Robin: Hello, 2023. I'm Robin.

Tim: I'm Travis Burleson. And I'm Tim Clarke.

Robin: You're listening to the Riding Obsession Podcast.

Robin: 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. 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. Yes. I will say this episode, it belongs to Tim. This is the Tim Clarke route planning. It's the Colorado episode, and we're gonna look at doing a rally in Colorado, or actually just like a, a gathering of specific invite for some Colorado riding.

Tim: All

Travis: your podcasts are belong to Tim.

Tim: Yeah. Hold on. Good luck

Travis: for great justice. Take every middleweight street bike down a

Tim: dirt trail. Yeah. Uh, you know, it's not that I intentionally drag everybody down to 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 wanna be on a squiggly line. I'm going there. It doesn't matter to

Travis: Tim if it's gravel or dirt or paved or Just some spaghetti on the map

Tim: like it's, I love to correlate squiggly lines and topo lines. If I find a high density of the both, I'm gonna be happy. That's what Brian

Robin: Ringer does. He looks for the topos and follows the ridge

Tim: line. I just want to cross as many topo lines as possible. , which means I'm going up or down, which means you're going

Travis: back and forth.

Robin: I've said it so many times, but Tim Clarke 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.

Robin: There we go. Yeah, baby. Yeah. Yeah. Look at

Tim: you. We got a map. Science.

Robin: 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. Yeah, 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 wet my appetite to come back and ride it on. That is fast. A fun bike.

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

Tim: scooter? I've done this lower loop here, down ure, 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

Robin: back. Okay, so you went south, then west, and then up that 1 45 or 1 41. Yes.

Tim: 1 45. On which scooter? G 600. Oh, the Beamer? Yeah. Yeah. I gotcha. 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.

Travis: Does it just dead end or has this become like Jeep Trail at the end?

Tim: 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, you've your brakes only. And that's a 13% grade

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

Tim: Yeah. Yep. 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, uh, grand Junction. I actually took this road three 30 up and it tend of disintegrates into a washboard of 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. This map

Robin: is looking

Tim: pretty sharp.

Travis: Well, everyone knows the Bmwc 600 Scooter is an ultimate off-road

Tim: machine. Oh yeah, yeah. Did lovely on uh, rudded dirt roads. The 16

Travis: inch wheels really soak it up.

Robin: Mm-hmm. 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. I, she was in the minivan with her parents, our parent and significant other.

Robin: That town there, there's that crusty butt hole in there. Yes. So that wouldn't work as a

Tim: clover leaf, would it? 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. It's a full Tim day. Yeah. Not even. Not quite that 300 miles. It's a three. Yeah, it's two 50 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 nineties down around Montrose, but we're still gonna have our mountain passes open. You know, we're not, we go either direction. We're either gonna go extreme heat in some of these areas, or we're gonna 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.

Tim: So they'll head us off at the pass. Yeah. My idea is we're gonna go after, 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 gonna 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, we sometimes you're sitting in a line of cars for half an hour, cuz 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. Yeah. 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 side got it mapped out so that each day was two 50 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 all in 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 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 cuz there were like you couldn't go all the way to the top.

Tim: I have

Travis: not looked. You had to like park and then take like a shuttle up to the

Tim: top. Top. 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. Okay. 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

Travis: love. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's like switchbacks up to the peak observatory or whatever. That looks wicked. Yeah. Zoom in a little tighter there. This doesn't have a, doesn't have a scale. Grab

Tim: the

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

Tim: Oh, yeah, it will. It's a top. If you grab the dude, there's, there's your parking

Robin: lot. Okay, gotcha. So it is paved all the way up to the top. It is, but that's a trick that the listeners might like to know about is that if you wanna check whether or not a road is likely paved, you can't rely on a hundred percent. But if you grab the,

Tim: the street view, I come.

Robin: 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 intent to pat the travel lights up, there's a good chance that it's paved and then you drop 'em in any given. Yeah.

Travis: So if it's blue, it means that street view is available. Right. And

Tim: that, yeah, that they've run their car there.

Travis: They don't usually do gravel roads.

Robin: Sometimes they do next to me at 52 59. If you look up 52, 59 here in New Mexico, I was like, oh, that's gonna be great. And I rode to it and I was like, not on this

Tim: bike. So I generally routing these. I try and minimize double back. I don't wanna run on the same road twice in different directions if I can avoid it no further. Those like

Travis: mountain peaks, there's usually just the, there's the one road, it goes to the top and it goes back down. .

Tim: Exactly. And yeah, you can there, if you zoom in, there are roads in here. Oh wow. But that's something that you're not gonna get through without off-roading or. Rough roading, not something you wanna do with three inches

Robin: of clearance. 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 roady, we can go goat rodeoing, Jerre Adventure

Tim: sport. Yeah. So there is a route here. So I've got us routing along this road next to the Tarelle Reservoir.

Robin: Is that full goat

Tim: rodeo? This is. This is paved. Okay. But there is a parallel here along 67 and that dumps right here. That by the Cheeseman or Chessman Canyon. And there's this Deckers 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? Forton Foxton Road. Those are, both of those are dirt. They look like very funder. 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

Robin: butt, crusty butt hole and thunder butt. I once knew a girl. Don't wanna

Tim: know. Don't wanna know. So silly things that I drove the whole rig with the truck with a scooter in the back haul on the camper. I went up over this mountain pass. What's the peak on

Travis: that? 12? 12,000, 13,000 feet?

Tim: Yeah. I think the saddle is just below, uh, just at 12,000 feet. Yeah. 12,100. 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 gonna get up in here and it's gonna be mostly off-road or camping. Not gonna be your average Robin Dean camper

Robin: sized. Do you have a Holiday Inn with wheels?

Tim: Yes. Yes. If you do, you probably don't wanna 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. I was like, could we reasonably get here in a day? I think I've got like a hotel here in

Travis: Georgetown and is there is that? There's a little double back loop outta Georgetown. So is it like a day's ride that Georgetown stay, do the loop, stay again, or come back through to the next

Tim: town? I was not staying in any place more than one night on this route.

Travis: What's a day one

Tim: stretch. Don't know if I've got this. Yeah. 1500 total. It looks like five days. I don't think I've got this broken up here.

Robin: It's a good five day route. Five or six days. Sure. Two 50 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 area. I've not ridden that area. Travis, we were in Denver, weren't we?

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

Robin: Which was awesome. That was

Tim: fun. Yeah. That's the area where on my big trip I, 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 Cause you will not get out. Yeah. Until it

Robin: dries out. The bike will live there from that point

Tim: on. You're gonna 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 just not, yeah. And that road took me about, I think I was on that road for over five

Robin: hours. 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. And that's the multi-day clover leaf 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 boat hole 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 bu got a lot. That's a very resort heavy. What about

Robin: north there? Area of that, what about north and rural of that?

Tim: Like 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 cessna's,

Robin: crop dusters and Lear.

Tim: Actually, I could probably look that up.

Robin: What matters most to me is they spelled roadway, r o d e. That

Tim: tells you a lot. 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 uh, basically the first couple rinks of mountains they call the front range, the nearest to the east stretch, like outside of Denver. Yep. 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 gonna be a parking lot. Yeah, that's to be, it's the place you ride for fun riding. It's the place you go for scenery. Yeah. Which I is outstanding. So I wouldn't say no.

Robin: I may have ridden some of those roads cuz we were there a couple years ago and I did a bit of riding for a couple 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, captain Kangaroo, captain Kangaroo guy. That's where he came outta 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

Tim: tooth. I've ridden some of these that are just incredibly fun, like this Road 72 is stupid fun. It's so tight and twisty and 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 Estees Park, which is the eastern entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. If we were actually looking to do cloverleaf type stuff, like staying close to the, the front range would be the easiest. There's the higher density of roads. Nice. But there's some stuff out on the, uh, west side that I really want to try.

Robin: Yeah. I think we should stick to the exploratory Tim Clarke methods at all costs. It's like that's the fun is when we are all into it. Yeah. My concept is just a experiment with the idea of a super clover, not a series of out and backs in a single day, but hey, we'll see you in two nights. We'll be gone from the next night. We'll see you 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

Tim: kind of thing. That's one of those things I could, I'll have to spend a couple hours routing out loops and seeing if it's even a doable idea. Yeah. It looks like

Travis: you could maybe do it in here. Yeah. If again, if there's. Two places.

Robin: Buena Vista and the K crusty butthole combo might work like doing both of those.

Tim: That might be too close together. I was thinking more Buena Vista and Montrose.

Robin: That's what I was gonna say next. . No, no false.

Tim: 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 It, it's beautiful. It's so

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

Tim: Yeah. This is the stuff we are looking

Travis: for. I just wanna see the curves. Have you dropped the street view pin?

Robin: Come on, look at that. This reminds me, I just planned a route last year. T r o route planning service. We plan vacations for motorcyclists. I set up his route across a few different countries and fed a really twisty road. Wanted to check to make sure that it was paved, dropped the icon and it, 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 a hundred 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, I don't know if I took a screenshot of that.

Tim: Unbelievable. Was that

Travis: the one you were doing in Spain? Was that in?

Robin: Yes, yes. The, 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 on it was after multiple switchbacks, a tennis court. Anyhow, Tim, that looks ridiculous. That road looks stupifying.

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 wanna do without an off-road bike. .

Robin: Luckily we have, the three of us have invested in a very sound T W 200.

Travis: It will easily carry all three of us out that

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

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

Tim: shape, I'm sure first through third. Don't get abused at all on an Ms F

Robin: bike. 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? I, they should have arrived to him by now. He is gonna send 'em to you. Yeah,

Tim: he said he is got 'em. He's gonna send him on. He's not gonna 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 in an ignition coil on from another bike and it ran. I would've walked away. I would've said Fuck off for making me drive this a lot, this far for this. But because he's your friend and I trust you and you trust him. I'm gonna 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

Tim: explicitly say, this bike does not run. Oh,

Robin: but it does start with the ignition coil. It might.

Tim: It ran. It

Robin: ran when parked ran wind park. Yeah, I know what I got. Which I know what I got.

Tim: Anyone listening, if you ever see a listing that says, ran wind 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 wind parked. It's all bullshit.

Robin: Well, as I understand it, he did start that bike up, so

Tim: yeah, he put fresh gas, which is now on my garage

Robin: floor. He's helping you clean up the

Tim: floor. Didn't need it. Yeah. . Fresh.

Robin: Fresh, 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? It's

Tim: fine. That's good. Yeah. It was just one of those funny ones where I'm like, oh, it's been in the garage a couple days. I walked in there and took a look under it and go, ah, there's something shiny out there. Yeah. Looks like oil, smells like gas. It's probably both.

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

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

Robin: of, it's a single cylinder, single bolt pull the tank, standard pet cock, and people will talk about the 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 break by we, I mean me, this is my dime, but we will swatch out the drum break for disc.

Tim: Did they

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

Tim: they do disc. That is actually, as far as I can tell, the only difference between the 1988 model year and the 2023 model year. It's the disc brake. Yeah. Yeah. That is the only change of significance on that

Robin: bike. I'll look into swatch out the entire front end. We'll just swatch out the forks on the wheel, get a disc brake. Anyhow, as we were seeing,

Travis: take us through this route, like day by day point A to point B to point C, but do it in Pig Latin here. Hey, ewe Arts Day in a Colorado, A in Springs, say

Tim: Thole 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 bucks a month. I was like, ah. We could probably call him and park cars in his dirt lot for 20 bucks. You never know. Yes, 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, seeing something pretty on their lunch break, first day Pikes Peak, run up there and then come back down and then make our way up north to Georgetown and Georgetown's first hotel. There are a bunch of different things. There's some bed and breakfast in there that have got marked, and depending on timing, we make the mount ovens run that night, but that's probably going to be the next morning. Yeah, so that's

Travis: 252 miles. Yeah. Yeah.

Robin: Two 50 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 triple seven 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 I, if I'm left in my own devices and out for a wander, usually I am, I'm up, I ride for an hour, get breakfast ride until lunch rides more. And when I stop for dinner, I look for where I'm sleeping that night, so I'm not really looking until five, 6:00 PM where am I gonna be? And then it's maybe another hour of riding. Until then, so personally, I left my own devices. I ride long days, so my kind of average travel day is more in the three 50 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 on the 200 mile day. Man, that was a tough day.

Travis: Children miles of difficult

Tim: off-road. Now the second time I dropped it, it took me a good 45 minutes to get it back on its wheels. It was, 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

Tim: try. 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,

Travis: so it was just lubricated rock. So

Tim: yeah, so it would be like, the wheels would be just swishing around. Then you'd hit something hard and it'd bounced you sideways. The second time it was just, it was like a volleyball cart that was three quarter a miles. Ended up slipping out on that. I basically had to, I 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 outta, it was hot and it was, I was almost outta 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 Mountain 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, yeah, probably lunchtime. I expect that loop to take a fairly sizable amount of time. That's almost as tall as Pike's Peak. Wow. Yeah, I mean, if you could see that map, elevation map on the bottom there, that is our second highest point of the trip. So after that, we're gonna 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 gonna be back up at fairly high elevation Carbondale's at 6,000 feet. Then we're gonna take 1 73 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 gonna 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 Clarke 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 sites 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 Rui boot on the earbuds.

Robin: That's good. We don't want any feedback. Let's see.

Tim: Are we good? We good. The

Robin: 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, and I'm gonna bring her in right now, ladies and gentlemen. And I hope I'm saying your first name, cuz I've always called you Piper, and I hope I get your first name right in Armen. You've butchered it. Butchered. That's butchered. Awesome. How do we say it correctly?

Piper: It's Army nay. Army nay. You butchered

Robin: it again. So Piper's here. Piper runs Clutch Motorcycle training in Denver, Colorado. Denver, correct? Correct. Yeah. And last time we talked, it was welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. Last time we talked, we were discussing all things Ms. F and this time we can just kick back and talk about riding and having a good time. Yes. So yes, you're, you've been sitting there listening the whole time. I have any observation so far of the Tim Clarke conundrum

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

Travis: Awesome. Yeah, it's like reverse Wisconsin. It's

Piper: pretty bad. I started drinking, actually, what'd you guys say? Buena Vista. What'd you say?

Tim: Buena.

Travis: Buena Vista. Somebody, I think probably Robin. Yeah. He's from Ohio. He's from Ohio. No, I'll give that to

Piper: Travis. Travis. No, no. I think it was Robin. I think Robin said it.

Robin: I'll take that blame. I'll

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

Piper: is Buena Vista and it's okay. You're forgiven.

Travis: Bona Vista,

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

Piper: the street. I actually just wrote up to Lions. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that. It's a little town in between Boulder and Estes Parks. I gotta pull up maps. Somebody also butchered Estes.

Tim: Uh oh. Yeah, that would've be me. Estee. Yeah,

Piper: you said Estes. Which reminds me of Testes and I don't know, that just calms me out.

Travis: Well, that's a, that's it's a mile rocket company, right? Estee . Yes.

Piper: But Estes Parks, so on the way up to Estes Lions, it's this cute little mountain town. I just, I looked out to my right and there were a bunch of turkeys, wild turkeys and a. Oh wow. I have so many questions about how that happens. ,

Tim: that sounds very Wisconsin thing to run into. Yeah. That

Travis: just happens in my neighborhood.

Piper: Oh, I've never seen that before.

Robin: They do fly and they are both dangerous as hell and delicious.

Tim: They're mean.

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

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

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

Tim: Oh, dear God.

Travis: Good eats Robin. Doesn't stop for deer. Usually even on his

Tim: motorcycle. .

Robin: Yeah, I did. Especially the yearlings. Are you brand new to this world and you're suffering early? Yeah. Isn't

Piper: that what Venice? No, wait, venison. Venison. Yeah, venison. Yeah.

Robin: I should know this. So we gotta teach you the Midwest lingo and you've gotta teach us the mountainous Colorado lingo. I like it.

Piper: Let's do it.

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

Piper: 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? Yeah. . Who knows? Who

Travis: knows the right to say it? Kittens

Robin: Travis is a er. So it's Mount Annes. It's like Martin Lawrence.

Tim: No, I

Travis: only live, I lived there for eight years. I wasn't born up there.

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

Travis: Yeah, he, I dunno if you can see. Yeah, he's like

Piper: over here.

Tim: He up here. Right here. Travis and I are both from Michigan originally. Okay.

Piper: 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's that way. It has like top topography. No, that's a good

Piper: idea. I'll do that next

Tim: time. Just crumple the

Robin: half of it. 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 seven and 36. Yeah. And some good hiking. Probably some slow tacos. Slow service tacos. This

Piper: looks good. Lions, no Lions has a coffee shop. Oh, okay. That's pretty much it. Nice. That's that's it. That's just about. I'm gonna get kicked outta that town now that I said that.

Tim: Nobody's even, there's mud Hot Lions. There's an Oscar Blues.

Piper: Oscar Blues sold out y'all.

Travis: Are they AV InBev now? Or like Coors or something? I know. Something dumb

Piper: like that, and they're, it's just not the same. I don't know.

Robin: I am old with no idea what that is.

Tim: It's like

Travis: three 12 when three 12 sold out. Oh, it's a beer. It's a beer brand. Yeah.

Robin: Okay, gotcha. A mo of Silence for Austin Blues.

Piper: I know. It's just, it's just not the same.

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

Travis: Are you doing So this would be 1, 2, 3, fourth night.

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

Travis: night. So, okay, so the Mount Evans loop would be plus on the right of the Carbondale. Yeah.

Tim: All right. Yeah. And then Carbondale through Grand Mesa to Grand Junction would be day three. Okay. And then straight south out of Grand Junction down to, is this Nuk and Naar? Rita,

Robin: say it. Go Piper, make it happen. Did he get that right? He did not get that right. I didn't even

Tim: the, the map is, I didn't even know

Piper: those bla Yeah, I, I didn't even know those existed. So we'll just go with that. N

Tim: A T U R I T A Notar, Rita,

Piper: that's short four. You will get a speeding ticket if you go catchy three miles above the speed limit. That's what, that's short for .

Travis: Oh yeah. So the co the county Mounties in Colorado don't play around. No, they don't. They sit on the edge of town and tag everyone. Yep.

Robin: Do they tape a joint to the ticket that they give you? Okay, here's your ticket. And it comes to a complimentary mint. Actually now

Piper: shrooms nice. Joints are, joints are old news.

Travis: joints are like domestic beer now in Colorado. Yeah.

Tim: Stop being cool when your mom doing the joints. .

Robin: Can you do that in Colorado? Is it They go

Piper: for that next tourist joint. Shrooms, yeah. Yeah, they legalize. Yeah, they just legalize it. 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. . Yeah,

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

Robin: Sure, that makes sense.

Travis: Does it? There's no reciprocity with other state programs?

Piper: No. As long as you're an MSF coach, you can coach, but first you have to get most certifi.

Robin: Which is fine. I'm good for that. Every state I go to, I get my butt kicked around about, you gotta do this, you gotta 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 gonna 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 like

Travis: 2 50, 300 a day so far.

Robin: 2 50, 300. That's not too bad. Piper, have you done that kind of ride before?

Piper: Yeah, I have the Mr. Piper and I went to Rocky Mountain National Park and we pulled off about halfway and I was cursing at my motorcycle and my butt hurt.

Robin: What are you riding

Piper: these days? Right now I have an aplia rsv.

Tim: Ooh, that sounds fun. I approve .

Travis: Sounds like your butt hurts. No,

Piper: actually it was the dry great twin that. They

Travis: kicked my butt. Oh yeah. Those don't have a

Piper: lot of seat. No, that was terrible. I'll come up with the rsv. Yeah, I was

Travis: gonna say, if I had it out there with the NC up on those passes, I'll probably crank it out, like 30 horsepower. I can also

Piper: bring a, a training bike.

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

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

Tim: it .

Travis: Yeah. We'll have to stop three times a day to jet it. Well, we're

Tim: gonna do that. I'm gonna steer us over some heavy passes. Yeah. .

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

Piper: Yeah, let's do it.

Robin: It'll be fun. What are the other training bikes you have on site? Are they Lt

Piper: Ws? No, I have a, we have XT two 50 s and also little Vergos, which are the bane of my existence. I hate those damn things so much. But you have shorter riders and. It, it doesn't make any sense to me cuz you have teeny, tiny little hands and for whatever reason you, they can't get their hand around

Robin: the clutch and the Yeah. Everywhere. Right?

Piper: Yeah. 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.

Robin: So where

Tim: are we at? All right. Uh, looking south of Grand Junction down to Naar, Rita. I can't remember if that was a, uh, that was like, that was like if I was gonna try and get that all done and Yeah. It looks like I was thinking we were gonna get all of that done in one day. Yeah. So Carbondale, two Grand Junction and then Grand Junction down to Naar. Rita,

Piper: how do we feel about motorcycle camping? Why are we staying at hotels? What? Are you guys a bunch of old babies if

Tim: we all getting old? True.

Robin: Yeah. Depends on the temps, I guess. Mm-hmm. , if we split the equipment across the bikes. Yeah. On RSV four, it probably has enough. Yeah. Yeah. I need it too, Tim. Good thinking. Me. I've got one mo. I

Tim: 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. Yeah,

Travis: Tim has his, 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'm, I was gonna say, I want to get one of those. The goose. Do you guys see that? The goose pack?

Tim: No, no, I haven't seen that. The moto

Travis: camping, I forget the name of the company. So they deal with one man called the Goose, and then a two person called the Wingman, but it's like a old school canvas, waterproof canvas roll. So it's actually pretty big, but it's not that heavy. It has a sleeping pad and sleeping bag built in and then it's designed attached to your motorcycle and make a little canopy. Oh, nifty. Like you're, you're in and out. Destroy your gear. Yeah.

Piper: 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 hotel 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, the top beach towel sized wet wipes, so you don't even need a shower. The man

Travis: wipes or whatever. I don't what

Tim: 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. Yeah, I

Travis: was gonna say, I don't know, I think I'm the only one. I don't know if you have kids rna, but, did I say it right? Rma? You nailed it. You nailed it. I feel like you don't, you're not really truly a parent until you've done the baby White Bath, cuz it's just you're too tired to take a shower and it's been four days. Yep.

Piper: Travis, I have

Travis: five kids. I'm sorry. I know. I mean, congratulations. Thank you. That's amazing. Thank

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

Travis: I have twin three year old boys.

Piper: I'm also, sorry. Yeah. . But at least you just get it all done in one foul swoop. You just get the, just rip off the bandaid, the terrible twos and the awful terrible threes and the fucking fours and the it all over with

Travis: at once. Someone said the term teenagers and I was like, yeah, that's, oh, it's true. Fun.

Piper: I've now had both. I've had, they've all been three and they've three of the five or teenagers. Nice. What I have noticed is, however they are at three is how they will also be as a teenager.

Tim: Oh, really? ?

Robin: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Travis, you

Travis: Henry's gonna get in so many fights. Do you see this gray streak

Piper: right here? Yeah. This is what came of my first turning 14 .

Robin: That got rocks though. That's some rockstar noise right there.

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

Travis: but that's why I dye my hair because it distracts you from seeing all the gray. Yeah.

Tim: That's why I don't have hair . Um,

Robin: I'm out running mine. Yeah,

Tim: it's overrated.

Travis: Yeah. I think Robin's on course for this skull tattoo.

Robin: Ooh. At this point, We're rural right now. We haven't gone out to do anything social, which I'm dying to do. Been looking for this podcast. So my hair, I've been just like, I'm not gonna shave my head, not shave my face. This is the most grizzly, the bozo, the clown hair has got to go. .

Tim: It's tired. Decount Horseshoe.

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

Robin: is this? I don't understand it either. Like the wife is always like, Hey, it's fine. I like it. It's good and I'm That's true. Love. It gets done

Piper: in the dark, is what you're saying. It

Robin: gets done in the dark. How bad can I get with this? I'm just gonna shave my head, except I'm gonna leave the right side and I'm gonna use gel to put it out.

Tim: Liberty Spokes, maybe

Robin: you should shave. I'm gonna take you up on that one.

Piper: Whatever she wants. Do

Robin: whatever she wants. That's the thing right there. See, that's the stuff. It's like, make sure. Yeah. But okay. Back to the RSV four

Piper: motorcycles. Yes. Yes.

Robin: Your mileage on the RSV four. That's a big day. Back to back to back

Tim: to back. So

Travis: let's see, how much can you get outta the RSV for before you need

Piper: gas? From my house to the gas station.

Travis: Usually

Tim: pass anything but a gas station, right?

Robin: RSV

Piper: four. It's not, it's not great

Robin: tank capacity. I'm gonna

Travis: say they're thirsty with a small tank.

Piper: It's a pretty decent size tank. I had, um, a Ducati penal before that and that tank was much smaller and I got crappier mileage with that. So

Robin: 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. Yeah, I

Travis: can get about 150 even though my bike only has a 2.8 gallon gas tank. But the worst I mileage I've ever gotten out of it is like 65 Honda. This is 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. You have

Robin: a five, 4.9 gallon tank, so you've got just shy of five gallons on that bike, which means it's tuned for the track. Are you always riding in whoop ass

Piper: mode? I'm a motorcycle trainer. No, I'm always riding the . I'm always

Piper: riding at least the speed limit. I'm always abiding by the laws.

Robin: All of the laws in the places, all the laws with the ridings.

Piper: Yeah, that bike is, it's dangerous. I, yeah, that's danger

Tim: for. What's a power level on that thing? That that one's over a hundred horsepower, isn't it?

Travis: 5,000 uhhuh? It's pushing two, right? It's like 180, 1

Piper: 92. No, I think I at two 20 something.

Tim: Holy hell. What's the H two? What are you talking about? It's

Travis: like there, it's like in the low twos. It's the thing with the H two is how it makes a power or not how much power it

Robin: makes. 217. Yeah. Didn't I say two 20?

Piper: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on it. Damn.

Tim: I have never ridden a bike that with that much power on it. I don't even know if I have a car with

Travis: that much power. .

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

Tim: awesome. I've spent most of my time with ad 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 700 x

Robin: and he is still pulling

Tim: away in the twists. We are not racing You.

Piper: 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. I'll still be in

Piper: Lions when you guys, that's

Travis: how sweep I'll be. The street twin makes like 64 horsepower. So

Robin: got me beat. So wait, do you ever ride the RSV four in the BRC two? Yes I do. Are you doing exercise one on that? Yeah. Love it. That's awesome.

Piper: I don't feel like I can give these guys shit for not riding there. I love, that's my favorite. I love the BRC two cuz you know, these guys are like, oh, I don't need this shit. I could just test out. I wish somebody would just find, let me test out. I'm like, okay, great. So ride your bike in the class. Oh, I, 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. They may or may not have already heard this. So exercise one for the one day MSF course, which is for unlicensed writers that have experience and are just there to get through the process cuz they have that experience. Exercise one is there, there's one cone at the very end is the hardest thing that the MSF has ever put on paper. It's awesome. And it's designed to say you can ride, fuck off, go home, see you at the B R C.

Piper: I love it.

Robin: 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 mm-hmm. 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 R V four, which is a testament to this gal's. Hell yeah. That's peacefully. I don't think I could do that. Yeah, not yet. I, you know, it took a lot of.

Tim: It's a bitch. I did do that on the X Sr. 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 with K t m 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, no turning

Piper: radius. That's awesome. The first couple of times I had to ride out cuz I was gonna 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 screw, I yell. It's not good. It's really . It's not becoming So I just wrote out a couple times. But yeah, it's, it can do it. It's

Travis: all lean and no steer and it's gymnast that you put the

Piper: cowboy up, you know what I mean? You just cowgirl up. You just gotta do it and you can't. And, but I do love when they watch, I love when they watch the demo, the jaw drops. That's a good, oh yeah. There's a lot of rubbing of the eyebrows.

Robin: God. God, that is a really hard exercise. It is. It's fun. Where are we at?

Tim: All right, we're looking from Naar Rita coming back into more of the tourist eras 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 wanna do it on a faster funner bike. Nice. 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 one? 6, 1 41 60. It doesn't matter how you zoom the line obscures the number, so I don't know how fucking road this is.

Robin: One 40 something. Yeah, they put the line, they should put that above the line. I don't even know if that's

Tim: possible. The

Travis: rider GPS

Tim: overlay. 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 gonna be a very full day. Yeah. That's pretty fun. That's a

Travis: stretch. What's the, what's, if you hover over the, the stays and it gives you the mileage points on the 9 52 is where we're altitude map.

Tim: So it's 9 53 for the end point on there.

Robin: 49, so seven 50? Yeah. To nine 50.

Tim: The two 50. Okay. That's not bad. It's not bad. It's just, it's, there's a lot of twist

Travis: on that one. Yeah. There's a lot of elevation between those two points. a lot of up and down. Yeah. Oh

Tim: yeah. Isn't that kinda the point? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. The day after that, we're heading back up north, back towards Montrose and hitting the Black Canyon in the Gunnison because that road is just a beautiful road. Somewhere over a thousand foot drop cliff. Nice. So, uh, just have us run out to the end point and back. This is just tourist 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. How hot were they at the, because it's, do

Robin: you smell something on? Oh

Tim: 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 'em right away because you don't have engine braking room. Yeah. No engine braking on that. BMW seven. There was like that one

Travis: time in trip seven s where I got. I lost you guys. Like I made the wrong term when I was riding sweep, and then I caught up and then my brakes were just like, like I, I poured water outta 'em and just, just, it just instant

Robin: steam the water never even touched the disc. It

Travis: just, those brakes must have been 400

Robin: degrees. That's the same instant where I think before you got there, we were standing there kind of wondering, taking a break, and all of a sudden outta nowhere we hear pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, , and it, it was a Lamborghini, a Coney, a completely kitted out Jeep A What's the one? It was a B Bugatti. A Bugatti. And it was like seven luxurious, like sports cars in the middle of the forest on a rural road, like motor trend just drove by

Tim: in

Travis: Appalachia

Robin: somewhere. Yeah, middle of Appal.

Piper: I, I always love when people come to class and we ask them the question like, what kind of motorcycle do you wanna ride? And how many times people have said Bugatti instead of Bugatti .

Tim: Oh, funny. It's Italian. It's close enough.

Piper: Oh yeah. And then they give themselves a seven on the, uh, motorcycle on the knowledge. I love that.

Travis: Oh yeah. . Yeah. That V12 motorcycle. I used

Tim: to think I was a fast rider until I did a charity Supermoto race. Mm-hmm. and 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 then I'm following him and coming into a corner and, oh, that's a little hot. Then I realized he's sliding both tires and I said, no, I am not doing that shit. ,

Robin: you said this on a previous episode. We were caping it. He said, two-wheel slide. That's a two-wheel slide. I don't wanna do a two-wheel slide . And then you slowed way down.

Tim: I will not stay up. If I slide two wheels it, 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. First level intermediate. So novice, first level, intermediate, second level, intermediate advanced contention. My best riding is first level intermediate. That's all I. And I'm okay with it would be the

Piper: water boy. I'd be the water boy. ,

Robin: have you done a track day on that machine yet? No,

Piper: not on that one.

Robin: Do you guys have a circuit

Piper: near you? We, yeah, we do. We have Pikes Peak Raceway, and then there's some other crappy one closer to us in Kono.

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

Piper: Yeah. And I won't do it,

Robin: but Black Hawk Farms in Wisconsin's kinda like that. Yeah. Um, yeah,

Tim: that's cool. Oh, I totally wanna take the mini bikes out to Black Hawk the monkey. Oh yeah. I'll take the t

Robin: w It'll be fun in its current condition.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah. They're not gonna let you in with it dripping as much as it does

Robin: tape. Tape it. Just tape over it.

Tim: tape it.

Travis: It's just a Scott oiler. It's

Tim: Yeah. You brought

Robin: a Scott Oiler to a track day. Well,

Travis: well, I don't want my train to my chain to thick. What chain? Why is there an ex, why is there an exclamation point, Tim?

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, the canyon and then we go back out and double back and take this north road because it's beautiful. Yeah. I got in the ridge. 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. Nice. 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. Nice. So from there we were planning on staying in Gunnison for the night. That's day five hotel.

Robin: I've been there. I swear

Tim: I've been there. Yeah. It's fifties. A fairly common road

Travis: to go through. What's that line that's going south though? From the big

Robin: lake there? Yeah, pull the dude

Tim: over. 1 49 here. Yeah.

Robin: No, one 14.

Tim: That's, I think it's one

Travis: 14. Oh yeah. So there's the big, there's the big lake and then the red line goes south. What's that? It's got a

Robin: limit. It stops. Check it out. Go to the very end of that, it one

Tim: 14 stops. But it doesn't mean that it's

Travis: dirt. No, to to On the route. On your planned route. Yeah. That, yeah, that

Tim: line. What's that? Yeah, that's 26. That's coming north from South Fork. Oh,

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

Tim: yeah, that's the inroad. And then the whole Gunnison is a out and back two double backs.

Travis: Okay.

Robin: Yeah. Your map guidance is a lot like your diagrams during those vol. The uh, yeah,

Tim: intentionally

Robin: obscure. So how far through, where are we at now? How far have we gone?

Tim: This is day five. This. 1246. This is doing good man. Outta Afghanistan. We're heading north. We're gonna take, I believe this is Independence Pass. Okay. Cottonwood Pass. Sorry, . Nice. Independence

Travis: is 70. I was gonna say, it looked, the line when you zoomed out the line just looked extra thick cuz it double backs on itself so

Tim: much. Yeah, so you can see we've got a couple, uh, double hair pins 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 hair pin. So yeah, that brings us into one of Vista and then heading south out of there and rejoining Highway 50 because this is gonna be closing, we're heading back towards civilization. So I was gonna bring us over into Canyon City or Canyon City. Canyon City Royal. 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. A

Travis: fun ni nuclear. I'm gonna start saying that out. Wig A funicular is like the gear train cars that go up and down hills. Yes it is. We

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

Tim: Hmm. Great idea.

Robin: You

Tim: have a type? Yeah. . Do you have someone we need to visit? .

Piper: I mean they have a wild horse program there. Really? It is really cool. Yeah. They u they almost said they use the inmates cuz they

Travis: do, they feed the prisoners to the wild

Tim: horses. I'm gonna, could I saddle up a tax

Piper: offender? ? Yes. They literally put them on these horses and just. Tie them to the saddles until the horse is

Robin: broken. I never knew that Colorado and Texas had so much in common. They're like twins.

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

Piper: It's a nice cheap spot, especially on my Rs before you guys might be bail me

Tim: out. Yeah, it looks like if we make it all the way back to Colorado Springs, that takes us, that's a two 50 from Gunni

Travis: in

Tim: back in, that's 250 miles. That 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 gonna have to be our lookout guide. Any observation 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.

Piper: Yes. Just make sure it's not over Labor Day weekend, cuz that is a crazy time. Ah, in Colorado.

Tim: That's a good point.

Travis: Had to be like second, third week of September. Yeah, that looks like a good time. When does the snow start happening up?

Piper: 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. Oh, you're a Libra. Oh, here we go. .

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

Robin: okay. Yeah. Maybe we'll do a September, we'll just do a bounceback. We'll ride to Chicago, do some riding. Head back to the rig. But I know Maggie's gonna wanna do this one too. She's gonna wanna be on, it's Drew Tripler and RSV four 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. Produce costs a little bit for hotel stays, but if we camp, that drops the price a lot. What about

Piper: vrbo? Os? Vrbo, as they say,

Tim: I have not really done that.

Piper: 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.

Robin: Is this

Tim: like a hostel?

Travis: No, vrbo. It's Airbnb, but Bougier, I don't know. I see the commercial. They're

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

Travis: Right. You are telling me this tech startup has problems with their operations. They haven't thought things through all the way And they don't keeping a close eye on stuff. No, no. No way. They

Tim: don't. Yeah. Oh, you mean they don't have staff to authenticate

Robin: the helmet company that. Got all the sponsored funds and then just hookers and blow all day. Yeah.

Tim: Pretty much.

Robin: and the money was gone.

Tim: Was that one of those heads up display companies? Yeah. And they got off Scott Creek. There was no guarantee of in rewards on your investment or whatever it was. Yeah. You're blowing

Piper: my cover

Tim: from my clothing line. . . But I was gonna do,

Piper: that's exactly what I was gonna do. Nothing has happened besides the fact that I now pay the federal government just to hold that

Robin: name. Yeah. 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 fr through armor for lady riders who are truly kicking ass. There's just too much. Oh, you're a girl. Here you go.

Travis: Turquoise pink. This one has skulls, but they have flowers on 'em

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

Piper: Colorado. I got you that in the shrooms. We Right. We'll do this on shrooms. How about that? ? .

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

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

Travis: be like, it's just like Z in the yard. A motorcycle maintenance, man. Oh man. I don't know. I should just start a fun to get me a new motorcycle. This

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

Robin: it can't be a standard

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

Robin: So we, it needs to be some kind of specialty super clover. I think that this route should stay intact exactly as is, but if we wanna 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.

Tim: Or intermission like

Travis: around Buena Vista around, was it Montrose? Boonie.

Tim: Vdi.

Travis: Yeah. Like those are the two spots. It looks like you could do a lot of this still, or like Tim was saying, just stay more toward the north.

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

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

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

Piper: called the Great Wolf Lodge in Colorado Springs and it, I think they have Groupon things all the time.

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

Piper: 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 my 2 cents.

Robin: That's a good concept. I

Piper: like it. You need a woman on this podcast

Robin: regularly. . That's actually gonna be the other part of the theme of this year. ? No, I'm going girl. Boy, girl, boy. Every well, next interview is gonna be with Dale Ho. Cool. But I did think about making it like a female guest every episode. And then I was just, eh, we'll go back and forth. Maybe I'll bow out

Piper: for episode or maybe just a, maybe just an additional

Tim: host is all, are you volunteering

Travis: RNA Saying that she wants the t r O podcast to be for hosted and she wants to be part of it. .

Tim: She wants in. You

Piper: guys just asked me how much horsepower my motorcycle has and I couldn't tell you. I also couldn't. But

Robin: still, you've brought so much to this episode. Yes.

Piper: 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

Robin: flair in there. It helps when there's a, 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 wanna discuss? Nude

Tim: hot springs. That'd be north of Salida. We have

Robin: that 10 minutes from us. Mount

Tim: Princeton Hot Springs.

Piper: Yeah, after 7:00 PM It's clothing optional. . I actually dunno if that's true

Tim: clothing optional now, but I'm gonna find out. They just don't know until we show up. Always test the

Robin: waters,

Tim: pun

Travis: intended. So you have to like, you have to creep up on the microphone and do a little, uh, vocal fry when you say that. And on that

Robin: note, I want to wholeheartedly thank you so much Arm 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. Aay operates K Clutch Motorcycle School in

Piper: Loveland, Colorado. You are nailing it. Rob,

Travis: do you know, is Harley bringing in their Indian made small displacement for training?

Piper: Who? 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. Ah. The three day thing. Oh, that's

Robin: great. I love that.

Piper: Yeah. Except that when they found that out, they decided to cut us off. Oh no. Yeah, so we don't, we're not gonna get the new bikes, but the new bikes that they're talking about are, I think electric.

Travis: Oh, wow. Woogie. Woogie,

Tim: woogie. I thought it'd be interesting.

Travis: I did see a thing that, whatever Jorgen Schork, the guy that's in charge of Harley now, yeah. His vision for the next 30 years is that Harley will eventually be all electric. Yeah.

Robin: Jorgen Schork.

Tim: He's got

Travis: some Scandinavian name. I don't know. Okay. ,

Piper: can you come up with something for me? Cause I actually love that. That's

Robin: great. Yeah. 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 gonna try to get 12 done this year. We're gonna have one episode for every month this year, not six 12. So with that, for tro.bike, I'm Robin Dean. I'm

Tim: Travis Burleson. Now. I'm Tim Clarke.

Piper: And I'm Arm a Piper.

Robin: Yes. Thank you for being here. Safe. Army. Nay.

Tim: You've butchered

Piper: it. Arm A. You nailed it. Army Nay. You've butchered it. Arm A. You nailed it. Army Nay. You've butchered it. Arm A. 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.