Travis: Dean. Burleson. Clark. Podcast.

Robin: We're an ever-developing online venue for responsibly-spirited, oh wait, who is it? Wait. We're an ever-developed, we're an ever-developed, oh shit.

Travis: It's teasing of spring, like you get those days where it smells like spring and the snow is melting and you can smell, you can smell the earth in the air and then it snows again. And last minute I found this Toyota Corolla base model with a manual for sale and I went out and tested her over it and it was nice, low miles, good price, like 34,000 miles for like 18 grand, 2019, so it's like not that old, not that many miles, it's a Toyota, gotta be reliable. Stick shift. It's a stick though, which is great. I call it the Canola because it's Canadian and bland and useful. A lovely. Yeah. But there's a couple of things I missed before I bought it that I don't know, you know, you know how you get. You get excited to buy a new toy because it was wintertime, test drive, I didn't even think to test the AC and then it does have an aftermarket Canadian brand remote starter in it, which it did not come with a remote, but I bought, I figured it out and I bought the remote from Canada for like 50 bucks and it works. The remote starter works and it gives me, gives me, you know, door locks and stuff. But then I was like, oh, can I like remote start it with the AC on? Like will it keep the AC on if it's on when I turn it off and then, you know, can I remote start it with the AC? And I was like, where's the AC button? So I'll have to deal with that. Good thing it's black. So that's been my thing. I need to put a new tire on the, uh, new rear on the motorcycle when it warms up. But other than that, it's going all right. Speaking of motorcycles, it's supposed to be a motorcycle podcast, not a track.

Robin: How long we've been recording. Yeah. How long have we been recording?

Travis: We just, we just, I think, uh, I think Tim's got the most exciting motorcycle news. The word motorcycle.

Tim: I got my monkey. Yeah. He showed up and is in the garage and I have got the suspension swapped out and I have ridden it so far. Two miles. Whoa. Now, yes, it got warm enough and the roads at least somewhat clear assault for a while there that I felt safe enough to take it out.

Travis: You mean you don't want to like salt rust your brand new bike right away?

Tim: Yeah.

Robin: I'd probably rather not just dip it in RCF, whatever that's called.

Tim: I think this thing is going to be fun. Is the TW running? Cause that's what the TW is for. No, it is. The TW is not running. Did you slap anything on it? I did put the ignition coil on the thing.

Robin: Dead battery.

Tim: And tried to run it. Battery was fine. I even put a jumper on the battery to boost it. And I spun that motor a good, I don't know, four dozen rotations and it just chug, chug, chug. Did you do the choke? Well, you know, I actually at one point had to check and it found out, you know, the first couple of times I tried to start it, it was empty of gas, which was funny because when I picked the bike up, the gas tank was full.

Travis: Speaking of leaky gas.

Tim: So it, it might be, you know, I forgot that it had a choke, so I maybe I can need to go back out and try it again.

Robin: Yeah, actually those will not start cold. I promise you that.

Travis: Okay. So did you confirm that there is spark? Did you do the like crank it with the spark plug out and down?

Tim: No, I didn't do that. So yeah, just a couple of steps that I need to do. I just, you know, we'd rather play with your monkey. Yeah. You know, it's 40 degrees out at best in the, at the peak.

Robin: For the listeners, unbeknownst to Tim, this bike has always from the start in my mind been intended to be a community get-together hangout project that we build and make happen. But I just decided not to tell Tim that because I myself didn't know either of what was going to be arriving at his door.

Travis: It is an X MSF TW 200 and it's an 89?

Robin: 88. Yeah. So it's, it's a shoe. It's a, Oh, I'm sorry. It's yeah. It's a drum shoe break. So that's 88, 89.

Tim: Yeah. Drum front and drum back.

Robin: When the members of Rush had mullets, but wore suits.

Travis: The suit mullet style. That's classic. Coming back.

Tim: Yeah. That bike is just sitting out in the porch right now. It's covered. It's got plastic underneath it and we'll get to it. We'll get to it. It'll happen. We'll deal with it. Eventually. I would love to get the thing running and ride it around. Yeah.

Travis: Well, how's that do a garage night?

Robin: Yeah. So, so that bike will not start. It's got two choke levels. Okay. Just so you know, it's got a full out and a clicking halfway in. All right. It will not start cold. It's not going to happen.

Tim: Okay.

Robin: Full choke, full choke, a good number of revolutions with fuel and oil. It'll, it'll eventually get going. Assuming the spark and ether maybe and a hairdryer and another bike. So it's a, it's gotta be full choke out. Choke is, uh, at the carbs on the left hand side. It's a, it's an outward dial from the plunger.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: Okay.

Tim: Okay.

Robin: All right. And it's been a while. We choke the living shit out of those bikes on the ranges. We choke them for about 15 minutes while we're setting up the range and the students are still showing up. We come back and they sound like they're about to explode.

Travis: Then just a cloud of black smoke hanging around.

Robin: You can hear it.

Travis: They're all.

Robin: So we re when we returned to the bikes, all you hear is like from every single bike, it's super rich and revving up.

Tim: Yeah. Oh, that, that I'm sure that's great for the motor.

Robin: Hey, what did, what did we spend on this thing? We spent your happiness on every last remaining drop.

Travis: That sounds like the snow, the snow, the snow blower only runs with a choke half on. And then like, as it kind of like the heat and it kind of ebbs and flows, you got to like click the choke, like a quarter turn one way or the other. Small displacement engines are hilarious. Don't run forever. Kind of.

Tim: I will, you know, pull the carb and clean it and maybe up jet it, richening it up off the bat. Maybe we can. Does anyone do a big bore kit for a TW maybe for 30? Probably. I bet. I bet they do. Um, that seems like everything's got a big bore kit in the, in the thumper market.

Travis: I think we should put a turbo on it or just put a, uh, put a Honda liquid cooled 300 motor in it.

Robin: I mean, it is an open, does it have an underbar or does it have a, is it a, it's a double cradle. Yeah.

Travis: So you can put anything that'll fit in there.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: Duct tape fixes all. Yeah. And you had to do the back to the monkey. You had to do the suspension twice, right?

Tim: Yes, I did. I thought when I was homesick, I would have plenty of time to work on the suspension. Turns out working on suspension when you have a fever is probably a poor choice. I like seriously, like I don't know what in the world I was thinking. I did not clamp the stanchion properly. Just put it straight in the vice. Yeah, pretty much. Uh, like wrapped, uh, wrapped like an old, uh, inner tube from a motorcycle tube, wrapped that around it a couple of times and then clamped it and think thinking like, okay, so the reason, the reason you've got to clamp this thing as much as you do in the first place is the fact that the damper rod bolt in the bottom of the fork, you can access it through the wheel carrier assembly. But you actually can't remove it with that assembly in place. So you need to spin off the, you know, the brake caliper mount wheel carrier hunk at the bottom of the fork. You've got to pull that off.

Travis: Yeah. So it's the upside down. It's an upside down fork. So, yep.

Tim: Yeah. So the previous ones that I've done this on are bigger bike ones. You know, I've done the DRZ, I've done the Africa twin. Those you'd never had to take those off. You could pull the damper assembly or whatever out from the bottom without having to screw with this. But because this thing is such a small diameter beast, they just couldn't make it work mechanically. The other problem is that Honda put a shit load of threadlock on these things. Threadlocker red? Threadlock red. Yeah. So it's put a torch on it or put, in my case, I put the heat gun on it for minutes and minutes and minutes and minutes. I basically got this thing up to, up to temperature. You could boil water off it, you know, get above 220 in order to melt this down.

Travis: And not hot enough for the paint to start smoking, but.

Tim: And like, and it still took a stupid amount of force. I couldn't understand what was going on. And then I, then it moved and I looked and I realized I just spun it in the clamp on the stanchion and just gouged the shit out of the stanchion. So I had to order a new fork leg entirely because I ruined that.

Travis: Which probably only comes with the wheel carrier on it, right?

Tim: Yes. So I, yeah, I, so I got a hold of the, the specialized tool that actually, um, has pins that drop in the damper rod or the damping oil, damping passage holes on the stanchion. And that's what keeps it from rotating when you clamp it. Ah, and even then after the whole, like hitting it with heat and finally getting the thing to break loose and spin, and I'm like spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning this thing off and it's not coming off. And I'm looking at it like, how is this? It's just not still threaded. What is going on? But it was actually the thread locker. There was so much there that it was holding it on with suction that I had to pull, spin and pull really hard to get this thing to actually finally pop off.

Robin: Yeah. Does that stuff rubberize like when it gets hot? Yeah. Right.

Tim: Yeah. It basically like, yeah, it's not thread locked, but now it is just vacuum locking. It's gooed together. It's just a gasket maker, basically.

Robin: So then as you're removing, as you're pulling that thing apart, it's actually rolling in on top of itself and just getting thicker inside a spot. That's got to be.

Tim: Yeah. You need to continuously add heat to the thing to get it to pull off. So yeah, these little forks were more work than anything I've ever pulled apart. Yeah. So ended up, you know, okay. Finally, you know, with a clear head, I'm doing this right. Got them apart, got them put back together. Got, got the bike down the street and it feels good.

Travis: The most complicated bike Tim's ever worked on is 125 CC mini bike. That is currently in his pocket, that tiny little thing, you know, clutch change on the side of the road, on a, whatever, on a DRZ, no problem.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, to put the thing in perspective is I outweigh this thing by 40 pounds. When you get on it, more than doubles. Yes. So I am exceeding the weight rating of this bike. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I am exceeding the gross vehicle recommended rate weight. So yeah, that's been, that was quite a challenge. Um, but other than that, I'm not doing much to the thing. I swapped out the, the brake and clutch lever. Cause I always hate the really long ones with the balls on the end. The gun savers. Yeah. I just got some cheapos. Now the $30 off of Amazon.

Travis: Yeah. The, the shorty adjustable ones.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah. In reality, I just put them out maximum distance and that's where they live. So now it's a racing monkey. Yeah. So I would love to throw on taller hand. Um, I'd like to put on taller handlebars, but I think that I need the cables, the extended cables and, uh, and, uh, brake line and wires might not have to do the wires. I think there's enough room for the wires, but I'll have to find out.

Robin: Get a stretch swing arm, extended race, extended front end and Ape hangers.

Tim: No.

Robin: Monkey chopper. No.

Tim: Yeah. Like I need, I'm thinking more scrambler than chopper.

Robin: I'm still developing this. I'm, this is going to grow this whole idea. See if you can fasten it into a three wheeler by not tandem three wheeler, or would that be tandem? Basically get a ruckus and then fuse the front end of a ruckus to the, the pack to the swing arm of it. So you've got a two seater, like a tandem bicycle. Oh, so in line with extended rake angle, Ape hangers and a stretch swing arm, and then slap a turbo on that baby. And you've got yourself some product.

Travis: How close, how close are the handlebars to your knees? Can you go full lock without having to spread your legs apart? Can you steer with your knees?

Tim: Not really. Okay. No, I cannot go full lock without the handlebars hitting my knee. And I can't really steer it with my knees because my knees are a little above the line of the tank. Can you ride it like a longboard? No, no, I would not. But it's, you know, it's a scoot all the way back on the seat and push with the feet. So it's not too bad. And it, it basically, it rides like a scooter.

Travis: I mean, I don't know. You said you've only put two miles on it, but I imagine if you scoot back on it, it just will wheelie itself anytime you want it to.

Tim: Is it a four speed? It's a five speed. The new one's got the extra gear.

Travis: Nice. So in case you need to slow down at 50 miles an hour, because I imagine it's like fourth gear, fifth gear.

Tim: I don't have enough power to push five gears. I actually think they did redo the ratios on it a little bit when they added the fifth gear so that they actually, uh, made both ends a little easier to deal with.

Travis: Oh, okay. So it's a really automatic wheel wheelies in first gear. Yeah. Making it's like two miles an hour and it's like, yeah.

Tim: So yeah, of course I like, I stalled it down at the corner because I wasn't quite sure where the engagement was.

Travis: Oh, anytime, anytime you get on a new bike or, I mean, when I test rode, when I test drove the Corolla, yeah, I stalled it pulling it out of the parking lot because I haven't driven it before.

Robin: How high is the rise on that, that, uh, clutch pedal and the Corolla? Like how much do you have to lift your leg up?

Travis: It's surprisingly a lot. Like the clutch is super light and it moves a lot.

Tim: It's so weird.

Travis: Um, and too, like the motor isn't as like torquey and isn't as like heavy. Like it doesn't, it feels like it doesn't have as much rotating mass as the Suzuki did. But the motor is more revvier. So you really have to like rev it up and slip the clutch more to get away from the start. Like you can't, you can't just kind of like chug away. Like you had to be up like 2000 RPM. Yeah.

Robin: I had a 1990 Corolla, same car, but it was just constantly.

Travis: I think more power than the two liter my Suzuki did, but yeah, it's just, it's a way different, way different animal. It's all up high.

Robin: So then back to the monkey stuff. I mean, the SCR is just sitting there like a perfectly intact ready bike for the season. Oh yeah.

Tim: Yeah.

Robin: The XSR. That's what I said. Wait a minute. Oh my goodness. I may have really messed this up. So among the MSF instructors, Harley has the most power in the world, but Harley has come out with a new Tim, what is your bike? Like the Yemi?

Tim: It is the XSR 700.

Robin: I've got work to do. Harley came out with a new bike. That is a standard posture bike using tech from like whenever, way back when.

Tim: Wait, wait, you mean Benelli came out with a bike?

Travis: Yeah. It's like, it's like one of their, it's like it's their Indian. It's like their Indian division. It's like just one of the smallest placement bikes from, from Asia that they aren't actually going to sell here, but it's just for their training courses. The, no, the SCR is the Yamaha Bolt Scrambler. The SCR 900 is the Yamaha Bolt Scrambler.

Tim: I'm not necessarily wrong. We're not wrong. Those letters do go with the Yamaha.

Travis: And there, and you said SCR 900, which is the right, or 950, whatever.

Robin: And I remember that the Bolt was just kind of a painful gas tank. I remember Trev, you sat on one.

Travis: I mean, it was a Sportster clone by Yamaha.

Tim: Well, I, I think I remember seeing that they were basically rebadging a Benelli. Okay. So Benelli, how do you spell Benelli? B-I-N-E-L-L-I.

Travis: B-E-N-E-L-L-I. Oh, thank you. Yep. Now here's a visor down article about it.

Tim: That's your standard international company these days.

Travis: Yeah. I don't even see dealers. I'm trying to see how, how do you buy one of these Benelli motorcycles?

Robin: You go to a Harley dealership.

Travis: Well, that was the thing too, is like, I think the, those small displacement ones, I, I can't find the article now, but there was, that they're gonna, they're gonna, you know, have those in like the Indian market and the South Asian market, but they're not going to sell them in the United States, but they will have some just for the training courses.

Tim: Okay. I am looking at their dealer distributor network now, and it looks like you can actually get them over in Reedsburg at, uh, that's, what is that? Not Mad City. It's Vitesnick. Yes.

Travis: It's, uh, no, Vitesnick is in Richland Center. This is Jay's Power Center.

Tim: Uh, yes, yes. So yeah, they've actually got a nationwide network of people dealing these now.

Robin: Is it the same bike minus the Harley badge on it?

Travis: No, these are the Benelli brand things. I mean, it's probably, I think it's the same motor in the, like the 500 that they're talking about. That's going to go in the Harleys. Nice.

Tim: So yeah, we're looking at, uh, two dealers in Wisconsin, four in the Chicago area. So they are around, but it's interesting. I have not seen them in person yet.

Robin: Hey, you know who we do have met in person? His name is Dale Hoke and he's a Wisconsin native who's traveled all over the United States on his motorcycle. And he runs driplessroadsusa.com and Maggie Dean is interviewing him. Let's go to the interview.

Maggie: I'm here with Dale Hoke of Driftless Roads USA. So thank you for spending some time with us today. Let's jump right in. How did you get interested in motorcycle touring?

Dale: Been around motorcycles most of my life and not really done more than just riding around town or short trips here and there. And, um, started reading about the transamerica trail and, uh, some of the big trips to Alaska and places like that and adventure rider magazine or the website. And it's got me interested in that kind of riding more and more longer trips and different kind of trips. And of course I had the wrong bike at that time. So I had to change bikes and get a different kind of bike. I had to get a touring bike versus just a street bike. And, um, so that's kind of, it's kind of evolved. I guess it's gone from, um, just reading more about what people are doing and finding more about what they're doing and sounds like fun. So that's kind of what got us going.

Maggie: Tell us about the most memorable ride you've taken in the U S and what made it special.

Dale: The probably the one that stands out the most, um, is, uh, we had a two day ride we took and, uh, we were in Montana and we started in Missoula, Montana, and we wrote, uh, to Moscow, Idaho and back. And, and it was over two days. And the thing that was really neat about that was all the different roads we took. And, uh, there was some gravel. Um, we, there's a really neat road that starts in St. Regis, Montana, and it's about 10 miles of gravel and you're climbing up over the mountains and you get to the top of the mountain and you cross into Idaho and it becomes paved. And so it's a long downhill paved, and I don't know why it's even paved. It's way out of the end of a, you know, of a, of a road, but it's beautifully paved the just going down this great curvy road, uh, you know, just no traffic at all. And, uh, that was a great road, great ride. And we got down, um, to the bottom of that road and we joined what's called the St. Joe scenic byway. And that follows St. Joe river into, um, St. Marie's, Idaho. And that was the same thing, just constantly whining back and forth. Not as, not as steep, uh, but, but whining. And at one point, um, there was an Osprey that was fishing. So the Osprey was gliding above the river that we were paralleling. And we were about the same height altitude wise as the Osprey because what the river was down below us. So that was really a neat thing. Um, that, that same trip, we've hit so many different great roads. There's a great road outside of Lewiston called the grand staircase. It's the old highway into Lewiston, uh, Idaho. It's just a crazy curvy thing. Um, there's a road called the Winchester grade, which is an awesome road. It's a little bit rough, but, um, it is paved and it's really curvy. It goes into Winchester, Idaho. And then we took another couple of back roads and hit some gravel going into a town called Kuskia. And, uh, you know, it was a really neat ride. We're on the gravel road. All of a sudden the Valley drops off below us and you're on this. It's a pretty nice gravel road, but the Valley is down below. And it was, you want to keep your eyes on the road because you don't want to be going off the side because there's no, no guardrail. And then the finished up was the Lolo highway. So from Kuskia took the Lolo highway, which is a famous, you know, a hundred miles and nine, a hundred miles of curves the whole way back and back up over the mountain pass and all that stuff. So that's one of our favorite rides of all time. I mean, you know, we've done a lot of the. You know, like the bear tooth and glacier and the black Hills and Yellowstone, those are all great. And we love those too, but this to me stands out. And it, to me, it's kind of a hidden gem because I don't think most, I think people might ride one or two of those roads, but to put them all together, one at a time is just on and on and on. Just, just great writing. And that was probably our favorite of all time.

Maggie: That sounds amazing.

Dale: Yeah.

Maggie: Is that route on the site?

Dale: It is on our site. It's called the Missoula, Moscow route, and we call it a dual sport ride because of the two gravel stretches in it. And there's really, you can get around the second gravel stretch. You can make it a little bit longer and go around the gravel stretch that takes you to Kuskia. You take you up and then to Kamiya and then down to Kuskia. But to get to the first Gold Rush road or Gold Creek road, there's no way to go past. It's like 10 miles of gravel and there's no way around that really to get to that part. And that's, what's so weird about it. You can go out of St. Marie's, Idaho on the St. Joe byway and it'll take you up to there, but then you, you know, you got to turn around and come back or else you got to go on the gravel to get into St. Marie's. So, you know, most people probably will never take that ride if they don't want to go on some gravel. And I will say, if you do take that ride, that stretch between St. Marie's and St. Marie's is, it's probably a hundred miles or so. So keep an eye on your gas. There's a, there's a gas station along the way in a town called Avery, but it's a small fishing town. You don't know what's going to be open if they're going to have gas. And, you know, we, we don't, we can't keep tabs on that stuff. So I'd make sure you've got a full tank of gas before you start out. If you're not going to take that route.

Maggie: Pro tip.

Dale: Yeah.

Maggie: What inspired you to create Driftless Roads and the website?

Dale: Well, we, you know, as we got more and more into riding and wanted to take some longer trips, we were planning for one trip in particular. We were going to start in, at my dad's place in Wisconsin, in southwest corner, Wisconsin. And we wanted to ride up to Red Wing, Minnesota. And so we were looking for, and we just didn't want to ride on the river road. The Great River Road is up the Mississippi the whole way on both sides. And we don't, we wanted to hit some of that, but we wanted to hit some side roads as well. And so we were researching it and trying to see, well, what roads look fun. And, and there really was no resources out there. There was a couple websites or like best roads here and there, but nothing that really fit the bill. So we just started kind of looking around and putting our, our own route together. This was the day before I even had a GPS. We're using note cards. And I wrote the note cards on the back of a note cards, wrote the directions on them. I gave them to my wife and, and we didn't have a communicator. And so she's tapping me on the shoulder, turn here, turn there. Which was interesting in other respects as well. But, you know, we really never found any good resources. And, and we were not as familiar with that part of the, of the country either. And the further we went, the more, more and more, we were just blown away by the great scenery and great roads. And so, you know, we didn't have the resources. We, we found the great roads. We said, well, we could be a resource. We could put some rides together. And I sat down one winter, I think it was 2017 in the winter time. And I said, I'm just going to put a route, a one-day route and all over the Driftless area. So we searched where the boundaries were and started with some of the roads I knew and kind of grew from there and there. And that's where it was. It was like, there was not a lot of resources and the resources we had that we found. And this is still true pretty much today. The resources you find out there will just highlight this is a fun road or that's a fun road. And it's still up to the rider to put a whole ride together. And so, what we want to do is we want to put a whole ride together for a whole day. You can start your day and ride this thing. You can end up where you started or you can, you know, you can take part of this right route and ride part of it. You can add another part and you can end up where you want to go. But our rides are mostly about riding. They're not about going from A to B, you know. Anybody can go from A to B and, you know, on Google or Apple Maps or their phone or whatever. And ours are more than that. They're trying to find all the fun roads and we'll take you down some roads that, you know, you might be in that area and you've never been on before because you just never had a need to take them. So, you know, we didn't find any resources. That was part of it. You know, we didn't have a lot of time. And so with not having a lot of time, we wanted to spend as much time on as many fun roads as we can. We just didn't want to say, oh, let's just find this one fun road, then ride it and then come home. We wanted to find a bunch of fun roads. And so we spent a lot of time planning our rides and planning our routes, just trying to maximize the fun roads. And sometimes it's difficult because you're in an area where there's so many great roads and trying to pick one or pick two and not have to double back. And we try to make it so that the routes don't double back on the same road. You're not crossing over routes. You're not confused. You get to intersection and you can see the route going different ways, trying to do things like that. So if you look at the details, some of our maps, you'll see it's just like crazy squiggly zigzags all over. You're like, why would you do this? And the reason is just it looks like a fun road. And, you know, we've ridden so many of them. They are fun roads. And so that's how we got started. And we wanted to see what people enjoy this. And we actually had to put up on our website, create a little website and we put them out for free. And so it was great that they were free, but we really didn't, we didn't have a way to see if anybody was even getting them and downloading them. So it was all for free. So there's no tracking mechanism. So then we went, we've got a new website and then we started charging a little bit. And we said, well, if you charge them and nobody buys them, they will know that nobody's interested in them. And, you know, people bought them and we started selling more and more. And then we started going to events and meeting more people and going to rallies and just get togethers. And the more people heard about it, the more people liked it. And, you know, it's one of those things that if you're looking for something to, if you're looking for something like this, it fits a bill. If you're making your own routes, then, you know, that's fine too. It doesn't matter. But, but that's how it was. We're on about our third or fourth website version. Now we've, we've gone through WordPress and Squarespace and now we're in Wix and we do all our own web hosting. And so it's, it's not overly, you know, sophisticated. We try to keep it simple. Now we're pretty happy with how it looks now. We're always looking for ways to improve it. And, you know, we started off just having routes in the Driftless area. We did that for two or three years and trying to think about the next, next evolution of the website would be. And so we've gotten into some dual sport stuff. And I know dual sport means, you know, a lot to different people. For us, it's mainly just public roads that are gravel instead of, instead of paved. And then, then we started going into other areas and say, well, we've done all these great routes in Montana and Wyoming and, and Seattle and Seattle areas. Let's put those out there for sale too and see if people like that. And we, you know, going up to the Canadian border and UP and the Upper Peninsula. And so we started putting those on and people like those. And so we said, well, let's start going more areas. And so we started going to the Ozarks and we've got a lot of routes in the Ozarks now. We've gone to, you know, to Dragon and the East Coast and some things down there. And we've, we've been going into the Southwest because we wouldn't want to do some riding down there. And so we got a lot of routes down there now too. And so those are starting to pick up a little bit more now too. And, and that's kind of how it's just kind of evolved. And I don't, I, I don't know that there was a need for it, but once people started seeing that we had stuff, they're like, oh, this is cool. I can have this and not have to spend all my time working on this thing, or I can, you know, not have to do that, the boring work. Or my, my biggest fear, biggest thing I always hate is like, I get done with a ride and then I'm like, oh man, if I had taken this left instead of a right, I would have had this great road. And so I had this just so-so road or a bad road. So, you know, I like to do a lot of planning ahead of time. And, and I, I hope that other people like that too. And that's, that's kind of why we do it.

Maggie: You kind of touched on my next question. How do you evaluate and really select the routes that you feature? And like, what's the criteria where you determine, yeah, this is a road or this is a route, this is a tour that people would be interested in?

Dale: Yeah, that's a good question. What we've kind of done some different, different methodology. I don't think we have one great methodology to do that kind of fits all, but when we were in the Driftless area, I was trying to fill the Driftless area. So, you know, and trying to find good roads and fill it when, when we're doing some things out West, those are rides that we wanted to take. And I like to set rides up like, like we like to take them, like we're in the Bighorn Mountains and that's a great area. It's like under, people don't really talk about it because there's so many other great rides, you know, the Rockies and the Beartooth and Yellowstone and all those things. But Bighorns are kind of in between there. And so those rides are things that we've done and we wanted to do. And I put those together. Going like to the Ozarks, same thing as the Driftless area. I'm like, okay, this is a big area. It's kind of constrained by some, you know, flatland. And so let's start in the Ozarks and start putting some things together. When we're working on the East Coast, down the Appalachias and that we're going a little differently there, trying to put some rides together that are in areas, but also trying to kind of fill in some of those great roads. Like we've got, the Dragon is a big, you know, popular one. Well, you can go and ride the Dragon all day long, or you can take our route and you can start off, you can ride the Cherahala Skyway and you can come back in the Dragon and you get a whole day loop out of it. So it's a little bit different. And so we're kind of going and hitting those things. And I had guys tell me, so I think they're just naming roads down there, just name roads. So you've got the Bootlegger and the, you know, the Back of the Dragon and the Black Snake, and they got all these roads and most of them are just roads that people are naming. And there's some places out there that have some loops like we do, but they're in specific, you know, small geographic areas. And so they're not, they're doing this kind of same thing we're doing. I know that you're wondering about that too. And so we're not going to just copy paste those. We're going to either not do something in that area or else we'll do something a little bit differently. But that's the kind of thing. It's kind of like we're trying to fill areas. So if you come to this area, no matter where you come from, which direction you come from or where you're headed, you're going to have a route that you can get to quickly and closely. And it'll be next to another route and next to another route. And so you can kind of pick a place in the middle and have three or four days of riding or you can work your way through and pick and choose and things like that. So that's kind of how we do it. And then as far as roads, how do we pick the roads? You know, it's kind of like we start big and we're looking at the maps, looking at Google and looking at... I use Butler Maps a lot with Reverb. If you have the Reverb Pro, you can see all the Butler roads on Reverb Pro on their website. And so that's kind of a starting point that, hey, this road, somebody's already looked at it and it's a great road. But we're... And there's other things like, you know, Rustic Road, Wisconsin Rustic Roads are big ones. Most states have like scenic byways and things like that. We look at those. But then what we found is that those kind of resources kind of tend to stay to the main roads. And so we start, okay, this is a great Butler road, but it's one road. It's 20 miles from here to here. How are we going to get back to there to the start? And how are we going to make a whole day out of this ride? So we're looking for, you know, small roads that are fun looking roads that were just not included in the Butler maps or whatever, or not included in the byway. And, you know, that's... We spent a lot of time going through it. You can spend two or three hours working your way back and all of a sudden you're at a dead end because you've got a gravel road there. Most of our routes are paved and we try to keep them that way because most riders like paved roads. So that's, you know, that's... We spend a lot of time just searching through and finding those great roads. And so it's kind of a, you know, hodgepodge of methods. And it starts with an area and works its way down to the roads.

Maggie: I feel like a lot of people in the Midwest area are somewhat familiar with the Driftless in Wisconsin that heads on in. What are your top three recommendations or unexpected places that you've discovered that are routes on the map that you feel like are overlooked, maybe?

Dale: Yeah, I think the Bighorns are... You know, I don't see too many people talk about them. And yeah, it's not so big you're going to spend a week there, but you could spend three or four days riding there and just have a great time, you know, because it's kind of on the way. It's kind of on the way to Yellowstone. It's kind of on the way to the... It's off the beaten path a little bit, a little bit south of Interstate I-90. But there's just tons of fun there. I mean, you're up in the mountains. It's a great road. It's wide roads. It's a trucking route. There's things to do and see. There's tons of wildlife there. We're up on top of the mountain and you get up on top, it's a little bit of a plateau and we're riding along and there's a moose, a moose on top of this mountain. And I'm like, what's this moose doing here? There's some Native American things to see and do. There's a huge medicine wheel there you can hike to and take in the solemnness of the scenery. You can go down the mountain and there's a place you can go see dinosaur tracks. You can go up to Level and there's a big canyon up there. It's like a mini-grain canyon and you can walk up to it and you can look down and see the river. It's the Bighorn River. It's a great, great area. It's not very populated. It's a small town. It's Greybull Level. It's just west of Sheridan, Wyoming. So it's kind of like, you know, if you want to head west, you're going through Sheridan and you just kind of bypass the whole thing. So that's one of them. There's neat things to do there. You know, the one we took through Gold Creek, I think people aren't going to go there just because they don't want to ride that gravel. That's a big one. Let's see, I think the Kettle Moraine in Wisconsin is a neat place. People want to go to see the Driftless area. There's a lot of fun riding there. The Kettle Moraine area is a little bit different. It's a little heavier populated, so you're going to have more traffic, maybe and a lot more side roads and things to watch out for. But it's neat riding and there's some crazy stuff there. We were riding in the Kettle Moraine a couple years ago and we were overrun by a bunch of people over by a place called Holy Hill over by, I think it's by Burlington, Wisconsin. And it's this big church on top of the hill. You can see it from miles away. And we're riding around and there's some Wisconsin rustic roads there and there's a place there called Hogback Road, which is supposedly a mythological beast there. The Goatman of Hogback Road is supposed to come out and try to grab you. We're driving around there having a time and I see this sign and it says spectacular sculpture. It looked like somebody took a real estate for sale sign and wrote, it didn't say real estate, just a blank white sign about that size, plastic and little metal stakes and a big sharpie, spectacular sculpture. We've got to see what this is. Is this like one guy had a big sculpture in his yard and it's so spectacular? So we're kind of chuckling about it. So we drove back in through the subdivision to get there and the end of this, and it's this huge area and this guy is this artist. And I was looking at this yesterday and I really blew it because I forgot to write down his name, but it's a whole art area and he makes these great big sculptures and they're like 8, 10, 12 feet tall, all kinds of weird wild creatures look like Dr. Seuss creatures. And you walk around and you can see him. He's got a workshop there. If he's there, you can talk to him. And it was like, this is amazing. Why have we never heard about this? And it's just, and he's got websites. It's all on the internet and you can look all over for it. But to have this little bitty sign in somebody's yard that's a spectacular sculpture, it's like it kind of undersold it a little bit. I think he said it went a little bigger. So that's a neat thing. I think people should go and look at this. If you've ever been to the Dr. Evermore's Forevertron over by Baraboo, it's kind of in that same vein. It's not the same. I don't want to compare the two, but it's like big sculptures out of iron and steel and old car parts and old kind of machinery and stuff. And it's kind of the same type of stuff.

Maggie: That sounds fun. I have not come across that little sign. So I look forward to that the next time.

Dale: It's on our Kettle Moraine route. If you take our Kettle Moraine route, which is a two-day route, which is a neat route, takes you from Milwaukee up to Sheboygan on the coast of the Michigan coastline. And then back through the Kettle Moraine and back to take it right through this.

Maggie: Okay. I think I've only ridden a part of the Kettle Moraine, like up through to Door County.

Tim: Okay.

Maggie: I haven't done the whole thing. But yeah, you're right. It's a fun road. And you may have already answered this, but I was going to ask, what's the most surprising or unexpected experience you've had while scouting or writing the routes as you create them?

Dale: Yeah, that was a big one. That was, I mean, I expected it was, I don't know what, like some guy's fountain in his yard. But I mean, we had a lot of things happen. You know, we're out this last year, we're out in South Dakota and I was scouting a route and it was a dual sport. And we're off on some gravel way off in the middle of nowhere. I mean, not nowhere, but you know, it's not like in Wisconsin or Illinois where you're off in a gravel road and you see the next house a half mile away, you're kind of off. You know, and we're seeing a fisherman here and there and went past this house and the whole house was covered with these metal circles. This man had taken like an old, I guess it's a farm implement, like a disc and covered the whole house with these, the roof and everything. It was kind of strange looking, but we're going over all these rocks and I'm like, well, I hope I don't get a flat tire. And then we start a little further on. I'm like, no, this doesn't, I can tell. And it's like, I told my wife to get off and we ride two up on the bike and I said, get off. And what's the back tire look like? She said, it's flat. I'm like, and I'm like watching the GPS. I knew my next turn was on the pavement. So we were 10 miles away from pavement. And so, you know, got out the patch kit and it didn't work well, but it got us to back to where we were going to go. But that was certainly unexpected. That was not welcome. I mean, that's not something that's a feature of our sites. And it turned out it was a nail. I didn't cut the tire on the rocks. It was a kind of screw, but that was unexpected experience. But some of the strange and wonderful things, you know, we've been spending a little time riding in Iowa and Iowa's got a lot of dirt roads, believe it or not. And we were off in this up by Okoboji lakes up in northwest Iowa. And we had a dual sport route, had it all pegged out. And these are all, you know, they're all real public roads. And one part of it, we're going on this lake and it's just nothing but two tracks in the dirt. And I'm like, well, this is really a neat road. I mean, that's the kind of stuff we really like. And we don't go crazy, but getting off in the weeds. And then we got this other place and it was a road. It was just a stretch of grass between two cornfields. And it's like, this is a road. It's like 98th Street or something like that. And the grass was up as high as the tank of the bike. And there was a path. There's a tire track through there and we're riding through it. But it was certainly not what we expected, but it was kind of fun. It was really fun to get through that. I was like, OK, it's a mile long. I know I can take a mile of this and get through it. So that's on our Okoboji route if you want to have some dual sport. One of the things that really is surprising, but it shouldn't be, we make these routes up and a lot of them we make up after we ride. Sometimes we make them up and then ride them. And they look good on paper and you get onto them and you're like, this is amazing. I mean, when you're looking on paper, you really can't tell how tight the curves are. You can see it, but it's not the same. And you can't see the hills and the drops and things like that. A lot of times we look at the satellite to see how things look and it's covered up with trees. And so you're on that route. You're just treeline road. And this is what fitting. I think they turn out better than I expected because the scenery is better and you can't tell what kind of a view you're going to have from the satellite view until you're on the road. You're like, oh, this is great. You know, some of the houses and farms you see and just crazy stuff like that. Of course, the wildlife, you know, it's just a never ending bunch of surprises. And it is surprising. My wife's like, this is another great road. I'm like, yeah, I thought it was going to be good, but I didn't think it would be this good. Of course, the locals are like, oh, yeah, we always think that's a good road. Well, I'm not coming from out of town. We're happy to find good roads.

Maggie: Do you find the locals are pretty good with sharing about like what's good writing?

Dale: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. I get a lot of recommendations. I get people from time to time write to me emails. Hey, look at this road. Look at that road. And for the most part, we try to put them in. I mean, a lot of times there are things like, well, we're not working that area yet or but I've had a couple. And we did a thing last spring and I was trying to enlist some local help, you know, getting us to trust out some roads. And hey, we'll send you this route. You try it out, tell you what you think, blah, blah, blah. And I had tons and tons of volunteers. I had 40 people just from the Ozarks alone that wanted to help me out. And so some of these routes and never heard anything back, not one. I had a guy in Arizona that did a couple routes for me, and that was good. He gave me good feedback. I had one guy from St. Louis that did some stuff for me, and that was good. And then based on their feedback, we made some changes as well to say this road versus this road or this was confusing. And so it was really helpful. And I thought it was a neat way to do it. And we gave them some freebies and things like that for their time. But I think what happened with the rest of the people was that I think they were, I don't know, I don't know what they're expecting. I guess I don't, I try to be upfront that, hey, this is going to be a GPX file. I need you to put in your GPS, ride the route, tell me what you think. I think what they were thinking was they were going to get a map or something because, frankly, I think a lot of them were just people that didn't use GPS. I think they were just, you know, so I think that's what ended up. They were like, oh, yeah, I'd like to help you. Or it's just ran out of time or didn't get around to whatever. But, you know, if people are listening to podcasts and want to try a route sometime and test it out for us, send me a note, send me a file. You can take some pictures and send us some files and some notes and tell if you like it or not.

Maggie: I bet you'll get a lot of takers. I hope so.

Dale: That'd be great. It'd be awesome. And we can't ride every road of every route, you know, do as much as we can. And it's nice to have some feedback. And that'd be great.

Maggie: You've talked about some of the unexpected and maybe less explored routes that you really like. What are the most popular riding routes?

Dale: The most popular ones right now are in the Drifts area, of course, because those have been on our site the longest. Those are the ones that people know most about. And of those, I think they're the ones that are in the southwest corner of Wisconsin, like South La Crosse, like the Mindoro Cut Route, the Kickapoo, Lower Kickapoo Route, the Wildcat Route, which goes to Wildcat Mountains, Wildcat State Park, the Wisconsin Triangle, and then like the Taliesin Route. And then the last one is the I can't remember. It's the one that goes through Darlington, Wisconsin. And it's in Lafayette County. It'll come to me anyway. So most of our traffic or most of our customers are in either the Chicagoland area or in the Twin City area. And then, of course, people live in Wisconsin. So people coming out of Chicago, they're wanting to stay as close as they can to home. It's they want to spend more time riding the fun roads rather than getting there. So they're hitting those Lower Wisconsin routes mostly. And then the Twin City routes, I think that's about half. Their volume is about half of the Chicago volume. So those are kind of the upper routes. Like there's a Maiden Rock Route. There's a St. Croix Route. There's some routes in Minnesota and things like that. The Zumbro River and the Red Wing Farewell Route. So those are probably our most popular routes. And it makes sense. They've been on our thing the longest. As we expand in these other areas, I don't expect those to be as popular because I think people that live there, they already ride them. They're probably not going to buy our maps. People that are going there, they might buy one or two. But those are those ones and twos. People are not going to have a crowd of 800 people going to the Dragon and buying our route at one time. So I think that's fine. Once the route's done, it's done. So if we get 10 people to buy it, it's great. If we get 100 people to buy it, it's great. But those are the most popular because I think that's where most people are coming and they want to ride those. And those are great roads. Those are great roads. Those are some of my most fun roads. We're from that area. We're very familiar with them. And we keep going back. I ride back there up by Prairie du Chien one or two times every year. Just some different roads. And we have some family reunions up there, some different things to take us up there. I always take the bike along just so we can spend some days riding.

Maggie: Yeah, you mentioned the Mindoro Cut. That is one I want to get back to and I haven't been back to in years. So yeah, that's a great, just that little stretch.

Dale: The first time we rode that, they went through and they had redone all of the drainage culverts. So every single corner had this big gravel strip through it. So we had to really watch our speed. Well, now that's all. It's been a few years now. They've repaved. It's been repaved maybe four years ago now. So the pavement's great. Unfortunately, they don't have any shoulders, all gravel shoulders. So everybody that goes on them cuts the corners and throws gravel on. So you really got to watch the gravel in the corners. But it's a great ride. It's a great ride. It's a fun ride.

Maggie: You collaborate with REVR and you host workshops around GPS and trip planning. And how did that get started and how's that going?

Dale: Well, it's going great. We were kind of, it's kind of, I don't know, it's kind of a weird thing. I have some contact with some riding groups in Chicago. And I guess the whole thing started was the Chicago, one of the Chicago BMW clubs was having a get together meeting and they wanted to put on a GPS event for their members. And they're looking for volunteers. And so I was trying to find a way to, you know, keep in contact with some groups. So I volunteered to help. And so me and three other guys put together a thing and we all did it at different parts and it went pretty well. And then another group, a Chicago camp group, was having, I'm friends with their leader, McKaylee Bersani, and they were having a get together. I said, hey, he said, do you have anything around this? Or he'd heard about this Chicago BMW thing. Can I do something? So I said, yeah, I can do this. I put that together. And then in the meantime, I started, I reached out to Rever to see if they have any affiliate program. A lot of websites and podcasts and things have affiliate programs and they, you know, we draw them some business and they give them some money and so forth. So they don't have an affiliate program, but they have like kind of a sponsorship program where they give you a special code and you can get discounts for people and they send that money coming back. So I wanted to steer people, when I was doing the stuff with the, you know, Chicago and with Michael McKaylee's group, I was talking about a program called Curviger, which is a neat program. It's a free program. And it only works on Android phones. So it's not, it's not, it doesn't work on Apple, which most people use. So I started working with Rever and so I'm like, well, I'm going to talk about Rever so I can promote Rever if I'm going to talk about it. Because, I mean, my main thing is a GPS and I, we work on GPS and I work on Basecamp and that's where, that's where I feel comfortable with. But a lot of people like their phones and a lot of people are looking for help with, well, what's this and what's that? Rever is a great, great app for that. And so, so the, the workshop's two things. It's the, it's introduction to Basecamp and it's introduction to how to get your Basecamp route onto your GPS and then Basecamp onto your phone, if you have a phone. And then part of it's about Rever and how to use, take your Rever and you can use your Rever route planning into your GPS or your Route, Rever route into your phone. And so that's kind of how it evolved. And that's kind of really what we've done. I think we've done six or eight now. We've done some private groups. We did a private group in Iowa City, did a couple in Minnesota, the Twin Cities, did a Waukesha Woodstock. I did another Zoom call with some folks from up by Green Bay. And then I hosted a Zoom call that didn't go very well. And I set it up during the football season, during a football game. So I didn't have many people attend it. And we had some technical problems, so it didn't go so well. But the feedback's been good. People get a lot out of it. I think people want, want to be able to do some of this stuff on their own, but they don't know where to start. And part of it was, okay, Dale, I bought your route. I put in my GPS and it's not working. What's the problem? And so there's some steps you have to go through to get there. And there's not a parent on any of the, any literature you can find and some YouTube videos out there. I haven't found a YouTube video that really succinctly explains it really well. And so that was part of the, part of the, part of the drive behind the workshop as well, to teach people how to do this. You know, our, our, our workshop, part of it's a PowerPoint presentation, part of it's a live demonstration. So the PowerPoint demonstration is on our website. People want to go in and scan through it. They can get some of it. But unfortunately, the live demonstrations part's not in there, so they're not there. But, but that's, I mean, that's, that's been it. You know, and the neat thing is, you know, you get to go out and meet people. You meet some of the dealers, introduce yourself and get contacts with them. Meet a lot of people that are riders and, and it's just happenstance alone. Like I was at, well, last year, last summer in 2000, 2021, I think, 2021, we met some folks from, from, from Iowa that are part of the Pure Stodge group. And we talked to them a bit and we've, we made up some routes for them for their rally. And then we started putting these workshops on this year. And it turns out one of the people that we met from the Pure Stodge group are the chairman of the workshops at the BMW National Rally in Virginia this summer. So they asked us to come to Virginia in June to put this workshop on. So it's like, well, if I hadn't done the workshop and, you know, with the Pure Stodge group, they wouldn't have heard about it. If I hadn't met them two years ago, they hadn't, you know, it's, it's all, you know, meeting those people and having those contacts. And, you know, it's, it's things that like, okay, we may not, you know, sell a route today, but we've made this contact that down the road, we're going to get together and do this other thing. It's going to be, going to be really cool. So we're excited to go to the BMW Rally in Virginia. So if anybody's coming to the BMW Rally in Virginia in June, stop by and, and come to our workshop and we'll talk about Basecamp and GPSs.

Maggie: So it's true in business and it's true in life. It's about who you know.

Dale: Exactly, exactly.

Maggie: What advice would you give to someone who's new to touring on a motorcycle and wants to plan a safe and enjoyable trip on the open road?

Dale: Um, yeah, I, I'd say people that want to get into riding, it's kind of a double-edged sword because you're not sure you're going to like it. So you don't want to spend too much money at it, but I, I'd say spend a little bit of money, make sure you've got a good working bike, make sure you've got some good gear. You know, make, you know, wear your gear. And, uh, and then I would say, take small trips and practice riding. And you take some small trips and decide, you know, what works, what doesn't work, what you need, what you don't need. I've got so much stuff that I take along. I probably don't need it, but I'm going to need it someday.

Maggie: So, hey, that tire plug came in handy.

Dale: Exactly, exactly. Um, but yeah, I mean, uh, and then, uh, plan ahead, but don't get stuck in your plan. Don't get too stuck in your plan. You don't, um, don't have too much fun at it. My, you know, my main thing that me and my wife struggle with is like, uh, I like to make a route. I'm going to stick to this route because I made this route the best route. And she's like, well, that looks like a fun road. Why don't we take that road? I'm like, it's on the route. We're not going to take that. And I'd say, we need to do more of that. I need to do more of that, you know, and I would say that for people that buy our routes, it's like, yeah, this is a starting point. If you see a fun road, go ahead and take it. You know, you never know what you're going to see that, um, that, you know, you know, that we don't know about it and then tell us about it and then we'll do something else about it too. But, but yeah, I mean, main thing is be safe. If you're going to ride in a group, make sure that you're feel comfortable in that group and you're not riding faster than you care to go. You know, that's a big, that's a big thing that I think that people get caught up in their new rider. They want to ride with a group and their friends have been riding for 10 years and they want to go fast and he's, he's, you know, maybe not comfortable doing that. So don't do it.

Maggie: Good advice. What impact do you hope you work on this site will have on local communities and businesses that are near or within the tours that you create?

Dale: Yeah, we, and we were hoping to have a positive impact, um, you know, and that it's kind of a, it depends on the riders, of course, um, a lot of what we do and we try to avoid highways. I mean, interstates, uh, we try to avoid big towns, like, you know, example, we've got a lot of routes in the Dubuque area and we really don't want to send people through Dubuque because, you know, you can go to Dubuque and ride through town, uh, if you want. Um, so by definition, it takes people, smaller groups, smaller towns, uh, you know, small roads. And so we're hoping people can go to those roads and, and, uh, uh, patron, patronize the local businesses, you know, get gas, stop, get drinks, maybe have a meal, stay at a small hotel or an inn or something like that. Uh, and then be good representatives of the motorcycle community. And then hopefully they'll say, Hey, we found this road because you're riding Driftless roads, uh, website. And they, they sent us right through here and we love this place. And so, um, you know, that's, that's what we hope for. I mean, we, we want to promote, you know, riding and having fun. That's part of our Driftless challenges to promote riding, getting people out into some different areas. But then, you know, we're hoping that people, um, spend a little money, take a little time, meet some people, have good time. And also good, good, good riders too. And not make a nuisance of themselves.

Maggie: It gives us all a bad name when that happens.

Dale: And I've come across that too. It was like, um, cause I try to, you know, I've been in a couple of campgrounds and riding through and trying to, you know, keep the speed down and the noise down and people comment saying, boy, you're the first rider I ever saw that didn't go screaming through here. And I'm like, well, I'm trying to be a good ambassador for the biking community. And, uh, I don't know. I'm too old to do that stuff.

Maggie: Do you have any advice or advice that you would give to someone who's interested in promoting tourism in their own community?

Dale: Yeah, I, I'd say meet people, get involved, go to some, meet the riders, the local riding groups, um, go to some meetings, offer volunteer help out. You know, we, we gave a lot of free routes away at first. Uh, uh, there's a neat, uh, dual sport ride in Galena every year. It's coming up the first, it's the first weekend in June. Um, and it's put on by a private individual. It's kind of a loosely organized thing. We've been going to that for four or five years. We always give free routes to that. Uh, he does a dual sport route and I always have a, a paved route ready and, um, met tons of people through that. And, um, of course it's mostly a dual sport route, but, um, some people come and want the paved and so just go and get involved, volunteer, meet people, uh, spend time listening to what they're saying. Um, that's, that's it. I mean, that's about it.

Maggie: Still a people business.

Dale: It is. It really is. Um, and it's a, it's a moneymaking business. The way to make a million dollars is to start with $2 million. And then, uh, at the end of the time, you'll have a million dollars. I was talking to a lady from Celtic tours and, uh, at the Chicago show. And she's like, yeah, you know, I make a million. She told me the whole gag. I'm like, oh, that doesn't sound too promising, but you want to make a million start with two. Um, but no, it's, it's fun.

Maggie: What's your vision for the future of motorcycle touring and travel in the U S and how do you see Driftless Roads, your website evolving to stay relevant and useful for writers?

Dale: Yeah. You know, it's, it's hard to, I was thinking about this a little bit last night. And, um, if you, if you read the news, it's like, well, young people aren't writing anymore and the writing ages are getting older. And, um, and you know, if I think about the young people today, they're writing, what are they using? They're on their cell phone, you know, they've got their cell phone or they got nothing. And, um, so it's, it's kind of a murky future. Um, I'm, I'm hopeful that, uh, you know, and then you've got the whole going electronic e-bikes and all that kind of stuff, and that's going to be a big change. And then how's that going to affect people? Um, I don't know if, I don't know if they're going to take long cross country tours anymore or not. Um, you know, I, I'm hopeful that people see us as an advantage that we're a time saver from planning a trip to, you know, messing around during their trip. Um, I'm, I'm hopeful that people start, continue to think the way we do that. I don't have as much time as I want, or I don't have as much free time as I wish I did. So I've got to maximize my free time by, by, you know, hitting the best roads I can. And I think we're positioned well for that. Um, what we're trying to do also is expand into other areas. So give people some other, uh, some other options, uh, of writing. And, um, it's interesting. We do a blog post every, every week. And it's just a real short thing. And we, we talk about one of our routes, you know, link them back to our website. And we talk about something else that might be going on, like the Driftless Challenge. Uh, talk about Rever again, Rever's having a free, uh, workshop next week. And so I promoted that because of course we're, uh, associated with Rever. So, um, that's always neat. And then every other week or so people like, Oh, there's a route here. And then they'll buy that route. And so it's kind of a neat, a neat thing for us to, to do that. But so expanding other areas. So yeah, the route this week was from Virginia. It's one of the routes we put together for the rally and a guy from North Carolina bought our, our, one of our Virginia routes. And so I was like, yes, you know, that was time well spent last night. But I mean, what we're trying to do is we're trying to position ourself by being, you know, more coast to coast. Um, we're trying to link in with writing groups, um, across the country. Our, uh, you know, our biggest access right now to groups that are not in our geographical area is at Bay, I believe we're not Facebook. So you can go on Facebook and you can find other writing groups. So we're in a writing group in Montana, Colorado, Arizona. And, you know, of course we're not getting everybody. We're probably getting 5% or 2% of the people, but at least we can start to meet people that way and kind of communicate with them that way. And then get feedback and, uh, eventually hopefully meet them in person. But, um, so that's what we're kind of do is trying to, um, just kind of keep on keeping on. Um, you know, one of the things, if you go to our website, you'll notice hopefully that we don't have any advertising. We don't have any sponsors. We don't have any pop-up ads. We don't have any, you know, any annoying stuff that, that drive people crazy. And part of it's by design, um, and part of it's by default, maybe, um, uh, it's designed to the fact that we want a really clean site and, uh, we're not selling. I'd rather be spending time writing routes and making new routes than going out and. You know, trying to sell ad space on our, on our website. And so that's kind of what we do. And then I'm thinking about, well, how would we do it? If I went to, if I wanted to go and sell ads at a local level, like to a restaurant or, you know, mom and pop hotel or whatever, that's one route. We've got 160 some routes now. So I'm not going to go to 160 different, you know, hotels, restaurants, stuff all across the country, trying to sell, you know, this little ad that's, that hardly anyone's going to see because it's out of 100, one out of 160 routes. And, you know, by the end of this year, we'll have maybe 200 routes. So, so then you say, well, you know, maybe you can get a, a big sponsor, a nationwide sponsor or like, uh, you know, cycle, cycle gear or ever, or, uh, RevZilla or some of those are like, uh, um, tour tech or something like that. I mean, let's say after our tour tech, we can, you know, but, um, uh, but I mean, I think we're too small for, for their business. I mean, I don't think our, um, you know, our reach isn't that big. Our, our traffic's not that big for those. So we're kind of, it's by design that we're not wanting to go out and spend that time and effort. And, uh, and, uh, and by default that we're just not big enough at this point. And we might be big enough someday where people come and say, yeah, we really want to get behind this. And, but, uh, for now it's just, uh, it's just for fun.

Maggie: The final question, what is your riding obsession?

Dale: You know, um, I, we love the back roads. We love the roads, less travels. Um, there's nothing more fun to us than you go over a hill and you see this downhill in front of you and you got the tree line and it's curving zigzag and you can't see the bottom and, uh, you know, nobody else is around. That's the greatest thing. I mean, we, the thing that kills me, it's just, I have to really bite my tongue. You start talking to people and there's a specific type of rider and you start talking about great roads or people will post online. What's a great road in Wisconsin or what's a great road here. And they'll say, oh, the great river road, take the great river road. That's a great, that's a great road. And I'm like, that is not a great road. There's a, there's, yeah, it's a road and it's pretty. You can see the river, but it's relatively flat. It's relatively straight. There's, you know, minor curves and the traffic is terrible and it's just not a great road. But if you're going on that road and you take any one of the side roads that go up, up over the hills, you're going to just be in a wonderland. And so that's our, our obsession is finding those roads, finding those back roads. Anybody can find the main roads where we want to find those, you know, and we, and we love the scenic roads and we've been to Glacier and the Beartooth and the Dragon and we love those too. And those are kind of like a checklist kind of thing to us. But our obsession is finding those, those great back roads and trying them out. And, and that's what keeps us going. I mean, that's, that's what we look for. And we'd like to share those with other people. You go, you're in Wisconsin or someplace and you're riding this back road and you come over a hill and there's this beautiful farm and you see the guy out in the tractor plowing and you see the cows over there. And that's, for us, it's like, there's nothing, you know, nothing. I, I was, I was with some guys from, from Chicago and I was, I was leaning on a little bit of a ride and we stopped for lunch. And he's like, well, why do all the crops, they have a row of crops and they have a row of nothing and then a row of crops. And I took it for granted that everybody understood what, what that was. And it's like, he had never seen that before. It was the, because of the erosion and the rotation, all that stuff. And so I'd explain about that. And so I can imagine for some people that hadn't been around it, this would be really, really, really cool to get on these back roads. And, and it's, I mean, the neat thing about it is in the Driftless area, especially, you're never far from anywhere else. You could be in a back road and you could think that you're, you know, a million miles away and get a flat tire and somebody's going to come by in 15 minutes or you're going to, you know, walk a mile or two miles to a house. So it's pretty, so you get out west, it's a little bit different story, but, but yeah, that's, that's us. It's, we try to share that with our customers.

Maggie: Dale, I appreciate your time. You want to share about how you want people to find you and connect with you?

Dale: Yeah. Our website is Driftless Roads USA. So if you go into Google type Driftless Roads USA, that should take you there or whatever Apple search block. That's our main website. We're on social media on, you know, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram. I'd say our Instagram game is not, not too good at this point, but we're pretty, pretty busy on Facebook and Twitter. But yeah, we do a lot of stuff there. I mean, we just, we don't just sell our sites. We do the Driftless Challenge. We do the custom routes. We have our blog posts. So if you want to kind of keep us going on, you know, where you can, you can join our mailing list. And we don't, I would say, you know, I always hesitate to join a mailing list because I don't want to just get blasted with stuff all day long. And we just don't do that. I don't have time for that. We send out one blog post a week at most. And so, and that's just more of information for people. And, and there's some discounts you might find out about like that. And we, we do some things, different groups, and we'll, we'll post about that as well. But that's how you find us DriftlessRoadsUSA.com. And, you know, our, my phone number's on there. If you send an email, I'll get it. If you call my phone, I'll, I'll, I'll answer it. Hopefully. If I'm not on a cell phone range, I'm riding somewhere. I'll answer the phone and we can talk about what you want to do for fun.

Tim: Yeah. I'm a little surprised. I don't think I've ever run into him, but I've known about him for years. He's a good cat to know.

Robin: Well, speaking of paint, I need your guys' advice. Both of you. I need you guys to do the work on the talking on this bit because I'm, I'm debating. Okay.

Tim: The clear coated. The aforementioned fiber fender.

Robin: Oh yeah. Yeah. So I have properly clear coated and sanded down the clear coat on the carbon fiber fender for the R1200RS. I guess that kind of got me thinking, well, if I'm going to go all this trouble and I've already got a carbon fiber fender, that's pretty freaking cool. What if I pull the fender, the fender extender off of the stock fender and then do a wrap on it? I just don't understand enough about that platform to know what goes into it. I wouldn't be doing it. I would take this to a person, but what's more expensive getting something wrapped or getting something professionally painted?

Travis: Painted.

Robin: Painted is more expensive.

Travis: Yeah. Yeah. A wrap, a wrap on something that small take them like 20 minutes.

Robin: And then is, I mean, what am I looking at? A hundred bucks, 50? Well, I guess it depends. Right. And of course it depends. Yeah.

Travis: But yeah, I mean, a paint would be a couple of days cause you got to prep and wait and that's got to dry.

Tim: And I think I want to wrap the bike. I think I want to wrap some parts. Yeah. I think with a wrap, I would on a part that that is that small and has that many tight curves. I definitely would take it into somebody because I know that I don't have the patience or delicacy to get it to conform to those tight curves.

Travis: Yeah.

Tim: I got no, I've tried and it always looks like hell.

Travis: It's like you ever see, like I've thought about like tinting windows on a car before and I just know better. Cause like you see the pros do it and they're so smooth and so effortless. And it's so fast and it's like, I'm going to fuck this up and it's going to be a mess.

Tim: I would have screwed with that for half the day. I would have had to like put it on and pull it off four times and it would look like crap.

Robin: Yeah. How do you get the graphics for such a thing? I think I'd kind of like to get the gray from the original fender color and do a little TRO thing on there with a little, you know, I need a graphic designer.

Travis: If you don't need to cover the whole thing, you can just get a decal vinyl decal. But if you want to recover the whole thing, I think a lot of places will do. Cause like, you know, they, you see the signs for, you know, custom graphics will wrap your company's van. Yeah. So I think they either, they have a machine that can print on the vinyl and that sort of way or, or order it from wherever. Yeah.

Robin: That's the concept I'm going for. I just, you know, painting is hard and I'm lazy and I'm trying, I'm learning. I'm going to, I'm going to finish both of these processes. I'm going to finish my crappy version of getting the carbon fiber back to pretty. I'm going to do my best to get the stock fender back to where it's a hundred percent ready for the bike. And I'm going to look at it and be like, you know what? It's just not. And then I'm going to take it to somebody and be like, Hey, make this look cool.

Travis: Literally cover up my mistakes.

Robin: Quite frankly. Yes. And that's the other question is if you want to undo that, I wonder what the process to get the wrap off of it, or is that just heat?

Tim: Yeah. Most of them come off really clean.

Travis: Yeah. You can peel it off and then just clean it and wax it and it's fine.

Robin: I think that's pretty neat. I'm thinking about going that route. I'm curious about the pricing. If there's a place in Las Cruces, maybe El Paso, or maybe I'll get Joe Godin to do it. Although then he'll print up a bunch of fallacies all over my bike.

Travis: He'll just like, like ghost them in, like very subtle. So you don't notice it until like, it starts to age a little bit.

Tim: The sun hits it just right. And it lights up.

Robin: So I love writing for the site. I do. I love writing for TRL. It's my voice. I'll pick a topic. I'll pick a product and just find a way to engineer some interesting reading around that product and we'll make money off the commission sales, whatever. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. The problem is, is that it's a lot of pressure to come up with enough content that, you know, it's just, it's just so much work to make an article good on the website. It's a lot. So I love having the outside authors throw in what they... Travis, I still need your article about the custom luggage you made. That was pretty cool. Travis, what were those bags?

Travis: Just the Apache, the Apache cases from Harbor Freight.

Robin: Yeah. So I love writing for the site. And then I was like, well, I wonder if I can start generating outlines or even minute amounts of content in my voice. Can I train the AI how I like to write so that it can compose something for me? And then I can go through and be like, yep. Yep. Nope. Absolutely not. Okay. Change that this, you know, from start to finish and still do the work. But when there's writer's block, can I get this thing to do something for me? Right? So I'm not using chat GPT. That's not what I'm talking about. Chat GPT, just picture a glowing ball of 1990s laser AI take over the world stuff in the middle. Chat GP is an offshoot of that. The ball in the middle is the source of knowledge. Chat GPT just taps into that ball and tries to use it in a way that's conversational. I'm using the API. TLDR, no, I can't get it to write in my voice and I know what the hell I'm doing. Here's the score. With the AI API, you can submit prompts and their responses according to you. So if I say, write a blog post about this topic with this headline and these keywords, and then hand it the entire article one at a time throughout the entire site, which by the way, I did. The result is if you ask it to write something, is a frantic, nervous wreck of a response that is all over the place with non-factual data, names that aren't actual human beings, claiming that they are friends of mine. Like when my buddy Jack bought the new Ferrari motorcycle. That's not even a thing. So this 2,500 word onslaught of misinformation is generated that honestly isn't even in my writing style. Sometimes it writes out half of the article and ends with the word and, or it responds with absolute gibberish where it's just like, I don't know. I can't find out. I need to find out the information. I don't know. I can't find out. I need to find out the information for 30 paragraphs.

Travis: It doesn't, it's doing bot stuff.

Robin: Yes. However, one thing that is excellent that I'm very excited about is it does really good outlines. So if you, if you type into like chat GPT, I need to brainstorm an outline on this article. I want to write myself about this topic. Can you give me 10 things I might want to pinpoint? It'll give you a really good outline. And then you say, what you do is then you delete that chat, copy that outline in and say, I brainstormed this outline. Can you give me some improvements on it? And you can do that. However many times, once it starts regurgitating the same response, you know, you found a really good outline for an article and then just be yourself and write the article. And I really liked that. It's, it's helped with my writer's block a lot.

Travis: Nice. Yeah. I think that's, I've heard of a lot of people using it to like outline and sketch that sort of stuff. And it seems like it works unless they go for it. I think it's less cheaty. Well, yeah. And it's like also like using a browser or whatever search engine to help you find stuff for your outline. Like you just doing internet research. You just found a machine that goes through it for you, right?

Robin: Yeah. A little bit less search and more generation too. Here's how we'll tie this whole episode together on a wrap up. Let's go around. What are your three tunes that come to mind right now that if you're going to ride, you want to hear those three tunes for the duration of the ride?

Travis: I'm going to say Supersonic by Bad Religion off of the Process of Belief is definitely one of them. Death Song just rips. They're really like kind of like any Bad Religion is right up there. Especially like most of their albums have like a real ripping opener.

Robin: Should we go around one at a time, one song at a time?

Travis: Sure.

Robin: Tim, what do you got? What comes to mind first? All right.

Tim: I think I'm going to go with Hamburger Train from Primus.

Travis: Yeah, let's give them.

Tim: Because it's just it's just this fun little rhythm that just goes on and on and it just builds on itself. Yeah, it's not intrusive. It's just you just kind of listening to it and grooving.

Robin: All right. So I'm going to start with the fact that we lost one of my music heroes recently, namely the one and only Jeff Beck, who has always been an awesome influence. So everybody loves to cite his, you know, his early stuff. That's a regularity. I love his early stuff, but I always like to bring up the new stuff he did that perhaps didn't get as much attention. I'm going to go with Jeff Beck, Pork U Pine. Travis, what's your next select?

Travis: I'm going to go with this is like a newer tune, Nuclear Power Trios, A Clear and Present Rager off of A Clear and Present Rager EP.

Tim: All right. I'm going to go with a new one, too. Electric Callboy and We Got the Moves, which is something my brother just turned me on to a little while ago. And I was laughing so hard when I saw the videos. It's like half. Let's call it like you're going to throw in a couple parts to this stew. The first part is like 1980s, just on the edges, starting into techno and then throw in some like 2010 metal. And I recommend checking it out about you, Robin.

Robin: My round two is going to I don't know how to pronounce the word, but I'm going to pretend like I do. But T-U-E-T-U, it's G-U-E-T-U, T-U-E-T-U, T-U-E-T-U, T-U-E-T-U, T-U-E-T-U, T-U-E-T-U by Skygaze. And that's on an album called Nostalgia. Very smooth, very soft ceiling. Keep your mind clear while you're going at a rapid pace. I like that kind of thing. I like to keep the brain nice and light while things around me are frantic.

Travis: Travis. I'm going to honorable mention the album Venom by Awesome Snakes, which doesn't count because I just got turned on to this like a month ago and have not ridden, listened to it while riding a motorcycle, but I will be. And you should check out the, it was like a project and I think they only made one album, Venom by a band called Awesome Snakes. And yes, they do spell Awesome Snakes out in a couple of the songs. And I'm going to go with, because I know Robin loves when I listen to Duo to Twang and I do too. It was hard to pick one song, but probably their cover of Stayin' Alive, Four Foot Shack.

Tim: Fantastic. Tim. All right. Third option. Let's go old school. Metallica, Damage Incorporated. Ooh. When you want to really attack something.

Robin: So that's Cliff.

Tim: Yeah. I think the last Cliff Burton album. Yeah. That is just a lovely, intense song.

Robin: All right. Well, I'm going to throw down my final offer here. Soul Coughings, $300, which hit me hard enough that I smacked it on an Instagram post while we were traveling here to New Mexico. That track, it just kind of has the dirt and the grit and the superhero, I've had enough, I'm going to go save the girl kind of mission statement in its opening guitar twang that I just hear it. It just sounds like something where it's like, and then the superhero threw his leg over the seat. And that makes me want to go fast. With that, this has been another episode. Stay tuned for next month's episode when we do the same thing and nobody has any idea where we're going or why. But we still like to ride. For TRO.bike, I'm Robin Dean.

Travis: I'm Travis Burleson. And I'm Tim Clark. Safe travels, everyone. So, how can such a thing actually be counted?