Robin: Hey everybody, I'm Robin Dean.

Travis: And I'm Travis Burleson.

Robin: And this is the Writing Obsession podcast. Today we'll be talking about the loss of Robert M. Persick, also near and dear to my heart, Colonel Bruce Hampton. These are two great losses recently, but one was personal to me. I'd actually met the man. We'll also be talking about a post-crash discussion on safety and MotoGP returning to the USA. I'll make mention now that we're always looking for sponsors for this podcast. Sponsors are given three focus mentions toward the start, middle, and end of their designated episode. Their contributions are put towards bettering the program's content and recording equipment.

Travis: If you're not in need of advertising, but are willing to donate regardless, it's worth noting that we're always accepting contributions via PayPal. Our beggar's email is easy enough to remember. It's donate at tro.email. It's donate at tro.email. So what's new with you, Robin? What do you have going on this month?

Robin: There's so much to talk about. I'm really trying to figure out a way not to make this podcast overrun with information. So if you need to cut me off, please do. But our very first guided tour is approaching. We're going to be riding nine days through Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Ohio. So I'm really excited about that. We've been going through a lot of motions to prepare the business to make that possible. And after this big trip, I'll be leading some smaller tours around Wisconsin and various other locations. Some are day trips, some are weekenders, some are long distance. So we'll see. Got the Street Triple R upgraded for the wife since she wanted to do the long distance touring as well. I installed a SAE USB adapter. It basically runs from SAE ports to USB so I can both charge the battery and plug the phone into that. There's an article about it on the site, so look for that. Got a new FIOM horn on there. A low tone, much better than the high tone. If you're going to replace your horn on your motorcycle, replace it with a low tone FIOM, if not an air horn, just because they're more intimidating. And got the Michelin Pilot Road 4s on there. So she's good and sticky and rides like a skate. I prepared the Bandit with new tires as well. Got some new gel grips. And also had to pull my headlamp apart for the second time. It was a hassle. But I had broken my headlamp reflector, so I replaced it. And while I had the whole front end taken apart, I decided to remove all of the weather sealer that I had used. The adhesive weather sealing tape to stop the sound of vibrations coming off the plastics. And I replaced all that with a smathering, just a blob of RTV silicone everywhere. So, should be no vibrations.

Travis: So if you see Robin's bike for sale, you can thank him for that mess.

Robin: First step is to carve a way out of the way. And it seems like I've gotten rid of the Hawk GT backfire. I went over to, if you look up on the site, we have a resident author, Joe Conrarty. He invited me to his house to get down to the bottom of this backfire. And it turns out that the carburetors were rich. The previous owner, P.O., had pulled the carburetors apart and put a tiny, tiny little washer.

Travis: Yeah, so he shimmed the needle.

Robin: They shimmed the needle, and the shim actually was making it run rich. Everybody thought, oh, it sounds like a lean condition. Might be a lean condition. Hey, you ever heard of, might be a lean condition? No, it was definitely running rich. And the backfire seems to be totally gone now. Next up for bid, we're finally, finally getting a motorcycle trailer. Gonna have a motorcycle trailer today on the way to your house for your garage night.

Travis: Oh, yeah, that's right. You're coming up tonight. Yeah, it's courtesy of Aaron, who runs the Wisconsin Off-Highway Motorcycle Association, or WOMA. Give him a plug there.

Robin: So what about you, man? What's going on in the world of Travitron 5000?

Travis: Significantly less going on in my world. For those, I guess, who aren't following us on Facebook, I got sick about a month ago with a rare condition called Ramsey-Hunt syndrome. Basically, I got shingles in my head, and it damaged the nerves in my inner ear and my face. So I'm paralyzing the left side of my face and damaging my inner ear function. So I've been having a lot of trouble with balance, and I've been doing therapy to recover that. So unfortunately, I haven't been able to ride, despite the couple of nice breaks in weather that we've had here this spring in the Midwest. So that's really frustrating. For the first couple of weeks, I could barely walk. It's getting better. I'm up and doing stuff and running some errands. Doing mostly regular stuff, just driving and riding motorcycles is kind of out for right now. Trying to do that. I got an exercise bike, so I'm trying to stay active and be fit as best I can without the ability to run or ride a real bicycle. As far as motorcycle stuff, I put a USB port on the big one for mounting a phone or other devices easily. So it's right up on the gauge cluster.

Robin: Which one did you end up getting?

Travis: I had a BikeMaster one, so it's kind of like the big round one. It's got a waterproof rubber seal over the top of it when you're not using it. It has a handlebar mount. If you had a fairing, it'd be pretty easy to do into a fairing, but I don't. I was also out of handlebar space.

Robin: You've got a lot going on. You've got the hand grip covers and the heated grips covers.

Travis: This is already so much stuff. You can only put so much on your handlebars.

Robin: Coffee espresso machine. It's almost a Goldwing.

Travis: It's a Goldwing with no fairing. Everything just bolted onto the handlebars. I just kind of stuck it up between the two gauges under the windscreen. I have that little fly screen on there and it fits right. Nestles in real nice right there. Then I picked up an FCR slide carb for the DRZ. It was a used one I got through a junkyard sale on eBay, but considerably less. They usually cost about $500, so I got this for considerably less than that. I need to go through and clean that up and make sure it's jetted and put new vacuum hoses and stuff on it.

Robin: What is the benefit to that again?

Travis: It's a pumper carb, so it's like the off-road version of the carburetor instead of the CV carb. When you open it, it just opens as opposed to when you are with a vacuum carb. When you open the throttle body, the vacuum from the intake actually lifts the slide up. This is direct. When you turn the throttle, it lifts the slide and it squirts gas right to the intake. You get a little bit more horsepower and you get better throttle response. It makes wheelies easier.

Robin: I imagine that's probably better when you're going over bumpy terrain and sideways.

Travis: Yeah, when you're trying to lift the front end and go over logs or do wheelies. If you have a DRZ, the whole point is to do wheelies.

Robin: It can do wheelies, right?

Travis: Yeah, it'll wheelie. It takes some effort and some skill to do it, but it'll do it. You have to do clutch-up wheelies. I also put heated grips on the DRZ because that tends to be my winter riding bike. I just put some cheapos. I got a cycle gear on there and some new grips. I was lazy and I just hot-wired them. They're just right to the battery. There's no relay or anything, which is good. One, it saved me a lot of time and effort. Two, there's not really a lot of space to stick a relay in there. Three, I don't care.

Robin: Nice, yeah.

Travis: As long as I remember to turn the switch off.

Robin: I was thinking about how the vampire issue is what you're referring to. Is there any vampiring when you're parked or tendering?

Travis: Only if I forget to turn them off.

Robin: Yeah, right.

Travis: At which point, the smell of burning rubber might be a giveaway.

Robin: I know there are. Burns Moto was the guy that I used to get all of my USB ports from for using my phone for navigation. His, even though it was just a USB port, if you ran it direct to the battery, nothing plugged in, it would still suck power off the battery.

Travis: Yeah, the USB port I have on the big one does that because it's got a little LED on it.

Robin: Did you run it to the running lights or anything?

Travis: No, I just ran it straight because I'm lazy. I figure that little LED is going to draw about as much juice as if you have a modern bike that has a digital odometer on it. It's going to pull about that much juice. One little blue LED isn't going to kill the bike unless it sits for six months off a tender. Yeah. Then I did install a relay system and ran wires to put TD grips on the Weissbuhl Blast.

Robin: Nice.

Travis: I just haven't gotten around to actually putting the grips on because then I got sick.

Robin: Well, going the relay route, that'll really up the resale value. It'll make it a lot more like, I did this right. I know she was talking about how eventually, down the line, she's ready to go in whatever direction she's ready to go in.

Travis: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, now she is, but we need money.

Robin: Of course, of course. But the point is that the way you're going about her bike versus your own, it's like this one's ready to be resold if necessary.

Travis: Yeah. I might put a relay or I do have the whole relay box set up. I could do that for the USB port. But also, my other reason behind that is I want to be able to charge my phone off the bike when you're camping or something.

Robin: Yeah. It's all low voltage. It doesn't really do any harm.

Travis: Yeah, it's not going to kill your battery for a couple hours of charging your phone or whatever. Whatever a cell phone battery is, like 280 milliamp hours, it's not going to drain your battery on your motorcycle.

Robin: Well, are you ready for me to blather on about today's topics?

Travis: Yeah, you can take over and talk about the various and I'll chime in with my brilliance.

Robin: Thank you, Travis, with the backup. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Not everybody sees that book as one of the greatest they've ever read, but the fact is that it's a powerful piece of literature that has had some influence on people for better or worse. I thought it was a brilliant book myself, especially if for no other reason that the author was not only a motorcyclist, but a really well-educated philosopher and psychologist, if I remember. Was that it? Was he a psychologist?

Travis: Kind of more of a philosopher. He might have been a psychologist by profession, but the book is more of a philosophy book. His other books are philosophy. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a motorcycle book the way Harry Potter is about broomsticks. It's like they're there and they play a key role, but it's really more about philosophy than it is about motorcycles. The motorcycle trip is the conduit for the bigger philosophical adventure.

Robin: He took something that was a conduit for him personally and used it as sort of a reflector to express a perspective on some topics that were central to the entire book. Well, he passed on not long ago, and Godspeed and Farewell is a book that I'm going to have to reread just for the sake of better understanding it and knowing that the author is now gone.

Travis: The point of that whole novel is that defining that balance between the rational mind and the creative mind and the trip that he goes on to sort of reconcile those two things. There are just some really great little vignettes in there, too, that have little lessons like the guy who has the BMW and his handlebars get loose and the clamps are stripped out, so you can't actually tighten the handlebar clamps anymore. He's like, oh, you need to get a shim. You just need to get a shim. He's like, oh, where do I get these shims? And he cuts open a beer can. He's like, here you go. Soft aluminum. It's thin. It's perfect. And the BMW owner guy is like, oh, no. I need to take it to the dealership and get a proper shim and get a $20 piece of beer can aluminum put in instead of a free piece of beer can aluminum.

Robin: That's the kind of situation. You could use shrink wrap tubing.

Travis: Yeah, so just that sort of unbalancing of the mechanical and creative and understanding how those things sort of work and then being creative to resolve mechanical requirements.

Robin: Sure. I remember in the vintage motorcycle groups when I brought up that I was reading that book, a couple people chimed in that were, I don't know why they called it Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. They don't mention motorcycling enough. And I think my response was because calling it Zen in the Art of I Hope My Son Doesn't Have the Same Manic Bipolar Breakdowns that I do doesn't quite flow as well on the cover of the book. Segwaying into another death, though, we don't exactly have the largest podcast listenership, but anybody who knows me well enough knows that my college diploma, it's in music. Not that that alone means anything, but so is mine. We're both musicians who just love motorcycling and that's worked out well. So my college years in music were quite fun, for lack of a better term. And in that time, one of my prideful moments was playing with three great musicians, Andrew Skordy and John Arthur Gentry Jr. and Jeff Steinau in a little band called Da Lemming's Ensemble. They changed names a lot every time there was a cast shift. And my tenure with that band put us on stage with some pretty great musicians, not in a parallel sense, but most of all just an opportunistic sense. And one of those opportunities that we seized put us arm-in-arm with Col. Bruce Hampton, also known for Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit. He appears in Sling Blade. He actually used to work with Derek Trucks a lot, helped inspire him. If you look his name up, you'll find a lot of stars and musicians that considered him to be royalty of sorts. He was the guy that they were always naturally just in awe of because his personality was so big and he did so much good and presented so much positive energy for musicians everywhere. The Aquarium Rescue Unit bassist, Otil Burbridge, he's now with the Allman Brothers, for example. And that happened partially not just due to his incredible talent, but because Col. Bruce Hampton, he knew a guy. All these amazing things. And so, again, if you listen to Robyn's Road Ruckus, if you go to the site, thewritingobsession.com, and you scroll down to the bottom of the page, on the very bottom left, you'll see Robyn's Road Ruckus. Well, I've cleared the slate on Robyn's Road Ruckus, and it is all, every song is Col. Bruce Hampton or Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit. And that's going to stay that way all month. So if you want to listen to some really great tunes that you may or may not have ever heard, go to thewritingobsession.com, scroll down to the bottom, click on Robyn's Road Ruckus for Spotify, and just have at it, folks, because if you've never heard of the man, it's your loss. So fill that void and learn something you've never known before. On to other things. Okay, so another thing that happened, Travis, I didn't really tell you about, and I'd love your input on this a little bit. I'm going to flip my notes around here. Had an opportunity to go for a ride with some friends, and one of those friends had a nasty, nasty crash. There'll be no names. This person has my respect. This person is a seasoned rider who just had a flub, and it went south hard. They're okay, and the bike's being repaired. But a conversation came into play later down the line. This person's going to be going on a tour with me, and I was like, we're going to have to have a little chat because you can't be doing that on the tour. Otherwise, we're going to have to leave you behind, and you'll get no refunds. And so this person agreed to get together with me and have a little discussion about some things that I feel I'd like to re-mention just because I feel like even the most seasoned riders who have the gumption to take a curve hard, they might want to be reminded of a few minor details. And you feel free to compliment these phrases. It started with, you know, I think you remember Greg White, of course, right? You know, he's an amazing rider. Were you with us when he led us and we ended up behind that, there was that massive, massive fuel truck?

Travis: Was that Ozarks last year?

Robin: Yeah, I think it was Ozarks. I don't think it was Brown County. But I just remember, I'll go through these really quick. Let's see if I can actually be effective at getting through these super fast. I'm behind Greg. Greg's leading the ride. There's five of us. We come up on a blind curve to the left. Greg disappears.

Travis: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we were coming up, and then it was hilly, wooded. We come up, the road approaches a river. Yeah. And it's just like, there's a giant, we're on this tiny two-lane back road, and there's a freeway-sized sign. Yeah, a freeway-sized, you know, maybe six feet across, corner to corner.

Robin: And you just don't see that out there.

Travis: Arrow left, and then that is on top of a 20-foot wide red and white slashed warning. It turns left blind.

Robin: It's really out of place. It may as well have said warning. Life flight is still even far away, you know?

Travis: Yeah, because on the other side of that sign, there was a 30-foot drop into a river.

Robin: And so we've all got our SINAs on, our audio interfaces. Greg disappears around the corner. I'm probably doing 65, 70. You know, we're in the spirit. And then I hear this, Robin, stop. And I'm like, I don't know what he said, but I see the sign. I know I need to slow down. But as I approach the top of the hill, he clearly says, Robin, stop at the top of the hill. Total stop. And tell everybody behind you to stop. But at that point, I'm just a little bit too deep in the corner. I'm not going to be able to warn anybody. And I see this massive fuel truck that is crossing this one-lane bridge. It is not your normal-sized 18-wheeler. The truck has the extra big tires that are intended to go through deserts and noise. And it's got all this gasoline. It was huge. And it wasn't a snub-nose either. It wasn't like a city truck. It had the long nose. And so the point, the moral of this one section is that be ready even when things are serene. Pay attention to the signs. Do not rely on your tech. You can use tech to your heart's content, but don't rely on it. It is not what you, it's not what it's there for. It's a compliment to your ride, not a resort. Next, the Mark Wells turn. I was on my 400 Seica. I was a new rider second year in. And I'm following a guy on a GSX-R. He's been riding for years. We're again following Greg. And I think Joe Conrary. I'm behind Wells, and Wells gets a little bit behind. So he notices that those guys turn around a corner. And he's kind of like checking his phone for a second. He's like, all right, boop. And then I see him gun it and take off. He's like, okay, cool. And I'm going to catch up. I'm like, oh, well, I mean, well, then we're going to go now. I gun it too on my little Seica 400. And I wind it out. And I'm having a great time. Again, doing about 70, 75 into this blind hillside curve. Now, about 50 yards up, there's Mark Wells. Mark Wells turns his head to look through this blind corner. And then what is him turning his head becomes him looking up because he has to compensate for that he may have had a little bit too much entry speed. So he has to lean the bike super low and go MotoGP low. And he's literally looking up through the turn. That's how his right turn looks. Well, on a 1982 Seica, you can't do that. And so I ended up going in really hot. Really hot. And it's a decreasing radius turn, which means it's getting tighter and tighter and tighter. And I end up in oncoming traffic. Luckily, there is none. But the point is, I felt the peg scrape. I felt the exhaust scrape. I felt the bike deciding whether or not it was going to slip out from underneath me. And I was fortunate enough to survive that event. Again, that was a long time ago. But the point is, the person ahead of you is not a predictive example for anything. You do not rely upon the person in front of you.

Travis: Unless they suddenly stop.

Robin: Unless they suddenly stop. Maybe then you might want to consider there might be an issue. They cannot decide for you how you operate your machine in any given curve. Don't watch what they do and decide that that's how you're going to do what's coming up. The other truth is, it's a blind curve. I shouldn't have been going that fast in the first place. Imagination and assumption have no place in the ride. All right? They have a place in the design of your bike, sure. But when you're riding, assume nothing. And don't imagine what things are going to be and then act on that imaginative result.

Travis: Kind of bringing back the zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance. If you do want a book that is all about motorcycling, David L. Huff's...

Robin: Proficient Motorcycling?

Travis: Proficient Motorcycling. I was trying to remember. And he does have another one, too. That's a bike... That's a book that's completely about motorcycling and technical riding and safety.

Robin: It's called Proficient-er Motorcycling or...

Travis: Morally Proficient-er.

Robin: Morally Proficient-er Motorcyclage. That brings me to the next point. The rider in question, like I said, they're a good rider. And they're beating themselves up more than any other person could ever beat them up about this particular issue. But like I said, it's inspired. And one thing I get to is even with track days, speed isn't a goal. Speed is a result. Speed is not a goal. Or if it is a goal, reaching for it isn't the way to get it. You want to learn while you're riding. And you want to ride well within the boundaries of your current skill set. As a result, you'll become faster. So I've learned to avoid riding beyond the 66% mark of whatever knowledge I might think I have the grasp of. This is known among the safety-minded as having a good skill to risk offset. And that's like only riding up to 66% of whatever talent you have.

Travis: If you think to yourself, oh wow, I'm going really fast. You're going too fast. Because if you focus on being patient and focus on developing your skills, that threshold will continue to grow. So if you have the skills, it won't seem like you're going fast even though you are going faster.

Robin: Yeah, it'll happen naturally. Ask Travis about his trip to the Ozarks. I mean, I already knew Travis was an incredibly good rider. After the Ozarks, he was like, no, I'm better now. It was pretty impressive.

Travis: Yeah. And too, it's kind of like when you work out or you develop any other skill, you want to be on sort of the edge of what you're capable of. You're whatever lifting weights. You want to be able to lift the weights, but you want to be slightly challenging. And that's kind of how the Ozarks were. It was like, okay, everyone's going a little bit faster than me and that's okay. I'm not going to try to go as fast as them, but I'm going to try my best to sort of keep up within the limits. But by the end of the weekend, that limit had increased.

Robin: Yeah. And nobody's going to leave you behind. Nobody's expecting you to, nobody's, you got nothing to prove. You know, the same thing goes for mechanical operation of the machine. So even when I'm even when I'm wrenching, which anybody I'll tell you, they should probably do my wrenching for me. But when performing any maintenance, you know, I was taught that when I turn a wrench, I'll think in my own head, what's happening? What exactly is this doing? Not necessarily where I can see, but where I can't see. How is the bike responding beyond my line of sight when I turn this screw, turn that bolt, adjust that setting? What exactly is taking place? And it's a very same mindset in your throttle, your clutch, and your braking. You know, a twist of the throttle is the very same thing. Exactly in this, in this situation, at this pace and in this curve or straight, as I apply more throttle or more brake, exactly what is the behavior of the bike going to be? That's a really good brass tacks rule to say, if you're not a little bit concerned, you're a whole lot dangerous.

Travis: Yeah, and too, if you're in a group ride, it's a way bigger bummer for everyone else if you crash than if you're a little bit slower than everyone else.

Robin: Yeah, now this person laughed because when I told him that I was basically going to make them listen while I talked, it was because they took up an entire day's ride out of my agenda.

Travis: Yeah, because you were what, like 10, 15 minutes into like an all-day ride?

Robin: Seven miles. We were seven miles into the ride. It was a 250-mile ride. And, you know, that brings me to some things, some mistakes I've made as well. You know, some time ago, you were there when I hit the deer. Rider mindset is big. You know, the best rider's mindset would be assume the worst, absolutely assume the worst. Every person on the road is trying to kill you. They see you coming. They're like, if I time this right, I can run this person over. You know, I can actually do this. This is a goal of the every, if you look at it that way, then you can be happy with the glimpses of what the riding should be when you get it. Enjoy the riding that you're going to have that is good, but be prepared for the absolute worst at all times. I know it sounds kind of paranoid, but if you get good at it, that's like a whole separate muscle. You know, there's a whole issue with how animals behave. Deer, if they have their butt towards you and they're on the other side of the road, they'll tend to jump back and go where the last location that they remember being safe was, which puts them right in front of your bike. I know it sounds stupid, but it's their logic. so, and with dogs, if you see a dog, and Travis can account for this, he's seen plenty of this, he's dealt with it perfectly every time, you see a dog, it's coming at you from an angle because that's how they select the destination of the kill on their prey, but if you hit the brakes for a split second and then accelerate, they become confused and they look dumb and you escape, no problem. Okay, segueing from that, then there's just people, the Amish. If you see an Amish buggy ahead of you, squeeze in the clutch, roll off the throttle, coast by in as most silence as you can attain, and wave hello, and once you're, you know, another 50 yards ahead, you can proceed to ride.

Travis: Don't spook the horses.

Robin: Yeah, don't spook the horses. That's, Travis nails it. Last thing, dirt, all right? Now, I would love to have somebody get this wrong so I can ask them the quiz question, but the fact of the matter is, all right, you're in the dirt. If you weren't in the dirt, ask yourself, what gear would I be in if this was pavement? Whatever gear that is, go up one gear and you'll be just fine so long as you relax and be loose and dance with the bike.

Travis: Yeah, it's helpful, too, to shift your weight to your feet. You don't have to stand up and that might be difficult depending on the ergonomics of your bike. Obviously, if you have, like, a V-Strom or an Adventure Sport bike, it's probably easier to stand up, but if you just kind of shift some weight to your feet, it moves your center of gravity down and it's easier to let the bike kind of wiggle underneath you. It makes a big difference for that, and also, when you're turning, you're not going to want to hang off the bike like you do when you're on pavement. You'll kind of dirt bike it, kind of move the bike underneath you, push the bike down underneath you to go through corners and it'll bite a lot better.

Robin: Travis, I'm going to leave it with you now. You've got to talk about MotoGP. I want to watch MotoGP and rarely have time, but I love the concept of it. You say it's back in the U.S. There's ways to view it. Give us everything you've got on the topic.

Travis: I know Fox Sports is carrying it again this year, so if you have that package on your case, I think it's also on some weird channel called BNTV, so if you get that. I know I cut the cable a year or so ago, so I don't really have the option, so there are some online options for it. You can go to MotoGP's site and buy a year pass. I think it's like $100 and something. I don't know. I wouldn't condone doing any illegal methods like BitTorrentine or anything like that because you can get pretty much whatever you want that way, but TheRunningSession.com does not condone that behavior.

Robin: Nor would we.

Travis: Yeah. I have all the MotoGP so far this season, Robin, when you come up.

Robin: Legitimately.

Travis: That I got legitimately. Yeah, so if you want to watch MotoGP. Also, AMA Superbikes, I think they put a lot of their stuff on YouTube, so if you're if you want to watch American Superbike racing, you can do that, and also, you can always go look up the AMA schedule and maybe catch some racing in your region. I know they do race here in Wisconsin at Road America in June, I think. I'll double check the schedule, but there might be a live race you can go see in your area, and that's always a good time if you can get a whole weekend because there's always more than, there's always the top level Grand Prix race, but there's always lots of lower races and fun to do as well.

Robin: That's a great way to have an excuse to get a designated driver and just drink your butt off inside the arena, yeah?

Travis: Yeah, well, what's cool about Road America is it's such a huge facility. It's like a 4.2 mile track, but you can camp inside the carousel turn. You can get a camping site there, so you, obviously, you can kind of ride your motorcycle if you show up there on a motorcycle around on most of it to get to one end of the track or the other, which you need to do to see all of the track. Or, the fun thing to do is you bring a little moped and you can go, there's certain areas that you can, that are only foot traffic and I think sub 200 CC, there's like a sign like nothing over 200 CCs.

Robin: Oh, Betty, we'd bring Betty our scooter, the 125.

Travis: Yeah, so you can get like the back straight to Canada Corner is one of those paths, so, you know, that way, you know, you're never going too fast and it's lots of fun and to some of the roads, some of the roads are gravel, so you don't really want to be on your, your big heavy touring bike, uh, punching around slipping the clutch for 20 minutes trying to avoid when pedestrians on gravel.

Robin: I like it. And now it's on to our guest interview. This month's guest interview features Travis's Garage Night. Everybody at Travis's Garage Night has been anxiously awaiting their opportunity to be interviewed by the Writing Obsession. So we're going to go around to each and every person who's attending and ask them all sorts of questions that pertain to things that involve opposable thumbs, if not motorcycling.

Travis: Iron butts and frozen bodies? There's some ama... Yes.

Sam: You might end up in the podcast. Iron butts and frozen bodies. Um, he was saying that there's some amazing roads, but there's three of them because each one is a mountain pass. Here, like, in the Driftless, you've got all these different roads. It's just like a plate of spaghetti, you know? And you don't... And they're not patrolled. The three roads that go over the mountains in Colorado are... They're going to have cops on them. It was a good panel. There was probably like 50 old white guys there. Wasn't there... Becky was there too. Yeah, she was on the panel and she was probably... There was probably like three women there. And, um, interesting thing, when you have a room full of middle to older age white men, there were more cell phones going off in this room than, like, I've ever heard before. And they have, like, the worst ringtones. And they can't turn them... They can't turn them off. It probably happened 15 times. I feel like the requisite piece of equipment for a long distance ride is the high back...

Travis: backrest. You know, it's high everything too. Sissy bar?

Sam: Sissy bar. Thank you. I've heard it called other things. I would call it sissy bar. Although I feel like you can't find them. You need to really, like, stick one out or make your own.

Robin: Yeah. You know what I mean?

Sam: You get the rat tail one? I'm attempted... I'm attempted to actually add one. I think I could, like, add one on here. Ridiculously high. You know?

Terry: Oh, yeah. Welded on or bolted in.

Sam: Well, I think I could take the pad off here and then, like, you know, put one like that high and, you know...

Terry: Stack your luggage.

Sam: Yeah, twist it on there. Like, I'd tie my tent to it. You know? Get your duffel and your Mexican blanket. Yeah, Mexican blanket. Need that... Actually, that goes on the front. Drug rug. Which is your Mexican blanket shirt.

Terry: Don't forget... Don't forget the Mexican blanket. Yeah. The blanket has the warmth of Mexican sunshine.

Sam: For New Mexico, which is going to be one of my eventual destinations. Yeah. I think I could make one out of copper pipe.

Robin: You know what I mean? It's really strong enough, though.

Sam: Well, I mean, you get the thicker wall stuff, right? Maybe. Possibly? Maybe. I think that'd be easiest to bend. Or you could just make huge fittings so you go up, over, and down again.

Robin: Like an erector set?

Sam: Yeah, yeah. Or, I bet you that'd be even better if you could, like, you could solder for strength. You keep cutting to make little...

Terry: So it'd be, like, a super shitty roll cage in a, like, a bucket race car?

Sam: Why not? You know, if it's going to look like a Hope D, you might as well go all out, you know? I've never heard that. I don't want a motorcycle for fashion. Functionality. Functionality, yeah. I can't tell how serious you're being about the sissy bar. I'm kind of half serious. Maybe I've watched a little too much Easy Rider. Maybe. I don't know.

Terry: Look at the beard.

Sam: Obviously. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't get a sissy bar. Maybe for my wife's comfort, too. She's always like, my back is too, you know, I don't have the lean back. Doesn't have enough. You need to get a top case on it. Well, I told her. I was like, I could do a thing, you know? Yeah. I don't know. I want a... I don't have my phone on me.

Robin: I think it's on the bike.

Sam: I could show you like a picture of my old Suzuki with the...

Travis: Did you have a sissy bar?

Sam: It was more like the... I called it like the oven rack. It had this big like, you know, square thing on the back and a big backrest. And the backrest had... You could like move it forward and back. It was on... So... There's a whole back? What the old dudes would do is they would put it all the way forward so then they could use it and then when your baby got on you could move the backrest back. So he'd ride it himself. Yeah. So it was... That would take quite a bit of engineering. I'm sure I could make that happen. Because it was like this. Like this. Oh yeah. I moved on that.

Terry: Oh yeah. On the rail.

Sam: Yeah.

Terry: That's like what supporters Goldwing is like. Has that like rail that goes all the way along.

Sam: Yeah. I don't know how I feel about riding this triumph long distance. I mean... Not with that seat. Well I don't know. The seat's alright. I have a fat ass so it's actually not too bad. I just put my bicycle and all the panniers on these rails and that's what I used on my first tour and then I used my backpacking like you know bag on the back. Exactly. Ridiculously tall is the key. You know what I mean? The taller the better for absolutely no purpose. Eight panniers. Eight panniers except for my tongue.

Robin: And that was our interview. So on to our listener questions. Tom Burns he's written for the site and asked us questions before. Tom Burns has a question on mid-travel chain cleaning. He writes Hey Robin I bought some Motul chain paste which seems pretty conducive to long distance riding but I haven't found a solution for keeping my chain clean. What do you use on a longer road trip? I've never gone away for more than four days. I actually talked to him about this after the fact and you know it's like why not bring some kerosene but then again it's like more liquid volume in your lugwidge than your lugwidge. I'm gonna leave that. Lugwidge.

Travis: Yeah it might end up as lugwidge if it springs a leak. Yeah I mean hauling a well I mean I could see if you have the space hauling a little sealed secure thing kerosene might not be terrible because then too if you're camping you have a fire starter but WD-40 is good that's basically kerosene and is a little more compact and you can get it wherever so I mean if you're doing that grab the little can of WD-40 you get maybe one or two cleanings out of it and then just stop at any store and pick up a new can while you're on the road.

Robin: Yeah and I brought that up he was worried about the whole theory about the O-rings and getting behind it to the grease but I remember them testing that so extensively that it's just not threatening.

Travis: Yeah it's basically kerosene with like wax and rust inhibitors in it so it's kind of better for your chain than kerosene. Yeah and there was there's a video online where they took they took O-rings out of a chain put them in a little cup filled the cup up with WD-40 and it was fine.

Robin: What about the grease behind the O-rings?

Travis: Oh yeah I mean assuming it doesn't get down in there I mean it'll just stay in there and it'll evaporate so it shouldn't be and you know so it depends what you're using for chain lubricant too because the chain paste I think comes in like a squeezy tube so it's thicker but if you're using something that's like a spray on like I use the what is it JM-1 or JB-1

Robin: Use PJ-Blue PJ-Blue

Travis: PJ that's it PJ-1 clear PJ-1 blue

Robin: And then I use Chain Wax Maxima

Travis: Yeah but those have solvents in them so you know you spray them on you need to let them dry for like an hour so you can actually just hit it with that scrub it off while it's still wet because that solvent is going to you know take off the old grease too and then put a fresh coat of the grease on and let it dry

Robin: Thank you for posting that question Tom and if anybody else would like to email your questions feel free to send them to podcast at tro.email that's podcast at tro.email or call 224-358-3010 that's our direct line and now it's time for this week's mess out of moto

Travis: brought to you by

Robin: the super slick motorcycle mega posse of incredible power this week's

Travis: mess out of moto brought to you by the super slick ultra badass motorcycle mega posse of incredible power

Robin: the super slick ultra badass motorcycle mega posse of incredible power it's super slick ultra badass and as a side note it's incredibly powerful got a lot of good stuff here man if you posted it I'm going to let you talk about it

Travis: there's an open house I don't know I don't remember where that was or what dates it was

Robin: yeah but it is it's it already happened typey typey searchy searchy googly googly why don't the guys at the writing of session know all the answers well because we're researchers too

Travis: yeah okay Aristich at open house is saturday may 20th 8 to 4 so if you're able to get up to duluth minnesota on the shores of the lake superior the getcha goomy you can go in and talk to the guys and check out some stuff they have some events going on it is on their site aristich.com slash open hyphen house if you want to check out what's going on there

Robin: and minnesota hey I'm telling you right now that is boring writing

Travis: well you can take the depending on where you are if you're coming to wisconsin there you go yes that whole side

Robin: of wisconsin

Travis: yeah that whole side of wisconsin is good or if you're more of a cruiser scenic type you can take the uh and you're coming from a little bit further south uh you know take the great river road follow the mississippi river up so I did I don't know if I mentioned the last podcast I got a set of their original gloves um the uh elkskin gloves the not the uh not the original ropers but the one up from that um

Robin: are they gortex

Travis: no they're just leather they're just elkskin leather uh they are pretty awesome they're super comfortable um yeah I didn't get the gauntlets I got the arrow stitch competition uh competition elkskin ropers so they are great because they have a velcro seal and they have an extra layer of protection on the knuckle um and they also have a thumb wiper visor guy uh and they're just you put them on they're like silky soft smooth great good fit I think they're gonna be awesome this season

Robin: next item up for a bit uh our own john radermarker is selling his 2002 suzuki bandit 1200 which that's one year off of my same generation version of the very same model and I can tell you right now that if I were to buy his bandit which I was tempted to my own favorite bike in the garage would become the parts bike to this bike that's how good it is so if you're interested go to cycle trader dot com and look up 2002 suzuki bandit he's selling his for 2900 bucks and let's see here we're talking about a semi-faired bike with 30k miles on it 30,000 it's got a lot of upgrades it's fully jetted it's basically the gsxr 1100 motor that's been retooled and retuned it's got a hole shot stage one jet kit for plus 11 horsepower the delcovix slip-on exhaust for another 12 horsepower a throttle position sensor which pushes the bike well beyond its stock 98 horsepower rating it's never been on a dyno but these upgrades put the power in excess of 120 horsepower it's got the hayabusa rear monoshock which I use it's a lot more comfortable progressive front fork springs balay aluminum handlebar risers which are two inches up and two inches back a corbin two up seat extended windshield like mine balay rider foot pegs it's got full gb luggage and sw motek quick release hardback mount so you can convert it square to you know just a naked sport bike again 12 volt sae outlet on the left side cover and the sae pigtail on the handlebars for heated gear auxiliary led cornering lights and led high and low beam projector lamps he and I went in on that because he had to buy him in twos ultra bright led turn signal lamps relay controlled 120 decibel air horn much like mine he's got the pilot road threes on there pilot fords are better he's got the oem tank bra the sae pigtail on the battery for winter maintenance charging and he's also got the stock seat muffler carb jets left side cover windshield extra turn signals rear shock fork springs and underseat tool kit it's all there for 2900 bucks I can't I can't hype this bike any further that's a great purchase for anybody who wants to buy it Travis would get it but then he'd feel like people would know how much he wants to be like me

Travis: yeah I know I'd get like four inches chopped out of my like shins just so I could be the same height what's next

Robin: next item I forbid oh the U-turns made easy video man I played that for the wife you know my wife is a formidable rider she's a good rider but she gets so nervous with like tight corners because she's on a sport bike she's got that curve of the earth turning radius yeah well

Travis: too it's kind of like moto gimcana techniques of using a little bit of rear brake to slow the bike down so it leans more and will corner tighter and then you can throttle out of it so you almost kind of like lean the bike

Robin: so all about the difficulty of getting into its maintenance would be probably beyond my current scope of knowledge

Travis: yeah I mean I feel like almost any modern bikes are going the way of cars where they're just packaging them all so tight and there's so much tech and so much other stuff going into them that and again the more the more performance oriented you get the more complex those engines get it's like the yamaha inline fours the sport you know the r1 and r6 derived engines have two sets of injectors for each cylinder

Robin: nice yeah so basically it comes with new maintenance frustration technology

Travis: exactly

Robin: let's see I know that our own Kevin Mulcahy posted about how lake michigan's passenger ferries their motorcycles can ride free yeah

Travis: I actually pulled this up you know before we talked about it so I have this information smart man so lake express which is the ferry that goes across lake michigan during the spring and fall there's no charge for your motorcycle which means that you still have to buy like your passenger fare so when you cross on the ferry you pay like a vehicle charge and then you pay a passenger charge where you can't ride with your vehicle they like strap it down and you have to ride in the cabin but you don't have to pay the motorcycle fee and that's from april 28th to june 15th and then september 5th october 23rd so you they're waiving the actual motorcycle fee you just have to buy the passenger ticket which i think is like 60 bucks

Robin: okay very good and then last thing we got on the list for this particular segment is which one of you listeners has travis's copy of long way round we know one of you if you just he loaned it to somebody yeah i

Travis: loaned it to somebody when i was really laid up there and not able to like walk and basically just couch couch bound i was like man i want to rewatch long way round oh crap they removed it from netflix oh well i have the

Robin: dvd he doesn't

Travis: nope someone someone has it

Robin: so whoever's got it there you go give it back yeah he wants it back make it happen all right and that is our podcast for this month again we're always looking for sponsors for this podcast sponsors are given three focus mentions towards the start middle and end of their designated episode their contributions are put towards bettering the program's content and recording equipment tune

Travis: in next time for more discussion on all things specific to sport touring or universal motorcycling as a whole for the riding obsession dot com i'm travis burleson and i'm

Robin: robin dean safe

Travis: travels everyone have a great day and i'll see you next time