Robin: Ah, man. Tim, we're gonna miss you on this trip, man. Oh, I know. But it's also magic that you're sticking to your guns, like, hey, I know why it's the right time for me to go with you guys, and I'm not gonna do it. I've gotta do this. I really dig that.

Tim: Yeah, I'm just so stubborn on it, I can't stand down on another trip. But we should keep track of each other while we're on it.

Robin: Yeah. Yeah? Voxer? Sure. Absolutely. All right. You guys, I got your photos done. I'll get rid of that noise. Oh, and I installed a plug-in that lets you guys see the preview of the actual podcast post. Yep, I took a look at that. Yeah, take a look again, because it should be looking better now. One of our fans is a truck driver. He wishes our podcasts were longer. Oh. So I'm gonna say that we keep it loose and have a good time with this one.

Travis: Not Paul, right? Is it something? Or is it Paul?

Robin: No, no, no, no, no, no. It's Vladimir. He is not Russian. Don't go there. And he is a huge fan of ours. Relatively new writer, but a definite sport tourer. And he loves the podcast. He listens to us all the time while he's driving, and wishes they were longer.

Tim: That's pretty cool.

Robin: Yeah, man. He says our podcast gets him through a lot. Maybe we'll kind of chill and stretch this one out a bit.

Travis: No, so that's that truck that's been parked outside my house at night. I know you're in there, Travis. I'm parked right in front. I hear you on podcast. We're friends. We're friends. We're friends. I know you. I know all about you.

Robin: You want to drink beers. I hope you're laughing. That's the best version of your accent I can do. He's from north of Greece. He's not from Greece. It's a country just north. Is it Slovenia? It's dead center north of Greece in the middle of that.

Travis: The former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Robin: Macedonia? Macedonia. Yeah. Slovenian? No. Sorry, Vladimir. I apologize for that. I'm drinking, and I hope you're laughing at this, because I'm probably going to upload this version of the podcast as well.

Travis: Yeah, Macedonia. The north of Greece includes Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. Those are the three countries on Greece's northern border. Also kind of Turkey, but that doesn't really count.

Robin: Well, if I want to be horrible, I would just say, oh, it's all the same, which I am horrible, so hopefully, again, he's laughing. Make it happen, Travis. Hello, everybody. I'm Travis Burleson. I'm Tim Clark. And I'm Robin Dean. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Writing Obsession Podcast.

Travis: Music plays.

Tim: Cue the dance music. Boots, boots, boots, boots, boots, boots, boots, boots.

Travis: Boots and cats and boots and cats. Okay, onward. Music plays. Today we'll be talking about a short-lived modern classic from Kawasaki, trip planning software, auxiliary lighting, and being put in a hot seat in an MSF training class.

Tim: This episode of the Writing Obsession Podcast is sponsored by the Ugly Apple Cafe of Madison, Wisconsin, where they use local overstocked produce to offer a quick, tasty breakfast.

Robin: TheWritingObsession.com is always seeking sponsors for this podcast. Sponsors are given three focus mentions toward the start, middle, and end of their designated episode. Their contributions are put towards bettering the program's content and recording equipment. I'll take this opportunity to promote our next, next group writing tour, which is scheduled for late summer of this year. Dubbed the Trip Sevens Tour, seven writers will cover seven states in seven days, starting September 1st of 2018. It's a twisty, sport-touring getaway of epic proportions, and we hope you'll sign up. More information about that tour is available via TheWritingObsession.com. Visit the group tours link, which is anchored under events, in our navigation menu. Now onto our personal notes and segments. Travis, how's your month going, and what year, make, model are we focused on today? We got plenty of time. Remember, I was telling you about Vladimir. He wants a long podcast. So you want to talk about what you've been up to. There is no longer a time constraint on that.

Travis: Yeah, I mean, not a whole lot. In the moped front, I did get my letter back from the Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles.

Robin: Did they say, stay where you are, we're coming to arrest you?

Travis: They said, I have to do a bonded title, and I just need to get a bond, so I need to figure that out here one of these days. I mailed that in with the right form, and they cashed my title check already, so I have to get on that at some point here, maybe tomorrow. But I just need to get a surety bond from somewhere, and then send that in with the paperwork, and then hopefully they'll send me a bonded title, and I can legally ride the moped around.

Tim: Very nice.

Travis: If the flipping snow ever melts. Oh, no kidding. Because we got another, for those of you who listen and don't live in the Midwest, we got another late April, mid-April blizzard. I don't know about down in Chicago there, but here in Madison, it started off with rain that turned into sleet that turned into an inch of ice that turned into four inches of snow on top of an inch of ice.

Robin: What are you talking about? You do know about this. It was garbage here. You know this. It was terrible.

Travis: Well, I didn't know if it was exactly the same or if it was.

Robin: You're going to hear about it when my segment rolls up.

Travis: You know this. And then it was sunny today, and a lot of it melted, and after I'd scraped all the ice off the sidewalk and the driveway and stuff. But then we're supposed to get more tomorrow.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: It was warm there. I went out for a couple of rides there. It was nice and chilly, but it was nice. And it's fine, too. It's cold. Don't care. But it's like ice and snow. I'm not running on studs. If I had a dirt bike with studs on it or something, or even just a dirt bike, I didn't mind dumping every now and again.

Robin: You bring wind into the matter. When wind hits the menu, that's when it's just too much. That constant onslaught of air.

Travis: Yeah. I'm not even talking about going out and joyriding. I'm just talking about using my motorcycle for putts around town or whatever. Speaking of which, speaking of wind, I did mod up the windscreen. So I got the Honda Original Equipment tall windscreen off of eBay. I used one for the NC700X, and it was just so dirty. Like it was just in your helmet. I'm not the right height. If I was four inches shorter, it would have been fine. Or if I was four inches taller, it would have been fine. Even moving it up and down the couple inches I can just didn't really help. So I took the jigsaw to it. Got a plexiglass blade from the Home Depot and made a little template, covered it in masking tape, copied the template over, cut it off with the jigsaw, filed down the sharp edges, just kind of hit it real quick with a lighter just to kind of melt all the hard edges off. And so I chopped two inches off that, and we'll see how that goes. It's still not the best, but it's better. So the wind hits like right in the chin instead of like in the forehead.

Robin: Yeah, if your body mass can deflect any of that.

Travis: Yeah, so you just have dirty air in your helmet. That's what I hate. But I think for the trip, if it's going to be warm, I might just put the stock, the short screen on, on the lowest setting and just have clean air. I'd rather have clean air than dirty air. You know, I'd rather have to, if it's going to be warm, it won't matter anyway in a couple weeks down south.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: I also modded up my top case, my old Kappa K35 that I've had forever. It's been on a couple of bikes. Yeah, I was like, man, I need, I really wish, because I knew I'd be riding with stuff in it and probably not enough stuff to fill it.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: And so I didn't want stuff jiggling around. So I went to the, I went to the depot and I got some like U-bolts, like some pipe clamp sort of U-bolt guys. And I was like, well, I can probably make these work, but like they didn't, I know they would just stick in too much, but the little piece of flat stock with the holes drilled in it, I realized that was just enough. So I got a couple of, I had a couple of stainless steel bolts, drilled some holes in just a little too small. I think there were number 10 stainless steel bolts and I drilled like a 7-30 seconds or 5-30 seconds hole, which is slightly too small for the bolt. So I could thread the bolt into the plastic. And so I went, I went like bolt head, washer, flat stock bar, washer, plastic, thread it through, washer, and then cap it with a, with an acorn nut. So you have a decent water seal.

Robin: That method works with stainless steel Allen heads and aluminum too. If you drill just slightly smaller, and I'm not saying this for, you already know this, but this is for our listeners. It's like, if you want to mount something or create false threads, stainless steel Allen head, drill through some aluminum, like a single size down. That's how I did the windscreen for the Hawk GT. And it holds true. It's a good, it's.

Travis: Yeah. The stainless steel is so much harder than the aluminum metal. It'll just, you don't need to tap it. That being said, I do have a tap and die set. You can get the Harbor Freight tap and die set. Great for aluminum. But yeah, so I did that and put two little, very thin things. Had a strap that was, I ordered like a pair of pants off of Facebook. It was like, I forget the name of the company, but it was like this ad. It was like this ad on Facebook for these like wilderness pants that were fleece lined. And I was like, oh, those would be really nice to wear under as a layer under motorcycle pants. But they came with this strap. That's what I'm saying. The belt, it's the belt. Yeah. It's like maybe supposedly the belt, but like I ordered like 34 inch waist and that strap is like 26 inches. Oh, that's ridiculous.

Robin: Oh man.

Travis: Yeah. So it was useless as a belt. So I made it the strap for my top case now because it's got a really nice latch. It's like very nice synthetic webbing and it's got a really cool latch on it where you can click it and then cinch it. And then regardless of how much tension you put on the latch, like it can be taut and when you release it, it still releases. Like you don't have to like, it has a good, the way it's set up, it's like even if it's taut, that doesn't hang up when you try and release it. It just releases nice and easy. So I like that. So I put that in there as the cinch down for my top case. And I thought that was, that'll be good. So I have for the trip, I have my rain gear in there and my visor is always in there, but it's strapped down now. And the tire kit and maybe the tool kit will go in there. Maybe something else will go in there, I don't know. But it's like...

Robin: So you got to remind me about that stuff because if you're bringing a tire kit, I do not need to bring one.

Travis: Yeah, well I think we were talking, my tire kit's got the CO2 cans and so we're going to maybe do the hand pump as a supplement to the CO2 cans instead of bringing a air compressor. Travis, do we take notes? I think we're just drunk and talking over Skype.

Robin: I'm worried about this now. All right, so we have to have... We have a week.

Travis: We have a week, man.

Robin: We're going to be fine. Tim, before you got into the call, I was telling Travis that basically if I need to go on a two-week road trip, I will be ready in an hour. Yeah. From last year and from experience, I've got my plan pretty much in place, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't mind having a lighter bike, you know? So when it actually comes time to pack for this trip, we will compare notes as to who's bringing what and maybe not drink while we do it.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: That's a good idea.

Travis: Yeah, I did a little bit of a practice pack and my... Man, so shout out. If they want to... I mean, I doubt anyone from East... I don't even know if Eastpac is still a company. I'm assuming Eastpac is still a company, Eastpac Backpacks. I remember their ads from Nickelodeon back in the 90s. I think you could win them on Double Dare along with your British Knights tennis shoes and, you know, Huffy mountain bike. Heck, yes. So when I was getting ready to go to college, so this was the year I graduated high school, it was 2001, I bought a new backpack online at my friend's house who had a computer and internet because I didn't have those things. 2001, bought this red Eastpac, like their base model, standard, like student, like three-pocket backpack. That's what I'm taking on the trip in 2018. I bought it in 2001. It went through six years of college, punk band, six months on a cruise ship traveling the world, three apartments in Chicago, an apartment in Madison, an apartment in... Like the thing's been around... And it's... Like nothing... Like there's no broken straps, there's no broken zippers. It's the most amazing backpack I've ever purchased.

Robin: 2001, it was a mean move, man. It was cold. I'm just saying, it's been... Yes, yes. I remember Eastpac's being everywhere. There's no way that company is down. I have no idea, yeah. If only there was some way for us to find out this information, like some kind of a web inter, super highway net of information.

Tim: No, no, no. You're never going to find it on there.

Travis: Anyway, the... So... So my red Eastpac, my 17-year-old red Eastpac backpack, if it's 80% full, it fits very perfectly into the frunk of the NC. I can fit all my clothes and maybe some tools. I'm going to try and fit some tools in there just so they're low down.

Robin: So do I need to sync back up for Eastpac?

Travis: Sync back if you want. Ooh, they have a padded Packer Pink Ray.

Robin: I got a padded Picker Pink Ray.

Travis: Yeah, they're still around. Looks like they're still pretty well-made.

Robin: Still pretty well-made. I'm sorry.

Travis: It's the wine. And all sorts of fun colors and stuff, too.

Robin: Fun colors.

Travis: Yeah, so that's... Anyway, so shout out to Eastpac for making awesome stuff. But that fits in the frunk. And then I got my ring gear in the top case and some other stuff. So that should be good for the trip. And then the only other mod I've put on is I got a cheap Amazon kickstand plate that bolts on to the bottom of the kickstand.

Robin: Okay, I saw that while doing the outline. So is that, like, universal to the Honda platform? Basically all their side stands are sort of similar or what?

Travis: They're all very similar. This one said it fit the NC700 specifically. But I imagine it'd probably fit any of the CB500s and probably any of the CB300s as well because they're probably just using the same kickstand on all those. It's like this little square kickstand foot. But it fit great. I put a little Loctite on the bolts and bolted it on. A little electrosecurity, depending on wherever you park. Bob Theda's steep-ass driveway.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: So yeah, for whatever it was, it was a couple of bucks. And it was like, okay, this is some... I mean, I have the puck still. You know, the throwdown?

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: The one the city of Middleton gave me at bike night at Quaker Steak and Lube. Da-da-da-da-dun, da-da-da-dun, da-da-da-da-dun, da-da-da-da-dun, da-da-da-da-dun, da-da-da-da-dun. Actually, the funny thing about that day at the Quaker Steak and Lube, there was someone from the city of Middleton there and they had these giveaway kickstand plates, like kickstand pucks.

Robin: And they're perfect for like, in your pocket, I'm stopped, this is kind of wrong, reach, grab, throw down, place a sidestand and go.

Travis: Yeah, and then forget about it when you leave. Yeah. Because it was free. Who cares? But it says like, city of Middleton. The funny thing about that, I remember that night, so the Quakers, there was a very large cruiser contingent there, a couple of choppers. There was a couple of cool Buells. That was the first time I saw the Buell XV-12.

Robin: Oh, I love that bike.

Travis: Not the XT, but the XV-12R.

Robin: The XV-12, which is like, it is a naked sport bike.

Travis: Yeah, it's a naked sport bike. I like that bike. But the first time I saw one with, it also doesn't have a gas tank. We used to expect the gas tank to be, because the gas tank, gas is in the frame.

Robin: Oh, is it a frame-based, it's a frame-based tank.

Travis: Yeah, so the filler's on the top, but it just goes into the frame. So the actual rest of the gas tank there, the hump. Is it a frunk? No, it's the air box.

Robin: Oh, okay.

Travis: And there was one, I could probably find the picture if I dug through a couple old phones, but they made it with, you could get a translucent plastic. So the hump in front of you was see-through plastic. You could see the air filter in the intake. Oh, that's neat. Yeah. And there was some other guy there with this weird, he had a, is this Spanish?

Tim: I'd make it a saltwater aquarium. Get some clown fish in there.

Robin: Oh, yeah, man.

Travis: Make sure you park it in the shade every time you park. But there was also a guy there with a Spanish 252-stroke GP replica bike from some, I don't know if it was Beta, I don't think it was Beta, but it was a Spanish company, and he imported it and got it plated somehow, but it was a 252-stroke GP replica sport bike that he put brake lights and a turn signal on.

Robin: Oh, wow.

Travis: And just made it street legal-ish. Yeah. Because, too, it's like one of those bikes where it's like, they don't sell it here. So if you go to the DMV with a title, it's not in their system. They don't know what it is, you know? But there was some cool stuff there. Tim, I don't know if you've ever been to the Quaker Steak and Lube there in Middleton on a Wednesday over the summer.

Tim: I've dropped in there a couple of times because I work just down the street from there. So I'd go there on my Vespa and get a lot of really funny looks from the Harley guys.

Robin: Yeah.

Tim: And then I'd go there with a dirty DR650 and get a lot of funny looks from the Harley guys. Yeah. Yeah. I think I even went there on the TTR250. Ng-ng-ng-ng-ng-ng-ng. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That thing was just ridiculous with me on it. Oh, I bet. Big man on a little bike.

Travis: Well, the Vespa, too, for that matter. Right. Absolutely. Oh, so anyway, on to the model focus segment of the podcast.

Robin: Yeah, talk to me. I've got questions here. I've saved my questions.

Travis: I've stopped you from telling me about this. I got hip to this bike, Shivan Moto. Someone put one up for sale. The Chicago Vintage Motorcyclist? Yeah, it came up on the Shivan Moto list. Someone was selling one. It's right up my alley because they only sold it in the States for two years, or like a year and a half. It was only in the North American market for a year and a half, like I think 2000, 2001, or 99, 2000. Maybe 99, 2000. They only sold it in the States. 2000, 2001. 2000, 2001. They only sold it in the States. This is the Kawasaki W650, which is a neo-retro. Well, not even neo-retro. It's a retro classic, a neo-classic. It looks like a bike from the 60s. It looks exactly like a Triumph Bonneville.

Robin: For those of you listening, there is a picture of this on the website for this particular podcast episode, as there always will be when we do this particular segment. It looks to me like it's got the Thruxton. Not a Thruxton, like a body.

Tim: Kind of looks like old Norton's to me.

Travis: Yeah, it looks like an old…

Tim: Yeah, sure.

Travis: It looks like an old… It's a Kawasaki that they started making in 1999. They actually made it until 2007, when it was then replaced by the W800 because they had to increase the displacement a bit and add fuel injection to meet emission requirements. And they sold that until 2016. Seriously? This bike? In Europe.

Robin: Oh, wow.

Travis: In North America, it was only 2000 and 2001. But, yeah, it looks exactly like… Like, go, like, think of your… The new or the older or the early 2000s, like Triumph Bonneville or the one from the 60s. It's got the Peashooter exhaust. It's got the knee pads on the tank. It's got the flat seat. It's a twin.

Tim: Oh, you know what it also has? It's got these fins on the exhaust, the header clamp.

Travis: Yeah, the cooler fins on the header clamp.

Tim: I love that.

Travis: Yeah. And the big chrome rear fender with the headlight sticking out and the turn signals and the struts on the front fender brace and the fork gaiters. Like, it's a classic 60s retro bike that Kawasaki made that they only sold in the States for two years. But it's super cool. So, yeah, this is part of it. So, it's 650cc carbureted with a CV carb. It's a 360-degree crank twin.

Robin: And you know I've got questions about that.

Travis: Yeah. So, it's a parallel twin. So, and a lot of the old bikes, some of the old Triumphs and stuff were all 360-degree cranks. I think the old Honda Rebel was a 360-degree crank and some of the other Honda Twins and stuff from the 60s and 70s. So, it's a twin. There's two pistons moving up and down attached to the crank. So, a 360-degree crank means that both pistons move up and down together at the same time.

Robin: Okay, yeah.

Travis: But it's 360-degree timing, so the firing, because it's a four-stroke engine, the firing order is 360 degrees from the other. So, cylinder one fires, they go down, they come up. Cylinder two fires, they go down, they come up.

Robin: Yeah, it's a drummer. It's right-left, right-left, right-left, right-left. Exactly.

Travis: Well, no, but it's going like this.

Robin: Yes, both hands are happening at the same time. But my point is the detonations.

Travis: But it's like one fires, two fires. One fires, two fires.

Robin: Yeah, one's compressing while the other is exhausting.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: That makes the most sense to me. We were just doing bike shopping for a friend. And, you know, we were just... It was really more for Travis and I than it was for her because every bike that we were checking out, we were just like discussing combustion, discussing the weight. You know, it was all like... She's like, this one's pretty. Can I ride this one? No, she's actually pretty skilled, man. She's got a solid skill set on her.

Tim: But she was looking for the Ninja 650 was what she went there looking for, wasn't it? That was a base. That was a base.

Robin: The concept was like, let's start...

Travis: Moving up from a Ninja 300, yeah.

Robin: From a Ninja 300.

Travis: So the 650 is very familiar.

Robin: The 650 was the bar.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: And then I got distracted by everything. Half the time was just her and Travis chatting. Well, this is this and this is... I saw like a baby bandit that Travis and I knew was there. I had seen it already. Oh, the 400? 600. The 600. It was my bike divided by two. And I sat on it. It was just like, I'll be here for a little while. This thing's cute. I don't know why I'm doing this. I was just sitting on this bike for this thing. I already have it. Yeah. I haven't been in there since they moved all the Triumphs in there.

Travis: Yeah. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's... Anyway. So it's a three-inch finger crank. So it has an even firing order. So it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. A lot of other twins. A lot of other parallel twins. Well, now, modernly, I think a lot of the manufacturers are moving to 270-degree timing. So it's essentially a cross-plane crank. Like they're 90 degrees. The crank pins are 90 degrees from each other. They get a ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.

Robin: So it's a dotted 8, dotted 8 16th?

Travis: Yeah. So it's basically, it fires like it's a 90-degree V-twin.

Robin: Tim, you got two musicians in here.

Travis: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's a dotted 8 16th. So it's like even sort of... I can live with that.

Robin: It's a solid one.

Travis: Well, it's like a 16th, 8th rest, 16th to 8th rest kind of thing. But yeah, which gives you more torque. That's the benefit of that. So it fires like a 90-degree V-twin.

Robin: Only for so long. Once you start building the RPMs, it just disappears.

Travis: Yeah, well, you get less rev out of it. You can't rev it as high because of the natural imbalance. And then other twins, like the Ninja motor and some other ones, are 180-degree timing. So while one piston's going up and the other's going down. But for a four-stroke motor, that means that the firing is like boom, boom. Instead of boom, boom, boom. Instead of being even. But what happens is since one piston's going down while the other one's going up, there's an inherent balance in that motor, but it creates a rocking motion you have to counterbalance out. Whereas with a 360-degree crank, you basically balance it out like you'd balance out a single with a big counterbalance around the crank.

Robin: It doesn't feel like a single. I wonder about that.

Travis: No, because you're getting the extra power stroke. So it smooths it out. And from what I've read about this motor, it's exceptionally smooth. It's really well-balanced.

Robin: It looks like an older version of the Seiko. I wonder if the Seiko was the same. I never knew the Seiko well enough, even though I loved it, to learn that information.

Travis: It was a 400, right?

Tim: Yeah. I always wanted that bike, and I never got a chance to ride one.

Robin: The 82 Seiko 400?

Tim: Yeah.

Robin: I owned one. It was my first bike, and I absolutely adored it. I put over a grand into that stupid first-timer bike. It had a $600 suspension on it. Shout-out to Chai Vinmodo for making that happen. But the fact of the matter is that that bike, I put way more money into it than it was worth and adored it, attracted it.

Travis: It was fun at the racetrack. Yeah, so the Seiko SS 400 has a 180-degree crank, so the pistons are opposite each other. Yeah. The other neat thing about, so back to the Kawasaki W650, the other neat thing about that is it has a bevel drive single overhead cam. So it's eight valve, four valves per cylinder, single overhead cam with a bevel drive like the old Ducatis.

Robin: Oh, wow.

Travis: So the way the bevel drive works is there's a gear on the crank or a power tank off on the crank with a gear, and what it does is it spins a shaft that goes up to the head, and there's a shaft that spins, and the shaft has a beveled gear like on a 45-degree angle, and then the cam shaft has a beveled gear on a 45-degree angle and those gears intermesh. So the cam is actually driven by a gear off a shaft that's driven off a gear that's driven off the crank instead of a chain.

Robin: So it's all conjoined.

Travis: Yeah, it's all mechanically conjoined like the old Ducatis had that with a bevel drive. But does it have a bevel at the bottom as well to make that happen? Yeah, yeah. Okay. There's no chain or anything like that. I mean, yeah, you need a bevel to do the 90-degree conversion. I guess you could use a worm gear, but it's probably not used in a worm gear because it's geared down too low. You basically need the cams to rotate with the crank, or at least a two-to-one with the crank. But, yeah, so it uses the bevel drive, which is neat because it almost looks like it has the way it's housed if you look at the side of the motor.

Robin: I am. Check out the link that you posted.

Travis: You can see the shaft coming up there in the link.

Robin: The motorcycle cruiser link?

Travis: Mm-hmm.

Robin: All right. It's a small image, but you see it. It's an entire...

Tim: Oh! Right? Yeah. So you're looking at this, like my first impression that it would be like a shaft lifter like in Harley engines.

Travis: Yeah, you'd think it'd be an overhead valve where there's a push... Yeah, with a rocker cam ...where there's a push rod coming up.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: But that's actually a drive shaft in there, yeah.

Robin: That's neat. And it's elegant. They did it really nicely. It's pretty. And it's got a Kickstarter.

Travis: Optional? No, it's got an electric start, too, but it has...

Robin: That's why I said optional.

Travis: But it can't... Well, it wasn't an option. They all came with a Kickstarter and an electric start.

Tim: It was just optional to use it.

Travis: Yes. But peanut butter. It's neither peanuts, nor butter. Disgust.

Robin: Mm-hmm.

Travis: Yeah, so that's WR. The W650. And so in... Actually, I think they stopped the W650 in 2007. And then they started the W800 in 2011, so there was a gap there. But the 800 is basically the same thing.

Tim: They just go bigger bore, bigger stroke kind of thing?

Travis: Yes, I believe it's still under square. Yeah, it's got more stroke than bore, but they went with a higher compression and fuel injection to make emissions.

Tim: Right. Yeah, they kept all the visual cues the same in the 800 here.

Travis: Yeah, it's basically the exact same bike, but just with a slightly bigger motor.

Tim: Yeah. I like the way they make the front rotor on the 800 look like it's a solid rotor, but it is a floating rotor.

Travis: Oh, yeah, they put the kind of big pan in there. Yeah, I almost wonder if they were going for like a drum look or something. Visually, it kind of looks like it could be.

Tim: Yeah.

Travis: Yeah.

Tim: But they got that little bulbous TT exhaust as well.

Travis: Yeah, the P-shooter.

Tim: Yep.

Travis: The P-shooter exhaust, yeah, it's super cool looking. Center stands, the rubber knee pads on the tank.

Tim: Yeah, I like it. It's a good looking little bike.

Travis: Yeah, it'd be fun. For sure. If you want that sort of like classic, that neo, you know, like buying a Triumph Bonneville, a new classic Triumph Bonneville. It looks like an old bike, but it's, you know, reliable. Yes.

Tim: And I love these little classic style standard bikes. It's like I just fall in love with like the, what's it, the TU250 Suzuki.

Travis: Yeah, me and my wife call it the 2-2.

Tim: Yeah. It's just, you know, it's just a classic little bike. It looks like something that could have rolled off the assembly line in 72.

Travis: Yeah.

Tim: Or like, it's got some modern tech in it.

Travis: Yeah, it's fuel injected. Or the SR400 that Yamaha re-released there for a couple of years, the single 400. Oh yeah, that is the kickstart only bike, isn't it? Kickstart only, yeah. The one that they have at Englehart that they like, have like factory, a bunch of factory options on, like the club mims and stuff, which would be like, I don't want, like, not this, like, no, I just want, I want it to be standard. I just want it standard. This is why it's still on their showroom floor and like, but it's severely reduced.

Tim: Oh.

Travis: Um, but yeah.

Tim: That's a standard handlebar mount though, you could just swap out whatever you wanted.

Travis: Yeah, just put regular handlebars on and get a set of Bike Masters for 20 bucks off of Amazon or, you know, Redzilla or whatever and you'd be fine. Right, make it what you want and still get the crazy discount. Oh, well, anyway, that's enough classic bikes and my stuff. Tim, what have you been up to? What's, uh, you got any new gear and what's your, what's your riding situation like?

Tim: All right, well, with the snow, we've kind of been shelved for a while and back on the garage project, but before that happened, I got the first ride from my friend and we started out just getting on and get a feel for how we're behaving together. You're talking about riding motorcycles, right? Rode motorcycles, yes.

Robin: Oh, okay.

Tim: This is my first time having her on the back.

Robin: Well, they might, they might be getting it on while they're riding the motorcycle, I don't know. That takes a little more coordination, but, would you like me to edit that out?

Tim: No, no, whatever. I don't care. Yeah, but, you know, it's like, first, just general principle, like, all right, like, this is how, you know, I don't want you to move around much back there. Like, if you want to move, if you want to lean, it's like, I tell them, just look over the inside shoulder on a turn. It's like, you don't need to barely move at all, but that's going to be enough that you're going to feel neutral on the bike. If you do that, you're not going to fight what I'm doing. It felt pretty good, we went down to New Glarus and then took 39 West for a while, you know, so it's like, generally, starting to get more complicated, more aggressive turns, and by the end of the night, you know, we stopped off for dinner in Spring Green, and then started heading some of the back roads, some of the hard roads back, Amaker Hollow, Knight Hollow, and some of the others,

Travis: Coon Rock Road. Yeah, all the hollows get tight and turn to gravel sometimes.

Tim: Yup, and they are, yeah, and they're just covered with grit right now. It's crazy. And we, on the way back, we saw more deer in one evening that I've ever seen. It was unreal. Like, oh, there's a flock of 10. There's a pack of 25. Wow. It was a conservative count between Spring Green and Madison, 160 deer. Like, my count was more around 180. Good grief. It was nuts, and these aren't all like in the road, this is like in the back of that field over there, you know, or up on the ridge I'm seeing five, but there were plenty of times I had to basically stop and wait for a couple idiots to cross the road. They're just kind of looking at me like I'm honking at them. They're just kind of looking at me like, oh, that's my dog. So hunting season's gonna be big this year. Got it. Yeah, I'm wondering if they did anything at all last year. There were so many of them, but, let me say, I love the Africa Twin for having a passenger. With that automatic transition, those shifts are so smooth, you're not knocking helmets. And she said that she was bracing, waiting for the shift, and she never felt it.

Robin: And she's ridden two up before, yeah?

Tim: Yeah, she is. Yeah, her ex-husband had a Goldwing and a Valkyrie and a couple big cruiser kind of bikes. That's cool. Yeah, and it was good. Really excited about getting a headset so we can talk to each other.

Travis: So I have, unless Laura wants to discuss that, but I have an extra SMH-10R that I won at a raffle.

Tim: Oh, that's awesome. Perfect. Yeah, if she doesn't want it, I will take it off your hands.

Robin: And you can get the earbud version of the SMH-10 standard as a secondary for, let's see, the SMH-10 component is 100 bucks, and then I think 30 bucks for the earbud system so that you can actually have earplugs and earbuds and all that stuff.

Travis: Yeah, if you want buds over speakers, you have this in an adapter.

Robin: The speakers, I don't like speakers. I prefer the earbuds.

Tim: I run the speakers with the earplugs in. I just max out the speakers.

Travis: That's what I do, too. I don't have, as a rule, don't like earbuds and I don't like earbuds just for earbuds, like for headphones. They either hurt or they don't stay in my ears and my ears are a weird shape and I have a really hard time with them so having them and then adding a helmet in the mix is just not gonna work.

Tim: Yeah, they don't stay in my ears well either so as soon as I put the helmet on over them, they fall out. There's a trick to that. Yeah, I never got that down so, but the, she doesn't have a helmet with a removable liner so we can't put the speakers in.

Robin: Go with the earbud kit and then see if she's comfortable with them. Okay. And if not, see me after class. Alright.

Travis: Before you get a new helmet, I mean, I could go to, especially if she doesn't care about Just go to cycle gear.

Robin: Yeah, I just got the showy, what's the base level showy? I just got one for like 300 bucks. I love it. The Quest? No. Keep going.

Travis: GT or the SF-1200 or something?

Tim: The SF-1200. Okay. That's not the base, that's like 1100 I think is their they have an 1100?

Travis: They used to.

Robin: It depends. Okay, can't remember the deadline. We might have a little bit of pull being in the industry and such, so.

Travis: Well, otherwise, you just do what I do and you don't care what color it is, you go to MotorcycleCloseouts, you go to MotorcycleGear.com and you get one of last year's for 100 bucks.

Robin: That's a good idea. Transparent glitter? Bedazzled?

Travis: Yeah. Trans-am trans-am hood.

Tim: It's, you know, she's got a lot more hair than I do, so, I don't know how to size a helmet for someone with hair. Yeah. Being that I don't have any. You gotta talk to Margaret.

Robin: Our own Margaret Dean. Yes.

Tim: You know, so, that's kind of, she enjoyed it, even though it was barely above 50 degrees, had a good time, so, we are on for her flying out and meeting me in Sacramento for the ride up the coast.

Travis: Yeah, is she a full face or is she a full face helmet?

Robin: We don't advocate anything but a full face helmet on TheRidingObsession.com, especially, I mean, we consider modular a qualifier. Modular is a good solution to the hair situation because it allows you to peel back the jawline of the helmet as you put it on before folding the helmet down.

Tim: I like that a lot of those have some flex as you put it on. You can flex it and get it around your face a little easier and then drop the chin bar.

Robin: Also, I believe that Arai or HJC, you can size your helmet adjustably by ordering different cheek pads, things like that.

Travis: Yeah, I think Arai and Shoei do that and HJC will do that for their, like, ARFAs.

Tim: Shoei does not. If you, you can get around it in some of the sizes. So, for me, like, the crown of my head in a Shoei is a medium but my cheeks are large. So, a standard medium will crush my jaw so I can't even close my mouth. So, if I get the large cheek pads in a medium shell helmet, because I think that the medium and large share a shell size. Okay. So, yeah. So, it ends up being just a little thinner.

Robin: That's really the secret too is that the shell sizes are identical for some brands and completely alternate for others.

Travis: Yeah, it depends on the brand and there's a lot of factors there.

Tim: And usually, the higher end helmets will have more intervals of shell sizes.

Travis: Yes.

Tim: Where, like, the cheaper ones, there may be three shell sizes. You might get in in a high end Arai, there may be five. So, yeah, but that's kind of off topic. Riding with a girl was good. Yup, and then, because it's been cold and nasty, I've been spending more time in the garage working on, working, not on the bike but working on the environment where bike work happens. Aren't I supposed to be helping you with this?

Robin: Yeah, something like that. Why, I'm sorry.

Travis: why aren't you up here helping Robin? Geez.

Robin: I made a pact and a promise and I just didn't show. Well, but is it getting done?

Tim: It's getting done.

Robin: It's one of those, That's because I'm a boss, Tim.

Tim: I'm a freaking boss. You are so damn good, you're helping me from Chicago. Sorry.

Robin: Maybe I need to, I'm going to look at my calendar while you talk so that I don't interrupt you anymore.

Tim: half of the ceiling is up. I bought one of those little cheapo panel lifters off of Craigslist and I'm probably going to be able to sell it for what I bought it for when I'm done. And already, you can tell it's holding heat better. So, the garage, the moto workshop and lounge because there is going to still be two full size couches in the garage for hanging out and bullshitting. Yeah, it's good, it's good. I've got to buy all this stuff that I need to bolt onto the bike and some electrics to run, some heated gear and I've got heated grips that need to go on and a handful of other things that once I kind of make some more progress and clear some space out of the garage I can continue with. So, one of the problems is I'm storing bikes for friends and there are six motorcycles in my garage right now.

Robin: Yeah, man.

Tim: So, in order to do anything, I spend half of the night pushing bikes around and other odds and ends before I can put them in the garage.

Robin: That's gotta stop, dude. That's gotta go away.

Travis: Yeah, I've already bugged them. I'm like, it's spring, get the bike, get them out of here now. They left the keys, right? Like, I'll take some out for you. Oh, yeah.

Robin: I'll go bake them up. I'll bake an engine in a heartbeat.

Tim: Yeah, I've got keys for three of the four guest bikes and only two of those run right now.

Robin: Which one do you not have a key for? The FZ. Hmm, interesting. Okay, so what's next on the list here?

Tim: All right, so Yeah, all right, so mentioning said epic trip that the girlfriend is going to join me, I was having some trouble with plain old Google Maps, which has been my go-to in order to, like, you plan it out on My Maps, you export it as a KML or whatever it is, and then you drop it into Basecamp and export it to your gadget. Because, yeah, as Garmin Basecamp is just so unwieldy for actually shaping routes. I haven't taken the time to do it.

Robin: You're talking about, like, when you're actually constructing the route?

Tim: Yeah, constructing the route in Basecamp is ridiculous.

Robin: Yeah, I know.

Tim: But, like, as far as, like, you bring it in, you do a little bit of massaging and you export it to the gadget, no problem. But the thing that drove me outside of Google Maps is I'm planning for a trip in June and I want to do some high mountain roads and some of those are closed right now. And Google will not route through closed roads. So even though I'm not going to be there for another two months and they will very likely be open, right now Google will not route to it.

Robin: So, now you know that I've got my preference on this matter. I'm not going to bring that into this mix because I am familiar with what you're about to talk about. Yep. This stuff, this is elaborate. This is, what I use, since I'm mostly a road rider, not a big deal. It doesn't really pertain. What you're talking about here, what you're about to get into, this stuff is very intricate. How did you go about finding this particular tool that you have yet to introduce?

Tim: Alright, this tool is called, excuse me if I say this wrong, FERCOT? FERCOT. FERCOT? F-U-R-K-O-T. FERCOT. And I found this while trying to find some help on Adventure Rider.

Robin: Well, hold on. So, FERCOT.com, for those of us listening. For those of you listening. Go ahead.

Tim: And what this is is a front-end web-based solution. It uses Google Maps for a base, and it also does OSM street maps, the open street maps, as an alternate. So, the thing that really I got into on this is that it will, if with a little pushing, will route through all those like closed roads, seasonal roads, it'll do off-road, so you can actually like point-to-point draw exactly the route you can, you want to take, even if there's no track or trail there. So, I confuse it a little bit because it was originally developed for road trips on highways and scenic byways. So, when I say day one and day two, I want to stay on the highway. I just want to make some miles. But then I get to Colorado, I'm going to get stupid. I'm going to go places that are hard to get to. I'm going to end up going through the south side of Dinosaur National Park. I'm going to hit some jeep roads. So, I'm going to hit some dirt roads and some roads that have numbers and no names and cross some BLM Bureau of Land Management land. And this is letting me route through those things. And the nifty thing that I found that is nice is that if you could plug in and say I've got a 180-mile gas tank range, it will suggest stops. Places to fill up.

Travis: So, is that what you're getting out of the Twin, is a 180? I guess it's got kind of a small tank for a liter bike, right?

Tim: Yeah, for the size of a bike, it's a small tank. 180 is pretty much when, 170 to 180 is when the fuel light comes on. And I probably have another 20, 30 miles after that. But I haven't pressed it.

Travis: Yeah, once in a while I want to get on the NC because the gas tank's pretty small under the seat.

Tim: And I plan to carry one of those one of those like one liter MSR fuel bottles. I'll have a little reserve even beyond. Because I am going, I'm going to go through the desert. I'm going to get off of the highway south in between Reno and Salt Lake City. I'm going to swing south. You're going to Tim. I am, yeah. It's, I'm going to go, I'm going to check out the Ruby Valley. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to try, there's a cool overlook over the Kennecott Copper Mine that I'm going to try and find. I've heard of that. The Kennecott Copper Mine I believe is the second largest open pit mine in the world. Wow. It is amazingly huge. It is something like 5,000, 6,000 feet deep. It is unreal. And it's just on the southwest side of Salt Lake City. And I've never actually, even all that time that I lived in Salt Lake City, I never actually went and looked at the thing. But on the southwest side of the mine, there's an overlook. And it's a, it's another seasonal jeep road to get to it.

Robin: And Frickit basically brought you to all these, you figured all these out in this app? Yep.

Tim: It actually has a tab that says find. And under one of those categories, you can find jeep roads. Yes. So it's kind of like you see it on the map and you go, oh, how do you get there? This is how. And you can, it often, like if you, you click on those, it'll take you to a website that'll give you more information. So it's all hot linked within the program as well. So, I mean, it's, every once in a while I go through there, it will, the route will break and it'll break bad. And it'll be like, all of a sudden, it's like it can't figure out how to get point A to point B even though they're a mile apart.

Robin: I've got an image here. If you type in Bing and Mine Overlook, you will see the depth of this massive investment.

Travis: Yeah, I just Google mapped the Kennecott Mine, Utah, and then there was a, there's no like street view because it's in the middle of the fucking desert. But there's a point of interest you can click on and there's a user photo there of this giant hole in the ground.

Tim: Yeah, it is just epic, huge. So yeah, I did find the way to get in there.

Robin: Really?

Tim: And do an overlook, yeah. Nice. I'm pretty excited. I'm going to check that out. And I'll hopefully be able to hook up and meet with some friends while I'm in Salt Lake City. But I'm probably going to be running through there at lunchtime. Hmm. So, yeah, let's see.

Robin: Well, with that in mind, what kind of new kit might you be considering for this particular venture? Oh, you're going to keep me on task here? I don't know. I don't even know. I thought maybe you, I couldn't tell if you wanted me to or if I was, I just started, I started holding my breath and then it started to hurt.

Tim: Sorry, I was getting a little lost in this. I've been so, so obsessing over the trip. It's been ridiculous. I went, I went to every state's like tourism bureau and ordered like all their information packets and maps. So I'm like, yeah, send me that. Send me that. Send me that. Paper maps for when everything breaks. Yeah.

Robin: The link that he actually provides for the FERCUT stuff goes to folio.fercut.com as in F-O-L-I-O. folio.fercut.com and that's F-U-R-K-O-T. And when you click on that, it takes you to, you know the maps that they give you at the IMS where they're just like, here, check out our route and blah, blah, blah.

Tim: Exactly.

Robin: The whole screen looks like a stack of those. Yep.

Tim: And the fun thing is if you click on some of those in there, it will map all those things and it'll have like suggested gas stops, suggested hotel stops.

Robin: That's tight. I like that.

Tim: Yeah. Like all these little neat things in there.

Robin: Yeah.

Tim: So it's a digital version of all of that and you can kind of personalize them and ignore stops you don't want to go to. Things like that. So like I said, every once in a while I'll do things that confuse the mapping software horribly. Yeah. And so what I've found is like routing the whole two and a half week monster of a trip really causes it to have a hell of a headache. But this is still in development and what it's got shows a ton of promise and I'm pretty excited about that as a tool.

Robin: Firkit's been around. They've been around and they're solid. They're just so much more elaborate. This is like, may I contest your selection? Yes. Please. Firkit's is extremely advanced on the best level for people who are into topography. This service can handle the kind of dirt road isolated landscapes that you request. It can make that happen. It's sort of like advanced Legos for the GPS developer. I'm more used to like space Legos. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So my personal preference because I'm mostly a road rider is RideWithGPS.com where it's a free service unless you decide to sign up for their paid service. You sign up for it and then you can start creating routes and download them in GPX format which is, let's face it, GPX is the MP3 of maps. Right? So you log into RideWithGPS and the real key is to go to plan and then before you do anything before you do anything take the selector off of follow roads which is just a it's a way to create map design disaster and set it to add and remove waypoints or control points. And if you do that you can simply type in the small towns that you want to get best twisty road from to between the two and then connect the dots twisty road to twisty road and you can kind of construct out of that light. It's a lot easier to work with but Ferkit, if you are if you are Tim Clark I'm sorry I've ridden with this guy, alright? This is this definitely speaks to the ADV sport tourer anybody who rides into dirt stuff and you know what I'm saying you know where I'm going with this.

Tim: I'm going to dig into the the RideWithGPS and I'd like I love to kind of like dig into new tools and new kits.

Robin: It's a cakewalk. I'll send you a link you'll see everything you need to know it's just there's nothing to it. It's all straight.

Tim: I've done it you've sent me some routes and I've downloaded off of there and that was easy I just have never done any planning with it. Tim, Travis didn't know this but we're recording a long episode tonight. That's right. That's right, we are. Alright. Alright, so This is for Vladimir. This is the sort of thing that I like I get lost I spent like half of Sunday screwing with this damn program. Consider like for an hour or two my girlfriend and I got diverted because we were looking for a King King Range National Forest or National Park there's a King's Peak Road and I wanted to get some more information on like trail conditions what it is.

Robin: You know you're supposed to be on a PC-800 for that.

Travis: Yeah, that's what it's named for.

Tim: You're right.

Travis: You also need like a Rolex watch you need to wake up in a bungalow beachside.

Robin: You need a cigarette extender and a DOT-approved Fandora.

Tim: See, the thing that I wanted so bad to pull off was that first night on the bike to camp on top of a mountain overlooking the ocean.

Robin: That'd be nice.

Tim: I tried so hard to make this happen but the King Range National Forest or National Park or whatever the fuck it is all the permits were sold out for the day that I was gonna be there.

Robin: Ugh. They don't have walk-in permits you can roll the dice on it.

Tim: And I will, yeah. So I would love to try because that would be so...

Travis: Or just roll in and get a day pass and then like hey buddy I'll give you like 20 bucks so I can camp here.

Tim: Yeah, and I might just say like I'm sorry I'm exhausted I can't go any further tonight. I need for my safety I need to stop.

Robin: That's fair. I mean that is fair. But that's a second resort.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or just kind of like I fell off and my tent fell out and popped up just like that. I figured I might as well do something about it and stay in it.

Robin: Ladies and germs listening right now you gotta understand for me right now personally what Tim is talking about just reminded me of an excellent amazing life life experience that I had riding from Chicago to Portland and back with my good friend Travis Burleson here. And Tim's gonna do that in the most man-up style I could possibly request. Are we going at the same time? Are you leaving when Travis and I are leaving?

Tim: No, I'm a couple weeks later.

Robin: I almost wish it was the same time so we could maintain communication and just be like hey, how you doing? Oh, that'd be awesome. But either way it's like I'm really really amped about what I'm gonna be doing starting next weekend with Travis Burleson because we missed there were things that we just didn't know that we could do better. We tried to camp a couple of times it worked out fine for the duration but eventually we're just like fuck it, let's get a hotel or whatever. I am truly excited for my upcoming trip starting next week. I'm really Travis, it will be my honor and privilege to get to ride with you again for a full freaking week.

Travis: That should be a good time especially since I'm not hugging I'm not lugging camping gear. Yeah, there'll be no camping gear that we use once.

Tim: None of this stuff that I'm planning to attempt should be you could do it in your average Jeep without $10,000 of extra gear on it. What's the new kit, man? The new kit is lighting. This was almost inspired by the unbelievable amount of deer sighted that I like I need more lights I need more lights I need to see what's coming around and for me my requirements are they gotta be reasonably bright they gotta have a pretty good spread but I need them to be road legal so I don't have to have a LED like them on all the time. So that is kind of where that drives the price up when you look at the LED lights because most of them have just a full cone spread and not like the vertical cutoffs like your standard bike headlights. So I did find a set from this guy goes by the it's advmonster.com is his website and he's one of the guys long term guy in the community and the adventure rider kinda culture so he's a guy I've known about for years and years and I know people who know him but never met the guy. So yeah I bought a pair of those they were $110 they look great just basically did a real rough connect to the you know touch the leads to the battery and saw them light up in the garage in the dark. Got a sunburn? Yeah I'm like ah this is gonna be good yeah this is one of the many things that I still need to bolt on but from what I understand is like auxiliary lighting you're always going to be balancing between you know you can go these ones I found on Amazon they're really nice they're super cheap they're like $15 they're cheap they're bright you know they got a 4 plus star rating with more than 4,000 reviews but they're not road legal and they're a little bit big for hanging off of a bike.

Travis: They're perfect for putting on a jeep.

Tim: They're like the 6 LED units yeah yeah they're like 4 inches square so you don't get worried about getting pulled over by a cop.

Robin: Nice you gonna mount them to the forks you gonna mount them to the something fixed or something that turns?

Tim: I'm putting full crash guards on so they're gonna be fixed and they're gonna be mounted on the crash guards.

Robin: Such an easy location it makes sense.

Tim: Yeah um yup and then of course I added in here the fancy ones the Denali ones yup so I've got these Denali ones that I found on Revzilla that are just gorgeous and they're like like if you've gotta get them in with your fancy BMW electronic system those will work plug and play but like 350 bucks is a little bit much for me for lights but they look so good don't they?

Travis: they look great the Denali's yeah are crazy but and you know they're gonna last they're so tiny that's the other thing

Robin: yeah Revzilla's you know they got like multiple hosts

Travis: they're all cool

Robin: Lemmy Lemmy yes Lemmy is a crack up man he's he's the one that talks about these so awesome you wanna buy them just from the preview of the video god yes

Tim: yeah talks about them and you're like yeah I need that oh yeah yeah that's one of those companies that I just I really get a kick out of them they made such a name for themselves out of their product review videos like no bullshit this is what it is this is why you want it this is how hard it is to install this is why we think it could be improved

Robin: yeah it's a good warranty you mean

Tim: yep

Robin: nice so that's

Tim: pretty much all I got on that on the fantastic LED floodlights and fog lights

Travis: it seems better than I went with the cheapest like Amazon garbage I could find so you know but they're but they're switched so it's okay

Tim: that's good yep so yeah there's just so many of those nights where I'm like I'm on the public streets it's just dusk but I just don't have enough visibility that I feel comfortable it's like I want to see a little bit more

Travis: yeah

Robin: you do know that they're aimed to be they're supposed to be aimed low you want to be under the fog

Tim: right yeah and what I'm planning to do I'm gonna mount them fairly low on the on the mount you know and just have them almost dead level horizontal I'm gonna mount mine on the chin of my helmet yeah something to be said for that and be able to point it where where you're where you're looking the Baja racers do that

Travis: yeah and what's the crazy the crazy Europe race they do like the hell race right all right the there's like the hell race where it's like like 120 people start and like three finish it yeah 24 hours

Tim: well it's one of those endurance ones that like they run it for that it's a fixed amount of time and you do like as many laps as you can it's kind of like a hair scrabble type race no there's a different

Travis: one I'm thinking of where it's like no it's like the end is like a vertical climb and like all the bystanders are just like helping the guy pull his bike up this hill

Tim: oh yeah yeah

Travis: and like no one makes it it's not the six days but it's there's something like that

Tim: no it's like hell gate I think

Travis: yeah

Tim: the one you're thinking of

Travis: yeah yeah but like they're like mountain lights on their helmets because it's so dark and they're just in the woods yep and you just needed to light up what where you're looking yeah

Tim: I've seen those on like the the Baja 1000 as well

Travis: yeah

Tim: when they're racing 24-7

Travis: yeah

Tim: so yeah they've got it's amazing like the the light bars that the trucks have is just an amazing amount of light that those put out

Travis: oh sure yeah when you have a truck it's like as much light as you can yeah if you're like well like these days too it's like LEDs are so ubiquitous and they're relatively inexpensive and you can just bolt them on

Tim: yeah yeah well what's another thousand dollars in lights when you've got a you know hundred thousand dollar truck you're racing

Travis: yeah exactly

Tim: um but yeah but yeah seeing them on the on the on the helmet looks like a pretty entertaining

Travis: yeah which makes does it make sense for for off-road

Tim: yeah

Travis: um you know on-road it's maybe a little cumbersome though I have um so you can see me right you can see my

Robin: yeah

Travis: my video feed on this I have the the replay XD action cam

Robin: yeah

Travis: which is cylindrical yep and I have that set up to be mounted to mounted to my helmet um so I could probably take the mount and if I got a flashlight that was the right diameter I could use my camera mount and put a flashlight in there

Tim: yeah well it'd be interesting to you do one on either side and balance your head so you're not leaning one one direction or the other going down the road

Travis: oh yeah it's not that heavy but it's

Tim: really more

Travis: like wind drag

Tim: oh yeah I've been thinking about I'd like to might take a look at action cams and see if I get something get some video option for my trip

Travis: that's honestly that's why I like the the replay yeah versus the GoPro is all the GoPro's are square

Tim: right

Travis: and so if you mount one to your helmet it's like this big brick on the side of your helmet whereas like this is actually like you know it's pretty slim and when you're going down the road it's cylindrical it's pointing this way going down the road so it has a very very low you know you're not going to get as much turbulence from it yeah it's got a low surface area for picking up when it's on your head

Tim: yeah I did buy I bought the large windscreen from V-Stream or I think National Cycle the V-Stream so I am going to mount that on the bike right now I'm getting a lot of turbulence off of my stock windscreen as well

Robin: all that leverage man that's yeah I've got an issue you know I've got an issue where I gotta decide morally do I let this be what it is and just learn to not be irresponsible about my speed or do I get something that makes me feel more comfortable than I probably should and then beat the Millennium Falcon at the freaking the Kessel Run you know the bike is dumb as hell it's crazy

Travis: yeah well that was a thing with so when I had the big one I had that I bought like I bought a GV windscreen like universal windscreen to bolt onto this classic naked bike back before naked bike was a category that was made back before naked bike was a category and I did when the Robert and I did the trip down to the Ozarks and halfway through I just took it off and no problem strapped it to the back seat and I was just like I'd rather be blasted with clean air than deal with this like windscreen garbage and I mean it's the though I'm super stoked and I know we're getting off topic here but I'm super stoked on the new CB1000R because it looks it looks like it looks like the big one it looks like the next iteration of that naked Honda and it's going to be pretty good when it comes though I haven't seen it on Honda has officially announced the CB300R which looks similar for North America they have not the European like YouTube and like magazine reviews have started for the CB1000 they have not released anything officially for North America for the CB1000 yet.

Robin: It'll be here if it's not that's their mistake that's a big mistake

Travis: especially with all the buzz around the Kawasaki Z900RS they are

Robin: quite different one is a literal throwback the other one is a modern throwback

Travis: yeah but you know

Tim: well I guess we can get back on track a little bit here Robin we've been waiting tell me

Robin: you know life is a gift even at its absolute worst moments and that is the challenge of adulthood among many to find that children of all things tend to get right out the gates to find yourself in the worst of all scenarios and know that you should be grateful for that opportunity to have witnessed even the worst of situations and unfortunately I lost a family member my brother Bill passed away anybody close to me has already been through the whole story of this back to back many times over they know that they've seen me have my ups and downs about it but he was an amazing human being and if you didn't know him then unfortunately that's your loss and his memorial was scheduled by another of my brothers and a lost uncle down in Daytona Beach Florida so in the midst of this pain I used it as an opportunity to make a trip I'd always wanted to have an excuse to attempt my iron butt certification they give you the plaque and I said okay well I'm in the midst of a loss here let's see if I can use this as an opportunity for some zen and I'm going to ride Chicago to Daytona Beach Florida I'm going to give this a go totally failed by the way get that right out of the picture I think in the future if I want to get my iron butt plaque that's not going to be hard to do that is actually a cake walk compared to what I tried to do and what happened in the face of it those of you listening I am doing a write up about that particular event and I think you'll see some humor in it as to all of the obstacles that completely just said nope this ain't happening but I did I did use this as an excuse to make sure that my morality was in check to get down there for my own family so I it was a memorial and I traveled from Chicagoland down to Florida I tried to do it in one day and eventually didn't work out and that's just fine I made it all the way to just south of Knoxville heading to Jacksonville about 850 miles total that's a pretty big hike right there that's a big hike yeah once you get you'll see this in the article but once you get to 40 east out of Knoxville number one yes it's an interstate number two it is it is lift oncoming traffic it's sort of like a strip mine yeah and then you've got about 20 you've got two feet two feet of berm that's all you have and it's filled with truckers oh yeah on a Friday night with southern drinking oh man yeah I had five hours of sleep this was the point and then Friday night in the south with lifted oncoming traffic and then it's extremely twisty it is like riding the sweepers of the Blue Ridge Parkway yes

Tim: yeah that is a difficult road to be taking on fatigued in the dark

Robin: for sure and then all of a sudden I saw antlers

Tim: oh Jesus

Robin: yeah and I was like I'm done that's it I was like that's it 850 miles and I started the trip at 28 degrees in Chicago I made it to the end of the Chicago Skyway after three hours and it had gotten up to a sweltering 32 degrees oh I got nothing to prove

Tim: no that's that's sort of like just maintaining your body temperature at that low temperature riding yeah I had heating

Robin: pulls a lot

Tim: out of even that it's not covering you 100% it still is going to pull a lot of your body is going to burn a lot of energy trying to keep warm

Robin: and you know I had fun trying Tim I had a good time giving it a go and the best part was on my return I got to meander Greg White who's a guest author for the site on regular occasion he suggested I take the Cherahola Skyway I'll tell you what the Cherahola Skyway if you take the entire Blue Ridge Parkway and condense it down to one fourth the total length and then make it barren it was amazing I've never ever been on a better way how's that just really good as a yeah it was amazing so I'm hoping you'll get a chance to ride that with me at some point yeah

Travis: well we're going to do that on our on our trip here next well it's two weeks from now yeah

Robin: Travis is going to rock it with me he and I I've made it my mission to make Travis cry with impassionate love for his motorcycle I love you NC so okay so I get home yes trip's over I'm home and I know that in a weekend I've got I've got to coach the MSF course this course number I should get it tattooed it was just so not fun I walk into the classroom ten minutes late and my longtime friend Chad Solomon is my fellow rider coach he has been doing the paperwork and he just says here run the class it's a three class course that's been combined into one classroom so I've got like 36 students and they've got stadium seats and they're hawking me oh my like stair step seating they're looking down at me as though I'm I'm supposed to remember everything that I was supposed to know because if anybody in the upper echelons from this platform knows they just say well whatever you got trained you know your stuff you should know your stuff why don't you know your stuff you should know these things why don't you know these things you know these things because you were trained you're trained here goes this is gonna suck and immediately I don't know I got lucky I basically I picked up the reins I took over it took a couple of these aren't necessary questions to get me going but eventually I was back on the ball next okay so this for me I'm sweating I go to bed wife is like you'll be okay sweetie I'm sorry you had that experience you know she's got my back that's good yeah next morning I wake up ice rain the whole day not not enough to make it like okay you don't need to be doing this today not enough to cancel but constant cold rain but that is what gets you what gets you is the wind I was talking about this before yeah all day long probably 15 10 to 15 mile an hour winds all day so I'm outdoors I'm wearing I'm wearing basically uh you know that ball that Jackie Chan gets into in uh Operation Condor and he jumps out of an airplane in it yeah that's my outfit so in the end eight of my students elect to ditch to stick around yeah

Tim: the the are the are your students dressed appropriately for this cold temperature

Robin: uh the eight that bailed I would say that three two of them I had to say look and they said don't even we're good and they left they weren't dressed properly the hypothermia was kicking on and I'm watching for that I'm watching the next six were just like you know what I hope I get you guys again because we liked you and we're gonna bail and we'll come back so it it worked out it was the last two that was just like wow okay let's do this and then that that last morning man it the the temps were 10 degrees shy and then the sleet was diagonal it wasn't it wasn't freezing rain anymore it was ice razors and I expressed I could express concern and so after all the prior work we ended up just canceling it was too much it was um it wasn't it didn't end up uh concluding itself it didn't end up getting better we just we just decided this it stayed it actually got worse so just a crazy crazy first round but on the upside the students are gonna be better off and my mess this up to-do list was fully checked off I am ready for any course I'm set good uh minus paperwork which uh if anybody's listening to this uh I'm doing my best as for this month's feature article we're talking about your motorcycle battery it's voltage after charging and discharging this is by guest author Greg Tiber it's entitled your motorcycle battery lies about voltage every bike on the market today has a 12 volt battery but that's not really the truth its power isn't fully charged unless somewhere in the area of 12.5 volts after it's been off the charger for a few hours here's where things get a bit funny you threw your battery on the charger Wednesday night and here you are Friday evening beer in hand as you prepare to warm up the bike for an oil change before you pull the charger off you check and find a charge of 12.3 volts meh should be okay right I mean it's a 12 volt system anyway but when you disconnect the charger and turn over the motor the starter barely cranks you keep fighting the engine sputters a little maybe it barks to life but the headlight is dim and idle now your bike won't idle well and doesn't want to keep running unless you rev the rpms slightly high before you go chasing those carburation or injection issues long story short it's time to replace the battery if you're unlucky it's time to go over the charging system but what gives the tender said the unit was full the technical answer is your battery developed a short in a cell over the winter the rest of the story gets a bit into electronics and chemistry we'll come back to that but before we continue here's what you need to do to prevent tears this year first visually inspect the unit if it's a flooded cell make sure none are low on water one or two flooded spend the 40 bucks on a new battery if all cells are a little low top it off and keep going step 2 trickle charge the battery for a couple of days then step 3 disconnect it from the charger and let it sit for a few hours lastly check with a voltmeter is it over 12.4 volts if so you're likely good for the year that's all the vital battery information you need for one season now why do batteries read so many different voltages batteries are chemical storage of electricity resistors and capacitors all of those factor into a wide range of voltages you might experience with a modern 12 volt system on a 6 volt unit a single shorted cell would knock you down 4 volts making it obvious your battery is toast when charging you need to raise the voltage higher while the cell is at rest to push electricity into it that's why when charging a battery you might see as much as 14 volts even when float charging you'll often see 13 plus volts capacitors at their simplest level are just a bunch of parallel plates amusingly so are lead acid batteries when you charge one they'll quote fill up unquote on a few extra volts holding on to that for a while once you've taken it off the charger this is why you need to let voltage settle before trusting a voltmeter's reading batteries are also resistors if you put your voltmeter across the battery terminals and turn the bike on you'll see the voltage drop right to 11 volts or less as soon as the headlight and coils activate if the battery had no resistance you'd see the full 12.4 volts across the terminals but the battery has some internal resistance which becomes part of the circuit as soon as you turn on the bike when you turn the bike off why doesn't the voltage come all the way back up again? that's chemistry rearing its spiky head the battery is a chemical cell and that chemical process takes time so if you leave the unit alone for a while the battery's voltage will climb back up if you only had the bike on for a few moments it'll recover most of its voltage hopefully this saves you some frustration if you're lucky and without issues you've at least learned a little about your battery's work enjoy an easy start riding season now question for our listeners what electrical solutions have you employed? there are a lot of battery related truths in motorcycling what issues have you tackled? how did you go about it and why? your input is invited post an article visit the riding obsession dot com forward slash contribute and start writing about riding today and that was our feature article for this month so now I think it's time to move on to Travis Burleson who's going to cover this month

Travis: in motorcycle history and now a list April 30th 1972 the 1972 Grand Prix season kicks off with the West German GP at Nuremberg Ring circuit in Nuremberg Germany April 29th 1979 riding his Can-Am Greg Robertson of Woodland Hills California finishes 17th on day 2 of the Pontiac 250 Supercross in the Pontiac Silver Dome in Pontiac Michigan shout out to my Michigan homies remember the Pontiac Silver Dome I remember the Pontiac Silver Dome I think it's

Tim: still there I do I have attended an event at the Pontiac Silver Dome

Travis: yeah I think it shut down in the late 90s early 2000s it shut down sounds right yeah I saw monster trucks there once a couple times when I was a kid April 28th 2013 CNN reports that journalist Mary Tom a prominent feminist who was an editor of Ms. Magazine in its early years was killed when she crashed her motorcycle in Yonkers in New York just north of New York City April 27th 1953 Grand Prix racer and AMA Hall of Famer farmer Pat Hennen is born in Phoenix Arizona April 25th 1999 aboard his RGV500 Suzuki for only the second time Kenny Roberts Jr. wins the Japanese Grand Prix at the Twin Ring Motegi in Motegi Japan April 23rd 1906 Triumph Engineering Company Limited is registered 1906 April 23rd 1906 with a capital of 100 pounds British Sterling April 22nd 1957 Mike Hailwood completes his first motorcycle race at Alton Park in Cheshire England and he finishes 11th April 20th 2003 2001 250cc World Championship in two time Suzuka 8 hour winner the Jarocado dies from his injuries sustained after crashing during the Japanese Grand Prix April 17th 1976 Ross Borrelli is killed when his Suzuki front disc explodes on Australia's famed Mount Panorama circuit and in April 15th 1972 Evo Knievel's X1 Sky Cycle Prototype makes his first launch attempt Can-Am did not have five wheelers when Kenny Roberts was junior Japanese I don't know I don't think they made five wheelers I think I read the script he won the Japanese Grand Prix but yeah but he's good good fried chicken though

Robin: good fried chicken which brings us to updated site features and developments I have one minute I hope I can do it glad to say there's not much to tell and go go okay so I updated an article about GPX files on Garmin units not too complex of a process to use them and definitely reliable so go to the site and look up curvy roads and you'll have everything you need to know we published two articles by guest authors Tom Burns and Greg Tiber that are really quite good look check those out they're under the articles menu under newest or something trying to better the group writing towards overall user interface I added an area for registered signups that's become more informative I've also adjusted a few link settings for ease of navigation how smooth as butter was that yes Robin Dean here here to smooth up your night let's get it on let's make some music happen let's make it happen oh yeah let's do that and under our listener questions 10 seconds one

Travis: what are you talking about

Robin: what do you think I didn't what was I doing

Travis: just there you think that's how I just

Robin: talked how you doing Travis Brilson Sam Clark all right listening to your questions this is hey Brandon Turner asks this question how do I do wheelies he's been writing for six years and still doesn't know how to wheelie well

Travis: to grow a certain Polish acquaintance talking you just buy a Duke 1200 I mentioned to

Robin: him a certain someone that Travis and I both know Tim you've never met him you're fortunate enough to have a would call me at 2 a.m. drunk on I don't know what and say every sentence started with fucking and the period was fucking so I get this phone call fucking Robin hey man how are you I need to know how do I do wheelie fucking

Travis: you buy a Super Duke or you buy or you buy an FZ or nine and you just crack the throttle in first gear and leave leave the traction control wheelie setting to like one instead of so you don't loop it yeah but to be to give a less fastidious answer to

Robin: those of you I'm thinking that I should say this anyhow if if you're serious start out in first gear when you're about to shift into second gear go ahead and preload your front suspension and bring the RPMs down to 50% of wherever they are from the red line and then give it a good throttle twist and you should probably be able to yank it up in the front am I wrong it depends on the bike

Travis: yeah I mean if you're so generally speaking for the sake of safety I would get a dirt bike yes or something like or dual sport like but something that can probably actually do a wheelie like a DRZ 400

Tim: go into your highest sport mode hit hit whatever buttons you need to and it's was it does it have launch control no um yeah yeah if it's

Travis: backed out I don't know

Tim: yeah that bike should be able to wheelie with just hitting it hard in second gear

Travis: yeah it too like you can kind of bounce the front like stand up kind of preload the front end and then when the front end rebounds open the throttle it'll it'll lift yeah

Robin: but let's look at this way you'll be two up with full luggage and a top case full of everything your wife refused to leave behind

Travis: yeah it's my industrial strength hair dryer and I can't live without it yeah

Robin: yeah and then you basically get sick of being in the lane you're in which is a carpool in that you can't change out of and then you decide you're angry at the next tollbooth gate and then you're in first gear and you gun it and then watch the horizon slowly get lower

Tim: yeah well I've you know I've never been one that like I'm not a wheelie guy I'm not gonna I'm not the one that can find the balance point and ride it but I got pretty handy at like dirt bike pop the wheel up get over a log you know and usually that is I've done it on small bikes too you know little 250s that have no power at all and it usually is you're doing a dance between reverse gear and up and dropping the clutch at the same time and you gotta have the right traction and the right body position and it will come up

Travis: yeah I mean definitely second gear put your weight back pull the clutch in rev the engine up dump the clutch it'll lift on a 1200 be careful you don't loop it yeah but on a 250 dirt bike or a DRZ 400 that's a little little porky dirt bike you do that and the front the front wheel will come up yeah keep your yeah

Tim: keep your rear rear of your foot near the rear brake you can clip the rear brake and it'll drop it and put it down or you know if it's coming up slow you can just pull in the clutch and it'll drop back down yeah I have actually probably one of the few people that have wheelied a TTR 250 in third gear oh but I did most of the work

Travis: yeah it was mostly it was mostly using the fact that you wait as much as the motorcycle to like hold the weight up

Tim: yes indeed yeah it's like you pull the clutch the pedals you kick off on the foot pegs

Travis: a little more BMX technique it was

Tim: and that was how I rode that poor little bike did I mention I blew up the engine on that bike

Robin: yeah well okay so that brings us on to this week's mess a la moto brought to you by the super slick ultra badass motorcycle mega

Travis: posse of incredible power power

Robin: power power power power power power power power power funky power the super slick ultra badass motorcycle mega posse of incredible power is super slick ultra badass and as a side note it also happens to be incredibly powerful well I had built a code algorithm that would actually rake the videos from our group feed but ever since captain what's his name the guy that invented book face who's book face guy mr. mr. book face mr.

Travis: second ball

Robin: that guy he changed up the privacy settings to avoid getting trouble with the Russians or I don't know but the point is is that like basically we don't have a way to access the stuff automatically so I'm scrolling through right

Travis: now check in check a noise out well there's the there's the terrible CG this is what you get when you put an air quotes Hayabusa engine in the air but it's

Robin: it was a good reason to eat popcorn if you scroll down far enough you get the chips I'm gonna start with chips how's that oh

Travis: not the VW trike it talks

Robin: about how mental vapor lock it's uh well it's chips talking about freeze up total freeze up

Travis: man just a ridiculous video chips episode yeah where some guys stuck

Tim: now now if this is real I can't imagine how sketchy that would be to slow someone else's bike yeah

Travis: you're right next to each other like they're like they're like trying to like shift it into neutral on this other

Tim: guy yeah yeah like if this was real this would be sketchy as hell to do I would rather just like kick the guy over and let him slide to a stop would probably be the safest option of the whole thing yeah it would have been better to just hit the kill switch on the on the

Robin: guy yeah that'd be easy that'd be cake yeah maybe a coasting hall Travis you post about neat pillion tips this video looks like a

Travis: yeah the guy from what's his name he's got a funky

Tim: name oh this is a great

Travis: video though moto moto track the guy from moto track yeah so it's a it's a really funny video and he kind of flips the script where it's like it's about riding passenger and he has his like girlfriend slash co-producer of his riding school I don't know like and then he he like pulled this big duffel bag off his bike and his girlfriend gets out of the whole bag and then she drives the bike and he rides past the guy and he talks about being a passenger like on adventure riding where it's you have to like you have to pay attention because you have to counterweight the bike when you're going down these dirt tracks and stuff so it's really good anyway yeah check out moto track on YouTube he has some good good

Robin: stuff yeah then up next is chopper town where if you connect three motorcycles to a merry-go- round you can pretty much burn a big hole in the

Travis: ground the chopper go around yeah some pictures from uh from uh freddy freddy uh hair plushie and he with his son his son out riding which is pretty cool before the snow came and then you

Robin: posted something about the first ride of the Indian FTR 1200 which looks pretty cool and it's still not interesting to me but it's cool that you're

Travis: happy about it oh yeah the uh street tracker indian might might do a production street tracker which would be super

Robin: cool that'd be cool because I'd better be a

Travis: damn sight better than anything harley davidson ever made

Robin: wonderful post about riding out of your garage on a minibike directly into a pile of

Travis: snow yeah it's very sort of wisconsin minnesotan where it's like you really want to ride but nature's being a bitch and it's like in the garage revs up and the garage door opens and he comes out and there's four feet of snow and you're just right into uh right into a wall of snow that's how i've been feeling the last couple of days not that there's been a wall of snow but there's been enough snow that you don't want to go out riding in it maybe if i had a sweet chopper minibike like that i'd go out and fall down a lot sweet jumps yeah shocks pegs lucky you take that off any sweet jumps tim take us out

Tim: this episode of the riding obsession podcast is sponsored by the ugly apple cafe of madison wisconsin where they use local overstock produce to offer a quick tasty

Robin: breakfast all right riding obsession dot com is always seeking sponsor for this podcast always seeking sponsors Sponsors are given three focus mentions toward the start, middle, and end of their designated episode. Their contributions are put towards bettering the program's content and recording equipment. I will take this opportunity to promote our next group riding tour, which is scheduled for late summer of this year, dubbed the Trip Sevens Tour, as in Triple Sevens, as in 777. As in Jackbot. Seven riders will cover seven states in seven days, starting September 1st of 2018. It's a twisty sport touring getaway of epic proportions, and we hope you'll sign up. More information about that tour is available via theridingobsession.com. Visit the group tours link, which is anchored under events in our navigation menu.

Travis: Well that's our episode for this round. Beginning at the end of next week, Robert and I will be on the road riding the most complicated version of the Trip Sevens Tour we could come up with. Lots of alternates, lots of side roads, lots of twisty, twisty, twisty. Should be good, or possibly scary, which is also good. But we will be recording nightly on the road, and releasing episodes more frequently, probably shorter but more often, but as frequently as a series documenting the journey. So we're going to do a day-by-day cast of the trip, and catch everyone up on our comings and goings for that event. So make sure to tune in for all those things. For theridingobsession.com, I am Travis Burleson.

Tim: I'm Tim Clark.

Robin: And I'm Robin Dean. Safe travels everyone. And to my brother Bill, somewhere out there in the cosmos, this month's ending belongs to you. May it follow you wherever you fly. Rest in peace, and thank you for showing me how to work the record player. God bless. God bless.