Robin: Hey everybody, I'm Robin Dean.

Travis: And I'm Travis Burleson.

Robin: And this is the Riding Obsession podcast. You can visit us online at theridingobsession.com. This week's episode is brought to you by nobody. Nobody. It's who's sponsoring this podcast. And to kick things off, Travis, how was your week?

Travis: It was good, you know. Same old, working on getting the BMW put back together, which hopefully I'll have the oil seal by Friday. And we'll start reassembling the motor. And then I got some O-rings in for the carbs on the CB1000. But I ordered them from a third-party supplier. And some of them don't quite fit right. So I ordered some more in a slightly different size. And when those come in, I will put the carbs together.

Robin: And we were talking about this before we started. You were saying, so are they too small, too big?

Travis: They're too big. So what I did, because I don't know if we talked about it last podcast or not. Honda discontinued the parts.

Robin: No.

Travis: So when you go to the parts fiche, there's all these O-rings for the carburetor assembly.

Robin: Has been replaced by?

Travis: Yeah, and they're all replaced by this one part number. But that one part number doesn't have all the O-rings in it.

Robin: Great. So this alternator has been replaced by this exhaust.

Travis: Sort of. It was replaced by this week's sponsor.

Robin: Nobody.

Travis: Nobody. Yeah, because there's three tubes that connect each carburetor, which means you need six gaskets times three, and you get four O-rings in a pack.

Robin: You said there's three tubes?

Travis: Three tubes. So there's an O-ring. Six. Yeah, six.

Robin: So you need 18?

Travis: No, because there's only three connections. Six for every joint.

Robin: Three joints, that's 18.

Travis: Something like that. Except it's kind of weird, though, because actually you only need 12.

Robin: So two of them are offset.

Travis: Well, you need 14, actually.

Robin: Good luck, man.

Travis: Yeah. And then what else? Oh, did I took yesterday, took the valve cover off and checked the valves on it, and they were all in spec. But it seems like it's leaking oil from the valve cover gasket, which wasn't torn but is rock hard and 20 years old. So I ordered one of those, and hopefully that is my oil leak. I think that might be the oil leak on that bike, and if it's there and not in the alternator, that would be awesome.

Robin: So what should be spongy paper is actually rock hard plastic.

Travis: Yeah, like spongy rubber. I mean, it should be rubber, but it kind of feels like wood.

Robin: No big deal. You can take care of that.

Travis: Another 50 bucks into my $1,800 bike. That's quickly becoming a $2,000-plus bike, $2,500 bike.

Robin: At least it's got a lot of basic and stereotype. What's the right word?

Travis: Universal Japanese parts.

Robin: UJM.

Travis: Yeah. So, yeah, it's coming along. I figure I'll keep it for another year, especially if I can get it running real nice. It's a fun bike to ride. Unlike Kevin came over and was working on his KTM, that is not universal or typical in any way. We couldn't check the valves on it. You need a special tool.

Robin: Yeah, there's video of us riding together on a Wisconsin back road. He really does quite a bit of street-level performance on that thing. Whatever.

Travis: On a giant, you know, 12-inch suspension adventure, 640 adventure.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: But, yeah, the valves, you know how, like, on a street bike, you take the valve cover off, and you can see the cams and, you know, the cam chain and sprockets, and, like, you can see how the valve – you can take the whole cover off. You can basically see the whole valve train from the top.

Robin: All within view.

Travis: Yeah. On his, it's like a dirt bike, and you just take out, like, two little view ports, and you have to, like, work in these little – like, you can't see the cams. You can just see where, like, the rocker arm touches the valve spring, and it's, you know, maybe an inch and a half by three inches.

Robin: Now, that's where I begin to get upset about newer model bikes where, like you said, everything becomes so specific to a special tool that it becomes really difficult to interchange what you would do to maintain a bike.

Travis: Yeah, like the regular feeler gauges won't go in. You need ones that are – They say KTM on the side? No, I think Motion Pro makes them, but they, like, they're – whereas, like, a regular feeler gauge is maybe about a half inch wide. You know, it's whatever thousandths thick, but it's a half inch wide.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: Like, you need ones that are a lot smaller than that because, like, the cap that's on top of the valve spring is dished, and then the adjuster screw sits in that dish. Wow. So you need something that's narrow enough to go down in the dish and feel the gap. Yeah, and also we couldn't find top dead center the way you're supposed to because, unlike most other road bikes where you remove a plug and look at a mark on the crank, on this one you just have to look in the oil sight glass that's casting a little piece of plastic window that's cast into the engine cover. But he's got, whatever, 30,000, 40,000 miles on that bike, and the sight glass is all hazed over and cracked. Like, you can't see anything to it. So we just had to, like, look down in the cylinder and watch the piston come up and then watch the valves actuate and figure out where top dead center was.

Robin: That's too bad because KTM's amazing, you know. Every time I see one of their bikes, I'm impressed by it. But just like any other new modern bike, it's isolated, or seemingly so.

Travis: Yeah, I think they just figured out a way to make a six-whatever-something, 640cc, single-cylinder, make 65 horsepower and weigh 100 pounds.

Robin: Sure.

Travis: Because that bike is so big. By the way, I moved it around the garage to make room before the guys came over to work on stuff. And I could just scoot that thing around the garage like it was nothing, even though I can't touch the ground when I'm sitting on it.

Robin: Nice.

Travis: And it looks big, and it's got a huge gas tank, but it's surprisingly light, unlike the big one, which is basically just a tractor. But it's easy to work on.

Robin: Sure.

Travis: How was your week?

Robin: Well, the past two weeks were a lot of ups and downs. We lost David Bowie, which that was an enormous drag. I grew up listening to his music, so that took everybody by surprise. I think that might have to do with why we took last week off. It's more the loss of a great music star.

Travis: Or we were just busy.

Robin: Or we were just busy, but you know we were mourning at the same time. Everybody was. I did get the alternator installed back onto my Bandit 1200. Happy to say that bike is probably leak-free now. It had three leaks. They're all gone, from what I can predict. I believe the O-ring, that took care of it last time. Only to find afterwards that I went to turn the key on, and the lights didn't turn on, so I had blown a fuse. Had to get a 30 to replace the mate. Having done so much work on the alternator, I think it actually influenced my ability to determine that it was just a freaking fuse. I had to laugh at myself about that.

Travis: Didn't you ground out the lead on the alternator?

Robin: I did. I saw the Zot, because it connects to the main. So I knew that there was a spark, and then when everything would not kick on, I knew that that was probably what caused the issue, but didn't allow myself to just realize, hey, it's going to be a fuse. So a buddy was over here helping me out with the Nighthawk 250, which I'm very happy to say is going to be reassembled tonight, which means I'll have a winter-ready motorcycle that I can ride with a little bit more abandon, less concern for, because it's just a Nighthawk 250. While he was here, we went through the electrics on the Bandit and couldn't come up with a solution, and then we just realized it's probably a fuse. It is. And then I waited a day and fixed it, and we're all good.

Travis: Yeah, if you spark something and ground out a hot wire, check your fuses.

Robin: Yeah, and I can't wait to have the Honda back together, because I've set my weather threshold to 40 degrees. If the temperature is 40 degrees or above, that's my 50% mark for take it or leave it and go riding, and now I have a bike to do that on.

Travis: I took the Buell out a couple of weeks ago, and it was well under that, but then I dropped it on an icy road.

Robin: Yeah, I remember that.

Travis: I was going to say the electrical issues on the Bandit were probably easier than when I was wiring my garage. And the circuit that runs in the garage and also the basement also runs through the bathrooms on the other side of the house. And when the circuit blew and none of the breakers were blown, it took me a while to figure out that you have to reset the circuit at the outlet in the bathroom.

Robin: And is that GFI?

Travis: Yeah, it's GFCI, ground fault circuit interruption. Sure. So all the outlets that are outside the garage and in the garage that need to be GFCI'd, like the ones in the bathroom, they just put them all on one circuit, GFCI'd the first outlet, which is in the bathroom, and then it's not run to a breaker in the box downstairs.

Robin: I think that's safe, though, so long as it is set up for that.

Travis: Yeah, I just had to figure out why I shorted a connection in the garage and no breakers were blown in the basement. And then once I figured it out, why do I have to go to the absolute opposite side of the house and reset it in the bathroom? I don't know.

Robin: So every time you blow a breaker, well, not breaker in the garage, you're just going to be like, I've got to go use the bathroom. I'll be right back.

Travis: Yeah, right. I guess it's a good time if I do that to take a break from the garage.

Robin: Well, I'll let that lead us into the most recently updated site features and developments. A couple of little things to start things off. When you click on the date in the top right-hand corner of the site, that'll take you to Today in Motorcycle History in a new window, which is a nice, simple blog maintained on another website. I just found it to be so interesting that I figured I'd go ahead and link everything over to that. So no matter what day it is, if you come to visit the site and you click on that link, it will take you to today's most historic events in motorcycling. Beyond that, we had a little bit of an issue with the map downloads. I had to disengage the ability to purchase maps only because the plug-in I was using to allow for that was giving the site a lot of hassle and getting us into trouble. I've since replaced it with my own code. So maps are once again for sale via download through PayPal. We've finished the weather map calculations. The bugs with that are coming along. We've got an advisory key that's scaled down, so there's not a giant color hodgepodge. We're soon to give the navigation a full boost so you can find everything again, and we're going to add a route planner that allows you to type in a list of cities before it creates both a high-speed expressways map as well as a highways-efficient map, a second-level map, before you start writing out your own twisties. Soon we'll be adding guided tours, so keep an eye out for that. We're hoping to lead tours on a whim based on scheduling abilities. That page will be up and running in the next month or so. And of course, I still need to make a page for this podcast. That's the truth, man. This podcast needs its own page. I just haven't figured out how I want to put it in the navigation yet. And that's it.

Travis: So there's your updated site features and developments. For the podcast, would we use a SoundCloud-style plug-in or something?

Robin: We could. I'm not going to. I think I want it to have a dedicated page that will actually show the current podcast ready to play with basic information after that for what we talked about, and then a drop-down menu to select different episodes.

Travis: There's not a hosting issue with file size or anything, or in streaming?

Robin: No. We have a really great server in that regard. We have unlimited bandwidth. It's nice. It's good. That brings us to off-the-bike topics for renting, reading, leisure, and such. I have it right here in front of me. Motorcycle Consumer News went on sale for six months at $5. I just got a six-month subscription to Motorcycle Consumer News.

Travis: Wasn't Motorcyclist having a similar? Someone posted that on the Facebook group, on the Super Slick Ultra Badass Motorcycle Megapods Giving Incredible Power.

Robin: That, I believe, was from Motorcycle Consumer News.

Travis: It may have been me. It might have been. Because I think there was a… Because I remember I signed up for two magazines, because when I did one, they were like, Would you like this other one? It's also super cheap. Add on. And I got my first issue of Motorcyclist.

Robin: Do you need windshield wiper fluid?

Travis: No.

Robin: Impulse buy.

Travis: Oh. I saw you clicked on this. Do you also need this?

Robin: We saw that you bought this last week. Would you like 40 more of the same thing?

Travis: I saw you bought some rope. Would you like a ball gag? That's not what the rope's for. Calm down, Amazon.

Robin: Well, yeah, so that marks a third magazine. You mentioned Motorcyclist. Now, a good friend of mine referred me to two magazines, in particular, Rider Magazine and Motorcycle Consumer News. I checked out Rider Magazine. I found it to be pretty cool. But Motorcycle Consumer News, I think, is the kind of information that I personally need so that I can start to assimilate data that I'm not really used to processing. Reading information about bikes that I'm not really used to trying to get through or understand so that the terminology becomes more familiar, the dimensions, the variables, will become more easy for me to understand. So I got myself a six-month. I'm going to read that thing front to back. Every issue, I'm going to be checking that out.

Travis: Yeah, I think MCN, they do more in-depth. There are a lot more technical specifications on the reviews and stuff. Motorcyclist is a little more fluffy, but it's fun. And I got the issue with the 2016 bikes preview.

Robin: Oh, nice.

Travis: Which I'm hoping many of those end up at the IMS in February in Chicago when we go.

Robin: Yep, press passes are ready. We'll be going to the 2016 International Motorcycle Show in...

Travis: The Donald E. Stevens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois. There it is. Conveniently located just minutes from O'Hare Airport.

Robin: This should be a good one if we play it right. I'm going to keep my press pass in my pocket, hidden, because I don't really want that kind of attention. I've never done that before. We'll see how it goes, you know?

Travis: If they give us some sort of special credential to wear, I'm just going to wear it. And then when I go to all of the manufacturer booths and know more about the bikes and the guys who are running the booths, it'll be doubly embarrassing for them.

Robin: Yes. That's a good plan.

Travis: Yeah, that's always my favorite. Does this have the Showa shocks on it? Oh, let me get on my knees and look. Oh, yeah, this has Showa shocks on it. Great. Does it have whatever, you know, the Bosch fuel injectors? Oh, yeah, I just pull it up on my phone.

Robin: Or I'll tell you right now exactly who needs to be on the lookout for me. It's Suzuki. I've been good to Suzuki. I like their bikes. And I know I'm going to approach their booth. And if I mention the word sport touring, they're going to say, oh, well, have a look at this. And it's going to be either a naked or half-fared bike with no luggage package. Exactly how is that touring? And I'm going to hammer them about it this time. Last time I was a little bit gentle. This year, I'm going to ask that they explain themselves, should that be the case. Suzuki, if you're going to offer something and tell your guys to represent it as sport touring, there better be some luggage.

Travis: Or at least say, oh, GV is making something that's a bolt-on fitment for this. That isn't some, you know. Because nothing like you like your SW Motec stuff. SW Motec does a good job. But it's always like you get an adapter for your bike and then put their adapter on and then put, you know, it's bulky. Whereas I feel like when you look at something like the new Versys, like the luggage on those bikes is beautiful. Like, it's nice luggage. You know, when you get, if you get the, like the LT, well, in the U.S., the 1000 only comes with an LT trim, or the LT 650 with the luggage, the color-matched luggage. It's color-matched. It's key-matched, lockable. And the way it clips onto the bike, when you take it off, it doesn't look like something's missing.

Robin: That's a good feature, yeah.

Travis: Yeah, the way it slides into the tail, like the tail section and then onto the passenger foot peg, when you take it off, it doesn't look like there's something gone.

Robin: Yeah, and I will say in favor of the SW Motecs, I mean, I can remove that hardware. It is pop-on, pop-off. It's customized that way. But the luggage itself, when it's on, you can tell that they said, here are the opportune connection points. Here is the luggage that will fit onto the plaque, you know, the universal adapter that we offer for that. And then they sort of drew a paint pattern that allows it to, if you decide to look at it as such, have a more sleek profile. But in the end, it's just a couple of big bubbles on the back that hold everything.

Travis: Yeah, it's not, which, you know, I feel like if you have, like, an old GL 1000 or, you know, an 80s UJM, like, because they're just kind of square in the rear.

Robin: Sure, a perfect fit.

Travis: They fit right on. But, like, you know, anything after the 90s is kind of a sport bike where they started kind of sculpting the tails, and it has shape to the back. Like, if it doesn't fit closely with that, it just looks like it sticks out a foot and a half before you even get to the bag.

Robin: Sure, and moreover, it's a luxurious problem to complain about. Don't think that we don't know that. It's just that this is what we do, so we have words to comment on the matter.

Travis: Yeah, exactly, because my big one, it's like that. It's got that curvy plastic on the tail, and so even when you put soft bags on it, it looks at, well, the soft bags, like, rub on the point where the curve bends over, and then they didn't make luggage for that bike either.

Robin: That's why I'd like to learn to fabricate if I could. You can always look on your bike and find points that you personally would trust if you wanted to build something to hold luggage on it and then fabricate to suit, something even that was easy to remove, but that's not in my skill set. I'm going to have to build that up eventually.

Travis: Yeah, like, until you needed, you know, a good, either a machine shop or a good home shop with that sort of metal fabrication with a welder and a miter saw and a good drill press and probably some bending jigs to bend, because a lot of the GVs, they use that looped round stock for connection points.

Robin: Yes, I've got a couple other things listed here, just out of interest. If you're not riding, keeping your senses honed, I've got the in-house drone. That was one of three gifts I got my wife for Christmas. We've got a small, tiny, 15-minute battery drone that we've been flying around the house, having a lot of fun with that. It's got a built-in camera and all that stuff.

Travis: Is it a Parrot?

Robin: No, it's not a Parrot. It's some $50 thing that Best Buy didn't want to admit they had it. Oh, you know, the only drone we have at that price is this, the Parrot Bebop at like $400 or $250. I don't know. I'm not looking at one right now.

Travis: Yeah, the Bebop's like the top Parrot model.

Robin: Well, we do have one that you can program to go wherever you want it to. The point is that we have this little drone, and it just kind of keeps you honed in on hand-eye coordination of sorts with mechanical objects.

Travis: Yeah, they're fun. I have a little. It's not a quadcopter. It's just a RC traditional single-rotor helicopter, I guess dual-rotor helicopter. That thing's fun to fly around the house. The dog hates it, though. The dog is so afraid of it.

Robin: It's that whistling sound going around in the air. What is that mosquito? Speaking of whistles, deer whistles. I got two deer whistles per the suggestion of a friend on Facebook whose opinion I trust now and then. And these, on the package, they say tested, proven. They work. Amazing product. Buy 50 of them. So I got one package. I mean, they're tiny little things. I thought it was going to be some big, clunky, ugly thing to put on my bike. So I got them in the mail. They are two little whistles. They're easy to use. They've got the, what is that, high-strength adhesive tape?

Travis: Oh, like that weird 3M stuff.

Robin: Yeah, it's got the tape, and then you fasten that to a plank, which I'm going to be fastening on the side of the bike. I do this, and then the friend I was talking about that came over to help me work on the Nighthawk 250 arrives, and the first thing out of his mouth, well, they don't work. Very, very outspoken about the fact that deer whistles do nothing. Although, I don't know. These have a reputation for being successful, so I believe there must be a lot of really bad products on the market and that this one is supposed to work rather well.

Travis: Yeah, I did some research on the deer whistles after your run-in with the deer.

Robin: Thank you. After is always good. Could be before.

Travis: It seems like most of the research is inconclusive. I mean, it's really hard to test that sort of thing. And it seems like, yeah, most of the time it's like, uh, they don't really help that much, or maybe they do a little bit, but they're relatively inexpensive.

Robin: So why not, right?

Travis: Yeah, they're inexpensive and unobtrusive. Might as well, you know, if some guy thinks that putting a little Peter Bell on his bike is going to keep him safe, he might as well put some deer whistles on. It's going to be better than the little Peter Bell.

Robin: Every little bit that might is worth at least considering, if I may say.

Travis: Yeah, well, you just do a cost-benefit analysis. If the cost is $10 and the benefit's minimal, it's like, well, the cost is minimal, so might as well.

Robin: Well, you and I both have a music background, so there's also that. It puts out a high-frequency, you know, dog-range whistle and in two, I think they're a whole tone apart, so that's perfect dissonance right next to each other.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: And that's going to be an eerie sound. What's more is I think one gets lower as it gets more air, and the other gets higher as it gets more air. So the sound flexes against itself, creating strange waveforms.

Travis: Yeah, it's supposed to bug the deer more than the sound of a screaming 1,200cc oil-cooled... Nyah! Nyah! Yeah, Robin hasn't figured out how to use the shifter yet, so it's just always in first gear. Nyah!

Robin: Moving right along to site-inspired topics from written articles. Again, we want to mention our sponsors. This week's Writing Obsession podcast is brought to you by nobody. Nobody. It's who's sponsoring this podcast.

Travis: Nobody. It's who you need when you don't need anybody.

Robin: Nobody. So plenty of people may have noticed, I mean, the front of the website hasn't changed in a while. We haven't written any articles. I am writing an article right now. I'm hoping more people are going to do that soon. If you're interested in writing for the site, please do. We invite content. But the most interesting topic that is still stuck in my head, even though I'm not writing right now because of the winter, is finding good, short, local routes. It seems to be a predicament for anybody who wants to get out for an hour on the bike or so. Fortunately, you don't have that problem, Mr. Madison.

Travis: Well, yeah, that's why I moved to Wisconsin and not of Chicago.

Robin: Good for you.

Travis: If you get the nighthawk, just go blast Lower Wacker in the middle of the night.

Robin: I've done that before. We have a video of that. Do we not?

Travis: Pretend you're Batman. I'm Batman.

Robin: Yeah, that's a little bit out of my range these days, though. I'm in the North Chicagoland area, so the best I got is Sheridan, which is not so bad. It's pretty good. But to all those Indiana folks out there, sorry. I actually was going to make a trip from Chicago to Columbus, and the best I could come up with was avoid anything that is a main road and go left to right to left to right to left to left to right to right to right to left over and over until I get to Columbus.

Travis: Yeah, northern Indiana is pretty flat. Southern Indiana has good roads. And actually, if you take US-41, like the Dunes National Highway, which kind of goes a little further north if you're going to Columbus than you'd maybe want to, it's pretty.

Robin: Dunes National Highway.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: I'm going to make a note of that because I'm going to be visiting my home city of Columbus a couple of times this year, I hope.

Travis: Yeah, so if you jump over to US-41, and that's Lakeshore Drive through downtown, and you just stay on it, I've taken that trip to Michigan a couple of times, and it's nice. And the first time I took it, people were like, that takes you right through Gary. And I was like, I used to hang out in Saginaw, man, when I was a kid. Yeah, I used to go down to Flint. But does Saginaw smell like Gary? Worse. There's a sugar beet processing plant. Wow. Actually, I think the sugar beet processing plant might be in Bay City. It's on Bay Road. It's right between. But if the wind is blowing the right way and it blows the smoke off the sugar beet processing, like down into the road, oh, man. If anyone knows about sugar beet processing, they make granulated sugar out of it, but it's from beets.

Robin: So there's a perhaps bitter onion overtone?

Travis: It's just, I can't describe it. It's like sickeningly sweet and like gross, rotten vegetation smell. Drink Coca-Cola. And they wreck your car. When you're during sugar beet season, if there's a truck in front of you, a sugar beet truck, you make sure you've got 200 yards clearance. Because if one of those beets comes off, they're the size of your head and they weigh about 10 pounds. Wow. Smash your car up.

Robin: Hey, take the reins here. What can you tell me about the status of Eric Buell racing? Because I've heard two sides of the same coin.

Travis: Yeah, I've heard a couple of things. I know that they went under. Then they got bought out by like an Indian company that tried to bring them back. And then I think they went under again. And then they were up for sale and they got bought by a financial conglomerate company out of Michigan. They're called like Liquid Assets or something like that. It's basically a company that just buys burnt out companies and liquidates them.

Robin: That sounds like what everybody was concerned about on the Super Slick was that one person thought they were going to be liquidated completely. The other thought they were going to be restored and put into action.

Travis: Yeah, so I mean it could go either way. The company that bought them is like not a motor. They're just a financial business, like capital B business company. They go in and they buy companies and then they sell companies or they liquidate the companies and sell the assets. So I imagine whatever becomes more profitable for them. So if they find an investor company or whatever, rich privateer that's going to front the money up and buy the company out and bring it back to life, which I think I kind of wonder if someone like Polaris.

Robin: Oh, wow, that'd be great, right?

Travis: Wouldn't it be cool? I think it was like because Polaris bought Impulse, the electric. Polaris owns Victory Motorcycles and they bought Brammo, the electric bike company. So now there's the Victory Impulse TT. It used to be the Brammo electric bike and now they call it a Victory. But Victory is a cruiser brand so they have this electric sport bike now. But I think if Polaris bought Eric Buell Racing, they could keep the brand which is known for sport bikes and then bring the Brammo guys in which is an American company too and have like Brammo, maybe still call it Victory, maybe call it Buell, maybe call it something else and then merge that sport bike and the electric bike and have their sport bike division because Polaris doesn't have a sport motorcycle division. They have their quads and their side-by-sides and their snowmobiles and their cruisers, the Victories.

Robin: Yeah, that's an ingenious idea to kind of spider out like that to complete the different segments and genre for your own. There's no reason that Eric Buell's concepts need to be mismanaged. The man is smart. He knows how to design a damn fine bike. But there's always the matter of who is in charge of how his end result is being marketed.

Travis: Yeah, and I think that the problem with EBR was that they made essentially one bike. They made one high-end sport bike and they sold it in sport, fully fared, and like naked trim. They had a naked street rider version and a fully fared sport version and they were 20 grand plus. And those are the only models that they had and especially in today's market. You look at what Honda is doing, what Yamaha is doing, Suzuki to a lesser extent, but then they just went through a bankruptcy. But when Honda came out with the CB500 model line, good bikes for six grand, five grand, and that's kind of where the market is. You need to have that affordable range and be able to do some volume manufacture, which I think if you get someone like Polaris behind you, because Buell was already using Rotax engines and Polaris uses Rotax in almost all their stuff. I don't know who's building the Victory engines, but all of their off-road stuff.

Robin: Keep us riding. Keep Americans wanting to ride. If a bike is that expensive, first off, we don't want to have to finance that, especially if out the door, if anything should happen to it, what's it going to take to get it back on the road? Are they going to back up their product with warranties? Things like that. But also, you know there was some guy at a desk who is thinking, what, there's really no harm in thinking I should be able to get everything from this bike, everything for this bike that I can, and he's just hurting the business by not getting a good price for it and making it a big thing, making it available to everybody.

Travis: Yeah, I thought they were good bikes. The reviews were mixed on it. I like the old Buells when they were on their Harley. Sure. I think it's a great concept. You take Eric Buell's amazing chassis and you put in this super simple engine in it.

Robin: What was it called? It was a, what is it called? It's like a center of gravity.

Travis: The mass centralization design.

Robin: Mass centralization design. That's amazing. And you can see it. I remember being on the track today. I talked about this in one other podcast where I was sitting there and I heard this juh-juh-juh-juh-juh-juh-juh-juh-juh-juh-juh. I looked to my right and there's just these two wheels that are almost touching and this dude in full leather is getting ready to beat the crap out of the track. It was a great thing to see.

Travis: Yeah, super short wheel base where there's a big lump in the middle, this torque. Yeah. Yeah, which I think is where, especially like the last of the Harley gen that didn't have the Harley motors in them, they had the Rotax, the 1125s. Yes. Those are great bikes. And I think, like I said, I think his stuff, he needs to get rid of that big single brake disc design. I think that's just a bad idea. I get it, but it's not practical. But other than that, his designs are really solid. So maybe it'll get saved. We'll see.

Robin: Well, keeping things moving here, we'll be getting into some tour planning in a moment, but I also wanted to make mention of some tour planning sites that have caught my eye recently. Actually, one in particular called Furkot, F-U-R-K-O-T dot com. This site feels like it's operated by between one and five individuals versus a number of people programming at the same time as part of some team. It just seems like it is, it has an independent feel to it. It's a great site, and I only found it because for the riding obsession, I'm trying to build a route planner that is extremely useful only to find that Furkot, brand new or not, has already done a lot of what I'm trying to do. They have a free membership, there's paid memberships, but essentially what I did was I went to the site to just check this thing out. I saw it on a forum. The person who owns the site itself had posted to the forums, inviting feedback. Who does that? There are so many different services out there that want to tell you what you want. We made this service. You want it. Here's why. And then you question something, or you ask them for a feature. Sorry, we can't do that, because you don't want that. And there's tons of online services that are like that. This one, not so much. You can enter all kinds of things. So I planned a route that would possibly be our entire high-speed expressways time-saving route from Chicago to Chicago, or from Madison to Madison, via all kinds of great, well, just expressways for the most part, just to test it out. And it asked me all kinds of questions I didn't expect. Where do we want to sleep? And I put camping. Or budget motels, just because.

Travis: Because you're cheap.

Robin: Because I'm cheap. And it said, how many miles would you like to ride in a day? It said 250, 250 miles. Keep it comfortable. Keep the knees feeling all right for that kind of duration, because we're talking about going from Chicago all the way down to Etowah, North Carolina, to D.C., to Vermont, through Canada. That's a long, you know, keep it at 250. Keep the endurance in check. And by connecting the dots city to city and the way that I'm actually attempting, I'm in attempts of putting something together to do kind of the same thing, it gave me various hotels at a good price that have a static cost, as well as campsites, roads to take. You can turn expressways on or off just like you would with Google Maps. One thing it doesn't do yet, and I think they've been called out for this, is it doesn't provide known, popular, worth-riding twisties, which is, I think there is a massive market for that. If there is a route planner that you can specify the time intervals that will plan the twisties for you, not that there's nothing to be said for going out and exploring. I love that. That's a good thing. But I think it'd be cool to just be able to say, point A to point B, give me some twisties. I got this much time. I'm in a bit of a hurry. Got a meeting. Make it happen. And then the map would do it. For a good school, I think we need to keep an eye on this one because they might be a great collaboration. And also, you know, they got the same color scheme as us.

Travis: Nice. Yeah, I don't know what the algorithm would have to be like to look at the map and have the algorithm figure out, like, this is a twisty road and this is a straight road. That'd be pretty. Or, like, if you just need to get that sort of data collection where if you're having human input, say, this part's twisty and this part's not, and go through all the roads in the United States.

Robin: Crowdsourcing might be the key to that. Some kind of social interaction or a forum or a communication base.

Travis: Which, unless, like, Google decides they want to do it, I think Google's the only place that's going to have the power and the numbers for that sort of data acquisition.

Robin: In terms of actually reading through the coordinates, there's, yeah, Google has the power to come up with the software. But coordinates are coordinates. And if you have a GPX file or something with a line and a lot of waypoints, there's a lot to be taken from that data. It might be a successful upvote system. So crowdsource, not just, hi, my name is Shabadoo McGillicuddy and I really like this road, so you should add it to your blah, blah, blah. More of a thing where somebody submits a route and then it has to be upvoted by a series of riders before it gets added to the complete mix as a waypoint twisty route.

Travis: Kind of like a Reddit sort of thing. Like, I'm Shabadoo McGillicuddy and I like this road. And someone's like, yeah, that road.

Robin: Shabadoo's a jerk, man.

Travis: Yeah, well, you know, he's fine unless he's been drinking.

Robin: I thought he was a glue guy.

Travis: Well, you know, he's got the kid now, so he's taking it easy. Shabadoo isn't a real person, just to let you know.

Robin: Now, there's one thing that Firkit has that the others don't. Firkit will show you grid roads and gravel roads. And what's really important about that is I don't know what grid roads are.

Travis: Grid, like country blocks?

Robin: I guess so.

Travis: Yeah, like roads, like the county line, like County Line Road is a grid.

Robin: Sure.

Travis: It marks out the county.

Robin: Well, if that's, okay, that makes sense. Well, not everybody knows that. And now they do. You know why? Because they're listening to the Riding Obsession podcast brought to you by theridingobsession.com. This week's episode is brought to you by nobody. And now for some listener questions. We have one from a friend, Kevin Mulcahy of Madison, Wisconsin, asking about the battery issues for the Sena's. Or actually, what was he asking about? He was asking about which systems we rock when we're riding. What wireless audio systems we use. And I use the Sena SMH-10. You've got the, you had the SMH-5 and now you have the... The 10R.

Travis: The 10R. The SMH-10R, yeah. Which has, the SMH-10R, which has been replaced with the just 10R.

Robin: That is awesome.

Travis: But the, on the good news, I know on, I forget which site I was on, one of the online retailers, the SMH-10R, the older model, the Bluetooth 3.0, with like the eight hour battery, is like $160. $165. Like it's super cheap.

Robin: That's a good price.

Travis: Yeah, so.

Robin: Is that for one or two?

Travis: One.

Robin: Alright, yeah. We got two with the earbud connection, which I then split into both earbuds and speakers. We have an article on the site about all that stuff. But, Kevin was asking about how we, how I wired my stuff up. He asked us both, but I knew for a fact that you went with just speakers, right?

Travis: Yeah, I just went with speakers because my ears don't like earbuds.

Robin: Fair enough, yeah. Everybody's ear wells are different if you're not going to go spend the extra cash to get in-ear monitors, which musicians tend to do that, but whatever.

Travis: I'm a bass player, I just need to hear the drum. I was like, can I get bass drum, can I get bass drum, hi-hat, and snare? That's all I need. What song are we playing?

Robin: Can I get more talent in my monitor, please? Can you turn down the sock a little bit? Just turn down the sock and give me some talent in this monitor right here.

Travis: And some slapback, need some slapback.

Robin: Well, there is a bad link, there was, was a bad link on the site. One of our most popular pages is how to replace the battery in your SMH-5. And the resource that we had linked to on eBay was selling a battery that was ever so slightly thicker than the one that is necessary. I've since updated that to two particular batteries that will work. One is made by a Canadian, a company in Canada. The other one is another eBay purchase that has the proper dimensions. So if you're having any problems with your SMH-5 battery, check that out. But Kevin wanted to blast the jams, quote unquote, in his helmet. What I ended up doing was I took the earbud interface for the SMH-10, ran a headphone splitter with one wire going to earbuds and the other wire going to two internal speakers so that if I'm in a hurry, I can just pop on the helmet and I'll still have audio. And if I feel like getting full sound, I go with the earbuds, which actually with the speakers sounds smokin'. Sounds great.

Travis: Yeah, I may, when we go to IMS, the Plug It Up, plugitup.com is where I get my custom molded ear plugs from. So at the IMS, they will do your custom molded ear plugs on site. It takes about an hour for them to cure. And what are they called? Plug It Up. Plug It Up, okay. Plugitup.com is their website. They're out of Florida, but they travel around with IMS. And if you go to the show, you sit down in the chair and the lady sticks, like sticks a plug in your ear, like all the way in your ear, and then takes a syringe of quick hardening epoxy foam and injects your ear and takes an imprint of your ear right there at the show. And if you just want plugs, they'll take that, take it out, cure it, seal it, and it takes about an hour to cure all the way and then you come back. And you can walk out of the show with custom molded ear plugs for $60. Nice. Yeah, they do sell a really great driver, like a really great headphone driver. They'll let you test it and then they clean it off. They have a tester that like disappears right into your ear.

Robin: What is a headphone driver?

Travis: Like an earbud. It's an earbud, the speaker.

Robin: Okay, sure, sure.

Travis: Yeah, but it's super tiny and it's like silicone finned and it goes into your ear. Like there's no bud on the outside. And they sound great. And they actually isolate fairly well. But they're expensive. They're like $130 for like the one driver model and then they have a two driver model. It's got like two speakers in each ear. That's more. And then if you want those embedded in a custom molded plug, you know, you're talking, you know, custom molded monitor price, you know, $300.

Robin: That's where it starts to sound like somebody getting all that they can for something when if they would just cut the price by half, more people might do it.

Travis: Yeah, I don't know.

Robin: There's another company that makes earbuds for their system that they charge $60 for those earbuds and you don't actually know if they're going to work with your ears. So that's another example of them saying, you don't even know if these are good, but because we have forced you to go with this digital connection instead of a standard eighth inch connector, you're going to pay us what we ask you for because that's how it's connected to our module.

Travis: Yeah, so it's, you know, it's always tough. That's why I wish there was a more, more of a market for those custom molded headphone solutions with sound deadening included.

Robin: Yeah, also to finalize my answer to another question you had was how we charge the units on the bikes. I actually have a USB adapter that connects to the tender access and that's how I, that's what I plug my Sena's into when I'm charging.

Travis: Yeah, I'll have to figure that out with the big one because the BMW has the Powerlit.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: The OEM Powerlit connector. So I really liked Powerlit over like cigarette lighter style. But if I'm selling the BMW, which I think I'm probably going to do in the spring, I'll have to figure, and keeping the big one, I'll have to figure out some wiring for the big one, which is hard because it doesn't have a fairing and there's nowhere to put anything.

Robin: Oh, yeah, I forgot. Or you just hang it all off the windshield so when you turn, everything turns, cup holders, sparkles, everything.

Travis: Everything. I'm just going to mod it out like a 60s scooter with 20 mirrors on it.

Robin: Make it look like a Chinese dragon.

Travis: Maybe I'll...

Robin: Ah, yeah. That's hilarious.

Travis: See if I can find a local fabricator and fabricate some sort of bracket or something that would be useful.

Robin: To conclude our questions, I want to say thanks to Kevin about that one. You can email your questions and concerns to podcast at theridingobsession.com. That's podcast at theridingobsession.com or call 773-614-6422. That is our online phone number. Feel free to call and ask any questions. We would be happy to answer them. We might not answer any that aren't pertinent to the... Yeah, you know how it goes.

Travis: Unless it's really, really funny and then we might just play it for entertainment value or maybe answer. We'll put a response up.

Robin: So tune in next time, everybody. We're going to do a dedicated route planning episode. We started to do a little bit of that during our last podcast. We're going to do an entire episode dedicated strictly to that next week or the week after or the week after that or probably 2017. Anyhow, those are the closing remarks and I'll say one last time that this episode of The Riding Obsession podcast is brought to you by nobody. Nobody.

Travis: Nobody doesn't like nobody.

Robin: Nobody. They're the people that brought you this podcast. For theridingobsession.com, I'm Robin Dean.

Travis: I'm Travis Burleson.

Robin: Safe travels, everyone.