Robin: Hello everybody, I'm 75% of Robin Dean.

Travis: I'm like 87.3% of Travis Burleson.

Tim: And I'm Tim Clark, operating at about 85% capacity.

Robin: And this is, in fact, the Writing Obsession podcast. Here we go! Today we'll be talking about... I forgot to fill in that question mark. Uh, post-garage night dog poop and phantom BMWs. We'll also eventually express concerns over industry moaning and the give-a-shift cause. This episode of the Writing Obsession podcast is sponsored by the Ugly Apple Cafe of Madison, Wisconsin, where they use local overstocked produce to offer a quick and tasty breakfast. TheWritingObsession.com is always seeking sponsors for this podcast. Sponsors are given three focused mentions toward the start, middle, and end of their designated episode. Their contributions are put toward bettering the program's content and recording equipment. I'm going to take this opportunity, because it's getting to be that time, to promote our next group riding tour, which is scheduled for spring of next year. Dubbed the Trip Sevens Tour, seven riders will cover seven states in seven days, starting in late April of 2018. It's a twisty sport touring getaway of epic proportions. And we hope you'll sign up! More information about that tour is available via TheWritingObsession.com. Visit the group tours link, which is anchored under the travel in our, under travel in our navigation menu. Actually, that's not even true anymore. I changed up the navigation. So, add in the website. You want to go to articles.

Travis: TheWritingObsession.net.

Robin: It's dot com. You want to, okay, mouse over events, and then click on group tours. So, visit TheWritingObsession.com, and then put your mouse over the events link, and then click on group tours in our navigation menu. Travis, you talk. I can't do it anymore. How are you doing, man?

Travis: Oh, you know, it's just like stuff and things and stuff. Where'd my outline go? Things and stuff. Yeah, moped. I'm working on the moped. I bought a moped. Moped? You know, I'm working on a moped. A moped. It's coming along. This, I painted it. So, the body and the swing arm are all bed liner black, which is easy to touch up, which I like. I got the wheels painted in like a dark metallic silver gray. They kind of look like OEM equipment on a BMW car.

Robin: So, you're saying what was going to be a Ninja 650 is now an actual, it's an R1000S.

Travis: Maybe. The shocks are still Hi-Viz. I couldn't find paint to match the shocks. It was either too yellow or it was too green. I couldn't find anything that was the right Hi-Viz yellow green color.

Robin: It seems like you did get the color of shock you wanted.

Travis: Well, they were on sale.

Robin: There it is.

Travis: They were on clearance because they were Hi-Viz and no one wanted them.

Tim: Could you reach out to the company and find out what paint code they used?

Travis: Oh, you mean? Well, I mean, I could have reached out to treatland.tv and then see who actually manufactures these shocks. It's dot com.

Tim: So, you got to dig pretty deep to find that info.

Travis: Yeah, not worth it. Though my favorite thing is I've been ordering a lot of stuff from treatland.tv for the moped and I don't know where they got it from or why they have it, but they've been sealing all their box with a Victoria's Secret tape.

Tim: Oh, I like that. That's odd.

Travis: So, I got like a big box with like tires, tubes, shocks, gaskets, a bunch of parts in it. It's a big box, just a big strip of pink that says Victoria's Secret on all the edges. And I bet my mail lady, I'm like friend lady. I bet she was like, what are you guys doing?

Robin: Our winter lingerie catalog is absolutely heavy metal. Did you see what I did there? Did you see what I did, Tim? You know what I did?

Tim: Yeah, I was with you on that. Man, I'll tell you what. Nothing, well, nothing. You got to be confusing the hell out of her because what kind of box of panties weighs 10 pounds?

Travis: Or weighs like 40 pounds. It's like shocks and tires. Yeah, dude. But yeah, I painted the tank too. So, the tank is also the gray of the wheels, but it's still chrome on top and then it's going to be gray and then it's going to be black. So, that should come out pretty cool. I'm just waiting for the cure so I can sand it down and polish it up and clear coat it. But yeah, I got hardware today to put the front fender together. I got a drill because after extensive Googling and some other stuff, I'm learning a lot and I messed up and I ordered the wrong fork brace and the wrong fender. But I'm going to make them work.

Robin: You're going to try to flab it?

Travis: Yeah, so there's like, depending on the model year and which model you got, because there's like six different like actual Puk brand mopeds from the era. And then there's all the like mine, like the JC Penny brand. And then there's a Sears brand and then there's a whatever. So, they're all made basically by the same company, but they're all slightly different from each other. And depending on which wheel sets you have and which fender you have and which forks you have. And there's like all these slight variations that I am not accepting stuff on. So, I ordered the wrong fork brace, which I made to work with some spacers. Ordered the wrong fender, which I'm going to make work by drilling some extra holes in it and adding some spacers.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: But it's also a moped, so like, who cares? Like, you can just screw it together. I'm just screwing it together with Home Depot hardware and it'll be fine.

Robin: Yeah. Shoot, I put that on the Hawk GT.

Travis: Yeah, I'm very close to it all. It's metric and it's stainless steel. And if I can get it in stainless steel, it's fine.

Tim: Ain't broke, don't fix it. Is broke, fix it well enough. Some of that hardware might be better than the original equipment.

Travis: Oh, yeah. When I eventually want to rebuild the engine on it and maybe put a big bar kit on it, the engine case is held together with mild steel flathead screws. Oh, my God.

Robin: Wow.

Travis: That are like six inches long. Yeah, so if you can get it apart without it breaking, yeah, I'm going to replace them with hex, stainless steel hexes. But yeah, so and yeah, same thing, like so many of those parts are so rusty by the time I took them off. There's a 40-year-old German mild steel bolt that's like, now just replace it with stainless steel from Home Depot or wherever and it'll be fine. So yeah, but it's got pedals. I got the engine in. I got to put the exhaust together. I think I'm going to use your leftover exhaust packing, Robin, to make the gasket on the exhaust because I don't want to buy it. And it's kind of hard to track down.

Robin: All you got to do is like sweep up your floor and you'll have an entire exhaust setup right there. My last trip to your house with that exhaust effort was the messiest, I'm going to drink and then I'll see you in a week type thing. Yeah.

Travis: What did you do with that, with your fleece that was completely covered in fiberglass?

Robin: It is still in the basement in a bag. It is in a sealed containment scenario in our basement.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: Yeah, but that's, that's it. It looks good. I got to do the wiring too at some point, but like if the engine's on the frame, the wheels are on, the fenders are kind of on, the rear fender's on, I got to put the front fender on. Do the lights, do the ignition, do the wiring, speedo, headlight, all the cables. But it's putting the tires on today, look, I just, it looks, I put the tires, I put the wheels on the bike with the tires on it and I'm just like, ah, excited. Nice. So, and what else is, what else is new? I put, like I got the tall Honda windscreen for the NC700X, found one on eBay cheap, so I figured if I don't like it, I can always sell it for what I paid for it because it's like the used price. And it's, I wrote it the other day and it's just really loud unless I sit, unless I sit perfectly upright, it's like if I slouch, if I sit upright, it's clean air, which might be a good excuse to clean air, or I might modify it and put a lip on it or something. I don't know, but we'll figure that out.

Robin: Those add-on lips never seem to do much good though. They, they try, but it's like the only way that those lips work is if you extend them fully and just make the windshield bigger.

Travis: Yeah. Yeah. So that's basically it. It's like if I, I'm going to modify the mounting points, I can move it up a bit in the mount and then I'm going to put a lip on it and then I think it'll clear my head. So, but yeah, that's, that's about it for, for bike stuff for me. Tim, what have you been up to that I, I've been a part of some of it, but what else have you been up to?

Tim: All right. Well, the, one of the big things was the garage night. It was the first time I've hosted one of those. I'm really happy. A lot of people showed up. I think we had, I don't know, we had 10, 10, 11 guys in there. Yeah.

Robin: Well, I mean, all total, I think I counted 13 people that came by. And Jody.

Tim: And Jody. Yep. Yeah, that was great. There was actually some work done on bikes. Yeah. Nice. Mostly Jody getting her new seat installed. She got a seat concept set for her WR250R.

Travis: And, and Jody's Tim constantly putting the pneumatic staple gun on his junk.

Robin: I wasn't going to say, I was not going to say anything. I was so going to, that was, yeah. Every time I looked over, I was like, wow.

Tim: I did tell him, I'm a little concerned with where you're pointing that thing.

Robin: We had a shop teacher in high school who accidentally drove a nail with a nail gun through his hand, through two boards. I mean, it just, it kind of brought me back to that. And I wasn't in the room for that event. All I remember was that he said, now don't do this. This is one of those things only I should do because I'm in, you know, I'm a teacher here. And he was like, boonk. And he just kind of calmly went, dang it. Go call the nurse.

Tim: All right. You were set. So yeah, we had a good time. Mounted, got the GPS mount on my bike and wired that back to the battery. I'm waiting for the, my PC8, the power distribution block, which did finally come in. I had to go to the post office this morning and pick it up as they apparently won't let something come in from Japan without a signature. So yeah. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. It's a Canadian living in Japan. How, how much can you distrust that guy? So that was the, that was really good. We just barely kept ahead of the cold with both heaters going. And yeah.

Robin: Speaking of which, I have a jet heater you might want. That's like a turbine heater. It's loud. It's louder, but it puts out some serious warmth.

Tim: Yeah, that might be, might be good. I don't know how much cold we're going to have for the rest of the season, but yeah. If you have gotten nowhere to put it, I'll take it. At the moment, I do not.

Robin: Anyhow, go ahead. You were saying? All right.

Tim: All right. So then we, you got, you put your note in the, in the outline here of your dog, because you did come up and hang out and stay the night at my place. And yeah, yeah. Yeah. Still not quite sure what set her off. If it was the F-16s flying out of the Truax airport, what was happening?

Robin: Or if she licked, licked an outlet. She might've licked a power outlet. There is, if that's what happened, it will never. There was an outlet there. She learned something valuable. Like don't do that because it turns her butt into a massive high powered golf course level sprinkler. And it was, I, I, yeah. Sorry, buddy.

Tim: Uh, and I, I appreciate the efforts you put into cleaning it up afterwards. Good Lord. That's, this is gonna be a matter of public record now. It's going to, you know, when it finally warms up, I'm open up the windows and we'll see if we can get the air to clean out a little bit. I should've done it on Saturday, but I didn't think about it. I was too busy taking the bike out for a ride. Oh yeah. Go on. So, um, I, I bundled up. It was high forties when I left the house and I was going to just zing across town, but it felt so damn good. I just kept going and I was out for about four hours with a lunch stop built in there because I had to warm my hands up. My fingertips were starting to get painful because it was so cold. Um, but man, it, it felt great. You know, it, you know, I threw together here a couple notes. Um, one of the big things to notice is the 21 inch front wheel and the 18 inch rear wheel. You know, you got the dirt bike style wheel set on this bike.

Robin: Yeah.

Tim: And with the long suspension, you know, I cranked a couple turns on the preload to give it the suspension in the back a little bit more stiffness for me. So I knew I'm heavier than the last owner. Um, for the most part, like I start out noticing, like it's a heavier turn in the, than the CB 500, but that bike is so tiny and light. I don't, you know, it's hard to expect anything else.

Robin: I mean, you got dual 17s. I've heard this about the ADV bikes where the turn in is a lot more of a lip. Like you do a lot more delayed apex.

Tim: Yeah.

Robin: Yeah.

Tim: Which is fine. That's my normal riding behavior anyways. Yeah. Especially out in, you know, unknown roads, unknown surfaces. Unknown speeds. Yeah. Yeah. But the bike behaved beautifully. I had no surprises other than one surprise with the DCT, which, uh, I was in the drive mode, just the kind of like boring, it's going to short shift, you know, hit six gear by the time you're doing 45. And I was following a car on the back roads going about this car was going slow about 50 and a 55. And I was just waiting, taking my time because the roads were cold. Tires were cold. There was water on the roads and sand on the roads, but I found a spot where I was ready to pass him. And I clicked it over to sport two and hit the gas. And it downshifted two gears and hammered. And I was doing 80 before I really kind of wrapped my head around what was going on and got it under control. Yeah. So, uh, you know, a little back road, narrow back road, I was hitting nearly 90 passing this car.

Robin: I should say, if this is anybody's first listen, since Tim got his new bike, we're talking about. It's a 1000. Africa twin 1000.

Travis: With the DCT.

Robin: Monster beast of a machine. All right, go ahead.

Tim: And that was fantastic. Most of the time I can't even feel the bike shifting underneath me. It's so smooth and it's so seamless that, yeah, it's almost like riding a scooter, a really big scooter. And I, you know, I've had plenty of scooters and I just get a kick out of it. I love that bike. I think I'm going to just enjoy the hell out of it. Um, the one thing that bothers me with it that has bothered me on the CB500 is the damn mirror mounts. Oh, so the. Mirror stock has got at the mirror, a little bit of a pivot so you can adjust your mirrors, but the mount, it's a standard mount, a standard thread into the clutch perch or the brake perch. And then the mirrors stem screws into that piece on the perch with a reverse thread. Okay, so you can, it's mostly for rotational adjustments. Sure. All the vertical and fine adjustments are out at the base of the mirror itself.

Robin: Yeah.

Tim: But it, you lock it down with a jam nut. So you've got a reverse thread jam nut on top of a standard thread base. So you tighten it down and you loosen the base. Yeah. So it really quickly turns into, I'm doing a minor adjustment for the position of the mirror itself. And the whole thing is flapping in the wind and you can't retighten this with your hands at a stoplight. You have to pull over and get the tools out to tighten this thing down.

Robin: Yeah, you do know how many bikes I've screwed up with like vice grips just to mangle that garbage. Like just, I give up and just clamp on it. Just, you know, so you, what's your solution? Are you going to try to get mirrors that are standard thread?

Tim: Well, the short term right now, I'm just loctited the hell out of the base of it. And I'm hoping that when I tighten down the jam nut, it's going to stay put. It's like there was no thread locker on the, on the base at all.

Robin: I hope it will, but I'm sure it won't.

Tim: Yeah, yeah. I just, because I was thinking I was just going to blast around town for a half hour and come back home because it was cold. You know, I didn't bring any tools with me, so I'll just have the tools with me. You know, a couple, I think they're 13 millimeter nuts. Oh, why would it be a convenient number? So usually like, I'll take a small adjustable and I'll have a 13 in my tool roll.

Robin: For modern motorcycling, we have perfected making any maintenance awkward.

Tim: Yes. Yep. So this is my first bike with traction control and ABS and ride modes and all that. So I've got a whole lot of things to play with. I only saw the traction control light flash once on kind of an ugly train track crossing in town. I have a feeling that most of the time I won't see that light because when the traction control is flashing, I'm probably worried about other things than looking at a damn flashing light. Yeah, you can feel the bike. Yeah, but I did have it because it was winter conditions. I was headed on the most intrusive, sensitive setting.

Robin: And courtship setting.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't make anyone have to white knuckle too hard. I've never had a bike with ABS before either. I'm pretty excited about that. I have had so many situations where I came into a corner too hot or something surprised me and had to get on the brakes hard. I've in the past gotten away with it because I was on really lightweight bikes. Like I remember dragging the rear end around a corner on the DRZ. That I had no business of coming out of that corner alive. Yes. I mean, you've seen me at some of my most aggressive, so. Yeah. I got caught out by this bad corner out on the Kettle Moraine area in southeast Wisconsin. Where it would say, come up a hill and it's a descending left hand that starts out with a bank in your favor and finishes with a bank out of your favor. And that transition, I always forget that that corner is there. And I've done it twice on that road and I've nearly gone down both times.

Robin: That's one of those situations where you're, the transfer of gravity while you're braking is what's going to really screw everything up. I was thinking that with, I'm glad that all of us, and I mean all three of us, have learned to ride assertively and with pep without ABS of any kind. Because otherwise, you know, there's a lot of riders that they're coming into the game and just like, all right, well, whatever, ABS. And it's like, oh, you don't even know. So they can just grab it like an on-off switch and maintain the word grab, you know, instead of like manipulating the brake and.

Tim: Yeah. And I have no problem with using the brakes aggressively, but I generally don't want to ever be in a, find myself in a situation where I have to grab it hard enough that I see the ABS come on. That means I haven't planned ahead. Now we have it.

Travis: Well, you guys have, I don't have any ABS.

Tim: Yeah, I'm considering it more if I get in a situation where I'm already being aggressive and oh my God, there's sand or something like that.

Travis: Travis, do you have ABS? No. You could only on the NC 700, you only can get it on the, on the DCT model for some reason, because Honda's don't like that.

Robin: Awesome.

Travis: Yep.

Tim: So now I'm looking at engine protection, skid plates, engine guards. Oh, you're a buying man. You're spending. Yeah. Well, I'm hoping that the sale of the CB500 is going to offset those costs. So I need luggage and then, then I just need to buy a lot of gas. I think that's the next plan. Yeah. Buy a lot of gas and spend a lot of time on the thing. And that's, that's pretty much everything I got on there. How about you, Robin?

Robin: Um, well, you know, nothing, not, not really much. I mean, not much has been going on. I've been feeling kind of in the weather and it's not really been up too much, not too much, not too much going on. I bought a 2016 BMW R 1200 RS with only 560 miles on it. It's maxed out on features. That's right. I finally broke down. Was this a demo bike? This was not a demo bike. This was a bought bike where the previous owner bought the bike, learned of his wife's pregnancy. And despite all angles of his family saying, maybe you should, you know, take that thing back. He was already kind of voluntary about it. So he returned the bike to the dealership with only 560 miles on it, which means when they take that bike in, they immediately do the 600 mile service. So this bike, uh, has the, the 600 mile service is already done 560 total miles on it. It is cherry and it has all the fixes. So I think it's maxed out. There are a couple of features I'm reading about in the manual that I'm not sure whether or not this bike has, but it's got ABS. It came with a GPS. It's got the Navigator 5 there. It's got cruise control. It's got shift assist. It's got an electronically adjusted suspension. It's got the factory luggage, including the top case, uh, heated grips come standard. It has a fully adjustable windscreen and the terror of financing a long-term purchase.

Travis: So is the windscreen, is it, uh, like, can you adjust it with the zero numbers, like a pinch and lift or is it electronic?

Robin: Uh, it's pinch and lift. You basically grab the top of it and drag it upward. It's got four settings on there. There are some other ones.

Travis: Oh, you just, you just yank it and it moves basically.

Robin: You just yank it and it moves. But then I've seen now there are three other windscreens I could get. So if I don't like this one, then on down the line, I might replace it. But man, I'm just, I'm stoked. So yeah. And, uh, you know, with that, that means that in order, same as you, Tim, except I'm going to say it differently. In order to, in order to finance the protection package, I'm most certainly going to install on this thing. I'm hoping that the Bannett sells at all. So I have to sell my beloved Bannett that I was planning to take to a hundred thousand miles at least. And now here she is at 62K and eh, I guess you'll have to go, baby. Sorry. Well, um, so that's my big news, man. The bike's not even here though. It's at the dealership. I've read through all the warranties. I've read, I've gone through all the schematics. I've learned what I could through the forums. I even swapped out the seat cause it had the lowest seat on there. So I, uh, got the standard higher riding position seat in place, but I can't, I can't look through the manual because every time I do, it's like gizmotronic option B is located on switch diagonal left of your thumb. And I'm just like, I got to see this bike. Where's this bike? It does amazing things. I can hope it will open up garage doors all over America. So, uh, that's the big, that's the big news. Um, in other news, uh, the Hawk GT, thanks to the help of Travis Burleson and Don Bearden is a lot happier. I mean, also myself, uh, I rejetted the carbs. I gave them the richest option for a stage two rejet. Uh, but I also replaced the diaphragms. There were holes in the diaphragms on the carburetor. There's no way that that wasn't the cause of the backfire. So, uh, basically rejetting, replacing the diaphragms, put on an aftermarket exhaust and immediately the bike was just meaner, faster, and better.

Travis: And yeah, and the backend breaking out all over the place on slick winter roads in Chicago.

Robin: Yeah. The backend kicks out in fourth gear and this slime, it's, I mean, it's like riding in jello. It's jello wrestling on a motorcycle. It's jello wrestling with a motorcycle. Um, so Don, Don B helped me, uh, get the mount for the, the, uh, rear exhaust and Senior Burleson helped me kind of configure a couple of things that needed to happen as well. Lots of power gains, no backfire.

Travis: I have to, I have to break the header pipe off.

Robin: Yeah. Yeah. We, we, yeah, we discussed that last time. If you want some, if you want some information on how to not remove the exhaust on a Hawk GT, listen to the previous episode of this podcast series.

Tim: You know, I am surprised that with the holes in the diaphragms or the backfire was the only symptom you were seeing. Yeah. Cause I had heard that there were all sorts of nightmare problems that that could cause like hanging idles and things like that.

Robin: There was some bog. There was some definite, you would give a gas and all of a sudden you would feel it filling up with air, like superheated air. You could feel it going in.

Travis: Yeah. Cause it wasn't, you're opening the valve, but the, the, the slide wasn't lifting.

Robin: Probably felt that a track day. I thought the clutch was slipping, but maybe it's not, I don't know. But at any rates that'll bring us to updated site features and developments. Ladies and gentlemen, the members maintenance area is working again. Something was wrong where JavaScript code that would write CSS caused it to fail. Now that is no longer an issue. Knowing is half the battle. G I J net. Yeah, it was beautiful. Navigation scheme. The navigation scheme, the new navigation scheme for the site is pretty much done. It's easier to find what you're looking for. We also added a store and a links page though. The store only has our 2018 calendar, which is just 2017 photos, but buy it. It helps the site helps us develop it. And that's the scoop. Now I've got in here. We should talk about the tour. We should talk about the tour. We got to get people to sign up for this thing. It's going to be a good time and I can't even begin to tell you how much I needed, especially coming from a sick head right now. Every time I cough, it feels like my ears are about to bleed. But this is a new little segment. It's really just an opportunity to try and convince you to sign up for one of our group motorcycle getaways. Currently, we only have one on the calendar with a duplicate possibly set for fall. Guys, are there any questions that hit you right upside the head, even though I have not really talked about it yet with the tour or with signing up for this type of thing? No is a perfectly good answer.

Tim: Well, I think part of it is like I haven't looked at your maps yet and see kind of what the new route is compared to what we did before.

Robin: It's so much better. It's so much better. So first off, we used to run it counterclockwise, right? We did it twice counterclockwise and now we run it clockwise. So the sun is to our back. We start out Maysville, Kentucky. We take like a slow warm-up route that leads all the way up to Zanesville, Ohio, which is where we jump on the triple nickel. And Travis knows the triple nickel. So does Tim. Tim knows it a little bit differently than anybody else. He knows all the side roads.

Tim: Yeah, I started digging down and checking out the hillbilly sites.

Robin: But I think the spot where when we were going counterclockwise, there was a road through Virginia and West Virginia that people were like, you know what? That was just fine. I could have done that all day. You know, they were very into it. The route took us off of that. Well, not anymore. We do that road. It is constantly, it is hours of wow. Just West Virginia and Virginia. The two of those states are, it's between the day where we ride those two states and Kentucky that are my favorite. Absolutely. Also, every time I've tried to tell a friend of mine, hey, you know, we also ride the entire Blue Ridge Parkway. It's a mixture of one of two things. Either the guy says or the gal says, well, you know, I love the Blue Ridge Parkway. It's beautiful, but it's kind of slow. Or they say, I've never done it before. This is amazing. This is beautiful. Look around. It's gorgeous. You know, it's one or the other. So I developed a second version of what would be the day of the Blue Ridge Parkway. And it's just unbelievably technical and gorgeous. You actually deviate away from the Blue Ridge Parkway two times over. You return to the Blue Ridge Parkway twice, but you totally get your fill of five to one. It's five times the curves in nondescript, lesser known roads that are definitely paved. I already checked them. And each time you return to the Blue Ridge Parkway, that's an opportunity to say, you know what? I could go for some more of that. Or, you know what? I'm done. And just ride the Blue Ridge Parkway the rest of the way. It basically turns, I think, a 260-mile day into a 340-mile day of just curvy chaos. Nice. And that's my brag. I'm sticking to it. After that, it's Tennessee. They get the chance to ride the Dragon. So if you've never ridden Trail of the Dragon, you wake up in North Carolina the next day, you can either ride the Dragon or you can go to the Wheels Through Time Museum, which is supposed to be absolutely incredible. I've not been. And I've ridden the Dragon a few times. So I'm thinking it might be time to check that out. Kentucky is sort of so good that it's unmentionable because it's such a rural threat. You know, it's really, really isolated in Kentucky. But it is just plain bomb riding. Incredibly good riding there. And then, Indiana. Beautiful, beautiful southern Indiana. I'm talking about that flat, boring northern Indiana crap. I'm talking about the good roads. Brown County. Brown County.

Travis: Yeah, which is good. I was down there this summer for the GS Resources Forum. Yeah, it was a good time. I say, Robin, you're going to be on a different sort of GS Resources now. BMW R 1200 GSs. Same motor. Same motor.

Robin: No, I'm not buying high vis. No, I'm not going to be wearing GS or BMW branded jackets. I'm not even sure, you know, these are my people yet because they seem very, you know, we like to get together in BMW or we talk about BMW at the BMW. The BMWs. Do you BMW? BMW. Like, I just want to ride the bike. I bought the bike because I like the bike.

Tim: I know a couple people on the RS that are just good ordinary people. You know, I've got a couple friends that have them.

Travis: The RS is definitely the outlier too. It's like there's RT people and there's GS people. And like, I feel like the RS attracts people who would, yeah, who like used to ride a Suzuki or a Yamaha or a...

Tim: Yep. A sport bike. Most of them, most of the guys I know have the older R 1100 RS.

Robin: That's a good looking bike too.

Tim: Absolutely love that bike.

Robin: Yeah, that's the tour in a nutshell. What's left to do is we're actually developing sightseeing tours too. This tour was always about twisties. Maybe people aren't in the mood for that. If I can convince them to sign up, I do have maps for where they could go to see some pretty amazing things. I know that our good friend, Hian, who runs VotoCycle on YouTube, VotoCycling, she just took a day at one point. She was like, you know what? I've had enough for the past three days. I'm going to take one day. And she headed directly to Maggie Valley, North Carolina, which is just beautiful. So I thought, well, why don't I come up with a third option for people who just want to sightsee? So do whatever you want to do. You know what I mean? Now we're on to Tim. Mr. Clark is going to talk about some new kits.

Tim: Tim, what you got for us today?

Robin: All right.

Tim: What I got my head in the last little while was I saw an article, and I already forgot what magazine or website it was on, saying how the airbag suits are now mandatory in MotoGP. And there were a couple other classes that those are involved. So these are the ones where you're on the tether, you come off the bike, and some of them are claiming as little as like 0.1 second deployment of these airbag vests. It basically protects your core, and a lot of them have a collar that basically becomes a neck brace that supports underneath your helmet.

Robin: You know, there's a Jackie Chan movie where he jumps out of an airplane in an inflatable globe. Yep. Yep. That's what I'm picturing with this.

Tim: Oh, yeah. It's pretty damn close. So I'm just starting to see that like... Just get on the bike with it fully inflated already.

Travis: Well, the funny thing too is like so often in MotoGP, like in the low side, these guys are already angry before they even hit the gravel. You can see them like pounding the ground as they're sliding across the pavement at 70 miles an hour.

Tim: Yeah, and the low side is no big deal.

Travis: And then they get back up, and then they get on the bike, and then they keep racing, and then they don't have the airbag anymore.

Tim: Yeah, yep. But yeah, it's that high side that is just devastating, especially the speeds those guys are going. Sometimes you'll see them get tossed like 10 feet up in the air. It's just insane. So I started digging in and starting shopping around and looking at them and trying to decide how practical is this for riding on the street? Now they've been out in consumer product enough that the prices are coming down. I mean, like the race kits, you know, the ones built into your leather race suit, they're $2,500 plus, you know, for a nice race suit with the airbag built in. So a lot of them are coming out. They're just vests. And some of them are like simple like spine protector ones that when they expand, they kind of come down a little bit past your butt to protect your lower spine. And they come up almost like a backboard up about to the top of your helmet. And those ones were pretty low cost. $450, $500 I think was what they were selling that I could find. I honestly didn't look that closely for that. But I was mostly starting to read up on a lot of the reviews where people are actually wearing these on the street, getting into crashes and getting kind of real-world testing. What is it like to live with one of these things on your back? So I mean, it sounds like, you know, these are the kind of things where you're getting, you're coming off the bike, you're tumbling, you're landing on something hard and nasty. And, you know, instead of breaking ribs, breaking collarbones, you know, or even like doing neck damage because your head's whipping around, you know, this is saving people of that. After my little experience of, you know, my ankle breaking, I'm really kind of appreciate, you know, $630 sounds like a pretty damn cheap price for this turtle airbag vest that I've looked at. It's kind of like the best of the lower priced ones that I have found so far.

Robin: Yeah, that's what I'm looking at now is it looks like the R&D went into how simple can we make this thing and still keep it effective. It looks like they did a good job.

Tim: Yeah, that company's been around since 2002, I think is what I read. I mean, they've been around a long time. They had, you know, plenty of time. I think that they first started coming out in 95 is what I remember reading. So they've been around. It should be a pretty mature product now. Yeah, so yeah, so that's, I mean, if you put the price in perspective, I broke my ankle. I've spent $630 worth in co-pays, metal equipment, medical equipment, a knee scooter, the crutches, cane, the silly peg leg walking crutch. That was ridiculous. We still got to motorize that thing. It was almost a giggle. So, I mean, that's, I mean, if you're talking about that, it's like spend the same amount of the money, but don't have the pain would be awesome. So trade that, you know, I'd trade that for a second for not having broken my ankle.

Robin: That's a good way to look at it, man. So do the math on what it costs to get your body fixed and then think about whether or not this is really a high price mark.

Tim: Oh yeah. And, you know, and I've got good insurance. So, I mean, $630, you'll blow through that easy. You know, whether it's in just an inconvenience, like I've spent more money on eating out because I just couldn't stand long enough to cook myself food in the kitchen.

Robin: Yeah.

Tim: You know, it's so, I got a, I'm a bit of a safety dork. I mean, I would be one of these guys that would go out and spend money on this. And I would take the two seconds every time I get on the bike, get off the bike to unclip myself from the tether.

Robin: As soon as I get out from underneath my crippling motorcycle debt, I might actually look at one of these things. But at the same time, you know, cool product. And with that, I know that Travis is nowhere near ready for this. Travis, what's the deal, man? What's the model focus? What aren't you ready to talk about today?

Travis: Oh, so I was down visiting family for air quotes, the holidays in early January. Because that's when we had time to actually go down to Illinois and visit people. And I was hanging out with the in-laws in Best Plains. And my wife was on the computer. And my father-in-law was on the computer. And my mother-in-law was at work. And I was like, I'm going to go to the bike shop. Because that's what I had in mind on the road. And I'm just going to kill an hour. So I went to the Honda dealer there. And they, and I'd seen picked by, I think I saw it at the bike show. But there's so much at the bike show. But it's like, this is the first time I really looked at the new 2018 Honda CB650F. Like the CBR650F's been out for a while in the United States. Like I think 2014 it came out. And it's been, I think, revamped since then. The 650, the CB650F is the naked version. And it's of course been in Europe for a while. But they finally brought it over to the United States. And man, it looks pretty. Like it's, you know, it's not as hardcore as like the CBR600. It's not a super sport motor. It's like sort of a bored out, detuned, or like retuned super sport motor. So it's more low and mid-end. You know, you don't have to rev it out to 20,000 RPM to get the power out of it like a super sport. But it looks Italian, man. Like it's got these, you know, four big chrome headers coming out of it. They're beautiful. Packed super tight together because it's a little 600 motor. It's like a wavy, wavy blonde. Yeah, they sweep to the left and they're chrome and they're packed tight. And they just, it looks so good.

Tim: And it's got that beautiful compact engine package that it's got there. It's very much like the CB500 engine and the CB or the CRF1000. You know, the Africa twin engine. Both of these very compact layouts. Yeah. And I love the little gold magnesium case color on it too.

Travis: Yeah, it's just, it looks cool. It reminds me a lot of the old Hornet, the 599.

Robin: Yeah, I love the 599.

Travis: Or the 919.

Robin: Which one has the better light? I think the 599 is the headlight I like better. But the chassis in general, just an elegant, elegant concept.

Travis: Yeah, I mean, it was the 999 was bigger. And then after, I think after 2004, you got adjustable suspension on it. But the one thing though is it has a standard fork. It's non-adjustable. Okay.

Tim: Wait, what?

Travis: Which is kind of a bummer.

Tim: So it's kind of the same as what you've got on the NC700 and on the CB500. Same level of shock.

Travis: Wow. Which I don't know if that's just like a cost-cutting measure. Or if it's like, I don't know if Honda's philosophy is more like, you should just tune your shocks.

Robin: I don't know.

Travis: But it's not adjustable. So you'd have to get a valve and dig with it. So that's a big pain in the butt. The other thing I thought was neat about it is like the CB and the NC, it does not have a hub carrier for the brake discs. The brake discs are bolted directly to the wheel. But it's dual disc. There's dual discs. But it's, but yeah, that exhaust. And it's got like that modern sort of naked street fighter, that modern naked street fighter styling to it. So I think it looks good. Because I thought the CBR version was kind of whatever, you know. But the naked version looks really good. Also, I wanted to mention the new for 2018. But it's not coming, I think, until like mid-year or maybe the fall. The CB1000R, the new CB1000R that's like neo-retro.

Robin: Yeah, I'm seeing around. There's like a few of them where they mention a cafe version. But it's got standard bars. And I...

Travis: Yeah, yeah, it reminds me. Well, I think it's cafe-inspired styling is what they're called. Because it's like neo-retro. Yeah. But it reminds me a lot of the big one.

Robin: I just, all I mean is that if they're going to put the word cafe on it, it should be a forward profile posture. It has, it should have Clubman.

Tim: It should have Clubman. It does have the rear sets on it. It just doesn't have the Clubman bars.

Robin: Yeah, so it's a little off. But, you know, people are misusing that term as of the past 10 years. It's just been a sloppy blathering. But the fact is, back to the bike. The bike is sick.

Travis: Yeah, I think because the old, the current generation or last generation CB1000 looked like the 650 is a modern naked street fighter kind of thing. Kind of had, love it or hate it sort of looks, you know, angular. I thought it was a cool bike. But this one just looks good. Again, it kind of looks Italian, like it looks like a monster almost. Like it's very, that round headlight with the LED bezel surround, like the angel eye headlight. You know, big swoopy kind of muscular lines. The seat cowl on the passenger seat. It just looks tough and cool.

Tim: Oh yeah, it's going to look really nice. The exhaust too, it's just a good bike.

Robin: It's a good bike.

Tim: I would love to see one of those with a full exhaust system replacement where they get rid of that catalytic converter on the bottom. It looks just a touch clunky.

Robin: Yeah, that's what they did to the Hawk GT.

Tim: If you're looking at it. So if you pull that out, it's going to look so lean.

Travis: Yeah, a smaller can and get rid of the collector and it'll look, yeah, it would look really good. But it's got to make your R4, so.

Tim: Yeah, and I'm honestly not one to do, I don't tend to replace exhausts anyways, but aesthetically, I really appreciate it.

Travis: Yeah, I might do an exhaust swap on the NC at some point because, yeah, it's just the first gen NC's got that big round chrome can on it. But the post-2016 style of the NC looks good with the black triangular can. But this, the earlier one like mine, man, it's just, I don't know. And it's probably sound a little better. But then I got to, I got to figure out the center stand work, which you had to do on the Hawk GT too, because you get rid of, because the exhaust, because the can has the catch for the center stand.

Robin: Right, but you were the one that helped me fix that. That's what we fixed when you were over here last time. That, that now works. I took it for a ride. I mean, there's a reason I know what it feels like now. And it's because that actually is held in place kind of proper. I would like to mint it a little bit better. But yeah, I'm going to take this instance. We, we don't have any listener questions for this episode. But if you have any questions for us that you'd like us to address or topics you'd like us to entertain, please email your questions and concerns via our contact form, which is located at tro.email. That's tro.email. Or by calling 224-358-3010. That's 224-358-3010. Which brings us to the Mess-A-La-Moto. On the, onto this week's Mess-A-La-Moto, brought to you by Mr. Brosen.

Travis: The super slick, ultra badass, motorcycle, omega, past the other incredible.

Robin: The super slick, ultra badass, motorcycle, omega, past the other incredible power is super slick, ultra badass. And just as a side note, it's also incredibly powerful.

Travis: And also very tired and kind of sick.

Robin: Oh, yeah, man. This is a hill, hill day. We, we had, well, you know what? There's, I'll post all kinds of goofy stuff in the actual podcast page for this one, this episode. But the only thing that really stands out is this whole thing from give a shift, give a shift, or G period, A period, A, S period. Which you can look up. If you type into Google, give a shift, trying to help save the motorcycle industry, you'll find an article that goes into detail about what they, what their concerns are. And I gotta be honest with you, in some ways, I have no empathy at all for the industry. But in other ways, I guess I do. This particular friend kind of stirs paranoia in his fear that future generations will render motorcycling illegal or uninsurably obsolete, which to me just screams dumbing down of society. I responded to the article in the comments section, and one of two things happened. Either my comment got lost at the bottom and never got upvoted, or they deleted it because I went off a little bit. When you find out that some kid found a $300 bike in a barn and turned it into what he decided was a scrambler, and as a result, you respond by releasing 20 scramblers all at $13,000 plus, and then you express concern over the future of the industry, it's gonna be kind of hard for people to relate to that. What happened to the, we've talked about this. The assembly line bike doesn't lend itself well to the father, son, here's how you wrench boy or girl. It just doesn't, modern motorcycles are computerized and bring it to the dealership, pay us a fee, bring it to the dealership, pay us a fee, and then they wonder why, you know, nobody's paying the millennials anything for any work they do. It's all like, we live in a society of interns. Travis, you have your beer in your nose.

Travis: Yeah, me too. Yeah, exactly, it's like, well yeah, I mean it's that same old problem that's been going on for a long time. Let's look at the automotive industry. Anytime the automotive industry makes a cool, hip, little car to sell to young people, who buys it? Old people. They're not like, they're not like middle, like old, like they're grand, like they're like, let's make, you know, let's make the PT Cruiser, let's make the Chevy Sonic, let's make this cool, funky, little, small car that's like funky and cool and like relatively cheap and oxygenarians buy it because it's cheap and comfortable and like 20 year olds don't have the money to buy brand new vehicles. Like most of them don't.

Robin: Yeah, most of them don't know the concept of what it goes into financing.

Travis: Yeah, well, or they don't have the credit or they just don't have the money. Like they don't have a job that would facilitate making payments on a thing.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: And especially I think that in current, the current generation, and of course, it's a broad statement, but it's even more so like more debt coming out. Like everyone, everybody who was raised in the 90s told you need to go to college and then they all went to college. 100 grand. And they all got a bunch of debt and then they got out of college and like I have this degree in this thing and they can't find it and then they're working in some other field, entry-level position.

Robin: You want one shot or two?

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: Is that a double shot in that, Mochaccino?

Travis: Because it's not there. It's, you know, it's that same millennials are killing the diamond industry. It's like, I ain't got no money to buy no diamonds. Yes. Millennials are frugal.

Robin: They're doing the best they can. Millennials ain't to blame for the industry's unwillingness to hear them.

Travis: Yeah. It's like, yeah, this is like BMW's like, we're going to make this throwback retro bike. Yeah. And it's going to be $13,000. It's like. Who bought it? And it's going to be a scrambled, scrambler, scrambler that scrambles. And it's like. And then we'll do a scrambler version and do all that. But it's like, it's like really the only, the only one really doing anything is Honda, the CVs.

Robin: Manufacturing does not get to dictate what the buyers should feel responsible to buy. It's the other way around. The manufacturing, they had a confident few years, some time ago, and now that's not sticking. They need to stop, learn, observe, and then price things to save their own butt. Cause that's the situation. The pricing needs to be set up in a way that is going to save both the consumer interest and the market itself.

Tim: Well, I think one of the things that you are seeing is like popularities of the 500s coming back. Like even Yamaha's FZ07 really well, sold really well. It was very reasonably priced. I think even like the ones that are getting really big press are like the 400s, the like, goodness, the KTM 390 was. Oh, it's a great bike. A favorite in the press. I haven't had a chance to ride one yet myself. I would love to, you know, the little Mini Duke or whatever it is. And even the Grom, I can't believe I've seen packs of Groms in Madison.

Robin: Yeah, and they're giggling.

Tim: They're having a blast.

Travis: I've never seen a Grom on the street with both wheels on the ground.

Tim: Yeah, and it's cheap. It's fun. It really, it's basic. It's not a super complicated thing to work on or to accessorize. So there's a lot of what grabs people about motorcycles in those cheap, small bikes.

Robin: Yeah, that's a big key right there is that you want to be able to feel a connection with your machine. You want to be able to work on it. And they keep on oppressing that concept that you want to be able to get your hands dirty on this now hard to get to machine that requires special tools. I don't know what went into that. I know that they're better in reliability, but give us an opportunity to enjoy the machine. I mean, Nintendo is coming out with games where you can design the cardboard pieces that you receive in the mail and then you fold them into the physical version of the game. And then you plug their little device into it and you play with this cardboard. And it's like, well, that sounds like fun. You know, I want to do that with my bike. Give me a component-based bike that's accessible, metric, and wrench friendly with all the fixings of what modern knowledge has brought us. And better still, give us the electric bike.

Tim: Make it happen. Well, most of those are still over 10 grand.

Travis: Oh, yeah.

Tim: For the basic, basic ones.

Travis: Yeah, for what should be a six grand commuter is $14,000.

Robin: Unacceptable. That is unacceptable. You know, drop that price, make it a kit system, make it modular, make the future tech adapt. You know, we need to have a relationship as consumers with those who make the bikes. They don't want that. They just want the money and the sale and to tally the next model.

Travis: The peculiarities and difficulties of developing an electric vehicle, raise the cost. And if it's the same thing with cars, you know, everyone's excited about Tesla. You can go to any Chevy dealer right now and get a Chevy Bolt, which is their full electric car, which is as good as a Tesla 3 for like seven grand off MSRP. Wow. Because like nobody knows that Chevrolet makes an electric car.

Robin: There you go.

Travis: I mean, it's still like 30 grand. Like it's still more expensive than buying a Kia and you're essentially getting a nice Kia that's electric. You know, but for motorcycles, there's no major manufacturer. You know, it's these little startups that have high costs. They're all Tesla, you know, Lightning, Zero. They're all these little startups. They don't have any other, they can't take a hit on those electric bikes. So all their R&D, all their overhead has to go into the pricing. But like if Harley actually put the live wire, which looked cool, I would ride one of those. Nice. And I'm not a Harley because it looked kind of like, it was like a standard naked. It looked a lot like that. The new CB1000 kind of had a retro, neo-retro standard sport look to it.

Robin: Yeah, but they didn't make it with any particular intention. It's just, it just was a showpiece.

Travis: It was a prototype thing, but they put those into production. That's something I'd be interested in. I think it'd be super cool.

Tim: I think the company with the highest chance of coming out with a real good one is probably Yamaha. Because Yamaha right now is actually working on electric mountain bikes and electric commuter bikes, like pedal bikes. So they're putting serious effort into producing these. They actually have a electric free ride mountain bike that they were, they ran an advertisement side by side with their WR250R dual sport bike. So I'm really hoping that they start developing more because they could throw out something with enough volume and hopefully get enough sales to actually make them price competitive with gas engines.

Robin: They've got the power and they're doing it from the ground up. That is really smart. So one like level at a time. And I mean, you know my vote. I'd like to develop a book that would just, like we said, we saw that Ninja 500 EX that they converted into electric. I would love to create it. I would love to start a service where we started doing that for people with junk frames. Like they send us the frame. We build them an electric bike and send it back to them for a fee. That'd be a lot of fun. Just need the right people in on it. And with that, I'm going to go into our closing sponsorship message. You guys good for that? Yeah. All right. This episode of the RidingObsession.com podcast was brought to you by the Ugly Apple Cafe of Madison, Wisconsin, where they use local overstock produce to offer a quick tasty breakfast. TheRidingObsession.com is always seeking sponsors for this podcast. Sponsors are given three focus mentions toward the start, middle, and end of their designated episode. Their contributions are put towards bettering the program's content and recording equipment. I'll take this opportunity to mention once more our next group riding tour, which is scheduled for spring of next year, dubbed the Trip Sevens Tour. Seven riders will cover seven states in seven days, starting in late April of 2018. It's a twisty sport touring getaway of epic proportions. We hope you'll sign up. More information about that tour is available via theRidingObsession.com. Visit the group tours link, which is anchored under the events link in our navigation menu. That's our episode for this round. Tune in next time for more discussion on all things specific to sport touring or universal to motorcycling as a whole. For theRidingObsession.com, I'm about 40% of Robin Dean. I'm Travis.

Tim: And I'm Tim Clark. Safe travels, everyone.