Robin: I'm Robin Dean. I'm Travis Burleson and I'm Tim Clark. You're listening to the Riding Obsession podcast. TRO, your sport touring motorbike fix. We're an ever-developing online venue for motorcycle enthusiasts who enjoy responsibly spirited riding along routes less traveled. I'll take this opportunity to promote our next group riding tour, which is scheduled for July of this year. It's the Trip Sevens Tour. Seven riders will cover seven states in seven days beginning July 9th, 2022. It's a sport touring getaway of epic proportions. More information is available at TRO.bike. Visit the group tours link, which is anchored under events in our navigation menu. Brief update on the site features we've been working on. Let's see, the beta release approaches. Having completed the second of two big tasks, namely the tours page, I'm going to kick through a bunch of smaller hiccups and release the new beta before I begin work on the weather page. Viewers, you might like to know that the site isn't going to look all that much different, but where it does look different, it'll be quite noticeable and for the better. Other things I'm working with, I'm tangled up in forms right now. I'm about to get rid of a plug-in we're using for our forms across the site, which means I have to carefully address the opportunity for bots to start hammering us with random form jargon. The maintenance area, it says here in my notes, almost ready. No, the maintenance area is ready. It's not released yet with the beta, but it is ready. We switched all the data to a JSON format. And also, every task you add to your maintenance list, you'll be able to add custom notes that are specific to that task and that task alone. So if you have like a shopping list, links to products and things like that, you can attach it to just that task. That was Margaret Dean's idea, by the way. So she added another two weeks of coding to my agenda, which is now done. To take a break from all that, I have also updated the tours page and added three tours for this year so far. I'll be really happy when I see five tours that are starting to get interest and things like that, but three will do for now since we're building. Plan is to finish that up and then look at whatever bugs are in my notes, release the beta before getting deep into the weather pages.

Travis: So, Travis. It's been a trip around here. Still not much motorcycling now as we're entering March in Wisconsin. It seems to oscillate back and forth these days between being like 45 degrees and slushy and 6 degrees and icy. But it seems like it's supposed to be in the touch of the 40s at least pretty consistently the next couple of days. So maybe if we get some melt off, I'll get on the bike again. Otherwise, just the same old around here working. The twins are doing good. We started swim lessons with them, which is pretty fun. They were a little scared at first, but then they warmed up to being in the big pool.

Robin: Weren't you, though, when you were that age, were you scared of the water?

Travis: I didn't. I don't remember being too, but I was never formally taught how to swim. I figured it out by the time I was 11.

Robin: Attempted drowning will do that to a person.

Travis: We used to go down. There was a small inland lake near us. You could call it a big pond, but called Oasis, the Oasis Lake. And you could go and pay like it was like a county park and you could pay like five bucks a car or something like that. And go swim in everyone else's filth for an afternoon. So vague memories of that as a child. I remember those days.

Robin: We had Jackson Lake Park near Lythopolis, Ohio or Bloom Carroll area, Ohio. Jackson Lake. And it was kind of, yeah, just like the public pond, like the public pee hole where everybody could swim.

Tim: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we had one of those. We had an old quarry. It was abandoned flooded quarries we'd go to. Oh, nice.

Travis: Yeah, because those are always like super safe where the water is suddenly drops to like 80 feet deep and freezing cold water. Yeah. There's like mercury in the bottle. All the snakes. Yeah, it used to be a nickel mine. Just don't drink the water.

Tim: Yeah, I do remember that that feeling of swimming out. And if you tread water and let your feet drop just that like five feet down was ice cold. Above that, it was like 75 degrees.

Travis: Yeah, just pull it up. It's about that Oasis Lake is about 600 feet across. Wow. You look up Oasis Lake, Alger, Michigan. Yeah, it's about, yeah, the beach front's maybe a thousand feet and it's maybe 600 to 800 feet across. It's a funny shape. Oh, oh, those times. Of course, now we got the lakes here in Madison, Wisconsin, which are shut down from algae blooms half the year anyway.

Tim: They're also getting a lot of problems with the PFAS chemical contamination as well.

Travis: Anyway, not much on the motorcycle front. Just doing that, playing shows, playing music with the Dead Johnnies. We actually, the show season has kicked in and there's a couple of bands have reached out already. We've already booked like four gigs coming up. So if we're in the Madison area, March 31st, whatever that Thursday is at the end of March. We'll be playing at the High Noon Saloon, yeah, 31st with the Get Happy Elvis Costello tribute. That should be pretty good. And some other shows coming up, Dark Horse Art Bar and the Harmony Bar here in Madison. So been playing lots of music to keep myself sane and waiting for the weather to change. I don't know if I had gotten my new toy by the last podcast. I don't think we talked about that.

Tim: No.

Travis: I mean, again, it's music stuff.

Robin: Oh, the bass?

Travis: Yeah. I got a US made G&L Peloton, which is like the first air quotes professional bass I've ever purchased. That is awesome. Congratulations. Only took 27 years and a degree. That's nice. But anyway, Tim, what have you been up to?

Tim: When it comes to motorcycling, pretty much nothing. They've been tucked into the corner of the garage and collecting dust right now. Did you get the squirrel out of the attic? You know what? We'd never figured out that it was a squirrel for sure. I have killed five mice that were in the attic. At least that's the current body count. There might be more up there right now. I'd need to check or feed them more peanut butter. It's been crazy at work. I volunteered to do product photography. The guy who was doing it before left the company. We had a major product launch where Intel released us to be able to advertise that we had designed around this product. But we had no pictures of the product. So I've been scrambling and did a crash course in how to take professional looking photos of circuit boards. Terribly exciting photos there. But we got it out. Successful results. We had to get a security waiver in order to get me to be allowed to use my own equipment. Rather than their 10 or 15 year old camera they had. We talked about the honeymoon to Madeira in the last podcast.

Robin: You're looking at Iceland too.

Tim: Yep. We've already bought the tickets. I've got a car rental booked. A couple of hotels booked. This isn't happening until September. Or end of August. Got moved up a little bit. This is going to be good. Going to do some traveling. Probably just like the trip to Madeira. Probably not going to be able to rent a bike. There's just too much going on. I don't really know if Iceland is known for motorcycling.

Travis: I'd imagine too. The licensing. It's weird.

Robin: Where are you from? You're American? No, no, no, no. You need to take the test here.

Tim: They are super particular about people going off the roads, off the trails. Yeah. Things like that. It's like you will get in trouble. You will get a fine. You will get caught. That kind of thing.

Travis: You will fall into a lava pit.

Tim: Right. It'll be good. It'll be just gorgeous. Then we had a really nice meal out for Valentine's Day. Went to a local place called Mint Mark and did a food and alcohol pairing. It is just fantastic. That was my first time having bone marrow.

Robin: Was that the gravy gutter thing down the bread roll? That was the bone. Oh, man.

Travis: That's like a big bone cut in half. Yeah.

Tim: The thing was he was giving everybody this, if I remember, it was like a fruit cordial kind of thing that you would pour into the channel of the marrow in the bone and drink your shot that way.

Travis: The bone shot, the marrow shot. That's crazy. It was weird.

Robin: Was it good? It was good. It was messy. Yeah. Bone marrow is good. Do you feel like there's somebody in the back who's just like, oh, somebody ordered the thing. We're going to do this. I can't believe they fall for this.

Tim: Oh, my goodness. It wasn't just me doing this either. Apparently they had everybody at the bar. They filmed it and they just panned down the bar and everybody is doing this, taking turns. Yeah. It just was ridiculous.

Robin: I think you'd get royalties for that. That's good.

Tim: That's been mostly it. It's been a fairly quiet month around here, which we've both appreciated. Things had been pretty hectic for a while. We started getting quotes for the roof. Home ownership. Applied for a home equity line of credit. Oh, boy.

Robin: Stop. Stop. It's overwhelming, the excitement. Yeah. But that is good. I'd like some more debt, please.

Travis: Yeah, that is the one nice thing about housing prices skyrocketing is if you already own one, that home equity line gets pretty big.

Tim: Yeah, it can get you in trouble quick. Robin, it's your turn. What are you doing? What has your month been like?

Robin: We'll start with the serious stuff. New shaving patterns. Okay. This is a family oriented podcast. Oh, I'm talking about upstairs, not in other regions. Oh, okay. So, shaving patterns in the upstairs variety.

Travis: I thought maybe we got manscaped on as a sponsor or something.

Robin: Well, I mean, I wasn't going to say anything. So, I see all these videos of, and I love the memes where they show the bald guy with the goatee who's going to tell you the truth about COVID. You know? Like, he's going to let you, he's sitting in his crappy pickup truck and he's like, bald guy, goatee. And he's like, I'm going to tell you what's really going on. And it's a government thing. And I don't support, you know, and dad didn't hug me enough. You know what I mean? You can feel it. And I don't want to be affiliated with that guy. But I don't have any hair on the top of my head. And I need facial hair to offset that this is a chosen style, not a genetic disorder, which it clearly is.

Tim: As the other bald man with a goatee. You know. Totally understand the dilemma here.

Robin: The Zappa is where I'm at now. So, it's the sole patch with the mustache, but I've never really learned how to fine tune the mustache. So, it's just this ball of hair on my upper lip with the sole patch.

Tim: Have you tried shaving the upper part of the upper lip and just have that little pencil across the top? Under the nostrils?

Travis: Yeah. Yeah. Doing the pencil stash?

Tim: I might draw it in.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: Yeah. And then do a little curly on the outsides? Do the John Waters. Get some tight suits. Isn't that the fancy? That's the fancy. Okay. So, next on. We're in Houston now. Best part of Houston? Definitely. There's great food. And one of our previous interviews, you guys might remember Kelly Howard. He's here. So, I get to hang out with Kelly Howard. And I get to eat good food. But other than that, this town is the worst city planning ever. And Travis, thank you for the insights about why that is.

Travis: Yeah. It's like if you had to drive the rig through Houston traffic, it's like, it is the... It was terrifying. It is one of the like, I went to school for urban planning and we studied Houston as an example of what not to do.

Robin: Everything is either in the way of another road or 500 feet in the air and falling apart. So, that's great. The stuff I'm looking forward to, though. I'm excited about a recent contract. I'm going to be working doing demo rides for K&M again. So, let me read this as is. Excited about a recent contract I've taken leading demo rides all over Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. That and the newly established Texas and New Mexico slash Arizona tours that we're offering on TRO after 777, trip sevens. Going to be traveling around all over Texas for K&M, letting transitioning riders and new three-wheel riders of sorts take a demo ride on their product. I like seeing what that does for people. It seems to make them smile.

Tim: That's good. So, Houston, like the motorcycling thing I know about Houston, that seems to be where all the motorcycle hooligan stunt in the street videos seem to come from. You seeing any of that?

Travis: Yeah, because the traffic is so bad the cops can't get to you even though you're on the interstate.

Robin: He's not lying. That is absolutely true. So, I went to the grocery store and I just heard squealing tires. And I look over and directly across the street in a Walgreens parking lot is like a 380Z that is drifting in a perfect circle about 50 yards wide around a sodium lamp and just doesn't freaking stop and then reverses it and does it the other way. And I looked at it and I lived in Chicago long enough to realize, yeah, I mean, I'm seeing something. I'm not going to get up in arms about it. But then I also realized, yeah, that's just, I'm in Houston. I guess that's the thing. I hear bikes sailing down the road in a straight line, of course. Nobody here knows how to corner. And the traffic technique is every man for himself. Well, there aren't corners.

Tim: Yeah, it seems like the only corners are cloverleafs.

Travis: And only where down the right side of your tire.

Robin: You would say that? It's all intersections with inside U-turn lanes. Some of them have cones to maintain your lane when you arrive, where you're merging onto the other direction of the road you were on. And some of them don't and have a five-star intersection happening at the same time. And I ran, yeah, I drove the rig through that.

Tim: That's insane.

Robin: Oh man. Let's get into this month's featured segments. Travis, what years, makes, and models did I make you get into today?

Travis: So I want to talk about the doesn't officially exist yet, but they officially announced that they're going to make it exist. The return of the Honda Hawk. The Hawk! So they're using the Africa Twin, you know, 1100cc, 9-degree crank, cross-plane crank, twin motor, and that they put in the Africa Twin and then the Rebel 1100, and then the NT 1100 that they just announced this earlier this year into a naked sport bike. That apparently is replacing the, so it's like a neo cafe racer. It's replacing the CB 1100.

Robin: Now, is it really a naked bike? Because it's got a half fairing in this picture.

Travis: It's got like a bullet fairing. It's like a neo retro cafe racer, but I wouldn't call it, it's not a sport bike. I don't think they're selling it as a sport bike. It's a sporty street bike with cafe inspired styling or whatever marketing garbage you want to throw at it. So they sent one of the links here. The one that is .jp was Japan only link to like a 30 second video with dramatic THX sound test music.

Robin: Of course, get intense first and be ready for the super curb.

Travis: You know, it's just like the shadowy shot of the fairing, but it's this bullet fairing with the round angel eye headlight like they have in the CB 1000R and the CB 650 and 300R. So it's like that angel eye LED round headlight. And you see like a long low tank in this bullet fairing. And then there's a couple of, you know, artists rendering journalism. This is probably what it's going to look like, uh, type things there where you can kind of see it flushed out a little more. Uh, but the actual full release is going to be at the Osaka, um, the Osaka motorcycle show.

Robin: That's pretty exciting, man. I mean, look at the wheel base on this graphic though. That wheel base is kind of like the GL 1000.

Tim: Yeah, it does look a little long, kind of a lot of rake on that front end.

Travis: And those are like artists rendering. So they might've pulled that off of an NT 1100 and redone it, which is, you know, a touring bike or, um, they might've modded out a rebel to look like, who knows how they rendered these, you know, these aren't official releases. So like the only official release from Honda is that like black background, black motorcycle, front three quarters zoomed in on the bullet fairing. That's the only official release. Everything else is, everything else is motor journalist, rendering speculation stuff. And they're probably compiling that from the rebel 1100 and the NT 1100. So the rake might be different. Maybe not though. Honda has that way of doing it though, you know, where it's like, Oh, it seems kind of heavy and it seems like there, it's got too much rake and then you ride it and it handles telepathically, you know?

Robin: Yeah. I mean, when we were looking at the NT 1100, that is a surprisingly light machine for the girth that it has visually.

Travis: Yeah. And like, I've seen a couple of shootouts now with like the NT 1100 and like the tracer nine. And the general consensus is that, you know, these moto journalists generally like the tracer nine cause it's a little more hard edge. Um, but it's like, I think unless you're a moto journalist, like the, like you can go, you can ride the NT 1100 as fast as any sport touring bike on the road. Right. It's like, it's just like I ride my NC 700, which is like a soft, super basic, low power thing. And I can shred roads on it. And I'm sure you can do that with, with the NT. And I'm sure you'll be able to do that with the hot. Cause it's got that Honda stuff. It's like, yeah, on a racetrack, it's not a jigsaw, but, or you have a fighter blade, but on the roads, like you can, you can shuffle it through the corners as fast as anything else. It's going to go on the road. That's smoking, man. And this, this looks cool like this. And then the question becomes like this or the Katana, the new Neo retro Katana, right? Well, have they even feigned an asking price for this yet? I haven't seen numbers on it. I mean, presumably it's rebel 1100 territory.

Robin: That's not bad at all. I've seen some fairly bizarre pricing for the Katana, strangely high pricing for the Katana.

Travis: There's the whole weird COVID supply chain price bubble garbage that's going on. But, but as far as like MSRP on a release, like it's going to be a bare bones bike, right? That's like the thing. It's not going to have the touchscreen that like the NT 1100 has assuming it's going to lift like just the LCD display off of the CB 1000. I mean, maybe we'll put a TFT in it, but you know, so it's, I don't think it'll have that high, you know, it's not going to come with luggage. It's not going to come, you know, with, with a lot of the other cushy features that are on the Afro twin and the NT 1100. I mean, we would suppose, right? It's all speculation, but yeah.

Robin: Enter Twisted Throttle.

Travis: Yeah. So I think it would be, you know, and it's, it's meant to be look, it's meant to look cool and like ride around town. Right. And it's like, yeah, this is like any bike you could throw bags on it and tour with it, but I don't think that's what their intent is. Yeah.

Robin: And this is more, this is even more aggressive than my Beamer. So my R 1200 RS, this is more forward profile and your knees are up high and they don't have a center stand. It's, it's just a really great round town or maybe a weekender.

Travis: It's like the CB, the CB 1000R, it's like that Neo cafe thing that Honda has been doing.

Tim: It's an interesting one. Like the artist rendering we're looking at here is showing the DCT version, which might be a really interesting addition to that segment. The little horizontal feature right in the middle of the watermark. That is the DCT servo.

Travis: The little actuator oil things for this.

Robin: It's funny to think that, I mean, we've seen the one rendering that is the graphic with the, the rebel features where this could have the, this could actually, since we have only really seen that bikini fairing, the half fairing, it could look like the six cylinder, the CTX. Yeah. What if it has, what if it ends up looking kind of like that, you know?

Travis: Yeah. I mean, well too, it's like, I mean, it's got that narrow twin engine. I think that, I think it's going to look a lot like the, well to these renderings, they have the piggyback dual shocks on it and it's like, I don't know, it's going to have piggyback dual shocks.

Tim: That actually seems like it would limit what, because they've actually drawn in the Africa twin swing arm on there. Tell me it's in Crayon. Like the, one of the big reasons that that whole arrangement was so neat is like the engine is so compact. The transmission is so tight into the engine that the output sprocket is almost at the exact point of the suspension pivot. So your chain tension doesn't change as much with the suspension changing position. So you hit bumps, you're not changing your chain tension, which is something that you've got to worry about a lot with long travel suspensions. But if they're aiming your standard street bike, like five inch or less, it seems a strange choice.

Travis: Yeah. Well, that is, um, I think because they're leaning into like the Neo cafe racer thing, but they did that with the CB300, 600, 1000R, right? And those had the, um, what do you call it? The pro link suspension. Um, and obviously the, the NT does, and the Africa twin has a pro link suspension. The rebel has the, has the dual shock. Um, so unless they're really going to lean into that retro twin shock thing, but I don't know if they necessarily would with anything with any sort of boarding intention. That's not a cruiser.

Robin: Well, interesting sidebar, the chain thing, there are ways around that. It's, it's not another thing that you have to get super dialed into. It is another thing you have to worry about. So what I used to do with the bandit was I would, uh, disengage the rear suspension and bring the rear wheel to completely compressed and then tighten the chain to that point.

Travis: But that's, you're talking adjustment, you know, we're talking design.

Tim: Yeah.

Travis: That's five balls. How much suspension did the bandit have? Like a four inches.

Robin: Hey man, I just wanted to hear myself talk about what I know.

Tim: Yeah. So this is definitely more about like dynamically how the chain is acting while the suspension is being compressed and extended.

Travis: But again, not so much an issue with a street bike.

Tim: Yeah. Like on dirt bikes, you'll see like some pretty heavy chain guides on the underside of this sprocket to keep, uh, keep the chain from actually jumping off.

Robin: Well, isn't every bike, a dirt bike. If you ride it wrong enough. If you believe in yourself.

Travis: Oh yes, definitely. Any bike is a touring bike. If you try hard enough. I mean, I'm excited to kind of see it. I hope it is affordable. And that's like my one concern too with the NT is like, it's like 1200 Euro and that's like 15, 16 grand if it comes to the U.S. And it's like, well, that's like, you're, you're creeping on Goldwing money and it's like, that's going to be maybe out of my range. And then this, you know, same thing. It's like, if this is 12, $13,000, um, I don't know who's, who's buying it. But if it's like Honda, I mean, what's the Rebel 1100 MSRP? 10 grand, right? Nine, three for the base without the DCT. So if this, if the Hawk is coming in around 10 grand, I think they got a winner. I think they got something that can take on the MT-09 for like fun around town hooligan bike. Tim, do you got anything to look at us for, for a new kit?

Tim: I don't.

Travis: I think Robin was, was, was pressing you to look at LEDs.

Tim: He did press me to look for, uh, LEDs, but I could not find anything with the, uh, what was it? The H7 connector.

Robin: Yeah. It's an H7 bulb.

Tim: It's like most of the H4 I've found some good.

Robin: This episode is very, very clearly a communal discussion of things that are usually individual to each of us. So what I put out to Tim was, I mean, the bulbs on the Beamer always eventually melt the case. So I was like, well, screw that. That looks awful. Right? So I tinted the lenses to give them a more uniform visual appeal, some aesthetics. And the lights still worked bright enough that when you're riding in daylight, people can say, oh yeah, those are headlights. I hope that, you know, I won't pull out in front of this person, which also means if I'm going to cover the lenses like that, I can get any bulb I want and fry the plastics to my heart's content because I've already dealt with the fact that they're melting no matter what bulb I put in there. Right. And I am using the factory temperature bulb. I've had to replace the headlamp casing two times now for both sides and they're not cheap. My thinking was, screw this. I'll get something that's like LED. And since LEDs, the light that they project typically doesn't provide a dense light. It's more reflective light that bounces off of signs. So my idea was maybe either get LED or here's the catch, really small, stealthy, hideable floodlights that I can attach to the crash bar because I don't want the bike to have an ADV visual look. I want it to be hidden, stealthy, sporty. I have not looked for that either, but I think that just discussing it now might set us up for the next time we discuss new kit. Unless, Travis, you have something in mind. He's already surfing.

Travis: Could you get some off of like a crashed R1? Like the Yamaha sport bikes with those little tiny LED headlights? Yeah, I'd be tempted to switch from an H7 to like an H4. Well, the connector would change and the mount and everything.

Robin: Yeah. How much would the... I mean, the mounting would change. I wonder how much the connector would really change. And is it a voltage shift?

Tim: No, no change in the voltage. But the biggest problem is going to be BMWs are typically picky about their communication. You know, they measure voltage drops and things like that. So you could be screwing with the CAN bus.

Robin: The CAN bus system. I've never messed with it because my auxiliary board is based on going around the CAN bus directly to the battery and having a switch and then just giving it the bird.

Travis: Yes.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: Because two, I've seen stuff where it's like you make a wire six inches longer for a brake light and the CAN bus just says, nope, something's wrong. It's not going to work.

Robin: Yeah. I really don't respect that in a company. Like, give us the freedom to do what we do. I do still love the bike, but I went direct to battery.

Travis: That's just modern technology, right? And it's like if you get a Tesla or if you get a Zero or a Livewire, how much modding are you going to do?

Tim: Right. Probably very little.

Travis: I mean, unless you... I mean, and it's possible, right? It just takes a higher level of effort and know-how and knowledge base than wire goes here with saying, and I'm just going to ground it to the frame and it's going to work, you know? That's...

Robin: I mean, I've managed to get away with a lot, although the one and only time that I've ever, ever taken my bike to the dealership for any kind of service, I did ask the guy. The reason was I didn't have the GS911 yet, which is a module that you plug into the bike and it allows you to reset the service interval and like...

Travis: So it lets you interact with the computer.

Robin: Yeah. So I have that now, but I didn't at the time and the wrench was driving me crazy. So I had him check it out. I said, did you find anything strange? He said, and the guy was real cool. He was just like, eh, and just like a voltage issue somewhere, but otherwise fine. And I took the bike and I rocked out.

Tim: You know, I have shopped around in some of them in the past and usually you've got a couple of levels. You've got the very expensive stuff you'll buy from Touratech. You know, there'll be the Hellas or whatever they are brand Denali ones. And they're usually like five to 700 a set. And they're...

Robin: It's actually kind of reasonable, but then again...

Tim: Well, you know, then you've got the other Chinese LEDs from Amazon that you can get from, or eBay that you can get for 20, 30 bucks. And there's not usually a lot in between. I have seen a few importers that did some smaller ones that were... One of my favorites was a guy that was working through Adventure Rider. It's called advmonster.com. Those were pretty nice. They were fog lamps that had a vertical cutoff. So they were legal to run all the time on the road. Usually they're hard to find a good quality one that's going to dissipate the heat that's under two and a half inch diameter. So not super stealthy. I think that they are getting better, but you really are not getting around the tradeoff of light output and heat.

Robin: Yeah, so we've got to compensate somewhere no matter what. And it's like the more we get down to attaching a lightsaber to the front of the bike, the more heat we're going to be dealing with just because of the condensed... Yeah, I get that. Well, that's cool. I mean, it's something we can talk about. And we've done our bit just to bring the discussion to light. We know that I'm looking for something eventually. Should I go ahead and get into this month's...

Tim: That is it. Let's roll into the history there.

Robin: Okay, cool. I got three dates that I want to read. Speak your mind as I go. But February 20th, February 25th, and February 27th. It's time for this month in motorcycle history, which is brought to you by todayinmotorcyclehistory.blogspot.com. That's right. February 20th, 2006. Four-time Isle of Man TT winner Raymond Picquerel dies at 67. Ray Picquerel learned to ride fast on the North London roads around the Ace Café and the Busy Bee where bikers used to hold impromptu races. After acquiring a secondhand 500cc Manx Norton, Ray competed in his first real race at Brands Hatch in March of 1961. A long and expensive apprenticeship followed with his father maintaining his ex-Bob McIntyre 350cc Manx. Am I pronouncing that right, Manx? I think so. Manx, yeah. Gradually, Picquerel's results improved, helped in part by having the engines rebuilt each winter by the legendary engine tuner Francis Beart. In 1964, he suffered his first major crash. He awoke in the hospital with a broken thigh, a massive pin driving down the center of the bone, holding it in place. Back in that year, I imagine that didn't feel great. Like, is that just morphine central or what?

Travis: Yeah, even back then, cigarettes and some whiskey and some morphine and you're good to go.

Robin: Hold still, you'll be fine. We're going to chop it off and put it back on with a pin. The following season, struggling financially with racing, becoming increasingly expensive, he was on the verge of giving up when ex-racer Jeff Monti offered Ray a sponsorship deal, which involved him racing a 250cc Bultaco. I love how the displacement's going down a bit. A 350cc Air Machi and a Triumph-engined 500cc Menard, bastard bike built by Jeff Monti Dudley Ward. Without having to worry about the expense of maintaining the bikes, Picquerel continued to impress, and in 1967, he caught the eye of the South London Norton dealer, Paul Dunstall. Picquerel responded with a string of successes, and he scored his first major win in the big bike final at Snedgerton, riding a 750cc Dama racer. I love Snedgerton. I just love those English town names. The results prompted Dunstall to offer him full sponsorship for 1968, and Picquerel responded by winning an astounding 17 races. He jumped at the chance to ride for the Triumph BSA team in 1971, and was an immediate success on their three-cylinder 750cc racers. Picquerel teamed up with Percy Tate, riding the famous Triumph Trident Slippery Sam, and finished the year by winning the world's premier endurance race, the 24-hour Bordeaux in France. He won two tourist trophy races in June of 1972, the production machine race on Slippery Sam, and the Formula 750 race on a Triumph. The last big race of the year for the Triumph team was the Mallory Park race of the year, meeting in September. Picquerel finished fourth in the feature event, and the team seemed set to take the first four places in the supporting 1,000cc event, until his bike locked as he negotiated the devil's elbow at more than 90 miles per hour. There was nothing I could do, he reflected. I love that. I went flying, and when I landed, Tony Jeffrey's bike came out of the air and fell on me. Freaking ouch, man. That's like steel, 1,000cc bike. It smashed my pelvis into six pevis and left me screaming in agony. Raymond Picquerel would eventually recover, although he never raced again. That's just, that's adult racing.

Travis: Yep, that's like the old school.

Robin: That's, yeah, smoking cigars, drinking whiskey, I'm going to race. I got 500 bucks for it, tape. Good grief. That's brutal. I got nothing after that. I was going to read two more, and you know what? These are shorter. You want me to give it a shot? No, you can always cut it out. Yeah. All right, the next one, February 25th, 1939, Bathurst, Australia. New South Wales. That's what I said. Bathurst speedway racing legend, Bluey. Bluey Wilkinson poses for his first motorcycle advertisement, the German-built Victoria. The bike is their new lightweight two-stroke V99 fix. Riding and racing in England for the West Ham Hammers, 1929 to 1938, Wilkinson would win the 1937 National League Championship with them. However, the pinnacle of his career was becoming solo world champion in 1938 at Wembley Stadium. Bluey's 1938 championship win was considered a real ballsy effort, considering he had actually broken his left collarbone in a match for West Ham the night before the world final. Determined not to miss the final, Bluey had the Tottenham Hotspur club doctor put his arm and shoulder in plaster. Good grief. I am not tough. He ignored the pain he was in to win his first four rides before finishing a safe second in his fifth and last to clinch the world championship before a crowd of 95,000. Shortly after winning the 1938 world championship, Wilkinson would become the first speedway rider to appear in Madame Tussaud's London Wax Museum. During his career, Wilkinson also rode for Australia in test matches against England and the United States. He scored a maximum 18 points in each of the five tests against England staged in Australia in the 1937 and 1938 season, a feat he failed to duplicate the following season by only a single point. He retired from riding in 1939 to become the promoter at the Sheffield Speedway. Tragically, less than a year later, on July 27, 1940, Bluey Wilkinson would be killed in a road accident in Sydney, suburb of Bondi. Arthur George Bluey Wilkinson was included into the Australian Speedwall Hall of Fame in 2008.

Travis: Yeah, those old guys, that's crazy.

Robin: Another old guy was doing some crazy shit on whiskey and cigars.

Tim: That's so hardcore, man.

Robin: I didn't read through this next one, but we're just going to give it a go. You guys ready? February 27, 1929. The legend that is Les Archer Jr. is born in his grandfather's garage in Farnham, Surrey. Les Archer Jr. starts his life story off, I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. How else would you describe a kid born into a family so dedicated to our sport? My grandfather competed in motorcycle events on the actual ground where the first motocross took place in 1924. Followed this with a father who won his first race on a 250cc New Imperial at Brooklands in 1926. Little wonder that my first memories are of the roar of racing engines coupled with the smell of Castrol R. Les was known for competing in long-distance speed trials, road races, and scrambles, i.e. motocross. Riding, racing, winning in Algiers, France, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, and of course, England. Archer rode in the 1947 Isle of Man Tourist Trophy, the 1950 International Six Days Trial, ISDT as it is for short. As a member of the British Army team, he competed alongside his traveling companion Eric Chaney, known as Ariel. He went on to become one of the top British motorcycle designers. Archer was also a member of the victorious British team at the 1953 Motocross Day Nations. Winner of the 1956 FIM 500cc European Motocross Championship on a highly modified Manx Norton, he would help further development of the Manx Norton with the famed motorman Ray Petty. Les Archer Jr. has some of his winning motorcycles featured at the National Motorcycle Museum, that's Solihull, West Midlands, Sammy Miller's Motorcycle Museum, New Milton, Hampshire, and the AMA Motorcycle Museum in Pickerington, Ohio, USA. Planet Trip. I used to play Pickerington High School in baseball and marching band competitions, stuff like that. There it is, man. Those are some good ones. I just want to make this... It's cold where you guys are, and I want people to live up north to have something to listen to. We don't have any listener questions this round. Tim, speak your piece if you want.

Tim: Yeah, if you'd like us to answer your questions, please give us an email. You can use our contact form located at email.tro.bike or by calling 224-358-3010. On to this week's Mess a la Moto, brought to you by the Super Slick Ultra Badass Motorcycle Mega Posse of Incredible Power.

Robin: The Super Slick Ultra Badass Motorcycle Mega Posse of Incredible Power is super slick, ultra badass, and as a sidebar, incredibly powerful. I put a bunch of stuff that I liked on here in case we wanted to blast through it. I didn't know how today was going to go, but I'm having a dang good time. The guy hanging on a winch riding the cub. Discuss.

Tim: That was beautiful. You did see this, right? It did look fun, yeah. Yeah, a guy is just like... I don't know if he was doing some work on the bike or something like that. He's got it hanging from the middle of the shop floor.

Travis: He's cleared out a bunch of space. He's on a moped. Yeah, I've seen a couple of those where you swing the bike up and then make it a swing and use it to propel yourself.

Tim: Yeah, I think that's called mid-February in Wisconsin.

Travis: Yeah, if I had a big warehouse, I'd be doing that right now.

Robin: Then there's the valves in slow-mo. I took pleasure in that one. That was pretty. Somebody in a different Facebook group asked, can you get that at full speed? There's one of the S1000RR. When it's idling, they're almost blurred out of visibility, and then it starts going. You see all these different phasings where it starts to find different visual syncs with the camera.

Travis: Oh, yeah, like the springs are doing rude stuff.

Robin: Yeah. It was just crazy to watch because when you think you're done, you're only at 8,000 RPMs, and they're going to 20.

Tim: Yeah.

Travis: The Frankentreg. Yeah, I saw that. I still don't know how it works. You've got this big, long handlebar where the handlebar controls go over the front of the engine, controlling it somehow.

Tim: Yeah.

Travis: Moving side to side, not turning handlebars. The British and Harley-Davidson got together. It's a Harley motor. This thing, I don't even know where this Frankenstein trikes... I don't even know where you got this thing. If you're listening to this, it's a two-wheels-in-front trike, kind of like a chopper. The seat's real low, big, long tank, big, fat wheel in the back. It's got a Harley engine mounted on the nose, so it's like front-wheel drive. Yeah, and really high up, too. And really high up, and it's on, like, car wheels, 18s. And then it clearly has a chain takeoff from the power output from the Harley going down, and you can't see, so it's presumably driving the front wheels off of a chain drive. So, like, how does it even have a differential of some sort? Like, it's got to be... Nothing says motorcycling like understeer. I mean, if the thing even turns, I can't even see how this thing turns.

Tim: Like, I'm imagining, like, a pivot right behind the front axle, and the whole back end of the bike pivots.

Travis: Maybe. You can't figure out what's going on here. It's like a forklift. It's a rear-wheel steer.

Robin: Yeah. Or the Green Machine. The big wheel with the rear-wheel steering. With the levers. Good grief. Okay, CB750 Antichrist.

Tim: The thing is one hell of a nice-looking beast.

Travis: What are you looking at? I don't even see this.

Tim: Yeah, it's a salt-flat racer.

Travis: The land speed, yeah, and with the toaster tank.

Tim: Yeah.

Travis: Yeah. So it's got, like, a Honda Dream tank, sort of. Yeah, and it's stretched with two motors hard-linked together.

Tim: Actually, it might be a full front end from a Honda Dream.

Travis: Yeah, it's got, like, a big... I think it's bigger, and it's got the huge... That really big drum. Racing drum brake, like the 12-inch drum brake.

Robin: Yeah.

Tim: Tried and true in crashing. Nothing says land speed records like drum brakes front and back.

Travis: Like, sketchy. I mean, you only need to slow down, right? You don't need to stop.

Tim: Right. Yeah, and you've got a lot of run-out, so you could take a mile to do it.

Travis: Perfect grocery getter.

Robin: Okay, Travis, this one... Well, I'll leave this one to both of you, because I didn't actually watch it, but I knew something was down. What happened to Alta?

Travis: Oh, yeah. So, Fort 9 did a deep dive on whatever they could acquire for, like, paperwork. Alta made amazing the redshift, and they were poised to headline a transition in Supercross, Motocross, to electric bikes, because they were killing it, and tests are like exhibition runs against internal combustion counterparts. Mm-hmm. They were kind of getting a little overspent, I think, and then were looking to sell out, and then Harley did the startup buyout corporate garbage, give them an offer, and then let them burn cash until the company's worth nothing, and then go in and pick up the gashes for the name. Harley gave them an offer, so they were like, great, and then they started ramping up their stuff, burning through all their cash. Harley never closed the deal. Of course. Now they're underwater, and then Harley's like, actually, you know what? You signed a non-compete, you couldn't sell to anyone else, so now we're just gonna pay you what you're worth, Liquid. Ta-da. And then they were, I guess the Alta name actually then got sold to BRP, but Harley owns all the technology.

Tim: Okay. Yeah.

Travis: No one can use their stuff or make anything, and it's all just dead.

Tim: Well, this is interesting. Isn't Harley spinning off Livewire into its own brand?

Travis: Yeah, Livewire's its own brand now. It's like a subsidiary brand. That might mean we get more models. Well, the price dropped significantly when they spun it off. They're like $15,000 now, not $30,000.

Tim: Oh, wow. I didn't see that. Oh, that's not bad. No, that's a big improvement.

Travis: Livewire.com. Let me look here and see what they want. They're significantly less, I think, now.

Tim: There were some of those Harley prototypes that I really wanted.

Travis: The Livewire one is $22,000, which is still $8,000 less. It's almost a third less than what Harley was charging for the first run.

Robin: Yeah. Not freaking bad. Okay, well, moving right along.

Travis: The green meaty. Yeah, we almost did this for the model focus, and the AMA magazine this month, they talked about these in the original H1, the triple, the 1,000cc triple, two-stroke. And when I went, I think I talked about it in one or two podcasts ago, the local scooter shop in Madison closed. He had two or three of those kicking around the shop, and one was race-prepped with the expansion pipes and didn't have any body work on it. Dude, how? And then he had a stock one.

Robin: Can you imagine a two-stroke power band on 800cc's a bike? That has got to be a savage machine.

Travis: Yeah. Yeah, well, that's like the old MotoGP, the 500cc two-stroke MotoGP bikes were like that. Wow. There was a, when Zach and Aerie were still at Motorcyclist, I think Zach did a thing, and some company, I think, in Europe was selling these. Essentially, it was like a replica 500cc two-stroke MotoGP bike from back when they used to do that. You could buy one. It was track only, obviously, and it was like $60,000 or something ridiculous, right? But he got to go and test one, and when he hit the first back straight, he wheelied it, and wheelied it into his chin and bit his tongue, and it was bleeding in his mouth the rest of the test ride. Oh, gosh. Because he was like, he hit the straight, cracked the throttle, and then it hit the power band on the front end, just lifted up, and he wasn't expecting it.

Robin: Yeah, and does that settle down? If you're like, oh, and you roll off, is it going to settle down or is it going to take forever for it to get out of that place?

Travis: No, it'll settle. You just have to throttle chops, just like... Throttle control, man.

Robin: It's a big deal.

Travis: Yeah, but you just have to know how that machine works.

Robin: Mm. Mm-mm. Damn. Okay, new MotoGP venue in Indonesia.

Travis: Did you guys watch any of those videos? Oh, yeah, there's like the rendering of the track. I mean, it looks like a cool track. These, like, modern tracks are, like, so well-engineered.

Robin: You know how you click on something and then that's all you see in Facebook? Yeah, I've been getting a lot of that one. So, Tim, if you haven't seen it, you haven't heard much about it, it's been popping up for me. Yeah. New track in Indonesia. Looks really good.

Tim: Looking at it right now here.

Travis: Yeah, it's like a big front straight, you know, and then they... And, too, they, like, design... I feel like a lot of, like, the old tracks, it was a little bit of, like, well, you just had to do what the land kind of told you to do.

Robin: Yeah. Forcibly, yeah. This is a flash. So they got good runoff, too.

Travis: And now they can, you know, with modern technology, they really design and engineer every aspect of it. And it's like we got this big straight into a nice, big, wide corner or into something, you know, like, it's designed to be manageable with, like, a runoff and then the sweepers and then this turn and that turn and a double apex and a hairpin. You know, they design them to be challenging and entertaining on purpose.

Robin: Yeah, that is what track designers do. They're building a track to fuck with your brain. That's really their ultimate goal. It's to mess with you at all times. Even after multiple laps, you're still just like, wait, I still don't quite. It goes like that.

Tim: Yeah.

Robin: You know, once you know a track, you don't necessarily know the track, but you're comfortable on the track.

Travis: The substrate is reasonable and the tarmac material can stand the heat and it won't, like, buckle or erode if they manage, like, water, do water management correctly, you know. I feel like that's a hard thing with, like, a lot of the local tracks in the Midwest is, like, you get freeze-thaw cycles and they get, you know, they got to be repaved every couple of years.

Robin: The Triumph Electric TE1, what do you guys think?

Travis: Oh, it's gorgeous. Looks like a street triple.

Robin: I like it. I'm with Tim. I think it's freaking beautiful.

Travis: The major manufacturers starting to play more, like, if Honda, you know, the Japanese, I think, especially once they release production stuff, because it's not going to be half-baked, right?

Tim: Yeah.

Travis: They got to keep crunching numbers. It's kind of like what's happening in cars right now is, like, Hyundai just released their electric car.

Tim: Yeah.

Travis: And, like, it's awesome. Like, it looks super cool. It's got these, like, pixel 8-bit headlights and stuff and taillights. And every car of yours, like, this is why would you buy a Tesla now?

Tim: Yeah. Nice. That's one of the things is in the EU, there's been a lot of electric competition between the different brands, and we just haven't seen it in the US.

Travis: Everyone in the US, despite what they actually do with their cars, wants to be able to go 400 miles if they have to.

Tim: Yeah, even though they're going 20 miles across town.

Travis: 99% of the time. It's truth.

Robin: And I need that for touring. You know, we do sport touring. That's our thing. I need to be able to go at least 250 miles a day and have an access to a three-pronged charge system that'll do it in an hour.

Travis: Yeah. If you could get 300 miles on an electric bike, like, that'd be perfect, right? Or even 200 reliably, like, comfortably, like, with spirited riding.

Tim: Like... Oh, man, if you could do 200 before lunch and then have an hour-long lunch and then do another 150, 200, that'd be a pretty solid day.

Travis: Yeah, that's, like, more than I would want to do on a gas bike. 400-mile day, that's a long day.

Robin: The Zero SR Slash S is my dream bike at this point. It is my dream bike if they can get that tech going. It's what I want. And I want theirs because I wrote it and it was the dumbest thing of awesomeness I've ever been on.

Tim: Yeah.

Robin: I'll take over for this next one. All I'm going to say is if the blonde girl at the Supercross event turns around and flashes the audience, I just want to see more Supercross. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Travis: Yeah, motocross and, like, a lot of these motorcycle racer guys, they're tiny, right? Like, Valentino Rossi's, like, five and change. Five-two, five-three. Ricky Carmichael was, like, a big motocross guy. And just, like, the dopiest Opie Taylor jug-eared, ginger-headed and they got these, like, five-foot-eleven Monster Energy model girlfriends. It's so funny.

Robin: Yes. Last one on the list. We ended the last episode. I kept it in there, by the way, where Travis said motorversal to unicycling. And now there is a high-speed unicycle on the market. There's one video. Maybe you guys are looking at it now. I don't know. But it looked cool to me.

Travis: Oh, that's the Rhino?

Tim: Yeah.

Travis: Yeah, those have been around for a while, but maybe they're getting some more traction and have upped their production.

Tim: Yeah, he's been working on that prototype for, like, decades.

Travis: Yeah, well, too. He's, like, cost him his marriage. Really?

Tim: Yeah. But it looks like it's production-ready. Yeah, he actually, if you watch this video, he talks about ruining his marriage because he was so obsessed with this project. And they'll show, like, four or five prototypes, if I remember.

Travis: It's basically, like, a one-wheeled Segway that you sit on like a motorcycle.

Robin: I can't envision the gyroscopic turning methods and all the stuff that goes into making it want to maneuver at all. But I did get a giggle out of seeing it go down.

Tim: Oh, yeah. I love that he's, like, riding it into a coffee shop and stuff. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Robin: Wrapping things up, I'll take this opportunity to promote our next group riding tour, which is scheduled for July of this year. It's the Trip7s Tour. Seven riders will cover seven states in seven days beginning July 9th of 2022. It's a sport touring getaway of epic proportions. More information is available at tro.bike. Visit the group tours link, which is anchored under events in our navigation menu.

Travis: That's our episode for this round. Tune in next time for more discussion on all things specific to sport touring or universal motorcycling as a whole. For the Riding Obsession, I'm Travis Burleson. I'm Tim Clark. And I'm Robin Deen.

Robin: Safe travels, everybody. electronic music plays electronic music plays