Travis: Yeah, I'm a little under the weather. I'm riding the phenylephrine, caffeine, and ibuprofen train right now.

Robin: Oh, we should keep you talking more than anybody then. Let interesting things happen.

Tim: I did the Delsim last night. Its main ingredient is the dextromethorphan. Yeah, I think it's extra emphasis on the meth in there. It's like, I did not sleep well at all. It was horrible.

Travis: That's the, so when you like do robo, like drink Robitussin to hallucinate, that's, that's what you're doing is you want the, the dextromethorphan in large quantities will make you hallucinate.

Tim: Yeah.

Travis: What's this podcast about again?

Tim: Yeah. Funny thing is if it's not in large enough, it's just upset stomach and poor sleep. Yay. I'd rather be coughing.

Travis: The guitarist in my old band, his radio DJ name was DJ Dextrometh.

Tim: Wasn't that like a late nineties thing that a lot of guys were doing? I don't remember that still going on.

Travis: Like the college dorm party scene. It's always been a thing. Yeah. As long as it's been around, uh, you get the Robitussin DM, which I think they, they, they like Dr. Mom on the commercials, but like dextromethorphan, but you gotta be careful because if it's, uh, Robitussin or if it's whatever, and it's got, you know, like acetaminophen in it, you'll just like kill yourself.

Tim: Um, Oh yeah. Yeah. One is like really fun hallucinations. The other is death.

Travis: Yeah. It's if you get them the wrong kind. And now they saw, I saw they they're selling it with like, it's like Robitussin honey and it's honey with medicine in it. And it's like, those things just should just be separate. Yeah. I think that it's probably going to just taste horrible. Take some medicine and then make some tea. Yes. You can drink as much tea as you want is all the honey you can handle. But yeah, I don't know. People are weird. They have to come up with something new. Right. Got to keep them sales up. Right. Infinite growth. Anyway. Uh, what did we talk about? I'm Tim Clark. I'm Travis Burleson.

Tim: And I'm Robin Dean. And you're listening to the riding obsession podcast.

Robin: TRO 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 23. It's the truth or consequences tour. Seven riders will carve the canyons of New Mexico and Arizona beginning March 22. It's a sport touring getaway of epic proportions. More information is available at TRO dot bike visit the group tours link, which is anchored under events in our navigation menu. No announcements, but updated site features. The site did go dark a couple of nights ago with mass 503 errors because I was building a new cache structure for our images to make things load faster. So one way to make things load faster is to make things not load at all. Managed to fix that. The image cache will hopefully speed things up. Actually, it already has. A lot of pages were loading blank due to the memory usage that's been fixed. But it told me that I'm starting to reach the limits of what our shared hosting can offer. And this sort of thing is why we're asking for donations so we can up our game with better server features and not just recording gear. If you feel like giving to the site, visit donate dot TRO dot bike. Donate dot TRO dot bike.

Travis: Travis. Motorcycle stuff has been, you know, we've been pretty much in winter. I've now that I have a commute back on the new job, I can't wait for the weather to be appropriate for motorcycle commuting. Define appropriate for you specifically. Not snowy. Okay. I mean, okay. I mean, well, you know, in my younger, more formative years, I would ride in sub-freezing temperatures if the roads were clear. But now that I'm 40, I'm kind of over that. I know my buddy, a member of the Super Slick, Sam, does that. He still rides. He rides to work through the winter if the roads are clear. But he also has indoor parking at his at his work. So not bad. I again, I have not been there long enough to qualify for the indoor parking. So I have to park on the street like a peasant and walk like five blocks. The thing is, though, there's so many stupid like you go and there's like all these pickup trucks that are parked like six feet away from each other. Oh, yeah. And it's like, I can't. It's like just just too little space for my little hatchback to fit. And it's really like if all you guys were scooted into a reasonable distance, there'd be four more parking spots on the street. So at least when I have the motorcycle, I can just zip right in there. So that'll be good.

Robin: Yeah, that'll help. What you need is a bike that you can get into. So like an AeroStitch suit.

Travis: Yeah, get one of those those bubble bikes or something.

Robin: Oh, we're going to get into some of that, by the way.

Travis: Yeah, I'm still waiting. Like the Elio Motors concept was always something I thought was cool. And they just can't seem to get off the ground. Yeah.

Robin: Is that the one that had like super forward controls, but you were you had like a forward it was like a windscreen sun thing over top.

Travis: Yeah, no, it was. So it's like it's a three wheel, two in the front, one in the back personal transportation. But it's like you're in like you get in it. Oh, OK. Like it's got so it's not like a slingshot or what was the other one? T-Rex. What's the expensive one? The Caulfield or something like that? No.

Robin: Oh, yeah. I know what you're talking about.

Travis: You know, the one that's like that uses a General Motors Chevy Sonic. It's more elegant looking and super expensive. But it's like but they're all over the top, right? Right. They're toys. It's like this was the original version of it had like a 600cc twin Yamaha motor in it that made like 40 horsepower. I think now they're trying to do electric, the electric thing. The concept is it's just a sensible thing to commute in. Like it has two seats in tandem so like the passenger can sit behind you. It's got a little trunk. Vanderhall. Vanderhall. Yeah, that was the other. But yeah, so this is like practical, reasonable urban transportation in a tiny package.

Tim: And they were really pushing to keep the price down. I think that they were originally quoting like $12,000.

Travis: Yeah, we'll see if those ever come to fruition. Especially in America where it's like these would be great except there's a bunch of people out there driving four ton, 10 foot tall pickup trucks everywhere for daily commutes and you got to live with them. That's about it around here. The band's doing good. The Dead Johnnies got a gig booked for January. Played a couple of gigs here recently that were pretty well. Where's the January gig? Harmony Bar on Atwood, Madison, Wisconsin. 9 p.m. January 14th with The Goobers. You heard it. The Goobers. Perfect. Are they a cover act? Yeah, they're like a surf punk. So they do like kind of punky versions of some like classic surf tunes and they do some Ramones and some other kind of earlier kind of punk with some surf vibes kind of thing.

Robin: Yeah, good enough, good hang. That'll be a good combo.

Travis: Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah, it's The Goobers spelled with an umlauted U. Which is a good way to say it because I feel like there's been a lot of bands called The Goobers over the years. So The Hans Goobers. But yeah, that's pretty much what's going on around here. Settled into that winter groove. Whiskey, playing bass, taking care of the kids, being sick.

Robin: I was so tempted. I was thinking about putting a jazz bass line behind you on your poem for Brian Ringer's article and I forgot to and it's already posted. I don't know if I can actually add music to an Instagram post after the fact.

Travis: You'd have to take it down and repost it.

Robin: Damn.

Travis: Though I probably could have just played a random walking bass line under myself while I was reading the poem. So maybe I'll try that.

Robin: You can see if you could do it again and be like, yeah.

Travis: But that's it for me. You know, this kid's dead mode, new job, waiting for the warm weather so I can ride again. Didn't ride as much as I wanted to this last year just because two-year-olds are a lot of work. Tim, what have you been up to?

Tim: Not been up to a whole lot for motorcycle stuff. The helmet that I was talking about last time, I did get a chance to go in and try a couple on at our local Cycle Gear and I did end up buying the Shoei GT Air version 2. Nice. Which I've got the version 1 helmet right now. Last year I picked up a Klim Krios Pro, you know, adventure helmet. It's this fancy carbon fiber with the choroid material shock absorber and transitions face shield. I mean, it was a lovely, lovely thing and it made my head hurt.

Robin: Oh, not good. Wrong shape or general weight placement or what? Wrong shape.

Tim: I mean, it was crazy light. Okay. It was so light. It was the lightest helmet I've ever put on my head that was an actual, you know, real motorcycle helmet. But yeah, it was a little too short front to back for my head. So I had to go back to the old well-known standard for me, that GT Air. I like the drop-down sun visor. It's just super simple. And I know that if I get the medium, it's going to fit the crown of my head perfect, but the cheek pads are always too intrusive. So I buy these, you know, I spend the extra money, buy the slimmer cheek pads, and then I can actually close my mouth.

Robin: I wonder if you could resell the, whatever you take out. I don't think so. Put them back in the wrapping and just be like, mislabeled here. Send it back.

Tim: Yeah. So I did that and managed to sell the climb and got a pretty decent price off of that. That thing is like an $800 helmet new. I bought it used, sold it used again. And I think the same issue that I had with it was what the guy I bought it from had the problem with it. And I liked having the transitions lens on it. That was a new thing for me. Nice. But it's not enough to really make me choose that for a motorcycle helmet. I did buy the fancy integrated headset from Sena for the Shoei GT Air. It's their SRL2 headset and it is a super clean install. It looks good. I think it's going to be exactly what I need. I don't really use the headset a whole lot for talking to people. I'm mostly just listening to tunes while I'm riding to work. And then the last bit of motorcycle business is I got the call from Englehart, our local dealer, that they had two monkeys allocated to them. And one of them was going to be with my name on it. I just got to choose which color I wanted. Monkey boy.

Robin: Yeah.

Tim: Yes.

Robin: I want to ride it. I want to take that thing out.

Tim: You absolutely can. So yeah, I'm going to have my silly commuter bike. It's going to be fun.

Travis: What color did you pick? I went with a red. That's faster.

Tim: It comes with a red plaid seat topper.

Travis: Oh, can't beat that.

Robin: Is it candy apple?

Tim: No, it's like it's traditional Honda red.

Travis: With that plaid seat, you should pop off the Honda logos and put Volkswagen logos on it. Yeah, that's pretty good.

Tim: Cracks me up. You know, I'm going to have the little mini bike and the big bike, and they both are kind of in the same visual style, that pseudo retro modern bike.

Robin: Maybe you could try to pack one on the back of the other.

Travis: Yeah, well, the red, it's like it's got the silver tank and then it's the red frame. It's like red accents.

Tim: Yeah, I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And again, you know, I'm going to be shopping for suspension. Yeah, because I am a big fat bastard.

Travis: Yeah, you're going to put that the monkey suspension to the test for sure. Yeah, well, good thing you only need that. You only need the rear suspension because the front wheel never touches the ground.

Robin: That thing's adorable.

Tim: Yeah, it's so fun. I get a kick out of them. Other than that, you know, winter and then just like Travis, I got sick this week. The funny thing is, like, I got sick. So I stayed home from work when one of my co-workers came in with COVID and passed it around. So I didn't get COVID a second time.

Travis: Oh, nice. It's awesome. Dodge the bullet. Yeah, just the cold.

Tim: I'd much rather go with the little bit of congestion for a week than another round of COVID.

Travis: Definitely. I've been taking my tests and they're negative, such as like, no, this just is a crappy cold. How are the controls on the SRL? Are they like under the jawline? Are they like buttons on the side?

Tim: They're buttons on the side, by the back, by your jaw joint.

Travis: Okay, but they're on the side, not, I think Schubert puts them underneath.

Tim: Yeah, they are on the side. Is the shape pronounced? Yeah, they're enough that you can feel them. Nice. You feel with gloves? Yep.

Robin: That was one of the coolest comments I've ever heard a friend of mine say. Bob Oakes was mentioning how back in the day, in the 70s, when you wanted to change radio stations, you could look at the road and physically feel the button.

Tim: Yeah.

Robin: And now with screens, you have to look at the screen while driving to make the change. So it's good that the contours are there just to be like, look at the road, feel it out. There you go.

Travis: Yeah. I hate that about modern cars. It's just so hard to do.

Tim: Well, a lot of times you're trying to find a place to anchor your hand so that you can predictably push that button on the screen as you're going down the road and your hand's bouncing around. You always click the damn wrong button.

Robin: Well, you know, voice commands make some pretty interesting stock investments now and then. Like, whoops.

Tim: I've had horrible results with the voice commands.

Robin: Volume down, turning volume up, volume down, more volume.

Tim: Pretty much it for me. It's kind of been a quiet time over the holidays spent with families and that's it. So how about you, Robin? What's going on with you?

Robin: Got my list in front of me here. So I coached an MSF course here in Texas for Total Rider. Thank you, Jeffrey Alford, for the opportunity. My intention was to come down here and immediately start coaching on the norm for a couple of months, but I knew I wasn't gonna be here very long. Took a lot just to get it started. Had to go out through the motions to get a new key. So I got the new key and got the coaching happening and got to coach it. The MSF is basically what they would consider an intermediate course. It's a BRC, the basic rider course, one day version where I got to ride my own bike in it, which is a lot of fun. So enjoyed that a lot. I forgot how much I miss doing that. I do enjoy coaching, you know, stick to the curriculum, see what kids need. I say kids loosely as some of them are in their 60s. Keep your eyes clear and decide whether or not they're worthy of a license and carry on. And everybody passed, so a lot of fun. Then things got a little bit less responsible. So Kelly Howard shows up, pulling behind him, a ZH2, and wants to hang out. And we went riding what I call the Bandera route. It's a route I have nearby that takes us to Bandera, a small section of the Twisted Sisters and back. And about halfway back, he says in that signature voice of his, you know, hey, Robin, you want to ride it? And I was like, yes. Started snotting myself, having a seizure. So we trade bikes. If you want to ask questions, you can. But in the end, you know, after three small wheelies and a momentary shift in this time-space continuum, yeah, I took that bike to my own G-force acceleration threshold, and I was only half on the throttle. My own personal limits for torque with the front wheel nannied at about three inches off the ground. Anything more would be a little bit much for me, and I still had half the throttle left. And it's a linear curve. I could not. I handed it back to him after five miles and said, nope, no, nope, nope, no, no, no. And just said, get this thing away from me and give me my bike back. And he, in his own words, it's something that everybody should try one time. I'm like, you own the thing, man. So yeah. After that, we got that new article published by Brian Ringer. So Brian Ringer is writing for us again. He's got a list of topics that he wants to cover voluntarily. They're his ideas, and I'm just like, bring them. And he wrote a most excellent article that I think we'll try to discuss some here today, which was immediately met with a lot of support from people that know how the alphabet works and finished the article and got the message from it. And then a small sum of people who either disagree with it for irresponsible reasons or disagree with it because they didn't read it and started quoting things that are safe that are literally in the article.

Tim: Yes.

Robin: Literally is in the literal, literal sense where it's written word for word. You should leave space, you know, and you shouldn't override your skillset. I'm like, he generally says that all of that's in the article.

Travis: That's what that's what the article is about. It's about being responsible.

Robin: What anybody who's impatient enough to read through it doesn't get is that it's intending to say like, hey, Speedy Gonzalez over there. Hey, Zippy. Hey, squid. Okay, it's cool. It's cool. We get it. Okay. Now here are some truths you might want to consider, you know, because no squid is going to hear an MSF instructor who rides a cruiser and doesn't believe in anything but a poker run, telling them you shouldn't ride that way. Their response is going to be, I do what I want. I'm awesome. And they're going to walk away and go get greased. So the article aims to say, well, if you're going to do that, why don't you keep up in your game? Because one way to get the ignorant to learn safety is to show them a set of parameters that they can relate to. And then they'll find their way back down to a little bit more, you know, you're not going to convince me to go cruiser speeds. It's not how I ride. It's not what I do. And I'm not lesser for going at the pace I do, but I'm safe about it. So I dealt with those trolls.

Travis: I always try to convince myself like, oh, but if I was on a cruiser, it's like every time I've ridden a cruiser or anything cruiser adjacent, I'm scraping pegs. I've done the same and it's like, no, that's just, you just can't just can't turn it off. Yep. Nope.

Tim: Nope. It's what we are. Once I figured out how to get it to turn, it actually turned pretty well.

Travis: Yeah. That's like, you really just got to hang your ass way off the side of the bike and get that weight right into the center of the corner.

Robin: And then it'll go, you know, you got to shave the metal down a little bit by just grinding it on the left and right sides. You know, you get pretty good foot position if you put your feet on the back pegs.

Travis: Yeah. Yeah. Passenger pegs on a Harley are right about where they are. I'm like an RR like super sport bike.

Tim: So kind of where you want a rear set.

Travis: Yeah. It just tucked in a lot closer because the seat's so damn low.

Robin: Well, speaking of sport bikes, I think we know exactly what's going on with Maggie's bike street, triple R six, seven, five, 2016. The antenna for the immobilizer is probably taking on interference or has a bad connection somewhere. So I'm going to investigate it. I don't think we're going to need to bypass it after all, but I brought it up like, Hey guys, if we could do that, what do you think about doing that? Tim really stepped up with an excellent response, which was, let's not make that information a known thing. Cause you know, motorcycle thieves. Right. But at the same time, we also got into it with how it's probably already out there, which by the way, it seems like it's kind of not, I mean, there are some small observations as to what you could hotwire in the connector to call it done. And people have done it, but it's not like it's massively public knowledge. It looks like the actual antenna is 40 bucks, whereas the entire system is a thousand bucks. So everybody hope in my favor that it's that.

Travis: Well, you know what, uh, at least for like a television or radio broadcast, what makes a really good antenna is a guitar pickup. So maybe you could just like wire in a Stratocaster pickup and then it'll be, that's an interesting idea.

Robin: Are you're okay. There's the smile. I was like, are you being real?

Travis: Yeah. Well, yeah, no, like for real, those like, uh, uh, guitar pickups are really good antennas. Cause they're just a big coil of, uh, of copper wire. They're like, you know, designed to pick up electromagnetic waves.

Robin: We need Travis to have a DIY segment.

Travis: You know, I don't know how effectively you could wire one into your bike, but if it's just an antenna, I will totally trust you to do that with max bike.

Tim: The immobilizers seem to actually be fairly good as a anti-theft device, like the Yamaha MT-10, which is just a standard key. Those apparently the guys are ripping out the wires and replacing them basically with a light switch.

Robin: Oh wow.

Tim: See to turn the bike on.

Robin: Yeah. There does seem to be some kind of a cutoff or a reset that causes it to want to key on more easily if the battery's disconnected. So I've been considering a large hot wire on off switch to hide underneath the frame at the right side. Yeah.

Tim: Just as an add on bonus, you know, there are arguments for removing that because like, if you've got a bike that is a track only bike, who cares? You know, you're, you may not want it keyed. You may want it push start, button start.

Travis: Yeah. Dirt bike style. It's on, it's off.

Robin: Yeah. And outside of that, let's see, prepping to sneak out for a big ride on the Twisted Sisters here in Texas. That's really, the weather's getting colder and colder and colder. And it's the one route, the big day that by my normal standard, isn't all that big. I think it's 245 miles. Maybe it's, maybe it's more, maybe it's like 275, but 275 miles of riding, let's call it.

Travis: It's a whole day.

Robin: It's a day and I haven't had a chance to do it. I'm really looking forward to that. That's my plan for the riding while you guys are up there in the snow. So just figured I'd rub it in.

Tim: I have been getting some fat tire biking in, in the snow.

Robin: On the pedal bike, the electric pedal bike?

Tim: No, just in the, uh, the old fashioned grunt pedal bike. Do you have an ice cream truck? Yep. Yep. With the five inch wide tires. They're beasts. I figured I had to go with the biggest tire I could get or I would not have any chance of staying on top of the snow.

Travis: Nice. Yeah. Those are fun to just see roll over anything. They make you work for it though. You have five inches of pneumatic suspension. Yeah. It's a lot of mass to rotate.

Robin: I get it about three or four miles in, I'm done. At least I know you're under the weather now, but you're getting exercise, right?

Travis: Yeah. Yeah. I know once the lakes freeze, you see the guys riding those across like Lake Monona to get to work on this, on the, on the isthmus. So instead of like taking the bike path, they, they just beeline it across the frozen lake to downtown.

Tim: I've done that a couple of times. It is spooky as hell at night.

Robin: Now, for those of you that did not read the Brian Ringer article, we would like to explain to you what an isthmus is.

Travis: Travis. An isthmus is a small strip of land between two bodies of water. So it's like a peninsula that is connected on the other side. We need to go through all of the, the land water connection formations. We need a Cape and a Bay and an Atoll and an Island.

Robin: There is nothing more thrilling on a sport touring ride than to discuss geography. Hey, well, it's important.

Travis: It's important to know your geography when you're, when you're riding.

Robin: It is. It's, it's what will keep your kids napping when you need them to be.

Travis: Yeah. I think I learned all that in like fifth or sixth grade. I remember having to know the differences and you had like multiple choice and the little pictograms of the different land formations.

Robin: I do remember from biology, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. Okay. So let's move the guest interview portion. Now we don't have one this round because I've been readying for other things, but I will say that the guest interviews, tell me what you guys think of this. We have Maggie every now and then do an actual one-on-one interview. And then on top of that, we bring somebody in who we, we all interview and then they guest host with us. And I've got a list here that is growing and I welcome this. I would like it to be balanced, boy, girl, boy, girl, or however they identify. I'd like to have this be nice and balanced.

Travis: You mean people don't just love to hear three straight white dudes talk about their opinions all the time? We need to mix it up. I had an interjection and I forgot it, but I found it again. And it was a grinder and paint makes me the welder I ain't. That's solid.

Tim: I like it.

Robin: Hey, listeners, if anybody out there, sport touring level or, you know, just motorcycling in general level, you have anybody you think we should try to reach out to as an interview, please reach out podcast at TRO dot bike.

Travis: Or if you think you're interesting enough and want us to talk to you, reach out, email podcast at TRO dot bike or visit email dot TRO dot bike, whichever you want to do.

Robin: I don't care.

Travis: I think we love like it's too, like if you're a track rider or like, I don't know, sometimes people just have interesting, like this, just the story about how you got into riding motorcycles. I feel like that's always an interesting story. It's different for everyone.

Tim: I was just thinking if we actually covered that between the three of us, you know, in a focused way about how the three of us started riding motorcycles. Yeah.

Travis: Maybe if you sift through everything it's there, but never in a right. Hey, today on the TRO podcast, we're talking about how we got into motorcycling. Maybe that's an episode idea. Maybe so. I think it'd be fun. You got Tim doing the Vespa 5000. Oh, yeah. Among other things. I mean, yeah, some of Tim's stories and some of my stories are.

Robin: Let's get into this month's featured segments. Travis, what year slash make slash model are we focused on today?

Travis: Oh, we're talking about the new Hornet.

Robin: Oh, that's right.

Travis: Yes. Look at that. Look at that bike. So this is the image I have here is from the Honda Motorcycles UK because it's not listed in the United States yet because Honda doesn't like to sell good motorcycles here.

Robin: But it said it's heading this way. What do you know? What do you know? What do you know?

Travis: Not much. It's actually out. They did like a launch review. So mostly European coverage at this point, like MCN, the European MCN out of the UK did a first ride review. And two, there's this whole new slew of seven to eight hundred CC, two hundred seven degree crank parallel twins coming out. So there's this and then Suzuki's got one, the new P-Strom. Oh, that's right.

Tim: So this is a new engine design?

Travis: New engine design. Yeah. So nice. It's not the NC motor. It's a whole new motor and it makes like 90 horsepower. It's a 750 two seven degree crank, low end torque. The reviews on the motor have been pretty good. Like it's everything Yamaha has been doing for like 10 years. Yes.

Robin: So it's Honda Nilla for sure, right?

Travis: Yeah.

Tim: Well, I know that the nice thing with Honda is they're going to reissue this bike and a lot of different configurations. I'm sure they'll do the fared naked. We might even see a Tenere competitor out of this engine.

Travis: They've already announced this is the new Transalp. Oh, yes. This is going to be the platform for the new Transalp. Wow. There's going to be an adventure version. You know, it looks pretty cool. I would, you know, it's got that pointy modern naked bike look. If they did like they did with the CB series, the R, the Neo Retro in this, that's where I'd want to go.

Robin: Yeah. Triumph did something like that. The Trident or whatever it's like that.

Travis: Yeah. So that's like 600 cc. So this is that would be in the same class. But the CB650R makes similar power, but it's an inline four. So it's peakier power, but it has that classic style. I think that the Honda version of that like Neo Retro look, I think is the best version of that Neo Retro look. No offense, Tim, but I think it's better than the XSR. No problem.

Tim: I know the XSR has got some some clunkiness to it. Yeah. It's not as polished as the Honda version.

Travis: These look really cool. The pricing's pretty low on it. It's got dual four piston radial brakes on it. They're Nissans, but chopped here kind of brakes, even though it's got like non adjustable forks, which is kind of weird. And they're upside down forks, so they'd be a little more expensive to mod out for some adjustability. That was one of the complaints from the test reviews is it's got that budget fork feel where it's both too soft and too stiff at the same time. But don't worry, you can't change that. Yeah. So I'm sure there's some drop-in kit you can get for it, but you've got to cut costs somewhere, right? If Racetech makes gold valve replacements for upside down forks, they might get a luggage kit for it and a little windscreen and stuff. Definitely, I think if they do the trans out, it's going to have luggage and windscreen. It's going to be touring focused. It's going to be porkier, I think, than the Tenere. It's going to be less off roady, but it's going to be not as bulky as the Africa Twin.

Tim: Kind of a hit in the middle point between the Tenere and the Tracer.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: They're coming back to remind the world that the CB is, that is the Honda motor. It's all about CB. Suzuki GS.

Travis: I mean, there's the new Suzuki, I don't even know what they're calling that platform. They have the 800 CC, 700, 270 degree crank parallel twin and a naked replacement for the SV650 and the V-Strom 650, which they're still calling the V-Strom, but I'm going to call it the P-Strom, as long as it's a parallel twin.

Tim: Which is more fun, because if I remember, Strom means stream.

Travis: Oh yeah. A large river stream or current.

Robin: The P-Strom. I see what you did there. Sorry for the delay. Yeah. The luggage for this bike looks kind of cool too. It's thermoformed. I'm guessing that's semi-soft.

Travis: Yeah. The factory luggage is that semi-soft. Nerf. Kind of thing. I don't know. If I got one, I'd probably get Shad's, wait for Shad to come up with stuff or maybe GV, but proper hard luggage would probably be preferred.

Robin: Maybe. I like it. I actually like this. I think it looks cool.

Travis: They look cool, but I feel like they're always kind of on the small side and they close with a zipper and they're just asking for them to fail.

Robin: They do deteriorate, I bet. I bet you they decompose a lot faster.

Travis: Yeah. That nylon overview or the nylon shell sun bleaches starts to degrade faster than ABS plastic.

Robin: Well, I wouldn't kick it out of my bed for eating crackers. I do agree with you on the headlight. That might be kind of nice to have some a little bit more like, I don't even need it to be a round light, just compressed and a diamond shape, perhaps like a Ducati knockoff vibe would be cool. But man, I mean, these little twitchy bikes that are just a good time and throw some luggage on there.

Travis: Yeah. So it's like I said, it's like kind of similar to what I have now, just with 40 more horsepower, definitely a sportier motor. It does have the TFT. I'm still like, I don't know, man, call me an old man, remind the world TFT again, the digital display, the screen, the full color screen. Sure. And it's like, I just, I don't need a one, right? Yeah. Put a little one on there for whatever rider modes and flipping through stuff. Give me an analog tack.

Robin: We do need a return to mechanical in a lot of ways, hint, hint immobilizer. Yeah.

Tim: Certain things. Just that being said, I still remember fussing with the analog speedo drive on a couple of dirt bikes. Oh, it's not.

Travis: Yeah. No, I mean, I don't, yeah, I don't want, you know, I mean, they're, they can be digitally controlled. Yeah. You know, like a full analog induction speedometer. I'm not asking for that, but just like, I don't need a color screen with a bunch of little icons on it and settings menu.

Tim: It's all about like getting the information at a glance, not this is so much visual noise that you actually have to spend more times with your eyes away from the road in order to pick out the information you want out of this noise.

Travis: Yeah. And like, you can have like a little, like have like a side screen. That's like, here's your traction control mode and your odometers and you know, your warning lights and stuff. But then just like, just have like a, a sweeping tachometer and a little digital number for your speed. And that's, that's perfect. Yeah. That's what still annoys me about that. The old Kawasaki's they used for a long time, digital tachs and analog speedometers. And it was like, you did this backwards. I want an analog sweeping needle for the tach and then just like numbers for the speed. That's like the, that's the best way I think. Otherwise it looks pretty good. We'll see if they, if they do a retro neo-retro version of it, I think I'd be more into it, but it looks like it's pretty good. 90 horsepower, 55 pound feet of torque, four gallon tank, 55 MPG claimed, 120, 70, 160, 60. So it doesn't have the big 180 section rear. So that's nice. That is good. Yeah. 420 pounds wet optional quick shifter.

Robin: 420. Now we know who they're really catering to. They engineered that in, you know, they did.

Travis: Yeah. Well, 419 is what it says on the paper.

Robin: So whatever, you know what their morals really are.

Travis: Yes. Everyone knows Honda's the biggest chronic.

Tim: Yeah. I'm sure the Japanese are really keen on the meaning of 420 in America.

Travis: For this bike that they haven't even listed as in the American market.

Tim: I really like that power range for a bike. 80 to 90 horsepower is you're not still in full size touring bike size. Still pretty light, still pretty nimble. Get it where you want it to go.

Travis: Low 400s in weight before you start throwing luggage and crap on it. Let's say like 70 to 90 horsepower is like, right. I think that's the sweet spot for what you actually need. That again, that's the one thing I don't like about the NC is it's like 50 horsepower. So yeah, it's great around town, but when you get out on the open road, it's a little anemic. And did you mention the anticipated list price on this yet? In US dollars? I don't know. Great British pounds. It's like a little under 9,000. So reasonable, probably going to be reasonable. Yeah. Let me see if there's a us dollar amount on this.

Tim: Well, I'm seeing in this motorcycle.com article read on the top. It's saying pricing varies from country to country, but they generally hover around 7,800 us.

Travis: It's a good number. Yeah. It's like eight grand.

Tim: That is a lot of bike for eight grand. Yeah. That's a pretty attractive package.

Robin: Yeah. They're staying kind. It's a better machine than we build here.

Travis: It always is. It's pretty enticing. We'll see, you know, I think the looks are pretty good. I don't know. I'm still kind of on the fence. That's, they're just kind of generic, you know, it just kind of looks like a Z 900 or Z or any of the empties.

Tim: Yeah.

Travis: They're all kind of that modern, the new empties with like the Cyclops lens light, a tiny, tiny eye light. Yeah.

Tim: That's weird.

Travis: Yeah. So these definitely have a better headlight than that.

Robin: We are where we are with design. And so, you know how the UJM platform worked back in the seventies through the early eighties. So now this is just sort of a known norm that the trick is, well, what sets this one apart? And in this case, you mentioned the motor all day.

Travis: So I think that's, yeah, it's the motor and it's the Honda, like it's the build quality. It's, and you get like, like I said, you get four piston radio brakes on the front TFT display, rider modes, traction control. You know, I think the SV 650 replacement, whatever they're calling that, the Gixxis 800. Yeah. Something in line though.

Tim: And it looks like they're going to do the, they're at a 3.8 liter oil capacity. So just like the NC and the CB 500, you know, they're going to have probably that 8,000 mile service interval.

Travis: Yeah. There's the Suzuki Gixxis 8S, which is like the competitor, which is the same bike. Like it's, it just looks exactly the same.

Robin: I love the 3.8 liter thing because that means you buy one gallon, full gallon of Rotella T6 fully synthetic, and you use the entire bottle. Yep. All right. Now it translates to 1.003 gallons, right? The residual that's left in the bottle is the 0.03. Toss that noise and ride.

Tim: Yeah.

Robin: You know, that's a great truth.

Tim: And that's exactly how the CB 500 was. I really like the way they do that to keep the volume up on the oil and just such an understressed.

Travis: It's, um, you know, it's not a race bike says you, and it is, uh, you can put that, that extra five pounds of oil in it. Cause it's a street bike. And like, if this makes it so much nicer to own, right.

Tim: Yeah.

Travis: Did not have to change the KTM. Are you listening? Got a dirt bike or on a race break. Yeah. It's like, you can get away with like the bare amount of lubrication. Cause you're going to be changing it after every race. Right. But it's like for a street bike, you just want it to do whatever.

Tim: Yeah. If you can get it into the once a year oil change territory, that is a really nice thing. Yeah. And that 8,000 miles is going to be as much as your, your average rider is going to ride. I'm sure in a year.

Travis: Yeah. Just kind of Googling the Suzuki. It looks like the estimated prices for that. It was like almost 10 grand, nine, nine and a half, 10 grand. So if Honda is bringing this into eight, they're going to have a winner as they do. But anyway, that's new bike. Go check it out. Very nice. Hopefully it comes to the United States. I imagine it would. So let's go to new kit for Tim. What kind of gear are you looking at?

Tim: I was kind of poking around. This is not one that I'm necessarily looking at for myself, but it's a alternative to a center stand for any of us that need to do chain maintenance.

Robin: So we wrote this article a while back, you know, you did. Yeah.

Tim: I did not know that snapjack version two. And this one is probably one of the most lightweight versions of those out there. This is basically the version of the old cut a crutch in half and use the pieces, the old school way for the dirt bikers. This is actually like seriously purposely sourced tubes for this and it folds in on itself.

Robin: I'm pretty sure. Right.

Tim: Yup.

Travis: Yeah.

Tim: So this is the tie rocks snapjack X trail, basically two nesting aluminum tubes with a cotter pin and a little foot on the bottom and a hook on the top slide in either under a foot peg or under the swing arm of your bike. And the other side is held up by your kickstand.

Robin: Yeah, this is cool. This is either it's either thinner or shorter. We have the snapjack V2. That's what Maggie uses for her bike. And it does the same thing. It props it up and you can adjust it for length to suit the right machine. It looks like this one's both stronger and smaller somehow taller. I don't know.

Tim: A little more minimal. And I believe it's the same company doing both of these.

Travis: Yeah. And this is a 13 ounce weight, 10 and a half inch packed length. Yeah. Let me look up the V2, see what that is.

Tim: And if I remember, they were actually selling this one with its own tool tube that you could strap onto your bike. Yeah. Which was basically, you know, a lot of the dirt bike guys were repurposing old welding rod holders or instruction manuals for tractors were coming in these tool tubes as well. And guys started strapping them onto bikes. They were a water resistant ish.

Travis: When I had my DRZ, I bought like a Harbor Freight welding rod tube and zip tied it onto the frame.

Tim: Yeah. And sometimes they'd be there when you needed them. Sometimes they disappear. These are pretty nice. So, you know, it's, it's a cheaper version than a purpose-built center stand. You can take it bike to bike. So if you're thinking about putting a center stand on a bike, you'd choose really a hundred bucks plus.

Travis: Or if you, you have something like the Yamaha or some of the Kawasaki's where the exhaust is under the bike and it's kind of a pain where they don't make a center stand for it. There you go.

Tim: Yep. So on the XSR, I actually had to replace the exhaust shroud because the center stand mount interfered with the standard shroud. So I've got an aftermarket exhaust shield.

Travis: A lot of these new street bikes have that under slung exhaust. So this is a great alternative for your maintenance and that sort of stuff. Cause yeah, it always sucks doing the creep and spray to like do your chain.

Tim: Oh yeah. Or to tension the chain.

Travis: Oh yeah. Or any of that.

Tim: That is miserable.

Travis: What's this thing? It's like 50 bucks.

Tim: Yeah.

Travis: So that's cheaper than a set of spools and a lift. Yeah.

Robin: For the listeners out there, this will be linked in this podcast episode page. If you type in Snapchat anything on their search engine, you're going to see that as well. It makes life so much easier for dealing with Mag's bike for sure.

Tim: I guess I can extrapolate more. I've improvised these with old pieces of log on the side of a trail. Alternatively, I have leaned bikes up against picnic tables. You're just laying them down flat on the ground anyways.

Robin: I have fashioned a DIY snapjack of my own making using paper clips and clothes hangers.

Travis: Oh yeah. I definitely, I've just used, um, you know, like jack stands. Yeah.

Tim: Which always you're a little bit worried if it's going to slip. Yeah.

Robin: I don't ever like that with the front jack, the front stand for the bike when you put it in the down tube and it's just hanging there on this sort of dancing back and forth.

Tim: Oh yeah. That's one of those reasons I went crazy with the rafters in my garage is that I can hang a bike from them.

Robin: Now we already talked at the beginning that, you know what? I don't know. Maybe we're not going to do the motorcycle history next year, or maybe we're going to pull it and we'll do like a featured article with a limit timeframe. That's worthy of discussion. Whatever's going to get you guys to actually, you know, speak into the topic, but at least for this round, our last episode of let's pull up this article. Let's discuss the velocity philosophy, a mannerly guide to speed by one, Mr. Brian Ringer. And I'm going to read through this and let's tap into what is the illiterate single syllable caveman getting from it, who has an MSF badge tattooed to the back of his lobotomy. And what the jackass squid writer who wants to break all these philosophies out, no matter the age, let's, let's go through this. All right. So I'll do the read and you guys, you cut me off at any time. It is a long one. So we'll time this. I've got 2.03 PM right now. Let's go to 2.10, maybe 2.15. If we're into this thing.

Travis: Yeah. Well, I'd say like read like the intro paragraph there, and then we'll just kind of do the headings and sum it up.

Robin: Right. So the article and without anything special in advertise, I'll read the advertisements. Let's just read the advertisements.

Travis: Use sport bikes for sale, top 10 motorcycles, repo motorcycles for sale, use monthly motorcycle parts, cheap electric bikes, motorcycle dating app.

Robin: The title of the article is velocity philosophy, a mannerly guide to speed. It's by Brian Ringer, a known writer for us and in the industry in general. And it goes something like this. My name is Brian and I like to ride fast there. I said it, call it a confession. It's also a celebration. I'll bet you like to ride fast too. After all, why bother riding fast motorcycles unless we get to dip into those vast reserves of speed and handling once in a while. And on certain Wrigley writhing roads, when the time is right, when the pavement sparkles just so, and we can see far enough, we do more than dip. We positively bathe in speed, luxuriate, lean, and revel in the soapy, slippery dance of physics and physicality. It's honestly the most fun you can have with waterproof armored pants on. And I truly feel sorry for all those muggles crawling around on four wheels. Are you with me so far? Are you one of the brethren and sistren of the order of two wheels, the red-eyed, slobbering, nail-biting devotees of the tilted horizon? Well, that conjures up one big question about motorcycles and the people who ride them rapidly. Is speed okay? All right, that's our heading. Now, so far, anybody who wants to have a moral podium, I feel like that's a part where like, I'm done. I already learned nothing from it. I'm going to tell you how it is. Also COVID's a conspiracy.

Travis: Are you with me? All right. But it's like, yeah, it's like asking a question and it's like, and see the first sentence is kind of.

Robin: Yeah. So is speed okay? Here we go. Yes, it is.

Travis: I'm done. I'm done. Speed's not okay. You gotta slow down. You're going too fast.

Robin: Right. So it's all about the cutoff point. Anybody who doesn't read the entire article, it's all about where do you feel like somebody has stopped reading and has something they need to call the president about. Is speed okay? Yes, it is. Leaving aside piffling concerns such as speed limits, it's certainly possible for the ethical, polite rider to proceed with great alacrity. But here's the cricks of the biscuit, the meaty core of the matter. For skilled riders within the limits of physics and shouting distance of sanity, how fast is too fast? Italicized, too fast. It's complicated. And this is where somebody who's set the bar on what they believe is right has set the bar and that's it. It's complicated. No, it's not. I am the bar. Velocities vary. How do, quote, we the fast move with minimum friction and maximum joy through a busy world of slow things, slippery things, hard things, stupid things, and nasty pointy things. So let's just get a few prerequisites out of the way. First, you're trained and experienced. Your motorcycle is up to the task. You're dressed for the job, gear, helmet, all that jazz. We're talking about riding on public roads, not a track. With all of the above said, what are some things that polite sporting rider needs to know? Where are we at here with this?

Travis: We've set up a bar here, a ringer's outline for his essay. I think his junior year of high school English teacher would approve the structure.

Robin: The next section, speed or not, paranoid equals polite. Boom. We're in safety territory now.

Tim: Yep.

Robin: Yep. First heading, starting things off with safety, speed or not, paranoid equals polite. So just one quick safety adjacent lecture. It's super duper rude to splatter yourself and your bike across nature or into Buick's. The same goes for making fellow riders stand around on the side of the road talking to cops and EMTs. Let's not harsh the mellow with your disgusting innards or idiocy. Littering just isn't nice. Is there anything about that that says like, you know, you can go as fast as you want?

Travis: No. Yeah, it is about responsible riding. That's the whole point of this whole article.

Robin: The self-governing, if you're a quick rider and you like to go quick and quickly and speed and blah, blah, then how do you govern yourself so you're not an asshat representing us poorly?

Travis: Yeah, it's don't, don't be a dick.

Robin: Some of the other headings in here, have respect for the locals. Keep a lid on straight speed. Be invisible. If you see mailboxes, assume there are kids, dogs, and dodges. I'm guilty of that one. Ask the last sweep rider from our trip seven store. There was nobody around. The neighborhood was dead. There was, it was like a housing market of void, nothing there, but I was like, this is a good road. I'm going to do this. Keep the RPMs down when you're around folks.

Travis: You know, first gear all the time, especially in town. That's first gear. If you have a, if you have a four cylinder that revs to 13,000, you need to keep it between 10 and 13,000.

Tim: There's no reason to ever shift, especially if it's straight piped. Your engine will thank you. You don't want to wear out fifth gear. You can ruin those, right?

Robin: So buy local, pay cash, tip well, get invited back, or at least be welcomed when you return to wherever you were riding. You don't want to get kicked out of a place being the out of town jackass that screeches directly into their main lobby of anything.

Travis: Gets mad when they don't take your discover card.

Robin: One of the trolls that speaks to speed means being nice to slow folks. I guarantee you, this guy would police the dragon.

Travis: Oh, slow down. No, you won't like won't let people pass them.

Robin: Right?

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: Stay calm and be nice. Don't take it personally that they're in front of you. Sometimes you can blast by, but not always all the time. Pass them all or none. If you're not make the pass safely and you're not going to get around the whole group, don't intermingle with their order. That's just messed up. And use your knowledge of the road, if you have it, to know when the right point to pass is going to be. When you do pass, do it politely. Use the other lane. Don't startle the people ahead of you. They're just enjoying their ride. Be irresistible and be gone.

Travis: If it's a region you're familiar with or roads that you're familiar with, especially like here in Wisconsin, the Driftless where there's kind of this tangled web of good roads. It's not New Mexico where there's the one road that goes through the mountain or through the canyon. It's easy to just detour. Oh, yes. Just go down whatever hollow road and take an alternate route. That's going to be just as much fun. Head them off at the pass.

Robin: Oh, yeah. See if you can beat them to their own destination by the long way around. That's hilarious. Another one is mind the double yellows. Now, this one, I like what he says here. If you're going to use the double yellow to pass, you better make damn sure it's a damn sure thing. What does a damn sure thing mean to me? One time I saw three curves and I could see all of the road in those three curves. There was no intersection. I could judge three curves and it was on a double yellow. The double yellow is there because those curves, once you're in them, they're blind. I've made my call. I know what's not there. And I made the pass and I did it without startling anybody. But I had prejudged it. The people behind me could not do the same because they did not have the same opportunity to take on that view. It was too late. But I got around. So now and again, sure. This is where the article, when he gets into the asshats routine, beautiful. Most of what you've read up to now speaks to those of us who are wise enough to make the right choice. It also says, hey, be polite to those who are already on the road who don't have the speed that you do get into the asset territory. If you're a cluster of asshats that are riding track grade on public roads, all you got to do to make that safe and fun is first off stretch out and be cool to people ahead of you. Having the right gear, you can definitely have fun with those speeds so long as you are observing all known threats. Maybe you have 60-20 vision that you can see at 60 feet what the average man needs to be 20 for. And you're just that good. I'm not prepared to judge that. I'm not prepared to know what you are and aren't good at, but don't mess with my safety and don't create a haphazard situation ahead of me that's going to stop me from enjoying the rest of my ride. It's a great article. I invite everybody to check it out. TRO.Bike?p?30311. That's the permalink. Or just search for Velocity Philosophy. And no, Travis, there is no apostrophe. For listener questions, we have one from Tom Burns. It's from one of ours. Tom Burns, who's written for the site, asked half-jokingly, do we have any suggestions on how he might completely encase his head in a bubble so he can ride his bike without taking a hit from allergies for more than the 2,000 total miles he made this year? He's upset about that. He's like, in-ride food and water access would be an optional bonus.

Travis: I don't know if you could fit an N95 mask under your helmet. You need a high filtration to keep particulate out. Are those the ones with the two Darth Vaders on either side? No, just the N95, just the paper ones. So the COVID mask. Yeah, COVID mask. That's what those are made for. They were made for hazardous airborne particulate. The regular accordion doctor's mask is meant to stop you from spewing crap out of your nose onto the person you have filleted open in front of you. N95 masks are like, oh, you're painting and there's stuff in the air that shouldn't be in your body. So this will filter it out.

Robin: If he gets a helmet that will fit his head shape and then has more of a off-road helmet extension, the mask might fit better.

Travis: Yeah, that might be good. Like getting like an ADV style helmet where you got a little more room in front of your face and you can wear like an N95 under if you could tolerate it.

Tim: I haven't tested clearance on that.

Travis: Well, that's the only thing I can think of outside of you got some good drugs. No. Claritin, you know, antihistamine stuff.

Robin: Maggie's allergy meds make her more fun. So I don't want to advise that for a rider.

Travis: There's different sorts of things. You know, like Flonase is like a steroid that you can get over the counter. That might help if that works for you. There's, you know, stuff with minimal side effects is available if they're effective, but if they're the only thing that works for you is Benadryl, then probably a bad idea.

Robin: In the words of my friend Mel Bull, take two. They're small.

Travis: I heard dextromethavin is great.

Tim: No, no, not really. If you have a listener question you'd like us to field, we'd love to hear from you. Email your questions and concerns via our contact form located at email.tro.bike or by calling 224-358-3010.

Robin: That brings us to this week's mess a la moto brought to you by the super slick ultra badass motorcycle mega positive incredible power. The super slick ultra badass motorcycle mega positive incredible power is super slick ultra badass and a sidebar incredibly powerful. Motori Minarelli successfully builds a Euro 5 compliant two stroke motor.

Travis: There's a lot of like little doohickeys on it, but it's fun.

Tim: So what I want to what the doohickeys do. That's a tiny one too. That looks like a little trials bike motor.

Travis: Yeah, I mean, what else is probably that's like electric trials bikes are a thing now.

Robin: Yep, well, but it's a 300cc two stroke. That's pretty pissed. That's a pretty pissed off two stroke. That's a lot of fun. Yeah, so power band all day. What does it say here? Made headlines at EICMA. Designed and developed in-house and it's based on it's based on the old YZ250s. Enduro motor. Bantic XE300 Enduro is what they're calling it. The XE300 is expected to hit European markets sometime in the summer of 23. I am curious.

Tim: Just shy of 50 horsepower.

Robin: I mean, right. You put that on a lightweight machine, goof around, fuck around, find out.

Tim: I've ridden the YZ250 motocross bike. One that, you know, probably 10, 15 years old, years ago. And that thing had two modes, front wheel up, backhand sideways. You choose which one you want. Yeah, you hit the power band.

Robin: It was nutty. So the timing on this cracks me up just because it's a good headline. We just wrote about, you know, Kelly Howard just finished that thing about the earlier race motors did.

Travis: TT bikes and all that. Yeah, that's the trick of the two stroke motor, right? It's super simple and lightweight, but they're wicked. They're temperamental in the way they deliver power.

Tim: They can be savage.

Travis: What else we got here? Oh, the mini electric scooter riding and the like little mini electric bike riding, like the pocket bike racing.

Tim: Oh, my gosh, that cracks me up.

Travis: Yeah, that sounds like so much fun, though. It's like, well, like you see Ari Henning and Zach Kortz doing that, where they get the little, you know, 50cc bikes and set them up for a grown ass man to sit on them and then hit go-kart tracks. Yeah, that sounds like, again, the kind of crap that only happens in California. It seems like it'd be so much fun.

Robin: Right. Next up.

Travis: Oh, here's one I like, the F9 video about the Ducati DesertX. Go on. Did you watch the video? I did not watch that one yet. He kind of starts off like really ripping it apart, but then admits that he bought one in this like very awesome scene out of the Godfather, like parody. It really sells his soul to Ducati. It's like they made changing the oil filter or the air filter an easy one step process. Opens the manual. It says, take it to a qualified dealer. And doing this, like all the services, they're all just, they're easy. They're one step. Every service is one step. Take it to a qualified, certified Ducati dealership. It's like the literal thing in the owner's manual for like every regular maintenance item. But I guess it's supposed to be really awesome. The DesertX performance and everything wise.

Robin: All right, scrolling beyond yours. Let's see here.

Travis: Now this one, the, uh, the, the monkey with like the full, the Neo future, steampunk full fairing on it.

Robin: The speed read. Yeah, like exit. Oh, that is beastie.

Travis: Where it looks like it's a monkey, but it looks like a locomotive.

Robin: It really does. It looks like the old Lionel toy trains with the like a diesel, like a, like a 1930s speedliner. Yeah. I mean, that's freaking wicked that you sit on top of. Can it turn? It goes that way. I posted this for Mark Gillespie, the repost where the dudes in the Polaris or Can-Am side-by-sides go into the mud and then they compress down on a large wooden object. It turns out to be a log. The front end catches it and fires it through the front of the chassis and up through the roof. And they were permanently stuck.

Travis: Oh yeah. Like pole vaults it.

Robin: Yeah. Oh my God. That was very satisfying to watch, you know, play stupid games, get stupid prizes. Oh, we were just talking about the two-stroke. So there was a Kawasaki H1500 two-stroke that beat a Hayabusa in a drag race.

Travis: Yeah. Well, it was, um, handicapped.

Robin: Oh.

Travis: Oh, the Abusa was? Yeah. So the, uh, if you watch the video, the Abusa's on like a one second delay on his light.

Robin: Oh, that's for times. Yeah. I get it. It makes it look like something went down that didn't. The times are just handed to the register at the end of the race. It doesn't matter who you're up against.

Travis: Yeah. So they do, uh, you know, like I said, it's, it's, uh, handicapped, uh, to switch the, to make it fair. Right. Yeah. Cause it's like on a drag strip and it's like this Abusa that's drag biked out. And I mean the, the Kawasaki's drag biked out too, but, um, yeah, like here, it's only like a minute and a half long. So they do burnouts. They do the thing. The queue up at the lights and it's muted. All right. So Kawasaki, Hayabusa, like they're, these aren't delayed light. Yeah. Still though, this is a fricking rip. Um, it's pretty cool.

Robin: And just like that, I'm on delayed energy. I'm ready at launch. You guys ready to wrap things up?

Travis: Uh, yeah, I think so. That's it for the mess. All the moto from the super slick all true. Badass motorcycle. Easy listening here on B 23. You're a smooth radio tunes with the super slick ultra baddest motorcycle megapaccio of incredible power. About to wrap this up here. Podcast. Y'all don't go changing now.

Robin: I can't follow that. Why don't you do, you do the wrap up.

Travis: We're wrapping things up. I'll take this opportunity to promote our next group riding tour, which is scheduled for March 23rd. It is the truth or consequences tour. Seven riders will carve the canyons of New Mexico and Arizona beginning March 22nd. A sport touring getaway of epic proportions. More information available at tro.bike. Visit the group tours link, which is anchored under events in the navigation menu. That's our episode for this round. Tune in next time for more discussion on all things specific to sport touring or universal motorcycling as a whole. For The Riding Obsession, I'm Travis Burleson.

Robin: I'm Tim Clark. I'm told I'm Robin Deed. Safe travels, everyone.

Tim: That's good stuff. That's good. And that's good talking. That's talking good.