Robin: Hello, 2023. I'm Robin. I'm Travis Burleson. I'm Tim Clark. You're listening to the riding obsession podcast. Tim, you know, I would probably say some kind of sponsorship stuff or some whatever about the thing and the stuff and how to do all of the doings, but it's 2023 and I think we need to have a really solid, fun, happy year when we do this. So there is no format yet. I will say this episode, it belongs to Tim. This is the Tim Clark route planning. It's the Colorado episode. And we're going to look at doing a rally in Colorado or actually just like a gathering of specific invite for some Colorado riding.

Travis: All your podcasts are belonging to Tim. Yeah. Hold on. Good luck. For great justice, take every middleweight street bike down the dirt trail. Yeah.

Tim: You know, it's not that I intentionally drag everybody down the gravel roads. It's just that I don't actually give a shit. So it doesn't make me hesitate. I just see here's a squiggly line. I want to be on a squiggly line. I'm going there.

Travis: It doesn't matter to Tim if it's gravel or dirt or paved or just some spaghetti on the map.

Tim: I love to correlate squiggly lines and topo lines. If I find a high density of the both, I'm going to be happy. That's what Brian Ringer does. He looks for the topos and follows the ridgeline. I just want to cross as many topo lines as possible, which means I'm going up or down.

Travis: Which means you're going back and forth.

Robin: I've said it so many times, but Tim Clark is the guy that when he's running sweep on our tours, if I'm confused and he rolls up next to me to help, his solution is to turn perpendicular to the road and drive up the side of the mountain so he can get a better look.

Tim: Okay. I finally figured out where to share screen from. There we go.

Robin: Yeah, baby. Yeah, look at you. We got a map. Science. That's sexy. That's what's up. Good stuff.

Tim: All right. So what happened here is I opened up the Butler map for Colorado. You know, the old street route map that will give you a color coded. This is the best of the best of the best. Go write it now kind of information here.

Robin: Yeah.

Tim: And this I launched after a trip down to Black Canyon of the Gunnison and got a chance to ride around there on the scooter. And the scooter not being the most outstanding sports vehicle, really whet my appetite to come back and ride it as a fun bike.

Robin: How much of it did you manage to cover on the scooter?

Tim: I've done this lower loop here down down to Durango. And instead of the swing to the right, I went to the left over to Dolores and then up past Telluride and then back.

Robin: OK, so you went south, then west and then up that 145 or 141? Yes, 145. On which scooter?

Tim: D600.

Robin: Oh, the Beamer.

Tim: Yeah.

Robin: Yeah. I gotcha.

Tim: Yeah. And I've also done this loop around the north edge of the Black Canyon is a lovely stretch of road. Oh, yeah. That is considered one of the best of Colorado. And this dive down into the Black Canyon is extraordinary. Does it just dead end? Or does it just become like a deep trail at the end? That's a down and back. It's like down to some water civil engineering system stuff and back. And that one is terrifying when you don't have a gear to drag. On a scooter, your brakes only. And it's a 13% grade plus.

Robin: That's like identification badge. James Bond evil guy area somewhere out there. Yeah.

Tim: Yeah.

Robin: Yep.

Tim: And I've also done this road up to Grand Mesa up through the Grand Mesa. That's was 65. And then instead of I've got this route turning left towards Grand Junction, I actually took this road 330 up and it kind of disintegrates into a washboard dirt road and found some of the dirt roads back there, bounced over to Carbondale and have ridden that road down through there back to Delta.

Travis: This map is looking pretty sharp. Everyone knows the BMW C600 scooter is an ultimate off-road machine.

Tim: Oh, yeah. Yeah, did lovely on rutted dirt roads.

Travis: The 16 inch wheels really soak it up.

Robin: Tell me this was not one of those instances when you had Sylvia on back.

Tim: No, I did not have her on the back for that. She was in the minivan with her parents, our parent and significant other.

Robin: That town, there's that crusty butthole in there.

Tim: Yes.

Robin: So that wouldn't work as a cloverleaf, would it?

Tim: Well, part of the problem is like the distances on this are pretty damn big. Yeah. So to give you a sense, going from Montrose down to Durango over to Dolores and then back up there, that's a full day. That's a full Tim day. Yeah, not even not quite that. 300 miles? Yeah, it's 250 to 300 miles and it's twisty roads. It's slow going. You know, you're not doing a 55 mile an hour average overall average. You're down more in the 40 mile an hour overall average. And usually when I consider that like all your stops, your gas, your food, your rest, breaks, your pull over to the side and go, oh my God, that's pretty.

Robin: Colorado being what it is, what do you predict the traffic situation in that area is like?

Tim: If we are targeting end of September, what I'm hoping to do is hit the point of the year where it's not super brutal hot in the flats. Because even end of September, it can be in the mid 90s down around Montrose. But we're still going to have our mountain passes open. You know, we're not we go either direction. We're either going to go extreme heat in some of these areas or we're going to have mountain passes closed and those will be like three hour diversions in order to get around the mountain pass.

Robin: Yeah, so you're talking weather. I'm also wondering about traffic.

Travis: So they'll head us off at the pass.

Tim: Yeah, my idea is we're going to go after school starts for all those people with kids so that most of those family vacationers are off the road. Well done. I think we're going to be fairly mellow on traffic for most of this. I didn't really have a problem getting around people all that much, although we'll still be in construction season. So if we run into construction, sometimes you're sitting in a line of cars for half an hour because they'll frequently if in the high mountain roads, if they're doing construction, what they'll do is they'll just shut down one side of the road and you'll take turns. North side traffic and then they'll run a pace car and make sure the road's clear and then they'll send the other direction's traffic. So this I've got it mapped out so that each day was 250 to 300 miles and I was considering starting in Colorado Springs. That's kind of the easy way place to drop a vehicle if you're trailering or hauling a bike in the back of the truck. That's pretty good, man. Yeah, so this initial plan was right away run up Pikes Peak. Yes. Just do it. Absolutely. Take the time early in the trip when you've got the patience for Tourists. Whatever traffic may be there because it can be bad and it could be 15 miles an hour up and 15 miles an hour down depending on the traffic.

Travis: Is it open? I know it wasn't open like last year because they were like you couldn't go all the way to the top. I have not looked. You had to like park and then take like a shuttle up to the top top.

Tim: Yeah, I do not know. I'd have to look into that and see if they've finished that. But if we find that that's the case and we won't decide to skip it, that is fine because I'm also routing us up to our second best peak drive which is Mount Evans to the north. I have not done this ride yet so I don't know for sure. I'm gonna zoom in here. This is straight west of Denver and it looks phenomenal. A whole lot of zigzags which I love.

Travis: Yeah, that's like switchbacks up to the peak observatory or whatever.

Robin: That looks wicked.

Travis: Yeah, zoom in a little tighter there. This doesn't have a scale.

Robin: Grab the little icon dude and just hold him to make sure that the road lights up.

Tim: Oh yeah, it will. The top.

Robin: If you grab the dude.

Tim: There's your parking lot.

Robin: Okay, gotcha. So it is paved all the way up to the top. It is. But that's the trick that the listeners might like to know about is that if you want to check whether or not a road is likely paved, you can't rely on 100% but if you grab the. The street view icon. The street view icon and hold it. Just hold it over the map. Not over the road anywhere, just hold it on the map. If your road, if your intended path of travel lights up, there's a good chance that it's paved and then you drop them in any given.

Travis: Yeah, so if it's blue, it means that street view is available.

Robin: Right.

Travis: And that. Yeah, that they've run their car there. They don't usually do gravel roads. Sometimes.

Robin: They do next to me at 5259. If you look up 5259 here in New Mexico, I was like, oh, that's going to be great. And I rode to it. I was like, not on this bike.

Tim: So I generally routing these, I try and minimize double back. I don't want to run on the same road twice in different directions if I can avoid it.

Travis: But for those like mountain peaks, there's usually just the, there's the one road. It goes to the top and it goes back down. Exactly.

Tim: And yeah, you can there, if you zoom in, there are roads in here. Oh, wow. But that's something that you're not going to get through without off-roading or rough roading. Not something you want to do with three inches of clearance.

Robin: You could always create the loop and then you get to a particular point with an announcement icon. And then you tell everybody, hey, we have the option to double back on the smooth. Or if you want to get goat roadie, we can go goat rodeo in.

Tim: If you're adventure sport. Yeah. So there is a route here. So I've got us routing along this road next to the Tariel Reservoir. Is that full goat rodeo? This is, this is paved. Okay. But there is a parallel here along 67. And that dumps right here that by Cheeseman or Chessman Canyon. And there's this Decker's Road and that is a gravel road. But it looks like a lot of fun. Which drops you into Southwest Platte River Road. And then South, what is it? Forkton? Foxton? Road? Those are, both of those are dirt. They look like very fun dirt. As you can see, they're in these tight little canyons along this river. So that would be the, get to this Buffalo Creek area or even further, like way back, way back. You say, okay, you can go left and we'll meet you in Grant. Or you can go right and do a lot of dirt here on the east side of Thunder Butte. Thunder Butte.

Robin: Krusty Butthole and Thunder Butte.

Tim: I once knew a girl. Don't want to know. Don't want to know. So silly things that I drove the whole rig with the truck, with the scooter in the back haul on the camper. I went up over this mountain pass.

Travis: What's the peak on that? 12,000, 13,000 feet.

Tim: I think the saddle is just below, just at 12,000 feet.

Travis: Yeah. 12,100.

Tim: Yep. And that, there is not much traffic on this road and it is lovely. But all of this is like the stuff north of Gunnison is you get out of this valley and it is just twisty and we had no traffic, hardly to speak of. It was lovely. And you're going to get up in here and it's going to be mostly off-roaders camping. It's not going to be your average Robin Dean camper sized. Do you have a holiday in with wheels? Yes. Yes. If you do, you probably don't want to see this valley with it.

Robin: You have to appreciate the dichotomy of two particular concerns with trying to plan a ride like this, where you have the locals in that area who use those roads for local business and such. They live there. And the fact that most Americans or tourists, that's not a go-to typical tourist location. Yeah. That's what leaves it open. I really appreciate where I'm at right now because I'm next to a national forest with a national forest road that is absolutely amazing. And it's usually a void of activity.

Tim: It's great. On this route here, I've got land. I started mapping out food. I started charting out where hotels were that were fairly well placed. It's like, could we reasonably get here in a day? I think I've got like a hotel here in Georgetown.

Travis: And there's a little double back loop out of Georgetown. So is it like a day's ride to Georgetown, stay, do the loop, stay again, or come back through to the next town?

Tim: I was not staying in any place more than one night on this route. What's the day one stretch? I don't know if I've got this. Yeah. 1,500 total.

Robin: That's like five days.

Tim: I don't think I've got this broken up here.

Robin: It's a good five day route. Five or six days. Sure. 250 to 300 a day. I don't know. What's everybody's thought on that? I don't know what the roads are like in that particular. I've not ridden that area or Travis. We were in Denver, weren't we?

Travis: Yeah. And then we went north up to Steamboat Springs is how we were going. Cause we were going to Salt Lake City. 40. Yeah. We took 40 down into Dinosaur National Monument.

Robin: Yeah. Which was awesome. That was fun.

Tim: Yeah. That's the area where on my big trip, I took 40 and then I peeled off and I did the bench road along Dinosaur. You zoom in here, you can see this Yampa bench road, which is amazing. It's also got some very deep sand. So again, not a sport bike road. And from what I hear is if it is actively raining, do not go in there because you will not get out.

Robin: Yeah. Until it dries out. The bike will live there from that point on.

Tim: You just have to wait for it to dry because it's just sandy. And honestly, if it rains, it's probably not too bad. But if you wanted to get out the West side, which is where most people approach those camping grounds, that is more clay on the climb out. And if that gets wet, it is a nightmare. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's just not. Yeah. And that road took me about, I think I was on that road for over five hours.

Robin: Do me a favor. Zoom out for a second. Get the whole map into full view for me. And once you do that, leave it in place so I can see the center of it. There's two locations that I'm curious about. And this isn't for the sake of argument. It's for the sake of theory and possibility. There's already been discussion of the difficulty of making this into a cloverleaf. By difficulty, I mean impossibility. Except I have an idea and that's the multi-day cloverleaf where anybody who's not doing the riding but wants to join us for the vacation is centralized. We disappear for an entire nights at a time before returning to the central hub for one night and then continuing on two or three times in the mix. So those two, Crusty Boathole and whatever it was called, near Buena Vista. Zoom in by, there's Crusty and then to the east of that, there's.

Tim: Yeah. Buena Vista is a fairly big town. Okay. That's got a lot. That's a very resort heavy area there.

Robin: What about north of that? What about north and rural of that?

Tim: Granite. I don't know if there's much in the way. Up here in Leadville, there's services. The roadway in. Yeah. It's got an airport. It may or may not be dirt. Cessnas, crop dusters and leers. Actually, I could probably look that up.

Robin: What matters most to me is they spelled roadway, R-O-D-E. That tells you a lot.

Tim: I can't remember where I was looking for. I'd poked around and say, oh, if we were to say, stay close to the front range or the, basically the first couple of ranks of mountains, they call the front range, the nearest to the east stretch.

Travis: Like outside of Denver.

Tim: Yeah. So you're talking Denver, Boulder, up to Fort Collins, which all of those roads are absolutely lovely. They're so nice. I would love to run us through Rocky Mountain National Park, but I almost guarantee it's going to be a parking lot. Yeah. It's not the place you ride for fun riding. It's the place you go for scenery. Yeah. Which is outstanding.

Robin: So I wouldn't say no. I may have ridden some of those roads because we were there a couple of years ago and I did a bit of riding for a couple of weeks. And I do remember that it was funny to me. That was the one where Scooby-Doo hair dropped his, pulled his helmet off when he was yelling at some lady in the middle of the street.

Travis: Captain Kangaroo.

Robin: Captain Kangaroo guy. That's where he came out of nowhere and was like, I followed him on a dirt path to a much better paved road before he got into an argument with a woman on the street and then took his helmet for the first time. I was like, wow, you still have that tooth.

Tim: I've ridden some of these that are just incredibly fun. Like this road 72 is stupid fun. It's so tight and twisty. I'll zoom in here and you get a little feel for what is going on with that road. This Coal Creek Canyon Road. Yeah. It just does silly things. It's lovely. And then taking it up through here, north to bounces in and out. But it finds its way up to Estes Park, which is the eastern entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. If we were actually looking to do cloverleaf type stuff, staying close to the front range would be the easiest. There's the higher density of roads. But there's some stuff out on the west side that I really want to try.

Robin: Yeah. I think we should stick to the exploratory Tim Clark methods at all costs. That's the fun is when we are all into it. My concept is just to experiment with the idea of a super clover, not a series of out and backs in a single day. But hey, we'll see it in two nights. We'll be gone for the next night. We'll see in a couple nights and then meandering back and having an evening with the fam, see what they've been up to, continue onward, that kind of thing.

Tim: That's one of those things I'll have to spend a couple hours routing out loops and seeing if it's even a doable idea.

Travis: Yeah. Let's say you could maybe do it in here. Yeah. Again, if there's two places.

Robin: Buena Vista and the Krusty Butthole combo might work.

Tim: Like doing both of those? That might be too close together. I was thinking more Buena Vista and Montrose. That's what I was going to say next. False. Sorry. Go ahead. So one of the sections that I'm really interested in seeing is this stuff south of Grand Junction on the far western edge of Colorado. It is, from what I can tell, super remote. There is nothing on this road here. This is make sure you get gas and water before you go down here. But look at that road. Yeah, this is beautiful. It's so nice.

Robin: It's screaming, man. It is screaming to us.

Travis: Yeah. This is the stuff we are looking for. I just want to see the curves if you drop the street view pin.

Robin: Come on, look at that. This reminds me, I just planned a route last year. TRO, Route Planning Service. We plan vacations for motorcyclists. I set up his route across a few different countries and had a really twisty road. Wanted to check to make sure that it was paved. Dropped the icon and this was remote. I looked all over this road to see if there was anything. There was nothing. And then in the middle of it, I'm talking over 80 to 100 miles into this road with nothing else around it. There was a tennis court, a tennis court and no house. Just a tennis court with a four-car parking lot next to it in the mountains. Out of nowhere. If I could, I don't know if I took a screenshot of that. Unbelievable.

Travis: Was that the one you're doing in Spain? Was that in?

Robin: Yes, yes. There were no houses, no buildings, no gas stations, no markers of any kind in the maps. I had the street view, whichever version of the satellite view that's hybrid and shows services. There was nothing, no rooftops. And then on this corner, it was after multiple switchbacks, a tennis court. Anyhow, Tim, that looks ridiculous. That road looks stupefying.

Tim: That's the sort of thing. I'm just dying to see what that is and see how that feels to ride. I, of course, looked at this. I zoomed in here and I don't know if you, how well you can see it. There's this little squiggly line heading to the northeast here. Yep. That is not something you want to do without an off-road bike.

Robin: Luckily, we have, the three of us have invested in a very sound TW200.

Travis: It will easily carry all three of us up that mountain.

Tim: That's the plan. That we could take turns riding the bike and the other two could be in the burleys, 30 miles an hour. It would be fantastic.

Robin: There are no better gears to be broken in than first through third on an MSF training bike. Those are the ones that are in the best shape.

Tim: I'm sure. First through third don't get abused at all on an MSF bike.

Robin: Speaking of which, I don't know. So we're segueing here for a second. Do you know if the parts are on the way? They should have arrived in by now. He's going to send them to you.

Tim: Yeah, he said he's got them. He's going to send them on. He's not going to bother sending me tracking information or anything. If I had gone just to some random dude and said he had a bike and I went down and he said, oh yeah, it doesn't run like this, but I put an ignition coil on from another bike and it ran, I would have walked away. I would have said fuck off for making me drive this far for this. But because he's your friend and I trust you and you trust him, I'm going to take it on faith.

Robin: Yeah, I was being very careful to set up our success in the conversation. There was a mutual understanding of this may be a void. You did not explicitly say this bike does not run. Oh, but it does start with the ignition coil. It might. It ran when parked. Ran when parked. I know what I got.

Tim: Anyone listening, if you ever see a listing that says ran when parked, price it according to the parts because they are probably bullshitting you. They parked it because it stopped running. That is my assessment of ran when parked. It's all bullshit.

Robin: As I understand it, he did start that bike up.

Tim: Yeah, he put fresh gas, which is now on my garage floor. He's helping you clean up the floor. Didn't need it.

Robin: Yeah, freshly polished with that. What is that surfacing called?

Tim: Oh, yeah, I got the epoxy flora down just last summer.

Robin: How does that respond to gasoline everywhere?

Tim: It's fine.

Robin: That's good.

Tim: Yeah, it was just one of those funny ones where I'm like, it's been in the garage a couple days. I walked in there and took a look under it and go, there's something shiny out there.

Robin: Looks like oil.

Tim: Smells like gas. It's probably both.

Robin: So immediately after that, I started composing an article on how we could go about isolating the leaks.

Tim: We may need some infrared. It's an off-road bike. It's usually really easy to find the leak when you're covered in dust.

Robin: That really is the benefit of it. It's a single cylinder, single bolt, pull the tank, standard petcock. And people will talk about their desperation about the carburetors, but the Chinese make a clone of the carburetor for that bike. They still make the bike. It's, there's a lot, we got a lot going for us. I'm actually curious to find out if we can swatch out the drum brake by we, I mean me, this is my dime, but we'll swatch out the drum brake for disc.

Travis: Did they ever put a disc on those or they still have drums? Yeah, no, they do disc.

Tim: That is actually, as far as I can tell, the only difference between the 1988 model year and the 2023 model year.

Travis: It's a disc brake.

Tim: Yeah. That is the only change of significance on that bike.

Robin: I'll look into swatching out the entire front end. We'll just swatch out the forks and the wheel. Get a disc brake on there.

Travis: Anyhow, as we were saying, take us through this route, like day by day, point A to point B to point C, but do it in pig Latin. You're at E-Way Arts Day in a Colorado Springs Day.

Tim: Us to create a whole bay. Starting out in Colorado Springs, drop off the vehicles, tow vehicles or whatever. It looked like I've got a little parking here. There's a Bill's RV in self-storage. It was like $35 a month. I was like, oh, we could probably call him and park cars in his dirt lot for $20. You never know. You call Bill and find out what happens. And then we ride out. So first day meeting in Garden of the Gods. It's just beautiful. And again, you're in with a bunch of people going and seeing something pretty on their lunch break. First day, Pike's Peak, run up there and then come back down and then make our way up north to Georgetown and Georgetown's first hotel. And there are a bunch of different things. There's some bed and breakfast in there that I've got marked. And depending on timing, we make the mount ovens run that night. But that's probably going to be the next morning.

Travis: Yes, that's 252 miles.

Robin: Yeah, 250 is where in a good day, that's where the knees start to say, hey, it's not May. Sorry, I'm rhyming too much.

Tim: Go ahead. I know a lot on the 777 strips. We've been done at four in the afternoon. And I just don't generally do that when I'm traveling on my own. I take more stops and I ride longer in the day. So if I'm left to my own devices and out for a wander, usually I'm up. I ride for an hour, get breakfast, ride until lunch, ride some more. And when I stop for dinner, I look for where I'm sleeping that night. So I'm not really looking until 5, 6 p.m. Where am I going to be? And then it's maybe another hour of riding until then. So personally, I left to my own devices. I ride long days. So my kind of average travel day is more in the 350 to 400 mile day, depending on terrain, of course. Dinosaur National Monument Day was a more... No, that was a big day. That was a stupid day. That one was a challenge. But that was probably more in the 200 mile day. Man, that was a tough day.

Travis: 200 miles of difficult off-road.

Tim: The second time I dropped it, it took me a good 45 minutes to get it back on its wheels. It was all in loose sand. And like anytime you try and do the... You'll see those little demonstrations of the little lady picking up the big Harley in the mall on this nice perfect surface. Yeah, just back into it and walk it back. That does not work in the sand. Because every time I tried to lift that bike, it scooted sideways.

Robin: Yep. And is that one where you had the video of you just walking away? Like, well, maybe I'll try.

Tim: Oh, no. That was the first drop. Okay. Really, that was basically a creek bed that was dry. And it had this really soft, silty stuff floating on top of hard rock. So just lubricated rock. So yeah, so it'd be like the wheels would be just swishing around. Then you hit something hard and it bounced you sideways. The second time, it was just like a volleyball court that was three quarter of miles. Ended up slipping out on that. I basically had to dig a hole behind the bike and drop the bike into the hole in order to get it upright. It was stupid. And I was out. It was hot. And it was I was almost out of water. Not a fun place to be. Okay. So planning on getting up here to Georgetown at the end of the first day the next morning. Doing this big loop and picking up Mount Evans and then back to Idaho Springs. And then making our way. Where's Idaho Springs? Idaho Springs is right here. You do Mount Evans, come back, have lunch or breakfast or probably lunchtime. I expect that loop to take a fairly sizable amount of time. That's almost as tall as Pikes Peak. Wow. If you can see that map, the elevation map on the bottom there. That is our second highest point of the trip. So after that, we're going to make our way mostly south and then out west. And most of this should be pretty quick road. There's a nice little snarl here to the west of Twin Lakes. And then we're aiming for Carbondale for the second night. So we are going to be back up at fairly high elevation. Carbondale is at 6,000 feet. Then we're going to take 173 south out of there. And this looks like it dives us into a really nice looking canyon on the way down to Hotchkiss. I have ridden this road and it is quite nice. Then we pop up over the Grand Mesa, which is just it's a beautiful wilderness area. Really good views. When you come off, you can see where this Powderhorn Mountain Resort is. From there, you're going to see probably 30 miles vistas. You'll be able to see all the way to these far mountain ranges. It's just...

Robin: For the listeners, Travis asked Tim to give us a walkthrough of the route and Tim is doing so. He's also doing what Tim Clark does, which is abandoning the route and heading to any direction that is not the road that we're supposed to be on and telling us all about the sights that we'll see there.

Tim: Yes, my earbuds cut out here. Let me see what I can do here. All right, we got a reboot on the earbuds. That's good. We don't want any feedback. Let's see.

Robin: Are we good? We good? The earbud in the microphone situation, it reminds me of a problem I once had recording another podcast when I was all by myself. When the two of you abandoned me. And one person in specific, who remembers this instance, was there for one of the interviews. I'm gonna bring her in right now. Ladies and gentlemen, and I hope I'm saying your first name because I've always called you Piper and I hope I get your first name right as in Armin. You've butchered it. Butchered. That's awesome. How do we say it correctly? It's Arminé. Arminé. You butchered it again. So Piper's here. Piper runs Clutch Motorcycle Training in Denver, Colorado. Denver, correct? Correct, yeah. And last time we talked, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. Last time we talked, we were discussing all things MSF. And this time we can just kick back and talk about writing and having a good time.

Armene: Yes.

Robin: So you've been sitting there listening the whole time. I have. Any observations so far of the Tim Clark conundrum?

Armene: When you get to Colorado, before you go on your adventures, I'm going to sit you down and teach all of you how to say all of the different towns' names properly.

Travis: Go on. Awesome.

Armene: Yeah.

Travis: It's like reverse Wisconsin.

Armene: It's pretty bad. I started drinking, actually. What'd you guys say? Buena Vista? What'd you say?

Travis: Buena. Buena Vista.

Armene: Somebody, I think.

Travis: Probably Robin.

Armene: Yeah.

Travis: He's from Ohio.

Robin: I'll give that to Travis.

Armene: No, no, I think it was Robin. I think Robin said it.

Robin: I'll take that blame.

Armene: I'll take it. Okay, anyhow.

Travis: I don't think until this point I've said Buena Vista, so.

Armene: It is Buena Vista. And it's okay. You're forgiven.

Tim: Buena Vista.

Armene: Buena Vista.

Tim: Last time I went through that town, there were deer just strolling down the street.

Armene: I actually just rode up to Lyons. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that. It's a little town in between Boulder and Estes Park. I gotta pull up maps. Somebody also butchered Estes.

Tim: Uh-huh. Oh, yeah. That would be me. Estes?

Armene: Yeah, you said Estes, which reminds me of testes, and I don't know. It just kind of bums me out.

Travis: Well, it's a model rocket company, right? Estes. Yes.

Armene: But Estes Park. So on the way up to Estes is Lyons. It's this cute little mountain town. I just looked out to my right, and there were a bunch of turkeys, wild turkeys in a tree. Oh, wow. I have so many questions about how that happens.

Travis: That sounds very Wisconsin thing to run into.

Armene: Yeah.

Travis: That just happens in my neighborhood.

Robin: Oh, I've never seen that before. They do fly, and they are both dangerous as hell and delicious.

Armene: They're mean.

Travis: They're a pestilence.

Armene: Yeah.

Travis: Yeah. They're almost as bad as the deer for the havoc they wreak.

Tim: Yeah, I've had near misses with them flying over the road.

Armene: In Colorado, we stop for any sort of wildlife. Squirrels, turkeys. I almost died a few days ago because we were going 65 miles an hour, and then we were going zero for these two turkeys. I'm like, you guys could have had Thanksgiving.

Travis: Oh, dear God. Good eats. Robin doesn't stop for deer usually, even on his motorcycle.

Robin: Yeah, especially the yearlings. Are you brand new to this world? And you're suffering early. Isn't that what venison... No, wait. Venison. Venison. Yeah. I should know this. So we got to teach you the Midwest lingo, and you've got to teach us the mountainous Colorado lingo.

Armene: I like it. Let's do it.

Travis: First of all, just teas don't exist. Mountains, mountains.

Armene: Yeah, we just actually went through this. My daughter actually asked every single person in our family how you say, what are those things outside covered in snow? And half the family said mountains, and the other half said mountains. So who knows?

Travis: Yeah. Who knows?

Armene: Who knows the right way to say it?

Robin: Travis is a youper, so it's mountains, like Martin Lawrence.

Travis: No, I lived there for eight years. I wasn't born up there.

Armene: Mr. Piper is a youper, born in Iron Mountain, Michigan. Oh, sure. So he always tells people where he was born by using his hand and a few fingers.

Tim: I don't know if you can see, yeah, he's like over here.

Armene: Yeah, up here, right?

Tim: Up here. Travis and I are both from Michigan originally.

Armene: Okay. Well, I do the same thing. I just draw a square rectangle-looking thing, and I point to right there.

Travis: Oh, yes. Crumple the paper up first, and then draw. That way it has topography.

Armene: No, that's a good idea. I'll do that next time. Just crumple the half of it.

Robin: Proud to have realized fairly soon that I needed to spell lion with a y. Yeah, and then I'm seeing this town. You're not joking. That's right next to 7 and 36. And some good hiking, probably some slow tacos, slow service tacos. This looks good.

Armene: Lions? No, Lions has a coffee shop. Oh, okay. That's pretty much it.

Robin: That's where it's at.

Armene: That's just about it. I'm going to get kicked out of that town now that I said that.

Travis: I hope nobody's going to find me there. Mud hot lions? There's an Oscar Blues.

Armene: Oscar Blues sold out, y'all.

Travis: Are they AB and Bev now, or like Coors or something?

Armene: I don't know, something dumb like that, and it's just not the same.

Robin: I don't know. I am old with no idea what that is.

Travis: It's like 312 when 312 sold out.

Robin: Oh.

Travis: It's a beer brand.

Robin: Yeah, okay, gotcha. A moment of silence for Oscar Blues. I know, it's just not the same. So Tim was just guiding us through this ride that we're considering. Yeah. I'm glad that you're here to deliver the scrutiny that I am so often receiving from these two. Tim.

Tim: All right, I had gotten us out pretty much to Grand Junction for our second night.

Robin: Yeah, we're looking at, what, 250 to 300 miles a day? What did you want to do?

Travis: So this would be one, two, three, fourth night?

Tim: Let me see here. Colorado Springs to Georgetown, Georgetown up to Evans, and then out to Carbondale for the second night, then Carbondale out to Grand Junction.

Travis: Second night? So, okay, so the Mount Evans loop would be plus the ride at the Carbondale. Yeah. All right.

Tim: Yeah, and then Carbondale through Grand Mesa to Grand Junction would be day three. Okay. Then straight south out of Grand Junction down to, what is this, Nucla and Naturita?

Robin: Say it. Go, Piper. Make it happen. Did he get that right? He did not get that right.

Armene: I didn't even know those places existed, so we'll just go with that.

Tim: N-A-T-U-R-I-T-A, Naturita.

Armene: That's short for you will get a speeding ticket if you go three miles above the speed limit. That's what that's short for.

Travis: Oh, yeah. So the county Mounties in Colorado don't play around?

Armene: No, they don't.

Travis: They sit on the edge of town and tag everyone?

Robin: Yep. Do they tip a joint to the ticket that they give you? Okay, here's your ticket, and it comes with complimentary mint.

Armene: Actually, no, shrooms. Nice. Joints are old news.

Travis: Joints are like domestic beer now in Colorado.

Tim: Yeah. Stop being cool when your mom doing the joints. Can you do that in Colorado? Is that they go for that next?

Robin: Coors Joint.

Armene: Shrooms? Yeah.

Travis: Yeah, they legalized.

Armene: Yeah, they just legalized. I don't know if you can sell them yet.

Robin: When I get there, can I coach for you? I'm just it has nothing to do with the previous discussion. I'm just saying we should talk. Absolutely.

Armene: You have to also get most certified, so you can't just work for anybody. You have to go through most certification program.

Travis: Sure. That makes sense.

Armene: Does it?

Travis: There's no reciprocity with other states programs?

Armene: No. As long as you're an MSF coach, you can coach. But first you have to get most certified.

Robin: Which is fine. I'm good for them. Every state I go to, I get my butt kicked around about. You got to do this. You got to do that. And then it's just the same curriculum that I've been coaching forever. By the way, Travis used reciprocity. Last time we had a podcast, he said convoluted. And I said convoluted all weeks. And I said reciprocity. And I'm going to start saying that at the bar. Tim, what's your target mileage? Because I'm pretty sure Piper plus one may be joining us for this.

Travis: Like 250, 300 a day so far.

Robin: 250, 300. That's not too bad. Piper, have you done that kind of ride before?

Armene: Yeah, I have. The Mr. Piper and I went to Rocky Mountain National Park. We pulled off about halfway. And I was cursing at my motorcycle and my butt hurt. What are you riding these days? Right now I have an Aprilia RSV.

Travis: That sounds fun. I approve. Sounds like your butt hurts.

Armene: No, actually, it was the Triumph Street Twin that kicked my butt.

Travis: Oh, yeah. Those don't have a lot of seat.

Armene: No, that was terrible. I'll come up with the RSV.

Travis: Yeah, I was going to say if I head out there with the NC up on those passes, I'll probably crank it out like 30 horsepower.

Armene: I can also bring a training bike.

Travis: I figured the Twin probably lose a little less power than the single.

Armene: Oh, man. Yeah. But or we can, like I said, we can just all borrow a training bike and we can just TW our asses around. It'll take us three and a half years, but I'll do it.

Travis: Yeah. We'll have to stop three times a day to rejet it. Well, we're going to do that. I'm going to steer us over some heavy passes.

Armene: Oh, yeah.

Travis: It's like, okay, Pike's Peak with a stop halfway rejet it. Yeah.

Armene: Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it. It'll be fun.

Robin: What are the other training bikes you have on site? Are they LTWs?

Armene: No, I have a we have XT 250s and also little Veragos, which are the bane of my existence. I hate those damn things so much. But you have shorter riders and it doesn't make any sense to me because you have teeny tiny little hands. And for whatever reason, they can't get their hand around the clutch.

Robin: And yeah, right. Yeah.

Armene: And they're not adjustable and they don't sell adjustable parts. So then you have to try to bend them and hope to God you don't snap something off. It's great. All right.

Tim: So where are we at? All right. Looking south of Grand Junction down to Natarita. I can't remember if that was like if I was going to try and get that all done. And yeah, it looks like I was thinking we were going to get all of that done in one day. Yeah. So Carbondale to Grand Junction and then Grand Junction down to Natarita.

Armene: How do we feel about motorcycle camping? Why are we staying in hotels? What are you guys? Bunch of old babies.

Robin: If we all old. True. Yeah. Depends on the temps, I guess. If we split the equipment across the bikes. Yeah, an RSV4 probably has enough. Yeah, yeah, I need it too, Tim. Good thinking.

Tim: I got one. I got my one man. I'll sleep off to the side. I know I tend to snore. I'm not subjecting anyone else in the same tent to that.

Travis: Yeah, Tim has his like two super tiny camping moto hammock solution.

Tim: I've got hammocks. I've got two man tent. I got a one man tent.

Travis: I was going to say I want to get one of those. The goose. Do you guys see that? The goose pack? No. No, I haven't seen that. The moto camping. I forget the name of the company. So they do a one man called the goose and then a two person called the wingman. But it's like a old school canvas, waterproof canvas roll. It's actually pretty big. It's not that heavy. It has a sleeping pad and sleeping bag built in. And then it's designed to attach to your motorcycle and make a little canopy.

Armene: Oh, nifty.

Travis: Like you're ready to destroy your gear. Yeah.

Armene: Yeah, well, maybe that company should sponsor this ride and give all of us the goose things and we'll see how it goes.

Tim: That'd be fun. That'd be a lot of fun. I really have no objection to camping. It's when I was doing the original planning and talking to Robin about this, he was planning it out like a hoteled, more luxury ride. Yeah, I always do that. So I was trying to cater to that. But there are some epic places to camp out here, though.

Robin: We can do that. I am not against that.

Tim: Yeah, I'm more than happy to do the full rough in it. And I got the top beach towel sized wet wipes. So you don't even need a shower. The man wipes or whatever those were. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I actually did bring one of those with me. And I only used it really once, like out in Delta, Utah, out in the desert. I'm like, I haven't been to a campground with a shower for four days. I really stink.

Travis: Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know. I think I'm the only one. I don't know if you have kids, Armine. But did I say it right? Ar-meh-meh. You nailed it.

Armene: You nailed it.

Travis: I feel like you don't. You're not really truly a parent until you've done the baby wipe bath because it's just you're too tired to take a shower and it's been four days. Yep.

Armene: Travis, I have five kids.

Travis: I'm sorry.

Armene: I know.

Travis: I mean, congratulations. It must be amazing.

Armene: Thank you. Wow. Yeah, one boy and four girls. Lots of crying in this house.

Travis: I have twin three-year-old boys.

Armene: I'm also sorry. Yeah. But at least you just get it all done in one foul swoop. You just get to just rip off the band-aid, the terrible twos and the awful- Terrible threes. And the fucking fours and all over with at once.

Travis: Someone said the term three-nagers and I was like, yeah.

Armene: Oh, it's true. I've now had both. I've had, they've all been three and they've, three of the five are teenagers.

Travis: Nice.

Armene: What I have noticed is however they are at three is how they will also be as a teenager.

Robin: Oh, really?

Armene: Oh, yeah.

Robin: Oh, yeah. Travis, you.

Travis: Henry's going to get in so many fights.

Armene: You see this gray streak right here?

Travis: Yeah.

Armene: This is what came of my first turning 14.

Robin: That kind of rocks though. That's some rock star noise right there.

Armene: Thanks. Yeah. People ask me if I, if I color it myself, I'm like, why would I want to do that? Why would I want this? Why would I want this? I'd rather just have my hair back, but.

Travis: That's why I dye my hair because it distracts you from seeing all the gray. Yeah. That's why I don't have hair. I'm outrunning mine. Yeah.

Armene: It's overrated. Yeah.

Travis: I think Robin's on course for the skull tattoo. Ooh.

Robin: At this point we're rural right now. We haven't gone out to do anything social, which I'm dying to do. I've been looking forward to this podcast. So my hair, I've been just like, I'm not going to shave my head. I'm not shaving my face. This is the most grizzly. The boza, the clown hair has got to go. It's time.

Travis: The accountant horseshoe.

Armene: How X-rated am I allowed to be right now? Fucking A. You do want to get laid, don't you? What is this?

Robin: What is this? I don't understand it either. Like the wife is always like, hey, it's fine. I like it. It's good. That's true love.

Armene: It gets done in the dark is what you're saying.

Robin: It gets done. How bad can I get with this? I'm just going to shave my head, except I'm going to leave the right side and I'm going to use gel to put it out. Liberty spikes. Maybe you should shave. I'm going to take you up on that one. Whatever she wants. Do whatever she wants. Right there. See, that's the stuff. It's like, make sure. Yeah. But okay. Back to the RSV4. Motorcycles. Yes. Yes. Your mileage on the RSV4, that's a big day. Back to back to back to back.

Travis: So let's say how much can you get out of the RSV4 before you need gas?

Armene: From my house to the gas station.

Travis: Usually. Past anything but a gas station, right?

Robin: RSV4. It's not.

Armene: It's not great.

Travis: Tank capacity. I'm going to say they're thirsty with a small tank.

Armene: It's a pretty decent size tank. I had a Ducati Pentagon before that. And that tank was much smaller. And I got crappier mileage with that.

Robin: Well, it's only this appropriate that it shows me on Google. It shows the result in liters. How Italian.

Tim: That's helpful, isn't it? My bike's 150 before I start worrying about reserve.

Travis: Yeah, I can get about 150. Even though my bike only has a 2.8 gallon gas tank. But the worst mileage I've ever gotten out of it is like 65. Honda. It's boring. I have the most boring Honda bike.

Tim: From what I was looking at, we're really not that far between gas stations. Almost anywhere.

Robin: You have a 5, 4.9 gallon tank. So you've got just shy of 5 gallons on that bike, which means it's tuned for the track. Are you always riding in whoop-ass mode?

Armene: I'm a motorcycle trainer.

Robin: I'm always riding. At least the speed limit.

Armene: I'm always abiding by the laws.

Robin: All of the laws in the places. All the laws. With the ridings. Yeah.

Armene: That bike is, it's dangerous. I, yeah, that's danger for me.

Tim: What's the power level on that thing? That, that one's over 100 horsepower, isn't it?

Travis: 5,000. It's pushing 2, right? It's like 181.

Armene: 2, no, I think I'm at 220 something. Holy hell.

Robin: What's the H2?

Armene: What are you talking about?

Travis: It's like there, it's like in the low twos. It's, the thing with the H2 is how it makes the power, not how much power it makes. 217.

Armene: Yeah, didn't I say 220?

Travis: Yeah.

Armene: Yeah. Yeah, I'm on it. Damn.

Tim: I've never ridden a bike that with that much power on it.

Travis: I don't even know if I have a car with that much power.

Armene: When you come to Colorado, I'll let you look at it.

Tim: Awesome. I've spent most of my time with the adventure bike guys. And most of those kind of top out around 130 horse.

Robin: Yeah. My tractor motor for the Beamer is 125.

Travis: I got 51 in my NC 700X.

Robin: And he's still pulling away in the Twizies.

Armene: We're not racing you. No. I can bring my, my street twin. I'll just, I'll ride sweep, sweep, sweep.

Robin: You ride sweep as much as you want. And when you're ready to pass Travis, you go right ahead.

Armene: I'll still be in Lyons when you guys, that's how sweep I'll be.

Travis: The street twin makes like 64 horsepower. So got me beat.

Robin: So wait, do you ever ride the RSV4 in the BRC2? Yes, I do. Are you doing exercise one on that? Yeah. Love it. That's awesome.

Armene: I don't feel like I can give these guys shit for not riding there. I love, that's my favorite. I love the BRC2 because, you know, these guys are like, oh, I don't need this shit. I could just test out. I wish somebody would just let me test out. I'm like, okay, great. So ride your bike in the class. Oh, no, I can't do that. I'm like, what are you talking about? Come on, do it. So I can't tell them to do it. And then I don't do it. That's.

Robin: These two guys, they may or may not have already heard this. So exercise one for the one day MSF course, which is for unlicensed riders that have experience that are just there to get through the process because they have that experience. Exercise one is, there's one cone at the very end is the hardest thing that the MSF has ever put on paper.

Armene: It's awesome.

Robin: And it's designed to say, you can ride, fuck off, go home, see at the BRC. I love it. Oh, I love it. It's two sets of weaves. And one of them is heavily off. It starts out five feet, 10. I don't remember. It's just, but it's an expanding offset weave. And you have to go around the corners while looking at the horizon. Yeah, I do it on my bike. She does it on the RSV4, which is a testament to this gals. Hell yeah, that's beastly. I don't think I could do that. Not yet. I didn't, you know, it took a lot of practice.

Tim: It's a bitch. I did do that on the XSR. I gave up on it when Jason let me ride his adventure. Yeah, see, but that's doable. That was a no, no, that bike. I think I made it through three weaves and I'm like far off.

Travis: No. On his KTM 1200 super dad.

Robin: See, but that can do that. I could do that in a heart because it's got a turning radius. Piper's bike.

Armene: No turning radius.

Robin: That's awesome.

Armene: The first couple of times I had to ride out because I was going to drop it. I get ugly when I drop bikes. My reaction is so childish. I don't know. I pick stuff up. I throw it. I scream. I yell. It's not good. It's really it's not becoming. So I just wrote out a couple of times. But yeah, it can do it.

Travis: It's all lean and no steer.

Armene: And it's a cowboy up. You know what I mean? Just cowgirl up. You just got to do it. You can't. But I do love when they watch. I love when they watch the demo. The jaw drops. And oh, yeah, there's a lot of rubbing of the eyebrows.

Tim: God, that is a really hard exercise. It is fun. Where are we at? All right. We're looking from Natarita coming back into more of the touristy areas over to Ridgeway and then to Ure and the Million Dollar Highway. And this climb out of Ure is just absolutely gorgeous. Did it on the scooter and want to do it on a faster, funner bike.

Robin: Nice.

Tim: I can't remember the name of all of these passes, honestly. But this one's really fun. You get past Ironton. There's a little more twist. But it's fun. Pretty much the whole way down to Durango. That's it's really nice. So I have not ridden this next section from Durango heading back east. But it looks fun. So I've got us heading up. What is this? 140, 160. It doesn't matter how you zoom. The line obscures the number. So I don't know what fucking road this is.

Robin: 140 something. Yeah, they put the line. They should put that above the line. I don't even know that's possible.

Travis: The rider GPS overlay.

Tim: Yep. So this is running up to South Fork, which would be the next hotel. Would be day four. And that looked like that was going to be a very full day.

Travis: Yeah, that's pretty fun. That's a stretch. What's the what's if you hover over the stays and it gives you the mileage points on the 952 altitude map.

Tim: So it's 953 for the end point on there.

Robin: 749 to 750. Yeah, to 950 to 250.

Tim: Okay, that's not bad. It's not bad. It's just it's there's a lot of twist on that one.

Travis: Yeah, there's a lot of elevation between those two points. A lot of up and down. Oh, yeah.

Tim: Isn't that kind of the point? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. The day after that, we're heading back up north back towards Montrose and hitting the Black Canyon and the Gunnison because that road is just a beautiful road. Somewhere over a thousand foot drop cliff. So I just have us run out to the end point and back. This is just touristy road. 35 mile an hour speed limit. This is not a sporty section. Speed limit. And then this dive down to the bottom of the canyon, which is just it's fun. It's fun. It's it will be a lot more fun if I've got a first drag first gear to drag rather than the scooter where I had only my brakes.

Travis: How hot were they at the. Because it's.

Tim: Do you smell something? Oh, my God. I was so nervous. I would actually let it run. And as soon as you let off the brakes, you're going 40. Yeah. Get back on them right away because you don't have. Engine braking. Room. Yeah. No engine braking on that BMW.

Travis: It was like that one time in trip sevens where I got I lost you guys like I made the wrong turn when I was riding sweep and then I caught up and then my brakes were just like I poured water out of it. It's just instant steam.

Robin: The water never you'd touch the disc.

Travis: It just like those brakes must have been 400 degrees.

Robin: That's the same instant where I think before you got there, we were standing there kind of wandering, taking a break. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we hear pop up, pop up, pop up, pop up, pop up, pop up, pop up. And it was a Lamborghini, a Kony, a completely kitted out Jeep, a what's the one that becomes a B Bugatti Bugatti. It was like seven luxury like sports cars in the middle of the forest on a rural road like Motor Trend just drove by.

Travis: In Appalachia somewhere.

Robin: Yeah. Middle Appalachia.

Armene: I always love when people come to class and we ask them the question, like, what kind of motorcycle do you want to ride? And how many times people have said Bugatti instead of Bugatti? It's Italian. That's close enough. Oh, yeah. And then they give themselves a seven on the motorcycle knowledge. I love that.

Travis: Yeah, that V12 motorcycle.

Tim: I used to think I was a fast rider until I did a charity supermoto race.

Travis: Mm hmm.

Tim: And I was absolutely blown away by how fast that those guys were, where I'm like on the edge of holding my line and I get passed on the inside and the outside at the same time. Towards the end of my run, because we were taking turns in this relay race, I was feeling good. I was following the guy and I'm following him and coming into a corner and oh, that's a little hot. And I realize he is sliding both tires. And I said, no, I am not doing that shit. You said this on a previous episode.

Robin: You were capping and you said, two wheel slide. That's a two wheel slide. I don't want to do a two wheel slide. And then you slowed way down.

Tim: I will not stay up if I slide two wheels. It will turn into a slide on my belly or back or side or something. Yeah. That was a whole lot of humility there.

Robin: My best riding day. Doesn't matter. Best racetrack day. I am first level intermediate. So novice, first level intermediate, second level intermediate, advanced, contention. My best riding is first level intermediate. That's all I got. And I'm OK with it. Would be the water boy. I'd be the water boy.

Armene: Have you done a track day on that machine yet? No, not on that one. Do you guys have a circuit near you? Yeah, we do. We have Pike's Peak Raceway. And then there's some other crappy one closer to us in Dekono.

Robin: Go-Kart track that they let bikes on. Yep.

Armene: Yeah.

Robin: And I won't do it, but. Blackhawk Farms in Wisconsin is kind of like that. Yeah, yeah.

Tim: That's cool. Oh, I totally want to take the mini bikes out to Blackhawk. The monkey.

Robin: Oh, yeah. I'll take the TW. It'll be fun. In its current condition.

Tim: Yeah, they're not going to let you in with it dripping as much as it does. Tape. Tape it. Just tape over it. Tape it.

Travis: It's just a Scottoiler. It's.

Robin: Yeah. You brought a Scottoiler to a track day. Well.

Travis: Well, I don't want my train to my chain to stick. What chain? Why is there an exclamation point to him?

Tim: All right. So that's my turnaround point. So this is the day of out and backs. So there's the dive down to the bottom of the canyon. And then we go back out and double back. And take this north road because it's beautiful.

Travis: Yeah, I got the ridge.

Tim: It's one of the better roads I've been on. So I would. That's one of those ones. It's worth the diversion. And as much as I say, I don't like to double back like this section of 50. I got no problem riding twice. It's nice. So from there, we were planning on staying in Gunnison for the night. That's day five hotel. I've been there. I swear I've been there.

Travis: Yeah, it's 50 is a fairly common road to go through. What's that line that's going south, though?

Robin: Yeah, pull the dude over that 149 here. Yeah, no, 114. I think it's 114.

Travis: So there's the big there's the big lake. And then the red line goes south. What's that?

Robin: It's got a limit. It stops. Check it out. Go to the very end of that.

Travis: 114 stops, but it doesn't mean that it's not on the route on your planned route. Yeah, that. Yeah, that line. What's that?

Tim: That's 26. That's coming north from South Fork.

Travis: Oh, OK. So that's the in route. That's the in road.

Tim: Yeah, that's the in road. And then the whole Gunnison is a out and back to double backs. OK, yeah.

Robin: Your map guidance is a lot like your diagrams during those.

Tim: Yeah, intentionally obscure.

Robin: So how far through? Where are we at now? How far have we gone?

Tim: This is day five. This is 1246. This is doing good, man. Out of Gunnison. We're heading north. I believe this is Independence Pass. Cottonwood Pass. Sorry. Independence is 70.

Travis: I would say it looked a lot when you zoomed out. The line just looked extra thick because it double backs on itself so much.

Tim: Yeah. So you can see we've got a couple of double hairpins on the climb up to Cottonwood Pass. And those are I think those will be fun. This has been repaved within the last five years or so. What it looked like to me. So it's one of those ones you need to keep yourself in check because you'll see it'll be like wide sweep, wide sweep, wide sweep. 15 mile an hour hairpin. So yeah, that brings us into Buena Vista and then heading south out of there and rejoining Highway 50 because this is the closing. We're heading back towards civilization. So it's going to bring us over into Cannon City or Canyon City.

Armene: Canyon City.

Tim: Yeah. Royal Gorge Park is which is a possible if we've got time, swing in, take a look. Big tourist trappy thing. It's got this really neat tram to the bottom of the canyon.

Travis: A funicular. I'm going to start saying that all week. A funicular is like the gear train cars that go up and down hills. Yes, it is.

Armene: We could also just stop in Canyon City and visit the prison there.

Tim: Great idea. You have a type. Do you have someone we need to visit?

Armene: I mean, they have a wild horse program there. Really? It is really cool. Yeah, they almost said they use the inmates because they do.

Travis: They feed the prisoners to the wild horses. Could I saddle up a tax offender?

Armene: Yes, they literally put them on these horses and just tie them to the saddles until the horse is broken.

Robin: I never knew that Colorado and Texas had so much in common.

Armene: They're like twins.

Tim: This is, I think, where I had not really planned the last hotel stop. I wasn't quite sure where we were going to be. The prison.

Armene: It's a nice cheap spot, especially on my RSV4. You guys might be bailing me out.

Tim: Yeah, it looks like if we make it all the way back to Colorado Springs, that's a 250 from Gunnison back in. That's 250 miles. Nice. I was looking at being the last day.

Robin: You just gave us the full loop and not to put Piper on the spot, but she's our resident there. She may have to translate for us. You're going to have to be our lookout guide. Any observations so far about what we're thinking about doing? Any thoughts on social matters in the area, vacationers? Tim did clock it for September. You were listening in on that. So the kids will be in school.

Armene: Yes, just make sure it's not over Labor Day weekend because that is a crazy time in Colorado.

Travis: That's a good point. That'd be like second, third week of September.

Armene: Yeah, that looks like a good time.

Travis: When does the snow start happening up?

Armene: Not in September, November sometime.

Robin: What about the high elevation temps during October? Because I'll tell you what, we're talking about late September, but my birthday's October 6th.

Armene: Oh, you're a Libra.

Robin: Oh, here we go.

Armene: It's cold at night, colder at night, but you can still camp or walk around your hotel in your robe and slippers. You'll be okay.

Robin: Yeah, maybe we'll do September. We'll just do a bounce back. We'll ride to Chicago, do some riding, head back to the rig. But I know Maggie's going to want to do this one too. She's going to want to be on the street, triple R and an RSV4 beating the hell out of us.

Tim: Let's do it. I think that one of my goals was to minimize how many hotel stays were like along the front range, try and reduce costs a little bit for hotel stays. But if we camp, that drops the price a lot.

Armene: What about VRBOs? VRBO, as they say.

Tim: I have not really done that.

Armene: I went to stay at a VRBO in California and I get there and it's vacated. Nobody's there, no furniture, nothing, can't get in. And so I called the VRBO hotline.

Travis: Is this like a hostel? VRBO, it's Airbnb, but bougier? I don't know. I see the commercial.

Armene: They're trying to be bougie. Yeah. How bougie can you be when you don't even know somebody has vacated their property?

Travis: Right. You're telling me this tech startup has problems with their operations? They haven't thought things through all the way and they aren't keeping a close eye on stuff?

Armene: No, no. No way. Yeah.

Robin: Oh, you mean they don't have staff to authenticate? The helmet company that got all the sponsored funds and then just hookers and blow all day.

Travis: Yeah, pretty much.

Robin: And the money was gone. Was that one of those heads-up display companies?

Tim: Yeah.

Robin: And they got off scot-free.

Tim: There was no guarantee of rewards on your investment or whatever it was? Yeah.

Armene: You're blowing my cover from my clothing line. What I was going to do. That's exactly what I was going to do. Nothing has happened besides the fact that I now pay the federal government just to hold that name.

Robin: The one thing that did happen is you've got the idea that needs to happen anyhow. She's sick of seeing minimalist pink and frou-frou armor for lady riders who are truly kicking ass. There's just too much. Oh, your girl? Here you go. Turquoise. Pink.

Travis: This one has skulls, but they have flowers on them too.

Robin: Cherries. Just so you know, the three of us, we get it. We got your back all the time. Oh, thank you. Now I know who my connection is when I get to Colorado.

Armene: I got you. That and the shrooms. We'll do this on shrooms. How about that?

Travis: We'll just stay in Colorado Springs and take shrooms for six days.

Robin: So much editing. I will be editing so much of this.

Travis: Be like, it's just like zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance, man. Oh, man. I don't know. I should just start a fund to get me a new motorcycle. This guy.

Tim: I will entertain the idea of trying to do the cloverleaf on this, but it really is one of those things where it's just...

Robin: It can't be a standard clover.

Tim: You end up having to double back a lot.

Robin: So it needs to be some kind of specialty super clover. I think that this route should stay intact exactly as is, but if we want to bring the fans with us that don't ride or want to chill and do other things, we'll have to come up with a see you in two days, see you in three days kind of thing that may work. Yeah. Or intermission.

Travis: Like around Buena Vista or around... Was it Montrose? Buena Vista. Yeah. Those are two spots. It looks like you do a lot of this still, or like Tim was saying, just stay more toward the north.

Armene: I think it's called Mountain Wolf Lodging, and I think it might be somewhere over there for the people with kids because it's like an indoor amusement park water thing. If the families were to stay in Colorado Springs, then they could do like the Garden of the Gods, and they could do... If you drop them off at you for four days, I'm not sure how much fun they're going to have.

Robin: Fair point. True. So how do we balance that with the money? That's going to be the hard part. Is anything resort level?

Tim: Yeah. This is definitely going to take some more shopping around to see extended stay costs, and it'll be tough to balance. It'd be like, all right, do we stick them all in one room? Because we're going to be out and about paying for our own hotels while we're away from base camp.

Armene: Okay. It's called the Great Wolf Lodge in Colorado Springs, and I think they have Groupon-y things all the time.

Robin: Maybe we can get them into this just for mentioning it.

Armene: So if you go to the Great Wolf Lodge in Colorado Springs, their phone number is... They have deals all the time, and if you have little ones, they'll love it, and your spouses won't hate you for dumping them in the boonies with nothing to do, but two cents.

Robin: That's a good concept. I like it.

Armene: You need a woman on this podcast regularly.

Robin: That's actually going to be the other part of the theme of this year. Now I'm going girl, boy, girl, boy. Well, next interview is going to be with Dale Hoke. But I did think about making it like a female guest every episode, and then I was just like, eh, we'll go back and forth. Maybe I'll bow out for an episode.

Armene: Or maybe just an additional host as well.

Travis: Are you volunteering? Armane's saying that she wants the TRL podcast to be for-hosted, and she wants to be part of it.

Tim: She wants in.

Armene: You guys just asked me how much horsepower my motorcycle has, and I couldn't tell you.

Robin: I also couldn't. But still, you've brought so much to this episode. Yes.

Armene: Just saying. It's always fun listening to a bunch of dudes talk about wrapping shit up and hookers and things, but sometimes it's just nice to have a little female flair in there.

Robin: It helps when a female comes in and actually validates those statements. You did that to this podcast. You started this, so I commend you. Is there anything else we want to discuss?

Tim: Nude hot springs. That'd be North of Salida?

Robin: We have that 10 minutes from us.

Tim: Mount Princeton hot springs?

Armene: Yeah. After 7 p.m., it's clothing optional. I actually don't know if that's true.

Tim: Clothing optional.

Robin: But I'm going to find out.

Tim: We just don't know until we show up.

Robin: Always test the waters, pun intended.

Travis: You have to creep up on the microphone and do a little vocal fry when you say that.

Robin: And on that note, I want to wholeheartedly thank you so much, Armine Piper. You did it. For being on this episode of the podcast and perhaps future episodes as well. It's a real pleasure to have you. Armine operates Clutch Motorcycle School. In Loveland, Colorado.

Armene: You are nailing it, Rob.

Travis: Do you know, is Harley bringing in their Indian-made small displacements for training?

Armene: Oh, so we don't get to know that. Because when we went to take over Thunder Mountains training program, we decided not to do the Harley riding experience, the three-day thing.

Robin: Oh, that's great. I love that.

Armene: Yeah. Except that when they found that out, they decided to cut us off.

Travis: Oh, no.

Armene: So we're not going to get the new bikes. But the new bikes that they're talking about are, I think, electric.

Travis: Oh, wow.

Armene: Boogie, boogie, boogie.

Travis: Oh, that'd be interesting. I did see a thing that whatever, Jorgen Schmorgenberg, the guy that's in charge of Harley now.

Armene: Yeah.

Travis: His vision for the next 30 years is that Harley will eventually be all electric.

Armene: Yeah.

Travis: Jorgen Schmorgenberg? He's got some Scandinavian name. I don't know. Okay.

Armene: Can you come up with something for me? Because I actually love that.

Robin: That's been this episode. Tune in next time for another lack of organizational, theme-based podcasting that is unlike what we did last year for the sake of stiffness. We look forward to it. We're going to try to get 12 done this year. We're going to have one episode for every month this year, not six, 12. So with that, for TRO.Bike, I'm Robin Dean.

Travis: I'm Travis Burleson. I'm Tim Clark.

Armene: And I'm Arminé Piper. Yes.

Robin: Thank you for being here. Safe trip.

Armene: Thank you. Bye. Arminé. You've butchered it. Arminé. You nailed it. Arminé. You've butchered it. Arminé. You nailed it. Arminé. You've butchered it. Arminé. You nailed it. We'll do this on shrooms. How about that?

Travis: We'll just stay in Colorado Springs and take shrooms for six days.