Robin: If you want to show support for this motorcycle podcast, visit donate.tro.bike. Hello, everybody. I'm Robin Dean. I'm Travis Burleson. And I'm Tim Clark. You're listening to the Riding Obsession podcast. The Riding Obsession, your sport touring motorbike fix. We're an ever-developing online venue for motorcycle enthusiasts who enjoy responsibly spirited riding along routes less traveled. I'll take this opportunity to promote our next group riding tour, which is scheduled for March of this year. It's the Texas Hill Country Tour. Seven riders will rock three twisty routes over three days beginning March 2nd of 2022. It's a sport touring getaway of epic proportions. More info is available at theridingobsession.com. Visit the group tours link, which is anchored under events in our navigation menu. There are no announcements or corrections because we always do everything perfectly.

Travis: Yeah, I mean, the only thing I would say is that if you take advice from us, it's your own fault.

Robin: We are the absolute end-all authority on all topics motorcycling. And the first thing we'd like to stipulate is that you should not listen to anything we say.

Travis: Exactly. The rules are made up and the points don't matter.

Robin: How's your month going, man?

Travis: It's good. Same, same, same, same, same, same, same, same, same, same. It's cold in Wisconsin. It's in the twenties the last couple of days. I haven't really done much in the way of bike stuff. Been doing the, you know, fatherhood is pretty good game.

Robin: There's a song in that somewhere. Fatherhood is pretty good.

Travis: Taking care of the boys and trying to get sleep when I can and drinking lots of eggnog because it's the season for eggnog. And the eggnog recipe I have is mostly whiskey. With a splash of nog. Yeah, well, it's whiskey with cognac, with maraschino, and then a little bit of sugar and an egg and some milk. And some nutmeg because having eggnog without nutmeg is like having a turkey without a duck and a chicken stuffed inside.

Robin: See, if Sean McClellan's not listening to this, I mean, what did he have? It was like some disco nonsense nog.

Travis: Yeah, it was like a pre-bottled garbage looking thing. I don't remember what it was. Orgnorg. Yeah, no, these are like single serving, made in a shaker, proper cocktail eggnogs. Stolen from Greg at HDD. How to Drink's YouTube channel. Yeah, I've been doing that. Been doing some music stuff. Had a gig a couple of weeks ago with the band. That was pretty good. We're on the cusp of having like a gig in the new year, but one of our guitar players out of town, so that isn't going to happen. But hopefully we can pull that together. If Omicron doesn't throw too many monkeys in the wrench or wrenches in the gears or if we don't have Lewis Cannon rocking the boat or whatever metaphor, simile, turn of phrase is appropriate here. I think it's a pun. But yeah, there was. I was joking with some of my bass player internet community people that I don't know what I'd do if I ever actually bought a nice bass that I didn't need to like fix all the time or like couldn't. Like I wouldn't want to like if I bought like a $1,200 professional bass. Like a Modulus? Well, yeah, or like a Warwick or a G&L American. I wouldn't want to like take it apart and like swap out all the parts and dick with it all the time. But like my Squire P bass that the only thing that's left is the body. You know, I don't care. So that's that's what I've been up to waiting for the weather to turn warm so I can go ride bikes again and looking at bikes I can't afford, which we'll talk about one later in the segment section. Tim, what have you been up to?

Tim: Well, not a whole lot other than getting married. Yeah, baby. Yeah, I was there. We gave speeches. Yeah, which I was I was actually kind of hoping more people would take your lead on that. I think that would have been a lot of fun. We were actually talking about, you know, a lot of those silly traditions are you clink on the glass, get the couple to kiss. We were talking about making people come up and tell stories about us. Oh, yeah, I've seen I've seen that before at a wedding. During the chaos of everything, that just didn't happen. Y'all should have drank more. We ended up, you know, spending like nine hundred dollars on alcohol that no one drank.

Robin: The more I drink, the more I'm sloppily trying to govern my own mouth.

Travis: Wait, there was alcohol that no one I thought it was a cash bar like I paid for all my booze.

Tim: The deal was if our guests did not spend two thousand dollars, we were on the hook for the balance.

Travis: I mean, I spent near enough a hundred because, you know, me, I'm like, hey, can I have you make something fancy with with a call?

Tim: Did you like how I snuck some extra in there for you, Robin?

Robin: So my goal was to have three drinks, you know, two drinks and then one to put things a little bit over the edge to have a little bit of fun. And they have those wide, deep glasses. So if I ask for a pinky of whiskey, it's actually like two shots. So I don't know that I'm drinking my whiskey and then there's a hot mic in front of me on the stage. So I'm like talking to the audience. But we got Travis up there. That was a goal.

Travis: Robin hot mic me on the spot and I had to go up there. But it's a good time. Congratulations again. Yeah, I'm glad everybody enjoyed it because we were all stressed out over the whole thing.

Tim: What else you got? We had this weird warm day in Wisconsin where it was like actually like rode my bicycle into work and it was too hot to wear a jacket.

Travis: It was that one 60 degree day before it dropped back into the 30s.

Tim: Yeah, yeah. It's 20s, 30s, 55, 60 degrees and then back to stupid cold again. You know, since the wedding and all that craziness for that week, we've done a whole lot of not much, which has been restful. Nice. I know you guys were talking about maybe doing something last weekend. I'm like, oh no, no, no, no. There are no plans happening. I will probably not get out of my pajamas. But that is it. Still trying to hunt down a squirrel in the attic. No metaphor. There's a squirrel in my attic.

Robin: Robin. Well, it's my turn. Man, I'm hustling. We're in New Mexico. We're going to head to Texas. In the time I've been here, I managed to finally get all of the footage that I needed for a video to promote our New Mexico tour. So in 2023, same year that I hope the three of us are going to try to do that Colorado thing. I'm going to be running a February tour. And so February of 2023, we're going to do a tour into Mexico. Look for that on the site. Now that the footage is done, which only told me that again, I'm going to come up with a wishlist for the site because my action cam, I don't know. It's just the stabilization looks bad. Turning off the stabilization. Stabilization looks bad. I want 360. It's time to like get that, go there and get something better. So the plan is for next year, after working with a company that shall remain nameless, we're going to go to North Carolina, stay there for three months. Then we're going to bounce down to Tennessee for a month or two. Maybe we're going to hit Texas only long enough to run our Texas tour. Then on to New Mexico for the start of 2023. After that, we're finally going to make the Pacific Northwest. That's been the goal since we started this adventure. Beyond that, Travis, you were talking about your base. Yeah, I've been avoiding maintenance on the beamer because I'm so wrapped up. You know, when you start doing one thing and it's complicated, but you're good at it, but you got to get the spools going. And then it's like a week long, month long, year long process. And that's where your head's at. My head's on getting the site done. So now you put a wrench in my hand and I don't remember. I don't know, you know? So once it's done, yeah. Once I get wrenching again, I'll feel more comfortable, but I'm not touching. It's time for a valve check, really.

Travis: Wrench.exe executable not found.

Robin: Yeah, I'm just going to wait until I'm ready to warm up to that. 70,000 miles. I think that if it's made it this long and the valves have never been off, they're probably okay. So that's my basic wrap up. There may be more and I'm just not remembering it right now because I'm still drinking my second cup of coffee. That brings us to our guest interview.

Travis: Our latest interview features, insert name plus short bio here. In this episode, we pick up with Sam Cooke on a less technical level to simply hear the tale of his 2021 racing season. Track time, both on the circuit and in the pits, always offer up a story or two.

Robin: With field correspondent, Margaret Dean, aka Magsta.

Maggie: Okay, so I'm looking at the race schedule, five races.

Sam: Yeah, so we were hoping, we were hoping to do five races this year. We typically kick off at Autobahn in Joliet, then we'll move on. That's kind of like an opener to just make sure everything is working. It's kind of a shakedown, get the cobwebs off. Then maybe we'll do a track day or something like that at Road America. I'm not sure if I had a chance to do one this year. Maybe I did. But then we'll do like a Moto America round for the Stock 1000 class. That's kind of my go-to, must-do every year. And then we try to fit in some like some club racing, maybe some National Azra stuff. This year, I wanted to try something completely different and do a team challenge. And that's typically about a two-hour long race. You can have as many riders as you want. With a team challenge, you're allowed to have, I believe, up to three riders or so. And it'd been something kind of like a bucket list item that I've always wanted to do. And kind of putting the team together and trying to find another rider was fun. We had some weird weather that weekend, but it was still a lot of fun. We finished pretty well. And then we were going to do like another Blackhawk round. And some things happened like in life that we just couldn't make it work. But we ended up doing another Autobahn round for club racing. And I burned up a clutch. So it had been kind of a roller coaster year, but it was still fun. Yeah. Managed to have some fun this year.

Maggie: I have very little knowledge of how the racing circuit works. Sure. Can you talk about each of the things? Like, so you did club racing. How is that different? And also, when you said you selected the five races that you wanted to try to do, how does that work too? Do you have to qualify or you just choose?

Sam: Yeah, good questions. So club racing, kind of when you get started in racing, is typically at the club level. There's a number of clubs throughout the country, but the one that's most prevalent here in the Midwest is CCS, Championship Cup Series. And then it's owned by a pro or semi-pro organization called ASRA, American Sport Bike Racing Association. There we go. Race organizations will link up with a race school. And during a race weekend, people that are interested in racing or want to get their race license will go through a race school. You're going through what all the flags mean. They're trying to put you in situations like they'll put you through a mock race at the end of the day to make sure that you can understand what all the flags mean. Typically, they'll even run an ambulance out on the track at the same time, and they'll throw certain flags and you've got to react the right way before that they'll sign off on you and give you your race license. And that's at an amateur level. So club racing will have kind of two different levels of riders. The amateur level, someone can go through their entire racing career at the club level as an amateur, and that's totally okay. They typically have yellow plates. You start out with a yellow plate. And then after you get a certain amount of points or you win a couple of championships as an amateur, you'll get a white plate, which is considered an expert. And then you can go on to get expert championships and eventually build up enough points. What I did after I gained enough points, I went to Moto America to apply for a pro racing license. You have to have a certain amount of points, been racing for a certain amount of years as an expert, and then actually get signed off by the club that you're racing with. So it was quite an ordeal. And then you get your Moto America license. So there's other racing organizations across the country, like WIRA. There's a couple in California. There's the Plains. I can't remember all the acronyms, but they're all over the country for club racing. So I guess maybe to answer the question, racing at a club level, you start out as an amateur. Then you kind of graduate to an expert. And then wherever it goes from there, if you get enough points, you can get a different license and then race at different levels throughout the country.

Maggie: How long would that take an average person? An average person, meaning they probably work a full-time job or a job. And so this is not something that they're dedicating all of their time to. How long can that take somebody on average?

Sam: I would say I'm probably below average. And as an amateur to just get to expert, I think it took me about three years or so. Maybe it was three or four seasons. And then it was probably another three or four seasons of riding as an expert or racing as an expert to gain enough points and experience to kind of move on to another level. I've seen people go from amateur to expert in one year. Oh, wow. Some people come in with a lot of experience and talent already. And then I know people that have been racing as an amateur for years and years and years. It's kind of hard to tell, but if you're motivated, you know, within three, four or five years or so, you could move up the ranks pretty quickly.

Maggie: So you mentioned there's a lot of different organizations.

Sam: Yeah.

Maggie: Do you go to the organization that you basically have access to, like in terms, you know, geographically, or do you sort of have to get the attention of the organization? Is it a little of both? Or you just register and kind of follow that organization sort of program?

Sam: Once you get your race license through, like here in the Midwest, Learning Curbs is one of the race schools that you can get your license through. And once you get a race license, other organizations will often recognize that. So if I were to want to go maybe race with WIRA, I could try to register with WIRA, try to enter a WIRA race. And typically my race license that I acquired will typically transfer. Different race organizations have different rules though, however. So you kind of got to be careful of, you know, how your bike is prepped or sometimes there's different gear recommendations or requirements, but typically it's the race license at a club racing level is pretty transferable from organization to organization. You just have to contact them and register.

Maggie: Was it team racing that you mentioned that you wanted to try this year?

Sam: Yeah. So something that always looked appealing was a team challenge. And I've heard other riders talk about it and their experiences with it, and nobody has ever said anything bad about it. And I'm like, man, that sounds like a lot of fun, but I always didn't want to put the kind of wear and tear on my engine, things like that. And I'm just kind of getting to the point though where I'm like, all right, let's just do it. So it's two hours approximately and Blackhawk Farms, I think it's somewhere around maybe 79 laps or something like that. Some riders will, or some teams will just field one rider and one rider will do the entire thing. A lot of those riders that will do it all by themselves are typically guys and gals that may want to do the Daytona 200 or something like that, because that's typically about the same length for distance wise and also time wise. So they'll have a setup like quick change tires, kind of like NASCAR. You see the rider pull up and there's a team that kind of jumps out and they can do a tire change in less than 10 seconds and fill the bike and the riders back out again. And these races offer those riders and teams some practice for races like the Daytona 200. But for just a typical guy like me, I just thought it would be fun to see how many laps I could put on before I got too tired or too stressed or started to run out of gas or whatever and then let another rider have a turn and switch back and forth. Just the two of you? It was two of us, correct. Another rider, Greg. Greg Avello, he's got a lot of experience with racing at a pretty high level when he was younger and took some time off to start a family and now he's kind of getting back into racing again. So someone that I would trust with my motorcycle first off and just someone that I knew was kind of in the same situation like me and we both have to go to work on Monday and not do anything too silly.

Maggie: Cool. That's interesting. Do you know how many laps you did?

Sam: I think we were in the 60 lap range. We were down, I forget how many laps from the leader. I believe Jason Farrell won that race. We may have been down 8 to 10 laps. I can't remember exactly. But we kind of went into it with a plan going into some of this stuff. Our plan was to put as many laps on as we could before the gas light would go on and then come in and then we would change riders, fuel up and go again. And before this, I had never done more than maybe 20 laps in one sitting at Black Hawk Farms. So there are longer races for club races called GT races. Typically, you'll get in about 19 laps in a GT race and that's riding as hard as you can for 19 laps for 25 minutes. I would go through about a tank of gas for those races. So I was thinking for Team Challenge, we would get in probably 20, 21 laps and then I would come in with gas up and then Greg would go out and we'd have to do a switch every 20 laps or so. But this was a very unique weather for this race. So we went out on slicks because it was dry. We had a dry practice in the morning, went out on slicks and I was thinking, OK, this is going to be a dry race. And then just as the race started on the outlap, it started to sprinkle and then it was just a mist for a good three to 10 minutes or so, but it was enough to make everything wet. And I had a decent start, but then all of a sudden the bike starts moving around, slipping around, especially on slicks. I got spooked and I lost a number of places. Then it took a while for me to get my confidence back and to get moving again. I didn't lose any more spots, but I definitely didn't make up any ground. And then it was still dry when my light came on. By then I had approximately 30 laps in, so we were almost halfway in. I definitely didn't ride for an hour, but it was well over maybe 35, quite a bit longer. So anyway, I had about 30 laps in. We conserved a lot of fuel, unfortunately, because I wasn't riding quite as hard. So we got quite a few more laps in. We came in and then gassed up. Greg went out, still on slicks. Three laps or so after switching riders, it started to pour and they called it a wet race and everybody came in and we got about five to 10 minutes to switch over into rain tires. We fueled up and Greg went out in the rain and he finished the rest of the race in the rain. And he was actually able to make up quite a few places. He was able to do some damage control and make some ground that I had missed. He did an awesome job. We ended up finishing fourth in our class, so just missing the podium by a lap or two. Seventh overall out of between 15 and 18 other riders. Not too bad for our first shot. I was pretty proud of that.

Maggie: Yeah, that doesn't sound bad at all. It sounded like it was pretty interesting and fun. So you're going to do it again?

Sam: Interesting is a good word. Yeah, I think doing it again would be a lot of fun. I've always wanted to try to do one of these on my own just to see how I could do. But realistically, probably two riders is the safest way to go. Just so not fatiguing myself too much. I think it would be fun to do it at a different track. I mean, what a great way to try to learn a track, but ride it for two hours straight. Maybe we'll go traveling or something next year and try it out someplace else.

Maggie: Obviously, the number of laps and the total time riding is a bit longer than maybe a normal race. And if you are not doing it by yourself, you have a teammate. I'm assuming it was a different experience and it enhanced your own repertoire. Is it more about the endurance?

Sam: Yeah, it's a little bit about everything. It's kind of like a chess game. You're trying to make the best decisions when it comes to, say, your tires. In my situation, and it's different for different teams, but in our situation, we went with a harder tire that would last longer. We were thinking that maybe we could make a front tire last the entire race, which is completely doable. And then we were hoping that we could get a rear tire to go the entire race. Then we had an extra rear tire sitting there just in case halfway through we would have to change, but it would potentially last the whole thing. And then we wouldn't have to waste the time changing the tire. And then I had a medium compound tire to give us a little bit extra grip. And then in case we had to change it two-thirds of the way through, that we'd have enough tire to last us the entire race. So chess game and thinking, okay, tire choices. Also like how you ride the motorcycle, just trying to be really efficient. Try not to fatigue your arms too much, like really trying to use your legs to grip the motorcycle, like in heartbreaking areas, not wasting energy on your motorcycle. Often on the track, you move your butt off to one side to get ready for a corner. Well, if the last turn before the straightaway is a right-hand turn, and then turn one is a right-hand turn, well, don't waste your energy by moving your butt over onto the middle of the bike. Just keep your butt on one side. You can still get arrow and get under the bubble, but not wasting energy that way. It's kind of like a physical piece of the game there. So trying to be as efficient as you can. And then just mental as well. I'm not like a super athlete, but say you do a run, you go out and you do a 5k or whatever you might run, and you kind of got to get past that everything hurts stage to like, I can manage this and now everything doesn't really hurt. You kind of get into that mental mindset of the physical aspect of it and trying to work through that. So in your mind, you're kind of working through those things. And then typically in a longer race like that, you're lapping quite a few other riders, trying to like figure out the best places to make a pass where it's safe. You're not going to slow yourself down too much. You don't want to like, if someone's behind you, you don't want them to catch up. But at the same time, you don't want to wreck your day or somebody else's. So mind aspect, trying to make good decisions out on the racetrack as well. All of those things together was just, it was fun. I like that coordination. I like putting all the puzzle pieces together. That's completely different than trying to put all the puzzle pieces together, like say for a big event, like a Moto America event or something like that. So it's a different challenge in a very different way. And it was a lot of fun.

Maggie: You mentioned that you wanted to do it with someone that you trust with your motorcycle. So you both rode your motorcycle. What went into the decision of your bike versus his bike?

Sam: Greg, long story short, he doesn't have a bike. He rides KTMs, Dan's KTMs. So the decision there was pretty easy, but I'm sure Dan probably would have had a lot of fun us riding his KTMs, RC8s. So I think that would have been a really neat experience. But also too, it was like, it was hatched from my idea and it was the team that I put together. And it just kind of made sense to ride my bike as well. Plus it has some cool safety features like traction control, which really came in handy that weekend and stuff like that. From a standpoint of rideability and ease and safety, that was probably the best choice as well.

Maggie: Why don't you talk about how your season went? What were the highlights?

Sam: I would definitely say the team challenge was a highlight. The new experience and then actually finishing pretty well, I thought was really fun. That was definitely a high. I had two challenging weekends at Autobahn. The first one was okay, but then the second one burning up the clutch and going home early wasn't a whole lot of fun. The Moto America weekend is always a high. This year, I swear it had a record number of fans out there and it's always neat riding in front of fans. This whole thing started about 20 years ago at Road America. Me as a fan watching the riders and thinking, someday I wish I could do that. It's taken me a long time to get there, but finally doing that, every Moto America weekend that I get to do is a high. Even if I don't do very well, it's still one of those living the dream moments. Lots and lots of people, Road America, you always want to do better at events like that. We struggled all that weekend with brake fade and it was a warm weekend. I wasn't handling the heat quite as well, but we qualified by a hair. Then race day came and we had a really, really good practice. I was able to get a good grip on the bike. I did close to my own personal best around that track. During the race, the race was interesting because quite a few crashes during the race. Just trying to keep my nose clean. Once it was all over, it's like a weight off of my shoulders. I get to go enjoy myself, have lots of backstage passes to see a lot of the pro racers and bump elbows with those guys. Say hi and stuff like that. Then the very last race weekend was a lot of work. We did an ASRA weekend in September. I had mentioned that I burnt up a clutch at Autobahn a month earlier. I actually put in an order for a new clutch right afterwards. I didn't hear back on when that clutch was coming in, so I ended up going to another organization and then not overnighting, but getting the clutch in really quickly. That clutch came in just a few days before I had to leave for the track. I ended up having to do all the work at the track, which is not something I enjoy doing. I like to have all the work done before the track. You get there, you put the warmers on, and you go ride. This weekend ended up being a lot more work than that. It was okay. It was fun. Unfortunately, I had a crash on Saturday, a slow crash. I wasn't able to get my qualifying in, so we spent the rest of the day fixing the bike. Then I rode it all day Sunday, did a few races, packed everything up, and hauled it from Blackhawk all the way up to Road America for a track day on Monday. That's kind of how the season ended. It was a hurry up and go. It was a lot on that last weekend. It was still fun. I say it all kind of with a grain of salt. Like I say, it's living the dream.

Maggie: Yeah, and it sounds like you were okay through the crash.

Sam: Yeah, like I say, luckily it was a slow speed crash. If you're familiar with Blackhawk, it is 3D, the bus stop. It's a low-speed right-hander. I made a really rookie mistake. Maggie, you're an MSF teacher, and we sometimes teach new riders. When they come to a stop, they'll rev the engine on accident. They're turning the throttle on at the same time they're squeezing the brake. I think that's what happened to my hand. As I rolled off the throttle and reached for the brake, I must have rolled on the throttle just a little bit. The bike was trying to go and stop at the same time. My traction control was also kicking in, saying, what are you doing? You're trying to stop, but your throttle is on. My bike was just jerking back and forth really violently. As I was trying to tip it into the corner, pull the ejection seat. I had to say, this isn't going to go well. I had to straighten the bike up. By the time I got the bike straight up and down, my front tire went off of the pavement. I was still on the brake. I didn't let go fast enough. It immediately tipped over. I just laid down on my back. The bike, unfortunately, did a little roll, tweaked a little bit, but it's okay. We got it put back together. I'm still trying to fix a few things on it, so I'll have some work to do this winter, but it's definitely rideable. It's just the way it goes sometimes. Even riders with lots of experience will make mistakes and might put me on the ground.

Maggie: I am glad that you were okay and that the bike is pretty much okay. If you were able to fix it up and go riding the next day, that sounds okay. As you're walking us through the jerky back and forth, for a different reason, but I had serious death wobble. Unfortunately, I'll be out riding sometimes, and I'll just remember that moment. If remembering it, it's like it's happening. It's not productive to do that, by the way.

Sam: Yes, sometimes riding, a lot of it's mental and confidence. If you don't have the confidence in the motorcycle or maybe what you're doing, yeah, it can be a big roadblock. Sometimes that leads to plateauing with your own skills. You know, it's definitely happened for me over the last three or four years where I'm ready for a kick, something different, maybe some new ideas. I think maybe this year, I'm kind of hoping to get out and do a class or something like that. A friend of mine is a coach at Yamaha Champs School or maybe do like a Jason Pridmore School or something like that. Get some new eyes on things and try to move forward.

Maggie: Does that mean you don't really have an ongoing coach for racing?

Sam: I would say at my level, that is not uncommon. But once you get to the pointy end of things, a lot of those top riders definitely have coaches. Coaches come in all different sorts of forms where say the top super bike riders and super sport riders and all these guys are typically riding with other riders at that caliber. They do a lot of riding in the dirt. They all have people that help them reach their highest potential for sure.

Maggie: I would expect that they'd have coaches or a team of coaches, but wouldn't a coach help anyone at any level? Is it more of a cost and time thing to invest in a coach?

Sam: Absolutely. At any level, whatever level someone might be at, coaching definitely helps. For me personally, it is a little bit of a time and cost thing. I do try to surround myself with people that give you tidbits here and there. Guys like Jason Farrell here in the Midwest. He's one of the local fast guys and he's one of the guys that'll give you the shirt off his back. He'll give you some pointers here and there. He'll help push the field forward. Then other people like riders at MotoVid will share ideas and will help each other out. But to have an actual dedicated coach here helping you out when you're riding, that's a big help, but it can be a cost as well. Their knowledge is worth something. You can't really get something for nothing. Hiring a coach is just that. You've got to hire somebody and typically you'll get what you pay for.

Maggie: I just wanted to hear about your race season. You're free to talk about anything else you want to talk about or anything else you want to bring up.

Sam: Next year. I don't want to say the R word. I'm not quite ready for that and I'm not sure what next year brings, but I've checked a lot of the boxes over the years that I've kind of wanted to do. But there's a few more boxes that I still want to check. Like I say, I'm not quite ready to say the R word yet, but I think it's on the horizon and I'm definitely thinking about it. I've always wanted to try to ride at Daytona. Maybe at the end of the year, next year, I'll get a Daytona ride. I'm trying to include my family in on some of this stuff so it makes it a little bit easier. Traveling, taking them with. I'm sure they would enjoy some time in Florida. I think I could maybe talk them into that. And then maybe in the spring, as things warm up, trying to get back down to Barber in Birmingham, Alabama, I think would be a lot of fun too. Again, trying to take the family and do a track day down there just to start riding for fun. Not that racing isn't fun, but it's a different kind of fun. Doing a little bit of riding just to ride and have fun with friends. I'd like to do a little bit more of that. The Road America, Moto America round is always a must try to do. That's on my radar. Maybe another team challenge would be a lot of fun. Maybe more. And then maybe riding at Daytona at the end of the year and kind of see where that takes us. Kind of see where that takes me and what kind of fun I'm having at the end of next year and then decide on where to go from there. I'm doing a little bit more dirt and trail riding. I'm having a lot of fun riding with my kids and my wife. Maybe upgrading the DR200 to something a little bit nicer would be cool in the future.

Maggie: It all sounds amazing and fun and great that the family enjoys riding as well. We know a lot of people that love riding, but the family is not so much into it. And it becomes sort of a, not solo, but at least in terms of the family. Yeah. So I think that's really awesome.

Sam: At least the track portion of it right now is a selfish sport. A lot of personal resources and time go into it. I'm the only one kind of getting the adrenaline rush right now. But it's been fun these last few years as my son and daughter are learning to ride. And my son is getting pretty proficient at it. He's not bad. I'm not sure if I want to push him towards racing a flat track or anything quite yet. But I think it would be fun just to see what he would do in a competitive situation like that. We'll see. We'll see. Maybe next summer I'll be a pit crew for him a few times. And once my daughter gets a little bit more confident and she's riding on her own, then maybe I'll have to get another 50 and maybe even another dirt bike for Mary. We'll see. But that whole thing has been a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to more of that in the future for sure.

Maggie: You mentioned that you want to be able to get out for more rides just for fun, like with friends. So when you're not racing and you're not coaching an MSF class, you're control riding. Are you getting a good balance of control riding and then getting out and riding for fun with friends?

Sam: I would say the last few years I have not been doing a very good job with that balancing act. It's been a challenge to try to have fun on a race weekend because club racing is a lot of that, riding with your friends. And I know a lot of the people that I'm riding with, yes, it's a race, but it's a fun race between friends. And club racing, you don't get any money at the end. You can't really make a living or anything like that off of it. So it's just, hey, I got him that weekend. Maybe that person or that rider is going to beat me this next coming weekend. It's a little bit more pressure than like, say, just riding at a track day. So I think it would be fun with no pressure, not having to worry about, I kind of want to beat this person, kind of just getting rid of that mentality and just going out, learning a new track and having some fun and not trying to have pressure to go fast or anything like that. I haven't done a very good job at that these last few years, but I'd like to do that again pretty soon.

Maggie: I see that it's been almost an hour, so I don't want to take up too much more of your time. But if there's anything else you want to squeeze in.

Sam: I don't know if I had a whole lot of time to say this at the end of our last interview. I can't do this stuff by myself. Like I said before, I'm the one at the end of the day that gets the adrenaline rush, but I can't do it without my family. Marrying the kids, allowing me to have that space is really, really important. And then there's other organizations that help me out and make this kind of stuff possible. Dunlop has supported me for the last couple of years and allowed me to do some different things like this team challenge, helping me out with some tires. Maybe I wouldn't have done this team challenge if I didn't have someone like Dunlop helping me out. Maybe I wouldn't have tried a different compound and trying different things, doing some different races, having a set of rain tires, all that kind of stuff. I want to be able to thank people and organizations like Dunlop, Motovid for allowing me to share my passion with other riders. Motool, they've helped me out for the last few years with lubricants. That stuff is not cheap. Getting some extra help with that stuff and as much as we change oil in our motorcycles, when an organization like that is helping you out, I don't feel so bad about changing my oil after every single race weekend and things like that. Getting help from those guys. Southeast Sales in Milwaukee has helped me out the last few years with my bikes. They helped me connect the dots between me and Kawasaki to help out with Team Green. You can learn more about that. Kawasaki doesn't put a whole lot of money into race teams right now, but they'll help out the club racers all the way up to the pro racers with discounts on race bikes and contingency money. If you end up doing well, they'll help you out. Southeast Sales will help me out with my OEM parts when I'm replacing stuff like my clutch and stuff like that. Superbike Unlimited, Freddy over there has been a good help. He's ended up flashing my bike and he's got access to really unique parts that maybe not every distributor may have. He's got all the trick cool stuff. Vortex Racing. So Vortex, they helped me out. On a race bike, typically some of the things that you have to do right away are put crash protection on it and you have to put case covers on it. Typically, you'll put a different set of rear sets and handlebars and things like that. A lot of that stuff, you're able to change these parts often and quickly after a crash. Vortex will help me out with those kinds of parts. Also guys like Mark Hine. I know you know Mark. Another person, Kim Shockey. They've been my crew members for the Moto America weekends and they're not spring chickens and I make them work pretty hard. I appreciate everything that they do and all the running. If you've ever wanted to see a couple of old guys run, come to a Moto America weekend when they're running. For me, they're sprinting around pretty fast. They sleep pretty hard those nights. Gotta thank those guys too. I have to make sure that I also include a few more Leo Vince exhausts. They've been helping me out with the last few bike builds for my race bikes. Every little bit helps when it comes to weight and power. I'll take everything that I can get. I've been using slip-on exhausts on my motorcycles so I'm still using the stock headers. Leo Vince does a really good job making sure they're getting every bit of power out of these motorcycles even with just a slip-on. So gotta look them up. Leo Vince exhaust. They do a great job. They also put me out of my comfort zone a little bit. I had to make a few bike build videos to help them out. It just shows me installing an exhaust. If I can do it, anybody can do it. Another one I gotta thank is Plus Suits. Having some custom suits makes a big difference when you are putting some time on the motorcycle. A custom suit compared to something off the rack makes a huge difference. Also, some longtime friends over at Mad Wraps. They've been helping out with vinyl wrapping and number plates and all that kind of stuff for me for the last decade or so. I always try to get them out to some of our races and to enjoy some of it and to help them out a little bit too. So Mad Wraps as well. I think I scratched the surface on some of the major ones and I know I could be missing a few others but long story short I can't do this stuff by myself and I really appreciate everyone that helps me out.

Maggie: One last question. What is your current riding obsession?

Sam: Right now it is trail riding. I am signed up for the Bucky this weekend. I sat at my computer. They cap it off at a couple hundred riders and it fills up within 15 minutes. So I was that guy on my computer at six o'clock a couple Sundays ago hitting refresh until the signup came up and I signed up for it. It's my very first trail ride ever. Really excited about it. Went out, bought some dirt gear and stuff like that. I am really looking forward to this trail ride this weekend. That's kind of what I'm obsessed about right now. Making sure my bike is good to go and will get me home later that evening.

Maggie: Oh my god, that looks fun. I just brought it up.

Sam: I'm a little scared.

Maggie: Wait, why?

Sam: I am very scared about... I shouldn't say scared. Maybe like scared, excited all at once. I've never done anything like this before. So it's a completely new experience for me on two wheels. I've done the 180 mile an hour thing on a straightaway. Now I am going to be doing the one mile an hour trying to balance my way through some mud. It's going to be a completely different skill set that I'm not sure if I've got it. So I'm going to sign up and I'll start out with the slow group and we'll see where it goes from there. I'll try to make some friends and hopefully they can tow me along.

Maggie: It looks fun. It's funny though, the very first picture there is somebody down in the mud. In the background though, but that's okay.

Sam: Right.

Maggie: Oh my god, that looks so much fun. And it's in the fall.

Sam: Yes, it'll be fun colors. And we'll have some cool weather up here. So there's a chance of frost the previous night. I think the weather will be dry and I'll just look forward to riding on two wheels throughout the fields and around the pretty roads of Wisconsin in the fall time. So looking forward to it.

Maggie: Whoa, I wonder if there's going to be any photographers. There have to be photographers.

Sam: I think there will be some.

Maggie: So I'm looking forward to the pictures. Well, thank you.

Sam: Thank you very much too.

Tim: And that was our guest interview. You can find out more about interview at interview site.

Robin: I'm just going to read off all of your prompts as if it's serious text.

Tim: I love that.

Robin: Yeah. So he's yeah, he's on facebook.com forward slash Sam cook number 28. It's all one words. Sam cook spelled K. Okay.

Travis: Number spelled out. So yeah, S-A-M-K-O-K-N-U-M-B-E-R-2-8.

Robin: Oh, whatever. You know what? It's going to be on the page for this podcast episode. Feel free to check it out. We'd love to hear your motorcycle story, by the way. If you'd like to be featured on this podcast, report your thoughts to an app like Authonic or for Android or iPhone spelled A-U-P-H-O-N-I-C and upload the results to SoundCloud and email us the link. We'll polish things up before featuring your tail in your voice and words, or we might have Maggie Dean sit down with you and have a little chatty poo. A little chat, a little chat, a little chat, a little chat, a little chatteroo, little chatteroosky.

Travis: That brings us to updated site features and developments to our class master, the most sophisticated man behind the keyboard, Robin Dean.

Robin: I recently signed us up for Chartable and I am going to stick with it after all. Turns out that that service is pretty, pretty baller. I'm pretty happy with it. But the first thing that happened was we weren't being tracked because they didn't like how long it took for our podcast feed to load, mostly because I wasn't using the streamlined images. So these big old posterized PNG files were loading up in the podcast feed. I fixed that. And then we are now defaulting to MP3, which I don't like. This is where I had some debate. They're like, your audio files are wave and that's enormous. And yeah, but if there's any one pattern we've seen in the internet, do you still have a disc that has 5,000 free hours of AOL? You get a 500k connection. Like these things always get better. So bandwidth is not something I could give a flying rat's ass about, but they do. Well, yeah, because they got to host all the things. They're not hosting anything. They're hosting nothing. All files are hosted on TRO. They simply redirect to those files. And if it doesn't load as quick as they want it to, they're basically protesting something that isn't a negative impact on them. We're defaulting to MP3. And in every MP3 episode, there will be a link that you can select and paste if you would like to hear the higher quality wave file. It's also accessible through the dedicated pages for any given episode.

Travis: If you have one of those like $800 Neil Young hi-fi portable. What is it that they're doing? Like 60 kHz audio? There's a super high end stuff. That's like, so you can play it back through $20, you know, doll candy earbuds.

Robin: Three things. Okay. So in terms of everything I'm doing for the website to get it ready on the beta level, all that's left now are the footer of every page and the pages. Not the articles, not the podcasts and not the homepage or any of the navigation, but just like the digital tools. If you look on the site, you'll see the thing that says digital tools. I'm working on getting those operational again for the new template in a much better level, more secure, more reliable. And then that's it. Then I'll be releasing the beta. I'm going to add a wishlist to the site. There are things that should always be public knowledge of what we wish we had that we do not. So to have any third-party services want to provide that or new innovative products want to offer up a test. There are things that we could probably all three use that I just want to leave out there where it's like, guess what's not in the budget that we are thinking about? Boom. Because if you're doing something like that and you want to make us help us make use of it, I think that'll be of some benefit. So that brings us to this month in motorcycle history. Let's read something good.

Tim: In the early seventies, 1970s, there must have been somebody at Suzuki headquarters who was a numerologist and felt that 185 had to be a lucky number. In 1971, there appeared a TS 185 Sierra, a 183cc two-stroke single set up as a woods bike, followed by the GT 185 Adventurer in 1973, this 184.8cc two-stroke twin bike, twin street bike, and then the 1974 TC 185 Ranger, a woods bike that was quite similar to the TS 185, differing mostly with its dual range transmission.

Travis: And now that we've brought up the TS and the TC, we'll ignore them and focus on the GT. In 1972, Suzuki began putting the GT Grand Touring Prefect on a street bike from the GT 750 Le Mans, better known as the Water Buffalo, to the GT 550 Indy, to the GT 380 Sebring, all triples. And then the GT 250, the GT 185, and GT 125 twins. Suzuki was in its two-stroke stage back then and had built some exceptional machines in the late 1960s, followed by the excellent triples.

Robin: One innovation of which the company was most proud of was the ram air concept, very apparent on this little twin. Take a close look and one sees that this is a vertical twin, parallel cylinders standing upright. The cylinders are perfectly square, 49 millimeters by 49 millimeters, and the air rams are actually built into the cylinder heads.

Tim: As opposed to being bolted on, as with the 380 and 550 triples, the patented ram air design was not of any use around town. But out on the open road, it allowed these two-strokes to motor along at close to maximum power with no undue side effects, such as overheating. Focusing the air right over the cylinder heads does wonders in getting rid of the heat.

Travis: The GT 185 ran a healthy 7-to-1 compression ratio, claiming some 21 horsepower at 7,500 RPM, most of which were galloping along when the speedo needle was at the 75 mile-an-hour mark. So it has like a ram air cooling design because they're air-cooled two-stroke twins. And if you just Google GT 185, you'll see like they look weird and like slanted and there's like way too many fins on the top. Okay. So they have like a real funny layout. So that's what keeps them cool. But if you're not putting air through the motor, they would overheat. I've seen these before in person and they look funny. Like there's a little scoop on top. What they mean by ram, it's like a air catcher. Just like you would have on a car where there's like a scoop actually cast into the pad that forces air down between the two cylinders. So around town, that's not getting any air. Yeah, because it's just passive. There's no fan, there's no water cooling, and there's not really any oil cooling because it's two-stroke.

Tim: Yeah. So you're looking at like a little Venturi effect where it's taking that large surface area entry vent and kind of focusing it down.

Travis: In that picture, you can see the little scoop on top of the head. That's crazy.

Robin: Well, cool. Let's get to this month's featured segments. Travis, what year, make, and model are we focused on today?

Travis: Yeah, well, we're still on the new things I can't afford. Maybe next time I'll go back in time and find an old bike. That's interesting. But right now, the new 2022 Triumph Tiger Sport 660. So it's the Triumph Trident platform. So they're like 660 entry level triple, but in a air quotes Tiger. I mean, it's really more like the Tiger 1050 was. I mean, sport touring, 17 inch wheels, but it's got the Tiger name, got the adventure bike fairing and windscreen and luggage. It looks like everything else in the segment. It looks like the BMW insert letter number X bikes or the Ducati Multistrada or the all the adventure bikes. They all look the same. The sport touring adventure bikes, the Tracer, the Yamaha Tracer 900. The new Honda NT 1100, very similar styling, I think, but in a smaller, lighter, cheaper sort of layout with color match factory luggage options. I mean, the only thing I think is it does have a under slung exhaust, which I don't know if you can get that a center stand for it. And since it is a chain drive touring bike, that's probably a problem. But, you know, trade offs, I suppose.

Robin: If you, if you run into that situation, you can always use the, what is the product? We advertise it. I wrote the article on it. There's the little kickstand thing.

Travis: Yeah. Yeah. Whatever that's called. A little jack, something quick jack or something like that. It's called. So the 660 triple, you know, 79 horsepower, 47 pound feet of torque, flat torque curve. Triumph is touting it's 10,000 miles service intervals, which is pretty awesome. That must be for like valve checks though. There's no way that's oil changes. Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah. And on the NC 700 too, but I feel like this is probably higher strung than that. Like 75 horsepower out of a 80 horsepower out of a 660, you know, the, the NC 700 gets 8,000 miles between oil changes, but it's making 50 horsepower out of, you know.

Robin: Well, you've ridden Maggie's triple it's under square and has an incredibly high RPM.

Travis: Well, this is a tuned down version of that motor. Right. So less stressed out. But still like, I think it revs to like 10 and a half thousand RPM. So it does that, that triple thing where you get the low end torque, but you also get that high end power rush.

Robin: That makes sense. And it's going to be shim under bucket and it's going to be a titanium, tiny titanium valves. I mean, maybe not.

Travis: It might be, you know, a little less advanced than that for the entry level. Cause I mean, it's two, it comes in at like 10 grand. That's not bad. Starting price is nine and a quarter us. Wow. Nine, three us. Yeah. That's a good entry. But I mean, once you get it out with like the factory color matched luggage and stuff, there's a couple of first ride impressions that are basically like, yep, it is a. British triple. It's a trident with a fairing and a windscreen and a, and luggage options.

Tim: Which everyone liked the trident. I never saw anyone say anything bad about that bike at all.

Travis: You have, uh, you have six inches of travel, 5.9 inches of travel, you know, dual discs. If the NP 1100 doesn't really bark joy and, or it's just like way too much when it comes to the United States, then the Tiger 660 might, might be on my list. I feel like this one will have more pep than the NC. Oh yeah. Then the current, then my Dan C 700. Oh yeah, for sure. More get up and go.

Robin: I think.

Travis: Oh, I mean, it makes, yeah. 31 horsepower, weighs the same, maybe a little less. Good looking machine. Yeah. I mean, it looks like I said, it kind of, it's a little generic looking, but like for the price and the power and the options for a middleweight sport tour, it's, that's pretty enticing and it looks good in the blue. I think.

Tim: Looks like it's got a pretty decent oil sump. It looks like it holds a fair amount of oil. I don't know about how adventure-y it's going to be, but the oil sump is covered by that underslung exhaust.

Travis: Underslung exhaust equals not adventure-y.

Robin: It's sports tolling. That's what this bike is. Yeah. Dual 17s. It's a kick ass street machine. That's going to be comfortable ergonomically for people that aren't me, that are taller than me.

Travis: Yeah. Well, it's like that. I mean, that's the thing with like the, you know, the NC 700 is like, you get the six inches of suspension by the 17 inch wheels. So it's like, you can hit the back roads and it doesn't beat the crap out of you. But like, it's still, you know, it's not an adventure bike. I think it's going to be a hit. I mean, the Trident already is. And so a more practical, smaller version of that, of the, of like the adventure sport tolling segment, I think I'll be, I'll be a hit. A not boring versus 650, basically. Very cool. Now we can hand it over to Tim for this month's new kit. What are we looking at there, Tim?

Tim: All right. Well, I have not done a lot of shopping for a new kit this year for myself, mostly because supply chains are a mess and the suspension upgrade that I really wanted. I haven't been able to find it anywhere. Ohlins makes this lovely front and back set suspension for my XSR 700 because, you know, I'm, I'm a big heavy bastard. I tend to overwhelm suspensions, especially if I start riding a little quicker on Wisconsin back roads. I'm getting kind of thrown funny, hitting bumps, entering corners, and I don't really trust what the bike is doing. So I need it to be a little bit more settled. I don't mind it being even a little on the harsher side if it is behaving predictably.

Robin: I wouldn't say that you overwhelm a suspension as much as I would say that you assault your suspension. I've watched you do it. It's a, it's a very unpurposed event to witness where he's just like, we're going over here now. Boom. And he's just hammering it.

Tim: It definitely makes me go into corners a little more timidly on this bike.

Robin: So you've got the stock suspension, right?

Tim: Yeah, I'm running stock Yamaha.

Robin: That's got to go.

Tim: Budget suspension. And granted, I was looking at, you know, the Owens, which is the high dollar stuff, but they've got the fancy, uh, separated cartridges and the forks. So you got one controlling rebound, one controlling compression damping.

Robin: I was trying to Google and see if I could find a place to buy them.

Tim: You can find the listings everywhere. Everyone's got the listing, but will you actually have to call them all around and find out if they have it?

Travis: And it's like, we can order one from Owens and maybe it'll show up in four months or not.

Robin: You got a part number. Oh, part number. If you got a part number, I was going to say, like, I am in love with eBay auto notifications. I'm going to do a search and save the search. So I'm looking for a second passenger seat on the cheap for my bike. So I can basically bolt a tail bag to the second, to the passenger seat, uh, the extra one. So I get notified every time there's one available or like a rims and stuff like that. Maybe that'll do it. I don't know.

Tim: I might look into that. I don't know. Of course, the funds already got diverted into camera gear. It's like, Oh, you sport bike track gear doesn't have it. RevZilla doesn't have it. You know, a number of other places I looked didn't have it. So, uh, camera, Oh, look, baddest one 35 millimeter. Well, you are the, you're the vicarious spender that is going to temper a little bit because we did a refinance to a shorter term on our home loan.

Robin: Oh yeah. Nice. Nice. Get it done.

Tim: Good call. You know, I think that's an interesting thing. I imagine there's a lot of people in the same situation where, you know, supply chain stuff, things just aren't available. Even if you wanted to buy it, no idea how long things are going to be before we recover on that. I haven't even looked at tires for a while to see how tough those are to get a hold of.

Robin: Yeah. Yeah. Amazon has tires galore. I just like, and Travis, I've finally, I've seen the light now I am going with the, I'm still mad at Michelin. So I, I am, I'm on the Dunlop train now.

Tim: Yeah. You had that bead that just would not seat no matter what we did.

Robin: Oh, I was pissed. Well, they sent it. The problem was I'll probably edit that out. But America sent a tire that was zip tied on the shelf for too long is what happened. So that created a permanent warp in the rubber. That wasn't, it was never going to happen. And there was a gash in it. So whatever. The gash probably came from me pulling it off with my teeth and angst. On to listener questions. We have none. I actually tried to get listener questions. Nobody asked anything. Probably they don't trust our judgment, which means we've made, we've been a positive influence on the motorcycling community by convincing people not to ask us anything. We've done good. We've made the world better. Thanks guys. Send your donations to shut the hell up Robin at running a session.com. And we won't answer those questions too. But it's time for this week's mess. All the motor brought to you by. Is that a cue for me?

Travis: No. The super slick alter bed has motorcycle make a positive, incredible power, power, power, power, power. All those classic, the classic Isle of Man TT races. That is baller. With the Lamont style bump start start. Yeah. They send out two riders at the same time with each start slot and they have to push start and bump start their bikes. And then leave at the same time. And then they separate two riders in 10 second intervals for the TT as crazy, crazy old school.

Robin: It's from 63, 1963. And it looks like, I mean, the footage looks like, because it's still, I don't know if it was all that famous at the time, but the footage, it looks like it's from 1923, you know? Oh yeah. Here's the people that show up. You can see the stands. It's almost like a luxury sport. So they've got these really nice seats.

Travis: Yeah. It's got that old timey newsreel feel, even though I think it was not so long ago. 63. That post-war English thing is still, you know, still strong in 63.

Robin: But it mentions the clash between Halewood on the MV Augusta and John Hartwell and Phil Reid on the Galeras. That just sounds Italian all day. Tim, did you find one? Both companies are still in business. Yeah.

Tim: MV Augusta and the Galera. Is it BSA that's coming back? Yeah, there was just a... Yeah, they've been like rebranding or rebadging some Chinese bikes for a while.

Travis: They just, I mean, what I saw, they just looked like Triumph Bonneville's, but...

Robin: I've heard people joke about the Royal Enfield stuff, but they're trying and they're not sinking. They're getting better. They're naked 650s. I mean, they're a cheap bike, but man, they looked good. I sat on one. I was like, this feels fun. Yeah.

Travis: And I mean, for the price, right? It's like, they're great. It has that old bike feel. It's like you get on a new Street Twin or whatever T100, and it feels like a modern bike. It doesn't. But the Royal Enfield still kind of have that air-cooled vintage feel to it.

Robin: But they defaulted to clip-ons on a naked, so it's like a naked sport bike. I just kind of would like to have one. Oh, you're talking about the Continental GT? Yes. Unfair, naked. Yeah, that's the one. I like those. Tim, what do you got? A couple of bikes coming out that I'm really liking.

Tim: There's the Husqvarna Norden, which is a good-looking adventure bike, but I'm still a little skittish on the brand after I had a negative experience with my Husqvarna. But the other one is the new Ducati adventure bike I like a lot.

Robin: The Desert X? Yeah. It says Dakar-inspired.

Travis: Is that based on the new liquid-cooled Monster platform? I think it is.

Tim: I remember there was something saying that it's based on an existing motor platform, so they didn't know.

Travis: So it's the 937 Testarossa updated Super Sport 950.

Tim: 110 horsepower. Dang. It's a genuine off-road capable beast. You know, it's built in, it's got an aluminum belly pan, so you don't really need to do much of anything. This thing's pretty much ready to go.

Robin: Yeah, they're intending for you to hit sand immediately. Like, take this, go hit sand. Thanks for the money. Kick butt.

Tim: Top-line suspension all the way around. On par with modern adventure bikes in terms of weight and suspension and clearance.

Robin: I mean, the first video you see of it, or the first photo you see of it, is a guy jumping at Dakar style in reference to the Dakar stuff. But I guess, compared to a Dakar, is this going to be up to the standards that, you know, the Dakar had to take a hell of a beating? Will this thing...

Travis: It's not a dedicated Dakar race bike, but it's styling inspired by... Yeah, so it's the same platform they use for the Monster and then the 937 Testastretta put in it.

Robin: It's like grape-flavored drink, but with vitamins added.

Tim: Sort of.

Robin: It's not the actual grape juice, but it is...

Tim: It's like reconstituted from concentrate.

Travis: Where I'd put this. Yeah, it's not grape-flavored. It's the same thing everyone else is doing. So it's like the Tenere 700 is the R7, is the XRS, is the MT07. And, you know, that's the only way to really function these days for a manufacturer. But it's a thousand-near-enough, 900-something cc Ducati V-Twin. And in adventure bikes, I'm sure it's fun. I'm sure it does wheelies. It does big old, dank wheelies.

Tim: Yeah, it's priced a little bit higher than your T7. I mean... 16.8. A little bit higher.

Travis: Yeah, okay, a lot higher than the T7. That's like more than an Africa Twin. That's like BMW big GS bunny. Nice.

Tim: Yeah, bare-bones model on the GS, maybe. It's not a cheapo.

Travis: So basically, it's like if the Multistrada Rally isn't off-roady enough, here's an option.

Robin: All right, so that brings us to the end of our show. I'll take this opportunity to promote our next group riding tour, which is scheduled for March of this year. It's the Texas Hill Country Tour. Seven riders will rock three twisty routes over three days beginning March 2nd of 2022. It's a sport touring getaway of epic proportions. More information is available via theridingobsession.com. Visit the group tours link, which is anchored under events in our navigation menu.

Travis: And that's it for our episode this round. Tune in next time for more discussion on all things specific to sport touring or motorversal unicycling as a whole. For theridingobsession.com, I'm Travis Burleson. I'm Tim Clark. And I'm Robin Dean.

Robin: Safe travels. 2022.

Travis: So da-da-da-da-da-dum.