be a concern.

Robin: It's just on the rim and pushes the lip of a tire over the rim.

Brian: But yeah, if you're using tire irons, if you never go past vertical on the tire iron, then you cannot pinch a tube unless you really work at it. You go past vertical, then you're going to pinch a tube and then you're going to have, then you're going to be mad and go find another tube. And like my KLR650 still has tubes. Uh, I changed tires on a, on a BMW a while back that had surprise tubes. I didn't realize they, it was, it was like the year before they switched to the tubeless spoked rims.

Robin: Well, they, they make a kit too. It's like, there's this shellac and a rubber seal that I keep telling him, why don't you just do this?

Brian: I don't trust that stuff, man. I don't think it's, yeah.

Robin: Well, that's a good warmup for what I'm going to say to your freaking, your, your question answers. I've got, I've got words for you, sir. Oh, good.

Brian: Let's debate. All right. Next up is listener questions. First off, if you'd like us to field your questions, visit email.tro.bike in your web browser to place electronical messages into our brain cavities. So I saw this in the wild and I had things that I thought, and Robin has things that he thinks. And so let's see what everybody else thinks. Um, OZ whatever ass just picked up my third bike. I'd like to keep my bikes on battery tenders just to be safe, but instead of buying a third one and having little boxes all around the garage, bro. I was looking into buying a single unit that I can use for all three, a single battery tender to, to use on all three. Any suggestions or should I just buy another one and be done with it?

Robin: You answer, you know what? You just gave me an idea that would be a great answer for this guy, but you go ahead and be you.

Brian: All right. This is going to feel a little controversial, I think, because there's a lot of, there's, there's some religion around batteries that people have. A lot of people don't want to hear this, but don't leave your bike on a battery tender 24, 7, 3 65. You don't need to do it. And it could overcharge your battery and cause problems.

Robin: What is a standard fully charged voltage for a non-operative battery? At least 12.8. Fair. How high can it get in some cases?

Brian: Um, sometimes you'll see it over 13. I think lithium ion batteries are end up a little bit different. I'm not sure. Oh, they got with them much.

Robin: Yeah. That's scary territory. Honestly, they have a chip set.

Brian: The, yeah, the lithium batteries have a battery management, a BMS battery management system in them, um, with a chip that does stuff and, and it manages all that. So there's, there's a couple of reasons for that one. Uh, you're going to shorten, you're actually going to end up shortening your batteries lifespan because you're constantly keeping it at like 99% to a hundred percent and you're constantly bumping it up and so forth, you know, over time that will kind of the battery won't last as long, you know, you're not going to get, you may not get four years, you may get two years, that kind of thing. The other thing, and the main reason I don't do this myself is that if you look inside those battery tender, whether that's the brand or other ones, the stuff in there is not exactly what you'd call NASA grade, and if you look at like the causes of house fires and garage fires, it's battery, like tool batteries, all kinds of battery chargers are, are a leading cause of that. So I don't want to leave those things plugged in when I'm not there. No ominous notions. So basically, and you don't need it. If, if, if your bike is working, right. If your bike, if your bike is charging, then ride the bike every couple of weeks and, and you don't need to plug in the battery every time you stop or every night. So what you can do over the winter, if you have a long winter layoff, or if it's a bike or a battery, that's going to be down for a while while you're getting parts or whatever, put it on the battery tender for like an hour or two every month or so. That's all you need. Just top it up every once in a while and leave it alone. Plug it in to the, let the light goes green and that's it. That's all you need. I mean, yes, there are battery tender brand devices and similar devices that can charge multiple batteries. Or he could just buy another one. What I'm saying is that he should not leave them all plugged in all the time. Stop it. Okay. Move that, move around between the bikes, uh, once a month or so. Plug in the bike for a little bit and be done with it or just ride the damn thing once in a while.

Robin: Which is always a good option if you can, although you might not get to do that up North or you may have winterized the bike and we do have winterization instructions for those of you who are going to be facing five feet of snow for an extended stay in your abode. I both agree and disagree with Brian. I'm way less concerned about anything truly bad happening to the battery as a being plugged into a basic battery tender junior is what we're talking about. So it's like, basically if something were to really go wrong, you have five amps of nope, that could figuratively happen. It's never happened to me personally. So all of our bikes over the course of three or four winters, constantly on a battery tender in our garage. So the bandit, the stripple, the Hawk GT, the Nighthawk 250, the scooter. At one point a Yamaha Vision. Anyhow, point is they sat with a battery tender junior on each and every one of them for the entire winter. There were no obvious negative effects. Those weren't years that I lost a battery, so to speak. So my point is I might do something like that. Fortunately, I don't have to, because I get to ride all year, which is gonna be fantastic. But to keep the topic, what it is, would I worry so much about it? No. At the same time, I like Brian's logic. If you let the bike sit for a week, top it up, I don't think that's going to be any different than if you left it on and caused harm that Brian tells you will definitely, definitely, definitely happen.

Brian: Oh, I see what we're doing here.

Robin: Here's my other concept too. You actually inspired a great idea. Imagine if you have a battery tender junior and an SAE switchboard and every day you just switch which bike the output is going to, so let's say you got three bikes, you go from the battery tender junior to the SAE insert on the switch and you have three outs that go to each bike and every day you just turn the knob to the next bike, then that bike gets its attention for the day and you do it every morning and whatever. That's not a bad thing either because it gives it time to kind of find its way out, you know?

Brian: Yeah, and another thing I've seen people do, and I think that's not a bad idea if you just want to automate the whole thing, there are these little timers you can get to plug into the wall and it's got day of the week and hour and some of them are just, it's like a little manual thing, like a washing machine timer, but anyway, you can set those to turn on like for one hour, one day out of the week and that's all you need. So something like that, if you really want to automate it, it would absolutely be plenty and would actually keep, you know, keep everything topped up and the bike would be perfectly fine. The related thing is you see, if your bike is not charging the battery, there's something wrong with the bike. So fix the damn thing. Yeah. That's one thing you see, especially in vintage bikes, people are like, Oh, well, these charging systems don't work well. Well, they can fix it. I mean, I'm to be blunt. Unless they're six volt, in which case hack it. Yeah, really? Yeah. Go get some flashlight batteries. And, uh, and the other thing, and this is, this is going to be controversial. Maybe I don't know, but I replace motorcycle batteries every four years. Just so I don't have to deal with the damn inconvenience of finding one when it suddenly goes bad. Uh, car batteries are every five years. And again, that's just me. That's just my experience. That's about, that's how long they last. That's kind of when the reliability goes off a cliff is four years on motorcycle batteries, five years on car batteries. And I just, I just replace them. It's it pencils out to like $2 a month. Batteries are cheap.

Robin: We've actually focused on the topic too much because it's just a damn battery. Just replace it. Is this horse dead?

Brian: Is this horse dead? Have we beat it? All right. Segment one, the meat in this sandwich terminology, dermatology. I don't even know what the hell that means, but that's kind of what we're talking about. We don't know what the hell things mean.

Robin: Any terminology in motorcycling or wrenching or worldly knowledge or alien invasions. A comparison study between the very same statements arrives at different defined conclusions. Basically concepts in motorcycling terminology that means two different things, depending on who you're talking to, which writing style, which curriculum. Nobody knows what they're talking about anymore, but they come away feeling like they had some important discussion because the words were in it and it just doesn't always work. For example, I posed this question to the super slick, ultra badass motorcycle, mega positive, incredible power, which by the way is super slick, ultra badass. And as a sidebar, incredibly powerful. These were their comments. All right. We're going to go with abbreviations. Of course, everybody should know who they are. All right. Go with your abbreviations, JD. He mentions hand tight. Whenever I tighten the jar, I only know that it's tight enough after the glass shatters in my bare hands. Then and only then do I know. What is hand tight?

Brian: Depends on the hand.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: I mean, am I Andre the giant? I worked on a bike after a guy who was, who was like a UFC fighter. He was a huge moose of a beast. If you're a gigantic monster Tyrannosaurus beast, use two fingers. That's hand tight. But yeah, that's, that's true. You know, what are you, what's the next one? I hope I've got the right spirit here, but one that's commonly misunderstood and you see it in manuals all the time and people get it wrong is the left side and the right side of the bike. If you're standing in front of the bike and you're looking at the bike, your left is the bike's right. Yep. Always, always, always. Things are from the perspective of someone sitting on the bike, like they're going to ride it.

Robin: Be the rider and be the rider.

Brian: And then that will tell you what's the left and what's the right.

Robin: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Brian: It's, it's really, it's really funny how that gets misunderstood. You know, when people are standing, like they're standing in front of the bikes, working, working on it or whatever, I've seen it happen. It's hilarious. It's tragic and hilarious. And the other related topic on that is that if you notice a lot of parts where it matters, we'll have a marking or an arrow or a number on them or something like that, that will tell you where they go and what the orientation is. Like a handlebar clamp, we'll have a dot or an arrow or something. And that always goes in the front. If you look closely on parts, you'll see a lot of that. Oh, this is the front. Okay. All right. What you got? So this is a twofer MW who says not above the full mark. You're going to dump in too much oil. That's the context. People want to fill that little window. They can't help it.

Robin: Another one for this twofer, carefully tighten as opposed to what? Caution to the wind. Give me that eight foot two by four. I'm going to attach that to my torque wrench.

Brian: Give me my impact and I'll give it all the yugga-duggas. So another thing you'll see in manuals a lot is cylinder number one, two, three, four, six, whatever you got under there. If it's an engine that's across the frame, like if like a Robin's got a parallel twin or it's a four cylinder engine where it's across the frame. Number one is always on the left. So, and again, left means you're sitting on the bike. Like you're riding it. Even if you can't write it because it's in a million pieces, your left hand, your clutch hand just counts out, you know, one, two, three, four, it's easy. One of the things that really trips you up. A lot of bikes with a V engine read the manual carefully. For example, that Boulevard is working on some other V twins. I've worked on V stroms, things like that. The rear cylinders, number one, you have to be careful when you're setting things like top dead center, things like that. RTFM read the fine manual and that can get confusing. What you got Robin?

Robin: DB brings up. Is it foot pound or pound foot? This one's also a twofer. Riding on the dark side. Now here's the thing. It's supposed to be terminology that means something different, depending on who you talk to. Now, foot pound or pound foot. I happen to know this person well. I always say foot pound. What's the plural?

Brian: Foot pounds. Well, like, is it libs? I want 12 foot pounds. It's not 12 feet pounds. The plural and compound word goes at the end. So anyway, use feet pounds though. If you really want to just be annoying, that's fine. Feets. Yeah. Feets pounds. I need 12 feets pounds. I mangled the English language just for art's sake sometimes. Okay.

Robin: I mangles it. There's a twofer in this one too, where he mentions riding on the dark side. Now the thing of it is that that doesn't mean anything different to me in any other context, unless we get really perverse.

Brian: I think it's got, yeah, it's got one meaning in motorcycling anyway.

Robin: Yeah. It only means one thing. So when you mentioned it, it doesn't have a double. Great way to start a fight though. Yeah. I don't notice any difference. I never go back. I totally make, it doesn't change anything at all. Uh, whatever. So our own Travitron 5000 podcast emeritus, Travis Burleson sent his response and here's his list. And I'm just going to let Brian deal with my words. Divorce gearbox, trellis frame, cradle frame, featherbed frame, rocker slash valve, slash cam cover, slipper clutch, drive lash, cush drive, ADV slash dual sport, cafe racer slash retro style, sport tour, tall rounder, ADV sport, dad bike, UJM, squid, pirate, Ducatista. There's a lot in this.

Brian: Well, the first half was all British stuff. Featherbed frame, your rocker cover. What's a divorce gearbox? Your bike had the gearbox as part of the engine.

Robin: Yes. Component integrated into the entire engine assembly.

Brian: Back in the old days or on, or back in the old days, the transmission was a separate component. So basically if you look at like an old Harley, the primary cover covers a chain or a belt going to the gearbox behind the engine, the engine and the gearbox or the transmission might be from like an, an early British motorcycles. They might be from different manufacturers. And so they would tie them together with a primary chain, usually a chain, uh, and put that under a cover if you were lucky and you didn't want to get your foot caught in it. The entire transmission is its own component. And now they're, now they're all together because it's lighter, et cetera.

Robin: Let's speed it up. The trellis frame is a trellis frame. The cradle frame is going to hold the engine from the underside, the featherbed frame.

Brian: It was an early term from a Triumph. They had the featherbed frame, had the first rear suspension. Motorcycles all used to be hard tails with forks.

Robin: No swing arm.

Brian: Yeah. And so the first swing arm, they called it the featherbed frame. Again, these are all like British, you know, rocker cover is a British term.

Robin: Well, what's the difference between a rocker and a cam?

Brian: None. Actually, one difference is some motorcycles, again, in the olden days had the cams were down below, like a, like a Harley down below. So they called it a rocker cover because the valve, because the push rod went up and there was a rocker to push the valve. So they called it a rocker cover and the cam cover was actually down below. Two terms that point to the same thing. They're not quite identical depending on what's under them. If you mean.

Robin: The thing on top of the engine that covers the top stuff, valve cover is usually. Slipper clutch. Yeah, we know what that means.

Brian: ADDs are the heavyweight boxing champions of dual sport. The cafe racer retro style. Don't even get me into that. That's going to be a conversation that we need to have Jordan on the show for. We'll have him as a co-host for that episode.

Robin: I think it's clear what the term means though. People can picture what you're talking about.

Brian: No, they can't. Because they see a reduced naked bike, a simpleton round headlight motorcycle. And they say, look at the little cafe racer. I haven't heard Dax Shepard say that. So you're talking about what made, what was kind of like a street fighter? No, no, no, no, no. I have prerequisites. Leave the fenders on it. Clubman's and rear sets. It needs to be one of the big four or British. Okay. The point is it's going to be a horseback rider in the gallop position with Clubman's and rear sets or Z bars, but it's going to be a gallop position ride. It's not going to be a naked bike with standard tubular handlebars of the typical norm, you know?

Robin: I think it's sufficient to say these all have a lot of overlap and blurriness at the edges. Can we leave it at that? I'll leave it be. And again, I'm just because I do a lot of wrenching the myth and reality of the educated elbow and what that, what that means is just not using a torque wrench, mechanically snug, the feel. Yeah. Tightening stuff by feel. And I do it. I do this a lot. I don't use a torque wrench and let's say, unless it's a critical application. Uh, and I also have a lot of experience and a lot of, you know, and, and so far nothing I've put together has fallen apart. So there's also, there's a reality of that, but there's also, you know, I've come after people to work on things where they use their educated elbow and apparently, uh, they turned into a gorilla for the day and anyway, I'm at the trail breaking versus counter-steering.

Brian: So we'll move on and go to Tom Burns mentions Dykes, dumb name versus side cutters. Good name.

Robin: I agree. What are we talking about here? Oh, you don't know what he's talking about? Yeah, no, I don't. Okay. Yeah. Google diagonal cutters. They're just, it's a pair of pliers with a big cutting that you use for cutting wire.

Brian: Okay. So this is a tool.

Robin: That's all it is. Yeah. A lot of old electricians have the habit of calling them, pardon the expression Dykes, because standing for diagonal cutters, nothing to do with, uh, anyway. Uh, but yeah, it can raise an eyebrow in, in certain, in, in some companies. So just call them your side cutters or diagonal cutters or give me them cutty things over there, you know, whatever.

Brian: You know, I think if you try to convince everybody to say it the way you want them to say it, like in places like Ireland or Australia, that's an ass whooping.

Robin: Could be. Yeah. I'm going to lump a lot of crap together in under writing technique here. And what I'm talking about is this, this unspecific, unactionable advice that you always hear, like be smooth, man, or ride your own ride or keep your head on a swivel, man. They're trying to kill you out there. I mean, this is all true stuff. You know, you should be smooth. You should ride your own ride. You should keep your head on a swivel and yes, they are trying to kill you, but it's kind of one of those things. If you're, if you're trying to give someone specific advice or dare we say coaching, then it needs to be a lot more specific than that. That's kind of like, there's, there's a lot of bullshit in these areas.

Brian: I bullshit full on bullshit.

Robin: How do you do that?

Brian: Unspecific, unactionable advice, like be smooth, ride your own ride, keep your head on a swivel.

Robin: This is, this is all great advice.

Brian: If the person you're saying this to doesn't understand and they make it known that they didn't understand and you elaborate on it, you are then breaking it down to the level at which they can receive the concept. Now that does not involve any specific manner because everybody learns different. I think the count, I don't remember what the count is. It's something like four or five, 17 different kinds of learners in the world to be a visual or directional and whatever, this is why I got into the argument about total control methods versus MSF methods, and I wrote a lengthy article about this that points to the fact that it doesn't matter. Are you getting what you need out of it? Are you happy? Are you developing as a writer? These are good things.

Robin: That's a good point. Yeah. Someone, like if you say be smooth to someone and they're like, I don't know what you mean, then that's the point to be more specific.

Brian: Scope is the word we're looking for here. Excellent point. For example, my favorite one is good coaching is specific and actionable. Well, no, good coaching results in vague actions that fit within the boundaries of what you're hoping the student will take on.

Robin: Fair enough. Oh, we're pissing people off. So while we're at it, let's see. These are things I hate to see. And I think people don't understand what they're talking about when they talk about this, like, dude, bro, bro, I want to drag a knee, bro. How do I drag a knee? How do I get rid of my chicken strips, bro? Sandpaper cart before horse putting. You are, these are not the goals.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Uh, Valentino Rossi did not drag his knee while riding his motorcycle because it looks cool and you want to be look cool. He did it because it was the necessary thing to do to get around the corner at the maximum velocity with the minimum energy expenditure. Your goal is not to drag a knee. Your goal is to smoothly get around the track as fast as possible. The knee dragging BS, you know, that happens. You know, I want to drag an elbow, you know, that stuff. You see people do this at track days. You see people do this on the street, which is really appalling. They get the concept and they don't understand quite why it's there. They'll stick their knees way, way, way out on the street and then totally screw up their technique in other ways. You know, look at my tires, my chicken strips. You know how to get rid of my chicken strips. I did learn to ride, bro. Take a class. Maybe the chicken strips are not the point. People get caught up in this, the cool sounding terminology without, uh, thinking about what they need and what it means.

Brian: Speaking of cool sounding terminology, DS mentions squeeze and ease has my head somewhere else on occasion. Me too. DS me too. Uh, but the last one for my list is gotta be B O and J G N. Bring up the age old trail braking and counter-steering.

Robin: And it's funny. I knew these are going to come up and I'm like, do we want to ban them? And it's like, no, we want them. Because if you ask 20 riders, what, what these things mean, you will get 25 different answers. Yes. And some may be in the area of correct.

Brian: I only know of two that I've accepted. You know what I mean? The rest of the answers are you go with the other group. And I'll see you when we get back to the rally.

Robin: I'll see you at lunch.

Brian: Yeah. You know what? You hate this topic so much that I'm going to refrain and we're going to make it an entire episode. It's going to be an entire segment. One is trail braking and counter-steering.

Robin: I have heard good functional definitions of these. Me too. This is a big one and it's a little alien to Robin's world, but I think it's kind of, uh, kind of interesting. There's a whole category of communication and miscommunication in dual sport riding. Uh, when you're off the pavement, it's really, really, really hard to communicate diff degree of difficulty. Like you're in skiing, you have black diamond, you have blue, you have green, you have bunny Hills and so forth. And when you're, when you're riding off road, I'll put it this way. If, if you are, if you're a writer, that's fresh out of MSF, you can safely traverse just about any piece of payment on the planet. There are a few places with really steep switchbacks or something like that, that that may be a little tough right now, but well wait against traffic. It's you're only good enough for a parking lot, according to our test, but go on, but, uh, when you, when you leave the pavement, suddenly the floor and the ceiling expand almost infinitely. There's, there's this huge range and there's this huge bag of different weird skills you need to get across things safely. It's, it's a really incredibly difficult for people who have these skills and don't even have to think about them anymore to communicate to everybody else. Like how difficult something is or what skills you need to get across it. For example, like a smooth gravel road, you know, there are people who have a lot of trouble, you know, you're on a dual sport bike with knobbies. There are people who get scared to death on a gravel road and hardly do it. And then there are people who think absolutely nothing of, of jumping off a six foot embankment into a Creek, you know, going across this Creek with boulders on the bottom, you know, coming out the other side through grandma's yard, dodging her laundry, coming out in her driveway, you know, there are people who think nothing. And Oh, the, the track goes through here and that's not a problem. Yeah. The terminal there, there's a lot of fun terminology. Like, you know, like baby heads, it's rocks, the size of baby heads. So baby head Hills is always a scary thing. Cause he got all these rocks rolling around and deep mud. That's easy to say. We really need a good classification system or something. I don't know what we need, but there, there's so many dual sport tracks and so many dual sport places I've been where I'm like, you know, I'm not going to do that, or I rode through it five years ago and it scared the hell out of me. And I rode through it this year and didn't even notice, you know, like my skills got better. That's happened several times.

Brian: This is one of those instances where I think that anybody who is approaching dirt riding for the first time, if you want an easy thing that you can say to somebody who's going to lead you on your first go of it, whatever the difficulty may be, you are allowed to convey the fact that I would like to continue moving. I would like to maintain momentum. Gravel roads. I'm not afraid of that. No dirt, gravel, some beach sand. Not really afraid of that either. Did that in Florida on the bandit. We start getting into two track. Okay. I'm going to start being more careful and start listening more to everything that's being told around me. Single track. Okay. I will be in the middle of everybody, please. And I would like some guidance and, and let's see how I do. But at the very least, if you're looking for major challenges at this point, as a newbie, do not involve me. I would like the bike to continue moving forward at an entertaining pace.

Robin: Yeah. Especially dual sport riding. You have to be, you have to be able to say that scares the hell out of me. I'm going around. I'm not doing that. You have to be able to say that. I've done that with water crossings before. It's like, you know, no. See you on the other side. And then there are times I come back three years later, same spot. And I've had education. I've had training. I've had experience. I'm like, oh, no problem. You know, here we go. That's the fun thing about dual sport riding. There's so much, there's so much more width to it, I guess. But yeah, conveying this to people, you're worried that you're riding with, if you haven't ridden with these people much, it's really hard to say this is easy. This is hard. This is medium. You know, this is a double black. I don't know. You know, I, this is double black diamond. It's very difficult to get that across.

Brian: I like the terms you also have here. Same for mechanicing stuff. I think as easy is intimidating as hell for some and vice versa. Now, remember the valve check. I'm thinking of a more deep seated truth to that. I don't find any valve check intimidating unless we've never seen it and time is of the essence. That was the moral of the entire previous story was that's where a mechanic can get very intimidating for some. It's really intimidating for anyone who says it's just not my jam and I have never addressed it. And it's not something I'm used to the concept of that's a hard conversation to navigate when you see somebody who does wrench say, Oh man, it's that that's going to be hard or that's harder. But I had never done shim under bucket until you and I did that together. And now I feel like that's, that's okay. I get it now. There's a couple extra steps and definitely some very important extra timing related safety measures. But the effort was not much different. My favorite term of that though is motherfucker bolts. I love that term.

Robin: The bad-ass bolts. Yeah.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: The thing about that job was what that was interesting is once you had excavated down to the valve cover and the rest was familiar territory to me.

Brian: Yeah, me too. That's the both of us. Once we got the valve cover off, I was like, okay, finally the hard parts over. Yeah. I can see access.

Robin: You can see what all these bits do, that kind of thing. One of the things I've mentioned before is that I've taught several people how to change motorcycle tires. What I think maybe even the majority of them have learned is that they don't want to change their own motorcycle tires and that's okay, like they could do it if they had to gun to their head and they're in Mongolia and there's nobody around or whatever, but several people have just decided, no, I'm not going to do it.

Brian: A truly skilled DIY wrench of a motorcycle enthusiast and at-home mechanic. The sign of this is that they will not judge you. If you take your bike to the dealership or trust us to do it, there is no judgment on that. It's the hack mechanic that will do all the judging for you.

Robin: That's true. The overconfidence is what I cannot respect. That's a very good point. Like for example, why is it impossible to find an old motorcycle where someone has not monkeyed with the wires? What is it about wires that attracts idiots? Get out of the wires. Stop. Get your fingers out of there.

Brian: Stop tying them together in bow ties. It'll be prettier to bow knots. I'm going to do a Windsor.

Robin: Yeah. Go brush your mullet or something. Leave it alone.

Brian: I did promise I am. I'm going to continue to help this gentleman with the 1970 Honda CB350. That sounds fun. It's a good time. I'm fine with it.

Robin: Make sure you get a ride on it. Those things are just so charming.

Brian: It's fun. And I think I'll get a longer ride on it if I finish the job. And maybe on tires that aren't made out of wood. You got it. It's just time. You can't avoid the question that, Oh Jesus, you have responsibilities. You are the co-anchor of radio T R O. You have to tell me, what are we doing next episode?

Robin: Yeah, I came into this episode. I did. I had no idea. I still have no idea. They've reached deep into places. You don't want to know about to find an idea.

Brian: Arms off a cow's ass.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: Shoulder.

Robin: I've got an upper glove up to my shoulder. And anyway, I was going to talk about field repair. Oh, nice. Let's talk about the things we have done. We have seen done the things we were prepared to do all that stuff to keep your bike going to keep your gear going to keep yourself going when you're on the road, off the road, in the hotel, whatever, how do you repair things? How do you keep going?

Brian: That is a topic that you, sir, specifically can rule. I don't have much to add to it. Most of my pre-ride preparatory on the bike, bring that with you stuff as minimal as it is, is intended to thwart those situations. Right. One of my biggest fascinations because it's a weak spot in my mental framework, not critical thinking so much as critical thinking under time constraints and pressure. So when you're on the roadside solving problems creatively in an effective manner, I've seen people solve mechanical related troubles in ways that actually inspire bike improvements upon return, where the thing they did to remedy a situation is better than the original concept, you know, this is your territory.

Robin: You mentioned prep, and I will say that it's a lot more common. I carry a lot of tools. You've seen it. It's a lot more common for that stuff to come out for other people's bikes than my I don't, I don't really enjoy standing in the sun, changing clutch cables or, or whatever, or improvising, but I like to ride. Did they bring a clutch cable? There've been incidents where yes, there was a clutch cable and there've been incidents where, no, we have to improvise one.

Brian: I'm going to say for you, odds are no, but did you and I bring a clutch cable? I often have one with me.

Robin: Yeah, I have an extra clutch cable on my bike, but yeah, it's kind of one of those things, especially because you're leading tours and so forth, people are going to swivel your way a little bit. So anyway, I think it'll be interesting to talk about, you know, what are the things you plan for, what are the strategies you use? We've talked about bits and pieces of this before, but we'll tell some stories. We'll talk strategy. We'll BS and we'll get through it. What was your idea, Robin?

Brian: Oh, I think we need to bring on the hate speech about, uh, counter-steering versus counter-weighting and trail-breaking and what it actually means. That needs to happen because I have my specific definition and it's all encompassing to embrace the level to which people are allowed to understand it on their terms, but they are not allowed to claim it as the absolute, even if it's the absolute.

Robin: That'll be your ship two episodes from now. That sounds like a good one. I have some thoughts and sources, but not as authoritative as, uh, Sir Robin Dean here.

Brian: So who the hell, who the hell am I? I'll edit that shit out. You know, I'm going to edit it out.

Robin: Just some guy. He's some, he's some MSF nerd, training nerd.

Brian: Hi there. Some guy from the internet here. Howdy do. Well, Rockstar, you ready to get out of here?

Robin: Let's get out of here.