Brian: Good to see you, Maggie.

Maggie: Nice to see you.

Brian: Last time I saw you was in Nashville, Indiana. You're in Texas right now, I believe, right?

Maggie: Correct.

Brian: How was your trip? Was it uneventful?

Maggie: It was uneventful. Nice and boring.

Brian: There's a first for everything, I guess.

Maggie: Yes, no, it was great. The suspension did its thing. Nothing else broke. No incidents, as I said, a boring trip.

Brian: That's incredible. Last year, I think things went sideways in a few ways, even getting from Wisconsin to Indiana. So did you stop in the middle, somewhere in Missouri or something, or am I hallucinating?

Maggie: It can be a five-day trip. We made it in four days. So we had stopped just over the border between Illinois and Missouri.

Brian: Oh, okay.

Maggie: Then further into Missouri, and then Texarkana, and then here.

Brian: Awesome, nice and leisurely. I would like to inform you that there are about four inches of snow on the ground here in Indiana. So you made the right move. You got out.

Maggie: I am sorry to hear that, for those of you in the Midwest dealing with snow.

Brian: No, you're not. Don't lie to me. Gloat a little, it's okay.

Maggie: Yeah, we just went for a ride a few days ago. Robin just went for a ride. Well, that's why we do this, you know? I actually got a bite on the bike. I don't think anything will come of it, but hey, that was progress, because it's been out there for a little while, and there's a lot of bikes out there. It's beautiful here. It's very fall-ish. Mid-70s, today was in the mid-60s, crisp at night, but sunny. Good riding weather, you know?

Brian: Two days ago, it was 70 degrees here in Indianapolis, and then yesterday, it was 60s, and then today, it's freezing and snowing. Life comes at you fast, I guess.

Maggie: The theme of today's podcast is problem-solving.

Brian: Calm logic and critical thinking.

Maggie: Yes.

Brian: Or calm thinking, critical logic, I'm not sure. One way or another.

Maggie: First, website updates and corrections. The popular posts are working again, so if you visit tro.bike, mouse over articles, and click popular, you can see what's happening, which are the top articles that are trending. The form anti-spam fallbacks are working again. Big shout out to TRO site supporter, JV, for their help with this. Something else, another update. Robin wants you, Brian, to know that he used the saw on his Leatherman many times recently in motorcycling-related activities, not the least of which was to cut a thick bit of fuel hose. What is that about? Were you trying to say that the saw is useless?

Brian: Yeah, I was kind of wondering out loud. I had a little rant going about, you know, some of the useless crap that they put into multi-tools, and unless you're cutting branches that are just the right width, I don't see much point in the saw. Now, I'm not sure why you would try to cut rubber hose with a saw, but maybe it was, apparently it was something he had to do, but they include a knife, which is normally what I'd use. But anyway, I'll inform Robin that I'm very happy for him, that his multi-tool saw was useful.

Maggie: I will add to that, that when I am sometimes cutting packaging where there's just a lot of thick plastic, like too much, like they've wrapped it 80 times, the knife has been useless, and I've had to use the saw.

Brian: It does have a use, okay.

Maggie: Yeah.

Brian: You can use that to unpackage motorcycle parts.

Maggie: Correct.

Brian: And I see some big news here. Tell me about it.

Maggie: We now own a Raboconda tire changer. So we sold the Nomar. That thing went quickly. It was out on the marketplace for not even a day, and we got the price we wanted for it. We got the Raboconda. It is more compact. It is a smaller footprint in general. It has good instructions. We watched Greg White's unboxing video of the Raboconda.

Brian: Yeah, we'll have to link to that.

Maggie: Yes. It is actually somewhat intuitive. We figured out how to use it pretty quickly. They do have some good videos, and it was a different story with the Nomar, which I know has been around much longer. The Nomar paved the way for things like the Raboconda, but I gotta say, especially for us, the fact that you can pack it down and it fits into a nice bag that they provide you, there are definitely upgrades that are nice for us. So yeah, it's great.

Brian: So I was really considering buying a Nomar because I'm kind of at the center of a lot of people that ride, and I've changed a lot of tires here at the laboratory. I used a Nomar, and I'm like, no, this is stupid. There's a really steep learning curve to using tire levers and spoons to change tires, but once you've climbed it, it goes pretty quick, and it doesn't take a lot of effort once you've learned how to do it. The Nomar just, it seemed to me, if you have the experience, it takes more time. The main thing is, though, the wheel just keeps popping out of the little clamps at the bottom all the time. Yes. It's really hard to get it to hold still. Once you get the damn thing clamped in there and holding still, then the rest is easy. You've got the demount bar and the bead breaker and all that stuff. And the Ravaconda really has an interesting way of just getting around all that crap, and you just plop it in there, put the thing in the center. There's a little stick that sticks up and keeps it from spinning around and does the same thing with a lot less effort. So yeah, I think it's really a much better design tool, and the way that you can just store it in a little bag and take it with you. So that's gotta be great for you guys. It's probably half the weight or less, right?

Maggie: Yeah. I mean, it's got some heft. It's made of pretty sturdy steel, but the Nomar, it's angular and it's big. And when we traveled, Robin had to undo the screws to disassemble it. And there was no bag that came with it. And the Ravaconda, it's a few parts that are made to be taken apart easily and then, yeah, stored in the bag. And they definitely benefited from the Nomar, for sure, being around first. But I have to say, it's a better product, I think.

Brian: 10 or 20 years ago, nobody changed their own tires unless they were like dirt bikers or just some weirdo. You know, like, oh, you gotta take it to a shop, gotta take it to a shop. And as prices rose and people got to know each other, motorcycling kind of moved to the internet. And they're like, oh, you really can do this at home. And yeah, it's legal. You know, it's fine. It's just self-defense because it just costs so damn much to have to ride your bike in and have them put tires on it and repeat every 5, 6, 8,000 miles or whatever it is, 2,500 miles for some of us. But like you said, the Nomar kind of had to come first, I think, and the Cycle Hill, I think, is pretty much the same design. There've been a few others, but yeah, the Ravaconda is the first one I've seen that really hits everything all at once. The one thing that is not great about the Ravaconda is it's kind of on the floor, if I remember right.

Maggie: You kind of have to bend over and- You could put it on a platform of some sort, I guess, if you have a bad back or whatever, but- I think if needing to bend down is an issue and you are someone not like us that's constantly moving around, you could probably find a way to secure it to, yes, a platform or something that's raised. There are times when you're gonna wanna be standing on a piece of it to put your leverage on it so it doesn't move around. Yeah, that part's true. I do remember when we were still living in Chicago, I think to get your tire changed somewhere, it would cost you 20, 25 bucks. One of our friends said it cost him 65 to get his tire changed. I was like, what?

Brian: Yeah, 65, 80 bucks is pretty common. And that's if you bring him in. Anywhere between 40 and 80 bucks is what I've heard. And if you just ride in, then it's gonna be an hour of labor, at least, more if you have like a gold wing or something like that with the fairings. And I started changing my own out of just financial self-defense a long time ago. Last time I had my tires changed at a shop, they screwed it up. They didn't seat one of the beads and I didn't see it in time. It didn't cause an accident or anything, but I had to take it all apart again and take it down there. I didn't know what to do about it at the time. And the guy's like, oh yeah, gave me the beavisome butt head. So they had to deflate it, break the bead and pop it again and it was fine. But if you look in the mirror, there's the only person that cares about your bike as much as you do. So it's just something people need to know how to do.

Maggie: I've heard you say that before and it's so true. You are the person that cares the most about your bike.

Brian: And your own skin.

Maggie: Well, yeah. There are some things that it's, you kind of can't get around. I experienced this with my bike.

Brian: That's one of the things that can stop you in your tracks, wherever you are. And being able to deal with tire issues on the road and solve those problems, which we'll get to here in a minute. You know, and even I would say being able to, especially if you have a bike with tube tires, being able to change a tube or deal with tire problems, even if you have to install a new one is a really good skill for riders to have. You know, it can be done. I showed up and did it at the 777's tour, you know, and everybody was like, whoa, didn't know you could do that. You can do it right here in the parking lot, but it just gives you a little more freedom and a little more confidence just being able to deal with this stuff because it's so hard, you know, if you're in the middle of nowhere, it's so hard to find, even getting a motorcycle towed is a huge deal, but I'm getting ahead of myself. My end of things, the only real update is that I'm disassembling my parts bike. We talked a couple of episodes ago. I got like a parts bike for my vintage Suzuki, pulling it all apart, putting all the parts in bins, you know, getting it all, finding places to put everything, because they're not making any more of these things. It's soon to be 42 year old bike. Oh, wow. Yeah, I've got a good seat, good engine, good set of carburetors, you know, just a lot of pieces and parts. I'm just going to stash and hopefully I won't need them. And whoever has to clean up my crap when I'm gone, we'll just throw it in a bin or something. But it's also just good stuff to have. There's a whole community of us who are into these vintage bikes. So whether it's me or someone else, hopefully this stuff will get used someday. It looks like Robin's been soliciting a list of questions. First one is PB. PB asks, I leave my motorcycle outside, but well covered for the winter. Do you have any tips to keep critters from nesting?

Maggie: Critters, they want to make winter homes out of any outlet they can find. So something you can lightly stuff, a small garbage bag into the end of your exhaust pipe, then cover that exhaust pipe with another tall garbage bag and seal it with a rubber band. So basically you're creating a couple of plastic bags barrier. And then you would cover the air intake and drain hoses with plastic wrap and a rubber band. So basically any small openings, you're covering with plastic and then securing that plastic sort of housing with a rubber band. I also had another idea for options. It's what we do to keep critters outside of the RV. There's a lot of little openings. When you're staying in a park that's got any kind of forest, yard, country, they definitely come a looking. We will stuff a combination of Brillo pads, dryer sheets, and Irish spring bar soap chunks. And you kind of fill the hole with some combination of that stuff. They don't like the smell of the dry sheets or the Irish spring. And so that stuff kind of needs to be refreshed. Also the Brillo pads, like they're scratchy and it's irritating. So another option. You could do a combination of those things. So those are some of the ideas I had. What about you, Brian?

Brian: Yeah, much the same. One of the things is you want to keep a cover over the bike but you don't want to seal the bike in. Otherwise you just kind of end up with like a terrarium effect and it gets humid on the inside when the sun hits it, it gets completely corroded. And I guess that takes us into the next part. There's another question. NMR asks, what are the best tips for storing your motorcycle safely during the winter? So once you've got all the critters out of there, there's an article on tro.bike, type winterize into the search. You'll get an article that really covers in a lot of detail, all the steps to take that we recommend to store your motorcycle for the winter. And again, it goes over the stuff Maggie said, you know, to keep the critters out of it. Even if it's in a garage or it's outside or whatever, mice or whatever are going to try to get in there. To kind of shortcut everything, the big steps are make sure the bike is clean. Make sure the bike is, everything is lubricated. It needs to be lubricated. Make sure the chain has a nice coat of lube on it and make sure all the fluids are reasonably fresh. Opinions vary, but the oil has some miles on it. Go ahead and change oil. So you're not sitting there all winter with all the acids and blow by and all that stuff sitting in the oil is a good idea. It's a good time to bleed and kind of flush the brake fluid if you want to do that or do that in the spring. But yeah, before it sits in the winter is a great time to do that. If your brake fluid is not like perfectly clear, that's a good time to do that. Change the antifreeze if it's time for that, that kind of stuff. And depending on how long your winter season is, whoever you are, you're going to want to fill the gas tank. Don't store it like half full or that airspace can get corrosion. If it's going to be down for four weeks or more, go ahead and put stable in the gas. Some people prefer seafoam. There's different elixirs and preferences, whatever. Put something in the gas to stabilize it and make sure the gas tank is full. And then if you have fuel injection, you're kind of done. Maybe run it a little bit to make sure that the stabilized gas gets into the rest of the fuel system other than that, don't worry about it. If you have carburetors, shut the fuel off, run it until the float bowls are empty and then drain the float bowls and the carburetors after it cools down just to make sure there's no gas in there to get all nasty. One point of controversy is a lot of people that go out in the garage and you start up the bike and warm it up once a week or once a month or something, don't do that. I really think that's a bad idea. Some people would argue about that. So go ahead and argue. If you're just starting it up and you're not warming it up fully and you're not going for a ride and getting everything moving, there's no point. You're just gonna load up the gas with combustion products, water is the worst, acids, blow by, stuff like that. You really just can't warm up the machine fully in the winter, just sitting there idling in the garage or whatever. So unless you can go for a 10 mile ride, just leave it alone and let it sit. Wait for the spring, wait for that first sunny day. You don't really need to worry too much about it. If you need to leave it on the kickstand, I'm sorry, sidestand. We don't have kickstands around here, right? Flat spotting in tires is not really a thing that actually happens. If a bike sits for three years, that's the one thing you need new tires anyway. But if just over the winter, you can sit on the sidestand, it can sit on the center stand if you have one, it can be set on a track stand, it takes up a lot less space. And then of course, before you go out in the spring, check everything over again, clean everything off, check the tire pressure, make sure the brakes work. Just do your checks before you clunk it into first and sail down the driveway. A lot of times in Indiana, the weather is mild enough. I don't really need to do anything to stabilize the fuel. Like it's pretty rare that I'm off the bikes for more than two or three weeks. Personally, a lot of times I don't actually do a whole lot because it's not gonna be out of action for three or four months. It's gonna be a couple of weeks, or just load up your RV and head to Texas and don't worry about it. And New Mexico and all that, yeah.

Maggie: That would be my advice, yeah.

Brian: Maggie's advice, go somewhere warmer. Like I said, there's an article on tro.bike and type winterize into the search form. You get kind of a full checklist to go through everything. And then once you pickle it for the winter, leave it alone until you're ready to go ride again.

Maggie: Our last listener question. TW asks, what are the flexible rubberized glove-like shields that cover clutch and brake levers at their joints called?

Brian: I have no idea. Tell us, Maggie.

Maggie: There is a picture of what TW is talking about. It's called a, insert your bike brand name, OEM cover or handle lever or clutch lever boot or lever guard kit or rubber protector. Full transparency. I didn't know that, but I Googled it, which is how I would approach finding out, just starting out with a basic, you know, search term to see what comes up. So when I did that for this, I saw Yamaha OEM cover. I saw other brands. So they all call it something slightly different. Also, there are some universal aftermarket parts that came up for kicks. If you use AI of any kind, you can see what the AI will tell you because now most of those, you know, they link to the source material that they're giving you the answers from. I saw an array of slightly different names. Many of them were kind of similar. You know, it was related to what it is.

Brian: I'm looking on a vintage Honda parts diagram and it says boot comma handlebar. And just to be clear, these things are not necessary unless you're doing like a full restoration or whatever. They're there. The manufacturer thought they kept dirt out or whatever, but you can ride without it if you need to. Another thing I've done with a mystery whatever is just take a picture, find a picture, and just do a Google image search and then see where you find similar pictures. You can start to figure out what the heck they call the thing. And a lot of time it's just bad translation from Japanese. You know, you never know.

Maggie: Yes, I agree with you. And the other thing that I've done is I've gone to search for my bike's specific parts fiche. Some sites have it and you can sort of, sometimes it's a little bit of a puzzle to figure out is it classified under engine or is it classified under transmission or something else? But once you find it, you'll see what they call it or at least what the OEM calls it. And then you can go from there to sort of get an idea of, okay, this is what I'm trying to find.

Brian: Let's talk about problem solving. If you lose that handlebar boot from your bike, don't worry about it. You can go without it. Robin recently put an article on TRO.bike, kind of recapped a breakdown he had in the middle of a trip. In a lot of ways, it was a bad situation. Everything worked out well. The family of motorcyclists came through and soon got him off the road. And I just happened to have the part. It was a whole thing. And the outline, it's like, there are a lot of times when you have a problem in the middle of the trip. Something's wrong with your bike. You can't go any further or you're not sure if you should, that kind of thing. But how do you approach thinking about this? How do you approach the problem solving? I remember when you guys were in Idaho and your triumph wouldn't start and I got a call and you're trying to figure out what to do about this. And this is before you'd really figured out what the problem was with that bike and why it would do this. The first thing you have to do is deal with the panic, get that out of the way so you can start to think and start to work the problem. I mean, have you ever read the Martian or seen the movie? The guy has to figure out how to survive on Mars. If you're panicked and emotional and you've got somewhere you have to be and all this stuff, it doesn't help. And that's often like the very first step in solving a problem. Robin broke a bolt on his bike while doing some work. And the first step was, okay, calm down. There is a solution for this. Have to get through that.

Maggie: I agree with you. It may be situational, it may depend. With my bike that day that you got the call, it was lots of things. We were in a city far away and we needed to get back and we weren't near our own solutions for emergency. And it was really hot, 100 degrees.

Brian: That doesn't help. Yeah.

Maggie: Yeah. And we were in a public parking lot. And so there were all these things. But yeah, getting calm so you can actually sit there and try to think through. I know that I don't think very well if I'm emotional or if I'm panicked, I in fact shut down, I need to be calm.

Brian: Yeah. And you touched on something there too, is I think step two, even if you know exactly what you need to do, even if you're like on a calm mountain lake, I know exactly what to do. Like you have a flat tire and you know what to do. But one of the steps people skip and I think you need to pay attention to is get physically comfortable. And whether that's dealing with cold or dealing with heat, get out of the sun, lay out something to sit on while you monkey with the axle. If you're skipping a bunch of steps and you're on your knees in the gravel and the sun's blazing down and there's a dead raccoon, you're going to make mistakes. Even if you know exactly what to do. Take the time to get comfortable, to optimize your environment, whatever that means. Push the bike over into the church parking lot under the tree, away from the dead deer. I mean, I've literally had to do this before. It's like, no, we're not fixing this here. This is gross. Let's get over there. And that's something a lot of people don't think of. And things like, it's a lot safer to get off the road and away from traffic and things like that too. Really go through what your resources are. What do you have with you? It's kind of like the Apollo 13 astronauts. The engineers threw everything on a table that they had in the space capsule with them. And had to figure out a way to build a CO2 scrubber out of parts. And they did it, and then they described how to do it. And it's a little bit like that. Take inventory of what I have, what's near around me, that kind of thing. And also, what can I find? You can find a lot of really useful things at farm stores, home stores, auto parts stores, Walmart.

Maggie: Yeah, as you're saying all of that, another thing that comes to mind and that kind of underlies everything, the get calm, get comfortable. I think it's okay to have a reaction. It's okay to have an emotional reaction.

Brian: Oh yeah, yeah, go run around and yell.

Maggie: Yeah, go do that. Just sort of maybe limit that time. And then you just have to be present. You can't think about time travel into the future or in the past of what you should have done or where you have to be. You have to be right there, again, so you can think about what to do. And if you're by yourself or you're with maybe someone who doesn't have the answer, just hoping that somebody's gonna tell you what to do, obviously, sure, use a lifeline. But I think you surprise yourself if you just calm yourself down and sort of slowly try to think it through before panicking.

Brian: Yeah, phone a friend is a great way to get into that mental space and also start working and also get into working a problem. It's like, okay, is this a mechanical problem or we're gonna try to solve this enough to get home or is this a logistics problem? This bike is going to stay here for now. We just have to accept that. But yeah, phone a friend is a great way to, even if your friend has no idea anything about motorcycles, it can also be a way to ground yourself and think about those options. So like Robin on his breakdown, he was able to make contact with friends in his network. This is not a mechanical problem right now. This is a logistics problem now, and then we'll work that. Hopefully it doesn't escalate into like, okay, now this is inconvenience and all the way, okay, this is a survival problem. How are we gonna, you know, the bears are gonna come eat us. Hopefully it never gets to that point. Phone a friend can help in a lot of ways, even if they can't really help you with the problem or help diagnose what's wrong and figure out if there's something you can do about it. One of the related things is you have to, even if, okay, I can MacGyver something out of some zip ties and I've got some wire that I found on this fence over here. And then I've got a bone out of this dead possum. Even more than ever, you have to really keep in mind your safety. It can be really easy to engineer a really sketchy fix. It's much safer to just get out of there. Dual sport riding, especially, like it's not safe to be somewhere where there's not gonna be another person for two weeks. You still have to pay attention. Okay, I've got this thing safety wired onto my makeshift clutch lever. Is this really going to be safe enough in traffic, you know, as I get home? Really have to think through those kinds of things, you know, and again, it goes back to panic. Calm down, think rationally, think through all the consequences and what could happen and how it's gonna work. I've used vice grips as like a makeshift shift lever before and you just have to remember that it's there and that it's gonna be tougher to shift for a while. It's not necessarily unsafe unless you forget it's there.

Maggie: Do you have a picture of that? I'm trying to picture vice grips as a shift lever.

Brian: I don't have a picture now, but the shift shaft on most motorcycles anyway sticks out of the case. And so you just clamp onto that with the pliers kind of hanging out at a little bit of an angle. So you just have the pliers clamped onto the neural part of the shaft and then you can actually shift with that. It sucks, but it can get you down the road.

Maggie: Oh, what? Yeah, okay.

Brian: And like if a clutch cable breaks, it's normally at the barrel at the lever. That's where they break 90% of the time. You can pull the little ferrule off the end of the clutch lever and then you can kind of unwind some of the spiral because the housing of a clutch cable is like a metal spiral covered in vinyl. So cut the vinyl back an inch, unwind some of that metal spiral, cut it off, and then you've got more free length of cable to work with. And then you can get it through your lever and then you can clamp it on with like a pair of small vice grips and just leave them dangling there. I've done that sort of thing just to get us out of the woods and that can be perfectly safe and can work perfectly well. You just kind of have to really think through all this stuff. Okay, like I've had to reroute a clutch cable to make sure I have enough free length after doing that because if you turn your bars and then your clutch locks up, that's not safe.

Maggie: My curiosity is what has been your sketchiest MacGyver fix? God. I mean, the one you described with the shift.

Brian: Well, there was one time, and actually I could not convince the guy to actually try it and go ride. And we came across a group of Harley riders and one of the Harleys, part of the shift linkage fell off. So one of those guys had a pair of cheap vice grips in his kit. I clamped those on and I said, here you go. So when you're going down the road with forward controls, it's all weird, but he would have to lift his foot up and kind of kick this pair of vice grips to shift up. It would be uncomfortable, but it would be possible. And then now you can get out of here, you can get home or you can get to somewhere, have some beers and deal with this later. What would have been better was to do like a suicide shift, like the old, old, old bikes where you have to shift and you have to pull the clutch with the same hand. It's complicated to do. It's very difficult to do. He could actually like lift up his boot and he could reach it and kick this thing and it would shift the bike and get you home. The guy refused. And again, this is where that panic sets in. The only thing he thought of and the only thing he would focus on was calling a dealer, having them come out with a trailer and tow the bike to a dealer and they can deal with it, they can handle it. There were two problems with that. First was the calling. There was no signal at all and nobody had any signal where he was sitting. And the second part, it was Saturday afternoon. The dealer was two hours away and they closed in about half an hour. He was so panicked and focused on, that's the only way to solve this problem. Basically, we just ended up wishing his friends good luck with this and took off. There's nothing else we could do. We didn't have a spare Harley shift linkage lying around anywhere. I don't know what happened. I didn't see any like bleach bones or anything last time, next time I was there, but it would have worked. Maybe we could have come up with something better. I also had an idea like we could have attached the vice grips and then had like a string running over his handlebars. So then he could like pull the clutch and then he could yank the string with his other hand. There would have been a way to do this. The bike ran.

Maggie: Yeah.

Brian: It's just this one thing. There's been a couple of sketchy ones.

Maggie: This would have sucked too, but could he have just ridden the bike in first gear?

Brian: Something like that, yeah.

Maggie: I mean, it would have sucked, but.

Brian: Yeah.

Maggie: I mean, there's always, I guess there's always more options than you think, right? They're not all gonna be great options.

Brian: Yeah, on a Harley, you could put it in second, maybe even third gear and you could take off and you could get somewhere that way. You could definitely put it in second gear and you could get somewhere. Maybe even just getting somewhere that had better cell reception.

Maggie: Right, yeah.

Brian: That's the thing, getting focused on a particular solution is kind of the first part, the emotional reaction. You have to get through it however you need to and then work the problem. And sometimes half a solution, okay, we'll throw it in second gear and we'll just slip the clutch a little. But any bike, you can put it in second gear and slip the clutch and get moving, if you needed to get somewhere. It'll get you 10 miles, it wouldn't be fun. 30 miles if you really had to. I once rode a bike home two hours without any clutch at all. There was no way to fix the clutch cable. So basically at stoplights, I would kind of Flintstone paddle it forward till I got moving and then clunk it into first gear. If I was in a little town, I would just kind of go into a parking lot and do orbits in the parking lot in first gear. And then when the light turned green, kind of pop out again on the road and then keep going. If I had to stop, then I'd just stop and let the engine die, put it in neutral, start it up again. And then there are ways around stuff like that. You know, and kind of the last part, but it's really the first part of problem solving is to be prepared for them. The things you have with you, your tools, spares, whatever you have, understanding how things work, having some mechanical acumen. That's kind of the first part, but it's also the last part. You know, once you've calmed down, you've assessed the situation, you thought of solutions and so forth, but having something to work with is a lot of it. Even if that's just like a credit card and a cell phone and a towing plan, I'm going to just leave it at that. Some people do that. Other people go to the extreme I do, and I've got a lot of tools and bolts and all kinds of stuff. So there's a lot of room in between there.

Maggie: I always carry an extra clutch and brake cable. They're light. They don't take up any space. Those are easy, light things of extras on hand. That's interesting that he got so focused on that. I can understand, but I've also experienced in other stages of trying to figure out what is wrong with my bike. And to reiterate another earlier point that you made, you are the one that cares the most about your bike. I've taken my bike to professionals, Triumph dealerships, a garage that was Triumph certified. I paid money to have them diagnose the problem and fix it. And they did not. Relying on the pros to be there for you in a perfect world, sure, great. But yeah, like you mentioned in that situation, no signal, can't reach the dealership. And unless you have a personal friend at that dealership willing to stay around on that Saturday, that's not your only solution.

Brian: And we've really focused on mechanical problems, but there are other problems, getting lost, getting separated from your group. There are different kinds of problems that happen. They're not unique to motorcycling, of course, that kind of thing. Coming across, trying to help somebody else who's got a problem, there's almost a social judgment you have to make. How much time am I gonna spend helping this guy? Those are all secondary, but yeah, the process is the same. Calm down, get comfortable, get safe, figure out what you need to do, what you're gonna focus on, what your priorities are, that kind of thing. It can get really complicated, but just take it step by step. Speaking of problem solving.

Maggie: Yes.

Brian: You mentioned your Triumph, and from what I understand, the issue is it'll start fine for a while, and then when the bike gets warm enough, the anti-theft system will fail, and then the bike won't start for the rest of the day. Is that about it?

Maggie: That's about the size of it. We had three people, Robin, Travis, Tim, all got together, they took the bike apart, they tested, you mentioned you thought maybe there was a ground issue. They looked for all that, they tested for continuity, they checked the cabling, the wiring. They took that thing apart. It was the thing that I dreaded the most, because you have to remove the air box, and it's just a spaghetti.

Brian: Yeah.

Maggie: They couldn't find anything. Any grounding issues, any issues with any continuity. Now, I don't know if they actually tested the stator or the regulator, but I have tested the fuel pump, and when I've done the test using the diagnostic tool, it's not that. I also get different error codes every time I run the diagnostic tool, and every other time, the immobilizer does come up as one of the errors. So we are 99% positive that it is an issue with the immobilizer itself. You can have something wonky with the chip, the copper wire, and when it gets too hot, it just won't start. I looked up what it would be to replace the immobilizer, but of course, it's not just the immobilizer. If you replace the immobilizer, you have to get a new ignition and keys, and then all of that has to be paired to your ECU, and that has to be done at a dealership. That is not cheap. I've seen various parts on eBay, but regardless, it all has to get taken to a dealership, and it's just beyond the point now that, as Rahava puts it, I had a come-to-Jesus moment with the bike, and we're ready to break up. So we're ready to break up, and in our ad, we're honest about it. Somebody that was looking at it just wants it for a track weapon, and that'd be great, but we told him there's a hardness that they make to try to bypass that. I don't know quite how it works. We sent him the link for it. Like I said, I'm ready to break up with the bike, so I'm beyond wanting to fix it. It's hard to price bikes. There's an article about how to approach it, but there's still a part of, when you're the seller, you want as much as you can get for it, and of course, when you're a buyer, you want the least you can pay for it, but we think we actually have come up with what's a fair price, and being as honest as we are with the whole thing, so Robin found my next perfect bike.

Brian: Ooh.

Maggie: There's some FOMO there. We cannot buy it without selling my bike. Not even, there's only space to carry one bike for me. I can't, so.

Brian: Yeah. Do you want to say what this next bike is, or you don't want to jinx it?

Maggie: I'm looking hard at the SB650, the new one. We found one. The price is unreal. It's a color scheme that I really like, and it's in good condition, but I need to sell my bike.

Brian: Are they calling it the SV again?

Maggie: Yeah.

Brian: They got over that Gladius BS. Obviously a great choice in a lot of ways. The European bikes, you know, they have different regulations in Europe and Great Britain. They've got these immobilizer or anti-theft systems that have proven to be pretty problematic. This is probably the third Triumph where I've actually had to help the owner deal with a problem with the immobilizer or the alarm system. In the first two cases, the one was a pretty early modern Triumph. Basically we had to build a bypass harness, then we could just throw it away. Then you just didn't have the anti-theft, which it's the US, it's fine. It's not that big a risk. And then the second one was all separate. You know, it wasn't built into the ECU or anything. Able to unplug this thing, and then they had to basically make a jumper. The immobilizer slash alarm system, the battery inside the alarm went flat. So basically anytime, you know, this thing would yell and yell and yelp and yelp until the battery ran down. We figured out finally that you could unplug this thing and then build a jumper wire for the plug and throw it in the trash and go on. Your bike is modern enough where it's all integrated. It's not just jumpering a wire, it's sending a signal of some sort somewhere.

Maggie: Through the ignition switch. Okay.

Brian: Yeah, if you could just put two wires together, that would not be a problem.

Maggie: Yeah.

Brian: It sounds like there's a signal being sent and there's not a good solution. So yeah, the pricing seems quite reasonable. The thing is in excellent shape. Got a brand new chain, if I remember right, you know.

Maggie: Oh yeah. A brand new chain.

Brian: Tires are new.

Maggie: New tires, yeah. I think the other thing is it's been one owner. It's a clean title.

Brian: Yeah.

Maggie: Her first three years were taken to the dealership for maintenance and we've done the rest ourselves. And so it's like, I've heard of other bikes where awful paint job or you don't know how many people have owned this bike. They don't have the title. Like there's all these other things. And so I can understand where the not starting issue is a little like, but depending on how good the person is with mechanics and looking at all the other stuff with it, she actually has been cared for. And yes, she's been ridden, but she doesn't have a hundred thousand miles on it. Yeah.

Brian: Yeah.

Maggie: I haven't ridden her nearly as much as Robin has ridden his bike. So she's not even broken in. I mean, come on.

Brian: Yeah. And if I remember right, it's stock exhaust.

Maggie: Right.

Brian: No monkeying around with it. Yeah. You need to find the right, somebody who's willing to deal with that or who maybe wants to make it, you know, it'd be a fantastic track bike. Somewhere out there is the right buyer. So hopefully you'll find that person. The SV650, I mean, it's a classic. I think you'd be very happy with it. Yeah, it's kind of a Ducati without all the Euro bike nonsense.

Maggie: Yeah.

Brian: That open trellis frame and everything, just really great.

Maggie: I sat on them a few times, but this one that we found is perfect. It would be lovely. I would, I'm actually not looking at it that much because A, I know it's probably gonna sell. And yeah, I'm getting fixated on it. I'm like, I want that bike. I also sat on a couple of Yamahas. I sat on the R7.

Brian: Oh yeah.

Maggie: There was a white one with the red rims. I was like, ooh, I've never been a white bike person, but I was like, this is kind of nice.

Brian: Yeah, the R7 is crazy good. I'm a Yamaha fan now too, but my last three bikes I've bought have all been in the winter. Like in the deep, dark depths of winter, someone finally gets desperate enough and the price gets to where I feel good about it. That's how it's shaken out. The last, my KLR I bought on New Year's Eve. Well, I was still on a walker from the accident that killed my last KLR. So I showed up, I get out of the car and I'm like, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, busted leg. And this guy's like, what the hell's going on here? And I had the owner like ride it up and down the street a little bit just to make sure. It was freezing cold. I was like, just, I want to make sure it starts and runs. You know, it'll be fine. Had a friend of mine with me to load it up in my trailer for me and off we went. My Yamaha I bought in February. My Vstrom I bought in late October from a guy in Michigan. People looking for a bargain, people with experience do tend to be looking in the winter. So hopefully you can find the right person who's like, you know, I think that'll make a good project. Yeah. Then you can settle into a Japanese bike with the reliability factor. Because yeah, having that in the back of your mind, you know, this thing's going to not start is rough. That's tough. That's not good.

Maggie: The last time I took her out on a ride, it was a lovely riding day. She started, I went out, we rode, we stopped and then she wouldn't start.

Brian: Ugh.

Maggie: We left her in the shade. I jumped on back with Robin. We did more riding. We came back, still wouldn't start. I left her there overnight. I was like, fine, stay here. Yeah, the owners of the place were fine. We came back the next day and had to pick her up. She still wouldn't start.

Brian: Oh.

Maggie: Then a few days later, started again. It's just insane. And like I said, it's the last thing that, you know, we're 99% sure of what the fix would be. We're just not willing to spend any more money on her. I have spent enough money on her over the years.

Brian: Even if they spend the money to go to a dealer and get all the electronics, it'd still be a hell of a bargain for somebody.

Maggie: All right. Next up, Wisconsinite Jamie Pauls is a fierce writer, an inspiration and advocate for differently abled motorcyclists around the world. He's put countless miles on his, was V-Rod, now street rod, converting problems into solutions along the way. Robin sat down with him to ask about his mechantech can-do resolve. Here's what Jamie had to say.

Robin: Jamie Pauls, welcome. How are you?

Jamie: I am doing very well. Been looking forward to this, even though I missed the first chance, because life.

Robin: Life will not wait for us to catch up to it. It will not. Your ingenuity, in my mind, is pretty much top shelf. Whether it's out of necessity, challenge, or curiosity, you've thought about, you've experimented with, you've fabricated riding kits to suit your riding style. I'm guessing you've probably done that with other aspects of your life. The question is, what came first, chicken or the egg? Does being you come with a calm, logical, problem-solving mindset, and hopefully the best solution to any situation, or is it survival instinct, or is it both?

Jamie: The biggest thing is, is that as you go along through life, people look at you and they assume, based on their knowledge, what you can and can't do. Women, men, races, political, you know, the whole spectrum, we make assumptions based on people, based on our experiences. And so my biggest driving force in my life, when somebody says you can't, I will.

Robin: Immediately tearing down all things face value.

Jamie: There's no obstacle you can't overcome if you have a will to do it. I've been riding motorcycles since I was 18. I've got 275,000 miles on motorcycles. I've ridden from 50cc Yamaha Midnight Special that my dad won in a contest, up to 1,500 Gold Wings, 1,000cc sport bikes.

Robin: This would be way more interesting if you had done it in retrograde. So if you had started on a 1,500cc Gold Wing and today you're riding a 50cc.

Jamie: I have went backwards sometimes. I've had, I think, six or eight Gold Wings. Oh, goodness. With and without sidecars. I had two with sidecars. All of the ones that had sidecars, I rode without sidecars as well, so I took them off.

Robin: Have you ever had a dog in the sidecar? And if so, can you count on one hand how many times you've done that?

Jamie: I did have a dog in a sidecar. We didn't go for a ride. He was a Samoyed. He just was in there for a photo op on a blue 1,500 with a California 2 Plus 2 sidecar that both my kids rode in.

Robin: Was that an Aspencade or was that a newer model?

Jamie: Aspencade. It had been a show bike and I bought it, used, but loved it. And I needed a bigger sidecar for my kids because they were getting older. I started with a, you remember the Vetter fairing kits? Yes, I do. Well, they made a Vetter Terraplane. Looked kind of like a Triumph TR7. Googling. Except they put it on the side of a motorcycle and absolutely loved the look of that sidecar. Had planned on trying to put twin Corvette buckets in it for both my kids. I mean, when they started out, they were small. They sat side by side, but I was gonna try and keep that. Never did come to fruition with that. I've never been happy with stock. You got a metal. I have to. Yeah. It's not yours until you change it. Why do you have to change stuff? Because I don't want what everybody else has. When somebody goes out and looks at a bunch of bikes, they go, that's Damon's. They don't even have to question it. They know as soon as they see it, that it's mine. I don't want anybody to mistake it. I've won some really cool trophies for engineering work in a V-Rod group that I was in, Best Innovation.

Robin: I'm gonna forcibly expand on that here in a bit, but keep going.

Jamie: I also was at the first annual Blue Nights in Wisconsin Dells. I won, there was a guy there that had a Lamborghini inspired motorcycle, a Harley. And I brought in my Harley V-Rod and won Best Drive-In to the show or something. Best Walk-In. Yeah, basically something that was done by you as opposed to you paying somebody else to build something. The Best of Show bike was built by somebody else. Beautiful bike.

Robin: When you were building this, even as a walk-in contender, did you already have a certain way about you and a certain series of gears and motion, how you were gonna get that done from start to finish? Or was a lot of trial by error at that point?

Jamie: It's a lot of trial by error. It changes. I start with making it mine, making it rideable. And then I see things. I have a VR SCA, which is just a regular V-Rod. Googling. It is basically the chopper bike. Long rake. Right, no cornering. They make a VR SCR, which is the street rod version. It's raised about two inches in height.

Robin: You say no cornering, but I'll have our listeners know that I've followed this gentleman around a racetrack several times. Tough to keep up with. This guy can ride.

Jamie: I've always kind of been the leader of the pack in the people that I ride with. Very few people want to lead because I'm always right there and they're feeling like they're being pushed. Some people don't like being pushed. I love being pushed. You try and keep up. I ride with my family a lot and there's some very skilled riders, but even the people that think there's that one corner, one piece of road, and they're like, all of a sudden, they just weren't there anymore. I've always tried to live life right on the edge. Do as much as you possibly can. Just look over the edge.

Robin: A lot of people will see that there's an edge. To know that there's an edge is one thing. To know where that edge is and to stay away from it. That takes some fine tuning. There is actual rhetoric in the episode that you're appearing on where we discuss how to have enough mojo and not fall asleep.

Brian: Yep.

Robin: Where's that gray area where you're having a good time but you're not facing the opportunity for adrenal crash?

Jamie: Yeah. One of the biggest things they talk about in cars and SUVs being unsafe, it's not that they're unsafe. It's that you make radical changes in yaw and that upsteps the stability of the car. Some of them will handle it better than others, but if you just relax, look at where you are, and ease back, you can come out of a lot of things.

Robin: Jamie, that speaks to my question perfectly. The idea that if you're riding or if you're engineering or if you're fabricating, to address it from a state of calm, even if things seem a little hairy. It's not my forte. On the bike, I try to make it my thing, but when it comes to problem solving, a lot of people aren't like you where they'll become frantic, give up, abandon all hope. I know that I'm one of them. It's like, if I can't fix it, angst, upset.

Jamie: And if you can't fix it in a certain amount of time, a lot of people look at it and say, this should only take 15 minutes to 45 minutes. And once it gets close to that timeframe, then they start throwing wrenches and they start getting upset. And it's like, dude, calm down, relax. Look at it from a different way. One of the biggest things with motorcycles in general is looking outside the box. I've had people say, I don't know how you do it. I was in a crash and I just don't understand how you get back on. I'm like, well, sometimes you just gotta get back on the horse.

Robin: We wrote an extensive article about that, about facing the rider fear. No brash decisions, just a slow easing back towards whatever it is you love doing.

Jamie: My last accident has slowed me down a lot, part of it's age, but I don't wanna make that phone call to my wife anymore. I miss it a lot. I wanna be back on it so bad.

Robin: Let's come back to that a second, at the problem solving, the no problems, only solutions mentality. What you said about the wrench, I definitely am a late bloomer into motorcycling. One day as an adult, I said, I don't have anybody to answer to. If I wanna ride motorcycles, I can. And so I do, but then the maintenance and all that goes into being a rider, if you really wanna be the real deal about, I maintain it, I operate it, all of the things. There's a lot of times when I walk around a corner and I arrive at a dead end with a giant word, can't attached to it in the garage. Whereas that's not you, you seem to arrive and you'd be like, all right, it says can't, but all I see is a bunch of different bars that shape letters. I can detach those bars and rearrange them into a different word. So when you said, you gotta think outside the box, I don't know that I've ever heard anybody explain what that means. And it's not a challenging question, it's an ask. When you think outside the box, how do you tune yourself to look at a situation and go through the problem solving routine? If you were to start to finish, think through it.

Jamie: One of the things when I've done different jobs and people said, you'll never be able to do that. I said, why don't you show me how you do it and then I'll adapt it so I can do it. So I watch them and I use a bunch of different things, how you hold things, how you can manipulate different tools. One of the things that the guy on No Fucking Way, he shows a vice grip and he puts a wrench on it on the knurled screw and tightens the vice grip with it. He also takes it and uses it as a lever on the handle part of the vice grip. So you tighten it up really tight, then you use the closed end wrench on it and use it as a lever. That tool hasn't changed since I was a kid. But in the last year, I found out a different way of doing it and being able to use it. Because unless you're got the vice grip of a orangutan, vice grips, they hold pretty well. But if you really want it to stay there, you need more than just your grip strength to tighten them down. And who knew that you could tighten them with a wrench, undo them with a wrench.

Robin: It's a means to a fix. It seems like you're working forwards by seeing it backwards at the same time. Correct.

Jamie: You wanna see where you're at, where you wanna be, and then you work backwards until you get to the point where you can do it yourself. I've always kind of been that way. I started working on cars and stuff before I was 16. Grew up on a farm. My dad taught me how to wrench on cars and stuff, working on farm equipment and tractors. There's always something you can do in a different way. But gravity is the biggest thing. Gravity is one of the biggest tools that people have. People that don't need to use it have no idea what it can do. You can get a lot done with gravity, moving stuff around and tipping it up so that if you're trying to move something and you have this big surface that's causing a lot of friction, get it so it's just on an edge and you reduce the friction a boatload. Just tipping it. You never really lifted it. You just tipped it from being flat on the ground to on an edge and you can move stuff.

Robin: So on the B side of that record is the inertia, right?

Jamie: Yeah. 55 gallon drum full of liquid. People will take those and spin them and ride them on the edge and they will send them. Instead of putting it on a cart, tip it up on the edge and it'll spin. The inertia of the liquid inside will start spinning and it'll spin on that one edge and just go down through a building.

Robin: Would you say that problem solving the most fluid approach to it is using your mental path of least resistance? Yeah. Oh, this is making way too much sense. This is the next question in my prepared words area. Big shout out to Kevin who people heard about last week in an episode. We had a busted rear axle leaf spring on our toy hauler. We were stranded and we're full timers, so that's a big deal. This guy shows up, turns out he's a motorcyclist. And so we recently made friends with a motorcyclist out of Nashville, Indiana, who's still recovering from a serious on the job injury. He fell off of an RV roof. This guy is a trained race mechanic. Oh, wow. But afterwards he was like, what I discovered was you can't make a career out of that. So he's like, he can fix anything and saved our asses mid journey down here to Texas where we are now. So Nashville, Indiana, recovering from this serious on the job fall, he has to change his bike platform because of more than anything, vibration. I immediately was like, go with a twin. I kept forgetting who I was talking to. He clearly knew his noise. All right, he's on a Busa. He's got a couple other bikes. He's got some, I don't remember if he has a Moto Guzzi. I know he's got a six cylinder KZ, but what can you tell our listeners in detail about how you address the unexpected challenges, which I think gets into that throughput, that path of least resistance, be them mechanical fabrication, tuning, et cetera, or technical riding methods, alternative takes on training the lot. What would you tell him about his plight?

Jamie: Well, you know, you talked about vibration. A lot of people don't understand that you can limit vibration by putting weights on the end of your bar. Bar ends. Bar ends. A lot of people think that they're just to protect the handlebars, but Gold Wings have been using bar ends for years to limit the amount of vibration because motorcycles are inherently vibration inducing.

Robin: You saw me on my Bandit a couple of times. It needed bell weights for bar ends.

Jamie: Harley is used rubber as isolation. I don't think it works that well. One of my favorite bikes is a Harley, but I've ridden numerous kinds of bikes. I'm a big fan of Yamaha. I love Gold Wings and I've only had one Harley and I absolutely love it. It feels like an extension of me and I love riding it. I used to ride it back and forth to work and you ride the same road every day. You know what you can and can't do and you know how far you can push and you just keep going and you just like, I felt this the last time. Let's see if I can go just a little bit further.

Robin: See, that's the version to keep because that's the one that doesn't go to the edge. It knows where the edge is. It's a big deal.

Jamie: Yeah. Back in the early days of riding when no fear was the biggest thing. I know. So stupid, but that was on the windshield of my Gold Wing. Oh, okay. So you take a sport bike logo and put it on a Gold Wing. I showed guys, they weren't all that they thought they were. I would outride a minute with a Gold Wing and they were on sport bikes. You want to see people just cry. Is take them away from thinking because they have a sport bike. On a freaking expressway. Right. And you take them down a curvy road. I had triple turn downs on it. I used to throw sparks because I would drag the exhaust.

Robin: Actual riding. Actual riding.

Jamie: Yes. And these guys, why'd you keep on throwing sparks at us? Like, dude, I was riding to my edge. We couldn't keep up with you.

Robin: That's not the goal. That's never the goal. No. So we now have a pre-tour video that's all about like independent decisions. Be good to the people around you. Nobody has to keep up quote unquote with anyone. That's not a goal. It's not the reason we ride. It's not so we can be an amoeba. It's about you having a good time on your terms. Yep. And safely so.

Jamie: If you want to keep up with somebody, go on a racetrack. Goodness, yes. You can push the limits. You're in a safer environment. We have cars to worry about. We have animals to worry about. Granted the racetrack that I was on still had animals.

Robin: To a Blackhawk. Blackhawk. Yes. Perfect. Deer, turkeys, raccoon. I'll edit this out listeners, I promise. But. Jaguars.

Jamie: You're in Wisconsin, so there's gonna be animals.

Robin: Yeah.

Jamie: Doesn't matter where you're at. But fighting with deer versus a bike, not very much fun.

Robin: Not gonna win.

Jamie: You know.

Robin: I do know twice I know. Two times.

Jamie: Yes. I did take a deer in a corner one time with my V-Rod. And I still have a problem. You know, they teach you to look through corners. And I'm like, that's what I was doing. I was looking through the corner where I wanted to be. And this deer comes out of my blind spot and crosses the road in front of me. And I didn't see it until it was like 10, 15 feet away from me. 50, 55 miles an hour. 10 to 15 feet. I put down three feet of black marks. But, you know, it was over.

Robin: You and I as friends and peers, we've ridden together several times. We've known each other for years. In the time I've known you, I'll step up one stair and say that I need to do an episode where I talk about how I'm addressing every corner. It's a repeat of look far, then look near, then look far, then look near. So you're calculating the prospects. And there's a lot of people that could stand to benefit from that.

Jamie: In the MSF courses, they're like, you have to look where you're going. You can't change your focus. I'm like, it's good on paper. Yep. On a racetrack, it's perfect. But in the real world, animals happen. And if you're not looking close and far back and forth, you're doing yourself a disservice.

Robin: Or you're getting really lucky.

Jamie: Very lucky. I've actually had deer go in front of me on my Goldwing and you could hear the hooves on the road trying to get traction to get out of your way. The clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop. Yes. And it's, I didn't hit that one. But lo and behold, later, I did hit one.

Robin: Let me ask you this. I'm told that we have a number of differently-abled listeners tuned into our little podcast here. The kind of people with one or many physical obstacles forcing them to completely rewire their learning process on the fly. Want to join in, better get ready kind of thing, right? For those of them out there trying to make heads or tails about how they can become fully functional motorcyclists, what suggestions and inspiration do you have for them out there?

Jamie: If you need modification and you've just started riding, you're going to have to go through the outside of the box stuff with motorcycle safety. Because you can't hardly get a license without going through an MSF class. You can kind of, but it's really difficult. You've taken the ARC, right? The Advanced Rider Course? Yes. And I found out the things that I had changed caused trouble with doing that class correctly. Because the changes that I made to my motorcycle wouldn't allow me to turn lock to lock as well as I wanted to. But you got to be there. I did get to be there. I also competed, Gold Wing used to have the GWRRA. I was a member of that for a while. And I competed in the tight circle competition where you just keep on going in a circle and try and get the smallest radius. Nice. I never won that competition, but the guys that I was going up against at the event, I watched people do it. And then I went in and did it. The people that beat me were doing this every day of their life. They would come home. They would have a pad of blacktop in front of their driveway. And before they put their bike away, they would come in and do four circles before they put their bike in the garage. A lot of the stuff that I do, I do because it interests me and I want to see how good I can do it. Ever since I was a kid, I always had to prove that I was good as the next guy. And that's got me in trouble sometimes. Sometimes it gets me a lot of respect. Sometimes it gets me a lot of disgust, but I play my game and people have to understand that their game might not be my game. I might not be able to do what you can do, but I can do what I want to do as well as I can. And I always strive to do the best I can in anything that I put my mind to. It's not, oh, let's just go out and half-ass this. Let's go out and make a concerted effort to practice certain things, learn how to become one with your motorcycle. I've had, I think, 18 motorcycles in my time. And the reason that that's number as high as it is, I would have a motorcycle and I would grow out of it. Either because it wasn't enough for the riding capacity. I went camping one time on a CM400T, me and my wife at the time, first wife, packed this bike down, went camping. I hated it because it was horrible. Went out and bought a bigger bike and never went camping on a motorcycle again for eight, I don't think ever.

Robin: It's not all it's cracked up to be if you're not into it. There are a lot of people that are like, oh, I could go motorcycling. I could also go camping. I don't have to do them at the same time.

Jamie: Correct. A lot of the times I grew to the point where I was so in tune to the bike that I knew exactly what it was gonna be and I would push it right to that edge. I need to get something else that I'm not familiar with so I'm not pushing the envelope all the time.

Robin: It's a graduation of sorts. Sometimes it's lateral. It's not always like a step up. It's just in a different direction, a different thing.

Jamie: I've done some really silly things in my life. Luckily, most of the times that I was screwing around, I didn't get hurt, but sometimes it's just not being totally aware of your environment. Okay. You'll say, well, I can normally do this and then you'll go to a different environment, like 20 mile an hour corner. I do it on this road, I can do it at X amount of speed. I go to a different environment, I see the same 20 mile an hour recommended speed. Surface conditions, yep. Surface conditions change, quality of pavement, just so many things and if you blindly go in without checking everything first, you're just asking for something. The more you play the game, the more chances you have to fail.

Robin: In a pessimistic view, yes, I absolutely agree.

Jamie: Unless you're learning something every time you do it. I should say, if you don't respect your environment and you keep on taking chances, eventually you're gonna get burned.

Robin: You gotta circle the wrong, true, false answer. I know that with our trip sevens tour, on a best version of it, the surface conditions are predictably good. You ride something like that for seven days straight and then you go up to Wisconsin, the Wisco Disco Tour and it's just rough roads. It's a lot harder. So you gotta take the thrills at a lower pace or whatever, but you gotta be a lot more predictable. You did something there, you were looking at some things from your past. Let's talk about for one second before my final question, I wanna know what plans do you have for the next chapter in your riding career?

Jamie: I've alluded to the fact that I don't ride on the road anymore. Right. I haven't really talked to my wife about it. I'm pretty sure I already know her answer, but I'd really like to ride on the racetrack. You know what the conditions are, you know what the risks are. I don't know if I'd have to go and compete with people. No, no, no. There's no rule about that. It always kind of baited me, the competition, because they look at me and they go, you can't do that.

Robin: That's on you, man.

Jamie: I know, it is on me. I watch some motor trend shows and they always go up against a professional and then they take their homemade stuff and they use the professional as a benchmark to kind of get where the best of the best is. The R&D. Yeah, and then they go and they do it and they have a time. It's not anywhere close to the professional usually or it seems like it's a long ways and then they come back, they do a little bit of changes and then they improve. That's what I would like to do. I would like to do track stuff and just be a better me every time I go out. Beautifully put. I just learned that in the last year where I didn't have to compete with somebody else, I need to compete with me. If you look at it like that, it's a lot easier to become a better you than it is to try and go out and beat somebody. People that race on tracks, some of them do it every weekend. I'm not gonna compete with those people. How could I? I mean, it's possible, yes. Why would you need to? Why do I need to? If I keep on pushing myself and if I can improve my ability every time or every other time, I think that would make anybody feel better if they went and they were 10 seconds this day and the next time they were 9.50 and they were 9.30. One little tick at a time.

Robin: How could you not feel good about that? Let me ask you this then. This is our closing question. If you can remember off the top of your head and try to relax about it, let it happen. What different courses have you taken as a motorcycle? What different training have you put yourself in the middle of to become the better you that you talk about? Which by the way is a huge inspiration to me, let alone everybody else who's listening to this. Go on.

Jamie: I've done the BRC2.

Robin: The one day prove yourself course.

Jamie: Yes, I've done the ARC course a couple different times because I was trying to be a MSF coach and I've also done street skills, which is track based real world speed riding that teaches you the limits of what you can do in a fairly safe environment and can get you up to speeds that you would see in real world.

Robin: So you've done all these amazing training. Any others? That is all. Okay. And how many arms do you have again? One. All right. High five to that. As long as it's on the left hand. Jamie Pauls, I can't thank you enough for being here. You betcha. Thank you.

Brian: Something that Robin and I have kind of discussed as we kind of wind up a really, really big year of riding. One of the things that was interesting is last few rides, you're almost out of that mojo. If you've had a really good year riding like we have, we're almost tapped out. And the last couple of rides, like we really stepped it down. That last ride especially was like super mellow. And we talked about this. We're like, yeah, let's just, instead of the red mist of speed and whatever, lean angle, it's more of a pink mist today. And it's a nice day. Let's look at the trees, that kind of thing. Maybe it's a little superstitious. Have a great year. Let's not ruin it on the last couple of rides, that kind of thing. Yeah. I've had that happen, my last November and broke a leg. And I don't want that to happen again.

Maggie: What a year, right? There's been a lot that's happened. Some of the events, the things we've discussed off mic, it feels like it happened like five years ago, but it was this year. There's been a lot of writing that it's still in our subconscious and we're smiling about it. Maybe the focus, we start to get too comfortable. It would have been easy for you and Robin to be like, okay, it hasn't happened all year. So maybe it won't or can't. And we all at some level are like, it's not gonna be me this time. And how do you calm down that mojo? You guys talked about it. What are some other ways that you can sort of get a handle on yourself so that you don't go all red mist?

Brian: Yeah. One of the specific things I talked about is after the track day, where you're spending the day closer to the limits of the machine, you really, really have to consciously dial it down on the street. We talked about sketchy passes quite a bit in the last episode. That's okay on the back street at Blackhawk Farms. It's not okay on this road. And so, yeah, really have to be mindful of that and think about that. You had some really good notes here about repurposing the ride and have some other goal for it.

Maggie: Sometimes I've taken a ride and I've given myself just one goal. I'll just work on practicing my lines. I'm not talking race lines, but it might be the line in general. And at the track, you learn how to approach a curve, right? Where you want to be, and you're trying to be efficient. But when you're out on the streets, like Robin talks about how he does a delayed apex. Sometimes that'll be something I'm practicing because it's true. I don't have a full field of view. I don't know what's coming around the corner. So I'm adjusting the line. I might practice a delayed apex or I might practice, if you have a really sharp turn, like almost a 90 degree, I've watched where people just use up the whole lane. They've got full field of view, nobody's coming. So they take up both lanes. It feels so decadent and indulgent to do that. I feel guilty for some reason. So I like try to practice as if there is a car coming, I've got to do it within my lane only, even though it would be so great. That full inside outside approach, if I hadn't ridden the route or been on that road before, I'm already more cautious, but I'll want to know like, oh, the next time I come through here, I want to stop or picture there.

Brian: Yeah.

Maggie: Actually taking in the scenery. When you're riding at a spirited pace, you're taking it in, but it's really on the back burner. You're not able to appreciate it because you've gone by really fast. That hollow or that overview outlook or whatever it is.

Brian: I may be familiar with that, yes. Okay, yeah.

Maggie: So yeah, I'll know like, okay, next time we come through here, I'm going to stop and take a picture there. I don't often find myself on a road where there's mile markers. In fact, I at all costs try to avoid those roads, but if I happen to be on one, I always note the mile marker. And every time I pass one, when you do see something or you do have to stop or something happens and you go to call somebody like, hey, I need some help. First question, where are you? And you're like, uh.

Brian: No clue, yeah.

Maggie: I'm on this road.

Brian: Yeah.

Maggie: I can't focus on that many things. Otherwise, you know, I just can't. You're doing the normal things, focusing on the normal things you do while riding, but you know.

Brian: There was one time in North Carolina, one of the very famous roads in the area was, basically there'd been a horrific accident. So there was a cop about every 10 feet. One of the refocusing things, I'd pick a different goal than your usual red mist or whatever you want to call it. My goal was to stay in the right wheel track on that road for the entire trip. Speed limit was like 30 or 35, something silly like that. If you're just locked into that right wheel track and you pretend the rest of the road doesn't exist, suddenly you're at monster lean angle at 25 miles an hour, having a great time and the cops got nothing to do. They just watch you, you know, because you're not exceeding the speed limit. That was an eye-opener. Oh yeah, let's have a different goal. Let's try something. And you learn some new things, but oh, okay. More precision about where you put your tires, for example, that kind of thing. I'll do stuff like I'll try to make note of where interesting looking gravel and dirt roads are. Even if I'm on a street bike, I'll come back on a dual sport ride, you know, and like, ooh, that looks interesting and really dirty. And maybe there's something interesting down that road, you know, and just remember that for later. It's okay to stop and take pictures, look at the scenery once in a while. I really struggle with that. Like I don't take any pictures. Like there may be like a picture of a gas station somewhere and that's it. I really need to do more of that.

Maggie: Yeah, I think quite a lot of people are similar to you in that they notice that this is gorgeous scenery, but stopping to take a picture, they don't wanna be bothered. I understand that too. I think about the movie Up when he's looking back through the photo album and there's all these pictures of their life together. And it's like, we take our memories for granted. It's finding that balance, you know, then there's the other extreme where that's all people do is they're all about their selfies and their pictures. But, you know, I try to find that middle ground of like, okay, I want some pictures.

Brian: You want the experience, but having a reminder or something of the experience is really the way to go. I'll try to do better on that in 2025, but no promises at all. What a beautiful thought, Maggie. Thank you. That was very much needed. Well, thanks, Brian.