Robin: How you been, man?

Brian: Good,

Robin: good. What observations specific to sport touring or universal to motorcycling as a whole have you observed this week? Brian?

Brian: I have observed. Well, two things I have observed some blankety blank spilled a whole container of drywall screws on the corner, uh, not far from my house. And I just wanna say, come on, dude. No. Um, yeah, u use your words. Yeah, I, I don't want to use like dirty words, but those are the only ones that fit. Um, and the second thing I observed is how you don't see anybody, you don't see anybody, uh, when it looks like there might be a cloud or a rain, you know, it's like you see bikes going around and so forth, and then they just disappear. If there's any possible threat of rain, and it's like, you know, that you, you're not gonna die.

Robin: Or, or at least that's not

Brian: the plan, right? That's not the plan. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, it's always on the table, isn't it? But, uh, you, but yeah, uh, just, just people have this reluctance to get to, you know, spots on their chrome and so forth. And, um, yeah, I try to ride to work every day and it, it's mainly just to kind of keep sharp, you know, if I'm, If I'm being honest, like it's not an exciting ride, but it's, it's, you know, it, it's practice. You know, it's saddle time.

Robin: Yeah. That's one of my favorite things. A friend of mine said, uh, Don Baron, he's written for the site before he said this, during an older version of the M S F curriculum to a class where he said, you know, to an older gentleman who kinda ribbed himself about being an older gentleman. And he said, you should be able to do anything you want. Well into your years, well into your years, so long as it's something you do regularly, frequently. On the norm. Right, right.

Brian: Makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah.

Robin: Let's do the segments. I got 'em set up in a pretty good order now. So we start with the questions, and actually this is something we forgot to do last time anyhow, and I should write into the outline the topic. The name of this segment is stuff our listeners might ask if we had any listeners, if you have any questions for us. The email is podcast@t.bike, that's podcast at t bike, and if you send us an email, it'll go to about 12 different people who will wonder what's going on and why it is they didn't get a chance to answer the question for you either. Brian, which one? What's the name of the person and what questions are they

Brian: asking? Okay. Uh, the name of this person? Let, let's call him. Let's, let's call him Uncle Fester. And

Robin: could you say that any creepier?

Brian: Tell me about your underwear. Uh, Do, do, do you guys powder your gits and all that? So fester. Let's talk about underwear. Let's talk about sport touring underwear. Robin, what do you got? What? What's, what is on your butt when you're on the saddle?

Robin: Well, assuming I haven't torn through it already. There was a company for a while there. I managed to make these things last for a good minute. Uni Glo or Uni Glo, U N I G L O. And they make a knee length boxer brief. It is. It dries really fast, so I'll pack pretty much two of everything. One I wear, the other one's packed wherever I go, the destination, you know, once I get a shower and all that, the dirty underwear goes into a wash bag designed for wash and laundry, and then the new stuff goes on for the night and into the next day. I think it's Uniqlo and it is. Fast drying material. Yes, it's sturdy. Yes, it does what it's supposed to, but after you wash it, it's not like hanging up an animal skin underwear of some, you know, fur based variety that takes a month and a half to begin to steam away. You know what I mean? What about you, Brian, by the way, not an awkward topic at all. Thanks

Brian: for this. Hey, you know, uh, motorcycling is one area where like men and women actually I've noticed, will frankly discuss matters of the body. You just have to, yeah. Uh, you know, Hey, your hands look a little bigger than mine. How about how, here, take these gloves. They're a little big on me. You know, stuff like that. Anyway, um, I'll talk about underwear now, what? And, and this is partially a mistake, but it's worked out really well. I went into, I don't know where I was, but anyway, I was looking, what I was looking for was bicycle shorts, uh, that didn't have like the bicycle diaper pad in it. You know how bicycle shorts, they have like a really thick pad because bicycles have those little horrible

Robin: seats. I wanted to be a piece of sporting equipment. I'd be a woman's bicycle

Brian: seat. Yeah. Anyway, so what I, what I ended what I found in somewhere, I don't know where. Uh, so I have like four pairs, uh, and they're basically like these Lycra or spandex, bicycle shorts, except they don't have the pad in 'em. So they're just like tight shorts and you know, it's a glorious site and into these shorts along. Along with myself, um, I put a generous, uh, helping of what I call giblet

Robin: powder. Are you talking about like

Brian: monkey butt? Yeah. Monkey butt's a good one, but I think the best one is, uh, is gold bond. Now you can get the gold bond gold, um, which is great, uh, and does a great job. Or you can get the gold bond, uh, that's got menthol in, it's like in a green container. And the, the term I've heard for that is, is 1000 elves. And the reason for that is that when you put that stuff on your giblets, you, it feels like 1000 tiny elves. They're giving you a nice little massage. It's very cool. And, and, and very much a tactile experience.

Robin: Yeah, man. No comment.

Brian: No comment. No comment. So anyway. So, yeah, I, I basically, yeah, normally I don't, you know, I'm, I'm only can get away from work for three or four days so that, that those four pairs cover that, um, four pairs and it worked really well. Yeah. So I got four pairs of these shorts. Um, now what I did, the mistake part came in because, uh, I was, I was checking the receipt later on, you know, balancing the old checking account and, um, What I realized, these are actually women's shorts. I have still not found any such thing and anything, any similar thing made for actual men, so I'm not sure. But anyway, um, yeah, they work really well and they've been really durable. They're kind of thick and, uh, have. Pretty much staved off the monkey butt for many thousands of miles.

Robin: Yeah, you're not the first person. I've heard mention that those products are out there and I'm becoming more and more well old, so I think I'm coming of age with the need for that kind of thing. Especially when you hit peak summer riding.

Brian: Yeah, yeah. Keeps the, uh, keeps the swamp at bay and. That's all I'm gonna say about that. Yeah,

Robin: you heard it here first, folks. You heard it here first. Tear that

Brian: bike. Giblet powder. Two words.

Robin: Giblet powder. Now we're onto the Mapt Mayhem. I'm loading up ride with gs.com, logging in using my Gmail account, clicking on route planner up top in the main navigation. You're chomping at the bit to see this amazing vision.

Brian: I am chomping. Okay, where are we starting today? Uh, uncle Robin

Robin: today. Warm Springs, which in the last episode you asked were the cold springs. Guess what? We might be staying at Cold Springs,

Brian: Texas. That's right. Hot, cold, warm.

Robin: So we wanna look at terrain and then I'm gonna zoom in.

Brian: Uh, I'm getting vertigo.

Robin: Don't worry. We got this. We're gonna

Brian: start the route.

Robin: That is pretty gnarly, right?

Brian: Yes. Yeah. Pretty, pretty gnarly. Uh, little area of the country here we arrived via 39, which would make sense given you were in Parkersburg, you were coming in from the Northwest and you were on 39.

Robin: Yes. Anything directly east or directly west I think is fair game. I wouldn't mind getting a little bit of a peek at to make sure I know what we are already, what we've already done that day. So I'm gonna go to ride with gps.com and I'm gonna, okay, there we go. Click on the routes. I'll load up the beast as they've heard it from one episode so far, the

Brian: full perfected. And then when you leave Warm Springs, which way are you going?

Robin: That's a perfectly fine question. Yeah. Here is Warm

Brian: Springs. Okay, so you're gonna go out

Robin: Got it. Definitely off of 39. Coming into town from the Northwest. And we don't do anything to the east. You talk about this, it looks like there's some good stuff in that area, but I don't know how far out Zoomed. Yeah, Brian. Show me your ways.

Brian: Now, one thing that's cool about this area is you can see if you're looking at it on, on the topographic view, you know, off to the west you've got the kind of the little, the little lumpy, beachy stuff.

Robin: Yeah. By topographic it's the terrain map inside of redwood

Brian: g p s. Yeah. Yeah. So you, you select terrain, and this is really like, you can. You can, you can see what kind of experience you're going to have. You know, you can get a real sense of like, oh, okay, we're getting into some more dramatic terrain right here. And so you can see that there's, you know, it was just sort of like lumpy, lumpy, lumpy, lumpy. And then now you're getting into some higher, uh, ridges. You know? And like, like most of the Appalachians, the ridges run like north. Uh, northeast to southwest. So they're kind of on this diagonal. And so the roads that are gonna be the most dramatic are the ones that are crossing all those ridges. Um, you know, they're ridge like ruffles. You know, you're, you're, you're riding on a giant potato chips and. So the mo, the best roads are going to, or a lot of the best roads are gonna be the ones that are trying to get across those somehow, you know? 'cause otherwise you get funneled into that diagonal down in the valleys and also in some of the ridge tops.

Robin: Yeah, it looks like it might be high traffic, but I'm inve, I'm looking at this, uh, just north of Warm Springs, Virginia. This US two 50. Which has some snarly snaggle tooth in there. Now that is a US route, which means heck, it might even be truck friendly. I don't know. It may be high traffic, but it is staring us in the face as poorly managed tear line right there. Just, just nothing but curves.

Brian: Nothing but curves and it climbs over and over and over, you know, over and up and down. You know, a pretty good size ridge system. You know, like normally you cross a ridge and you're done for a while. This just keeps going. So that could be a good goal. But how far away? The other thing is the scale. Like how far away is that?

Robin: That's a good question. When I expand the elevation chart, I believe that's what'll show me the size of a. No it won't. Okay. I don't know what is a mild just yet, but the one thing we can do, what are your thoughts given the situation on me taking this, uh, I don't know, about two 20, more like this, 92 over here through Dunmore and then up to Hawthorne. All of this is due north. Mm-hmm. To get to the top of this two 50, if I do that, I'm loving it. That alone, well, it didn't wanna do what I just wanted to do, but. Already. Let's see where we're at here. That's 50 miles. That right there alone is 50 miles.

Brian: Yeah. Basically you would end up with a route that's around a hundred miles, you know, to get you back to, uh uh, there we go.

Robin: That's 50 miles right there.

Brian: So you were talking about going up to, yeah. Um, is there something better? Yeah. Well, and the other thing is to go back out 39, even though you're, you know, Then go up 92. Oh, I see you. Yeah. All the way to the head of all the way to Thornwood. So

Robin: this thing's jumpy with the Zoom right now. So I'll, I'll just use the click box. Sorry about the, uh, vertigo as you called it. We're talking about something like that Lady fork. And then take 60, you wanna take two 19 up top or 66

Brian: over? You could, yeah, you could take two 19 up top and then take two 50 to Hightown and then 64 back hightown.

Robin: Where do we see that? What if I did this six 60, uh, the 66 route? 'cause that looks filthy.

Brian: Yeah. Let's see if it's actually

Robin: paved. I'm vaguely trusting that the little guy here says it's paved. Let's find out. Loaded and, yeah, that's paved. Yeah. Thorny Flat Road, which is 66 through Green Bank, which is 92 over to two 50. And I bet you if I just click right here. Look at that. All right. That's already, you know, that, that's, that's some miles right there. Yeah. But you get to ride this two 50 all the way to Monterey. Right. And I get the feeling that's not, I, you know, that's nothing to be angry about. And then you can just take two 20 all the way back in as a cool down and call it good. I think.

Brian: So what do you got there?

Robin: 130 extra miles back to Taj, which I think is, that's acceptable. Uh, if it's a short day or people just have. You know, if people are just those, those types of rider that just eat miles for breakfast, then uh, yeah. I got no beef for this. I'll tell you what looks even better is that 6 78 there by Williamsville Williamsville. If we just do this, that looks even better. Yeah. It's gonna be similar mileage and Yeah. Yeah. It still

Brian: leaves enough distance to Yeah. And it's not a US route and it's a numbered state route, so it'll be paved. Oh

Robin: yeah. So if we go back to Warm Springs here, I'll make the adjustments for the, the actual lodging. Let me make sure that this is, oh, what's this? Probably not paved. My trick with pavement is to grab the street view icon. Yeah. And if the, if the road lights up, it's probably paved, but then you really gotta zoom in. 'cause I'll tell you what, man, here in Idaho, they're not messing around when they say US Highway or US Interstate, blah, blah, blah. They might very well be talking about a freshly dug ditch. Yeah. Full size semi-trucks driving down that thing.

Brian: I think that, what do you got? 149 miles now it's 150 miles. Yeah, and the thing is you could, you could like, you could go up 92 here on this side and shave off some. Probably smart.

Robin: Yeah. You ever get to that point where you're just like, but I don't wanna look at that,

Brian: but I don't wanna, yeah, I don't wanna.

Robin: That's, Aw, that's an, this is an awful feeling, but we're gonna do it.

Brian: I don't wanna be prudent.

Robin: Let's see what, oh, well, you know, 92 look better actually in that one little section. If we do that, we've knocked it down to 120 miles extra that you can just chomp on and I'll like it. Should I save this one up?

Brian: I think so.

Robin: Alright. You know what I'm gonna do once these things get published,

Brian: Whatcha gonna do, Robin?

Robin: We're we're, we're gonna make these available on the podcast episode pages for people to download if they want to. I

Brian: think so.

Robin: Yeah. This is, this will be good. We'll make 'em freebies maybe. Maybe. Yeah.

Brian: Alright. They're, so the, all the, the listeners, the, the. The teaming crowds of listeners are going to be, are going to want to see what in the hell we're talking about. Absolutely. Or follow along at, they can follow along at home on Google Maps or on uh, Broadway, g p s

Robin: ride gps.com. I'll probably edit some of that out at some point. Let's see here. So what am I looking for? Oh, the names Okay. 7 7 7 dash

Brian: There we go. Do you wanna put together a second one that is, Not as long, but a nice scenic route. 'cause if you go south of Warm Springs, it looks pretty cool. And I think you could get back and You mean hot springs? Yeah. Yeah. If you go through, go south of Warm Springs in Hot Springs and then you get into Boiling Springs. No, um, there's actually Healing Springs down there.

Robin: Perfect. Oh, I don't know. We can, I just don't really. Care about those people enough, I think.

Brian: Yeah. Let me, like you could, what I was talking about is you could go down two 20 and hang it right on 6 87 and come back. Okay. You're making me do

Robin: it. You're making me do it. So let me clear the map. We're doing it. So starting Hot Springs and you want me to go where? Down? Two Oh. Warm

Brian: Springs. Oh. Warm Springs. Warm springs. Go down. Go down. Two 20. Yep. Then you can see there's some tasty bits there. So keep going. On 2 22, you see Clearwater Park and hang it right on 6 87. Well look at what it

Robin: did. Look at what it did. It wanted to avoid all things good about this, this, uh, moment in motorcycling. Yeah, I mean, that's a US route that's gonna be paved. I don't even need to look. I know it's paved.

Brian: Yeah. And then, uh, yeah. And then you're back up and you're, and you're going through this really cool valley and there's Yeah.

Robin: Just head on, back from there through, uh,

Brian: 6 87. Yeah. Yeah. And what do we got? We got what? 50, 60? We got about 60 miles. I bet. Uh, yeah. 40. Not even that. 50 maybe. Yeah. 50 miles. Yep. If

Robin: that. I like it. So I should save this one as the bonus scenic. Shouldn't I already right out the

Brian: gates? Yeah. Yeah. And I like that idea, you know, where you've got a couple of like, okay, here's a couple of little bonus routes. You know, one of 'em is for you, you know, you slobbering maniacs, and then here's a, you know, like, you know, our people. And then here's one, here's one. If you're, you know, you know, like if you're shrimp at, at lunch is not sitting well with you or your roller dog once out or something like that. Perfect.

Robin: We have two now, lemme make sure I've got both of these stored. That marks this episode of Tastic Mayhem. Which, uh, Brian, did anything inspire you about that particular ride?

Brian: That's a broad question. Yeah. What you need to do when you're riding in West Virginia is not, not, think of that John Denver song. We're not gonna sing it. You don't wanna be thinking, you know, uh, West Virginia Mountain Mama, you know, blah, blah, blah. No. So just, just try to do that while you're in the mountains of West Virginia. It's impossible. Can't do it.

Robin: Well, that's, but we're not in the mountains of West Virginia. We're in the mountains of

Brian: Virginia. Oh, still in Virginia. Okay.

Robin: I, I believe so. I do know. Socially it is touch and go about that topic. If you talk to somebody from Virginia and you think on the in line with eh, Virginia, West Virginia, whatever, the Virginian, they have a certain southern sophistication that will eloquently. Destroy your commentary about anything involving them having anything to do with West Virginia whatsoever. So I stay away from that one.

Brian: That's true. Good idea. And, and just to be fair, uh, warm Springs and Hot Springs are kind of just inside the border of Virginia, so, uh, for much of, for much of the, uh, first route you're going to be in. West Virginia and crossing into Virginia. So anyway, that makes sense.

Robin: Hey, that brings us to Brian's tiny tasty tool Tips

Brian: gather round kids. Um, Let's pick a random, tiny, tasty tool tip here. Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna combine two today. One of 'em is, uh, now everybody should have a human toolkit with 'em. You need to have a first aid kit or somebody does, you know for That's right. All the

Robin: little stuff stuff. Last week we were talking about comparison. Those, I forgot to bring mine in. I don't, I'll, I'll chime in a little bit here, but I forgot mine.

Brian: No problem. Anyway, in my kit, I carry something I have not seen other people carry, and I think it's very important. And what you want are, are, uh, you know, uh, several of those little disposable artificial tears, uh, droppers. So you get, you can get these little eye droppers and they're little tiny plastic eyedrops that got just a little bit of the artificial tears, eyedrops and carry like 10 of 'em. Because when you're out riding, you're outside, you're in the air, there's things in the air, there's bugs, rocks, aliens, you know, all kind of, all that kind of stuff. And even, you know, even with helmets, you know, things happen and get in people's eyes. So if you have, you can take like four or five of those little droppers and, and flush that stuff out of someone's eye. And it also helps soothe their eye. You know, this, this can literally be a lifesaver for someone. I mean, if you can't see, you can't ride. And that's, that's horrifying. That's pretty brilliant. I like that. So I don't see a lot of people having those. And so, you know, go get some artificial tears. You know, it doesn't matter what brand or whatever. Uh, Chuck, Chuck, some of 'em in your first aid kit, they're tiny, they're light, they don't take up any room, and you will find ways to use them. Someone will get a bug in the eye. And tiny tool tip number two. Very tiny carry some Immodium need. I say more

Robin: Immodium ad. I forget what Immodium does.

Brian: It regulates the human excretory system. Uh, so anti shit yourself. Pretty much. Yeah. So if, uh, if things are flowing too hard back there, Immodium helps slow the tide and it works fast.

Robin: Smart. No, I, that's still funny, but that's smart. That makes sense.

Brian: Yeah. So yeah, nothing's more miserable, Dan, you know, having, you know, having some issue with a, with a bad roller dog you got back in West Virginia and it wants out. Anyway, um,

Robin: you really bring the, the charm to the Wednesday night

Brian: episode. Do I need to literally draw a picture? No. If anything starts to go awry, just take one and take another one. If it, if it continues to, and, you know, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll help the problem quite a bit and we will say no more.

Robin: Nice. Very good. Now, not everybody remembers these timely tips. They're all important, but every now and then you're gonna find yourself on planet. That guy, we've all been that guy. We've all ridden with that guy. Let's talk about that guy.

Brian: Oh, there's so many of that guys to pick from. Um, I'm gonna talk about that guy. Uh, this is a dual sport ride in the wilds of Tennessee, like very remote. Um, and some of it was actually some single track and, you know, just very remote and so forth. Anyway, that guy. Uh, got a flat on his, uh, K L R and that happens. That doesn't make you that guy, really. Um, and so, you know, we improvise, we get rocks together, we pile up sticks. Uh, we, you know, we, we, we build a primitive lathe, you know, we, anyway, we get the wheel off or we get the tire off. Um, It's actually a pretty nice time 'cause we're in the woods. It's in the shade. We've got a little bit of a breeze. Uh, there's no dead animals around, so it's actually, you know, it's not bad as far as you know, dealing with a tube tire. You know, and we had spare tubes and all that stuff. Anyway, so we get the tire off and we found the, the object that punctured his tube was actually a broken off key. Like, like a key from someone's house, what it was doing out there. I have no idea. So,

Robin: That's a whole topic right there, the things that can puncture a tire. I remember, uh, our own Travis Burleson, he drove, he rode his bike over a socket extension and not even a small one, like a, I think it was a quarter inch and it became completely embedded, like straight. It was, it was probably, it was about three inches long though. I think it was a quarter inch drive and the whole thing was flush with the socket connection. I was like, what's on your tire man? And he's like, what? He, he rolls up, begins to tug on it, and then, and that's,

Brian: there goes our day. Nice. Yeah. And, and yeah. Those, those can be, well, here's, here's the thing. We found the key in the tire. Yeah. We could, uh, there was one time that we, we pulled a, a rock out of, it was just a rock. Just a rock. A rock, yeah. A little stone. And so we see this little thing peaking up and I start pulling on it and it comes out and it's just a little rock. And I'm like, how the hell did this get in? You know? Anyway, okay, so go back to the original, that guy. So we find the key, uh, we, we get, we have a new tube, so that's good. That makes life a lot easier than trying to patch it and we start putting things back together and something. I don't want to claim any kind of divine in intervention here, but something tells me, or at at least it should be part of your habit when you are wrestling a tube tire. But, uh, I took a rag, you know, I had my little, you know, your, you know, clean up your hands rag, and I basically swiped it around the inside of the tire and I found a screw. So basically this guy had two flats at once or that guy, I mean, had two flats at once. Yeah. From a key and from a screw. And if you stop, so basically just you, because you find a problem, make sure you found all the problems, is the lesson from that guy. So he's, he is like a

Robin: two-wheeled

Brian: Morocco. Yeah. I don't know how I, to this day, we don't know how it did that, but yeah, you always, so basically you always run, if you're dealing with a tube tire, you always. Run a rag around the inside and see if you can, you know, make sure there's nothing that's gonna puncture your tube. And I guess that's why you do that. 'cause sometimes there is something else, or, you know, totally unrelated, you know, so like, someone was like, they were going to Home Depot and they were taking a long way home and their keys fell out and you know, and then they lost a box. I don't know what happened. I don't know why that stuff was out there. I'm trying

Robin: to think of the one that hears of that guy. The Ride Your Own Ride Logic, the Ride Your Own Ride Logic. I hope that I haven't already told this one, but I will say that if I have, it's still worth hearing. Again, from a, a mental safety perspective, sometimes you just run into somebody that you didn't know and then you do and you're like, oh, they're, they're seem pretty cool. Maybe we'll go for a ride at some point. And then you invite 'em and they. Seem to think that there's some expectation of them to ride in a specific way or there's some specific expectation of how the amoeba that our multiple riders is going to go. The number of us gather on the day specified and I say, yeah, we're gonna ride up this way. And you know, it's, this was a Chicago route. So it was specific to the Chicago land area north of, you know, when you get out into the burbs, if you stay by the lake, you might find some opportunities to have a little bit of fun, but nothing rural by any means. Right. I've managed to devise this little route because when we were there, I needed something that could enjoy a, on the regular. If I had, uh, an hour and a half and I wanted to go exhaust myself on the bike, I, I would just be like, I'm gonna go do the regular route. That's actually on the website. I think I said. Uh, it's written as roll your own twisties. Finding a remote route with low enough traffic that you can at least enjoy being on the bike without any heavy duty downtown Gold Coast Noise going on. Here we are at the start of this thing. We get on the bikes, we take off, and very early into the ride, we float around a corner. It's a blind corner, it's a residential blind corner, and I always run a delayed apex. So I float wide, I look into the curve and I dip the bike in and I begin to accelerate carefully because like I said, this is residential territory. There, there are kids playing in the yards. I don't wanna mess with that. Yeah. Right. And I look in my right mirror and I see this blip. Not turn going full force. It took me a while to register what, to this day, I don't understand why you would make that decision in a blind curve, but what I did see and my subconscious took note of was somebody's been watching too many Instagram videos. I. Blasts through this corner, rights into somebody's yard, downs the bike, it end over ends. They were all right, but they're sitting there with this broken machine thinking, well, I don't understand what happened. Isn't that what we're doing? If anybody told you that's what we were doing. Don't ride with those people.

Brian: We're gonna, we're gonna go till someone crashes. No, you're

Robin: right. And if somebody didn't tell you that, don't pretend like Instagram is a resource to understand what's about to happen there. Interesting. That's been weighing on me for quite some time. It feels really good to have gotten that out.

Brian: I'm glad, I'm glad I could help extract this, uh, from you. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, yeah. The, that guy who does something stupid and, you know, and, and everybody's on a different, or he is on a totally different page. Totally different plane of reality. Um, yeah, been there, done that. I. I'm adding to this, to

Robin: the outline, fast without purpose, blind curve crashing. And then I'll strike through that one. That way I, hopefully I don't bring that one up again 'cause it shouldn't have to plague me everywhere we go. Text strike through style 1993.

Brian: Very good. Yeah. Yeah. And. And we could talk separately about, well, and, and there's really not much to say, but the, that guy who uses the whole road, like not just the right side, but the whole road is his playground, no matter where you're going. And it's just, you know. It's a, it's a terrible thing to see. It is, and I don't want to get into a rant. So there, you know, it's like that. You, you are not on the same page. You're, you are going to be that guy and I'm gonna go ride somewhere else.

Robin: Well, what do you wanna do from here? Do you wanna do another Mapt Mayhem in a different location, or

Brian: I think an excerpt from an article. I like that. That's actually not a bad idea. I could talk about the rules of passing from the Sport touring article.

Robin: I'll hang out for that. And then the other thing is, you know, we've got room to keep on coming up with more segments.

Brian: I'm just gonna start at the top. Okay. This week on Brian's bloviating, we're gonna start with a commandment. One for my list of 10 commandments for the sport touring ride leader. And the first commandment is thou shalt stay the hell away from one another. This is the number one invi commandment space is life. When you're moving, give each other at least a school bus of space. Don't, don't worry about the two second rule or whatever. You know. Uh, think about it like a school bus. Everybody knows what a school bus looks like, right?

Robin: Oh, now we're gonna debate because right there it's like two seconds. The school bus gets bigger the faster you're going. True.

Brian: Yeah. And we're talking a long school bus that your, that your sister rode, not the short one you guys rode anyway. So leave space around you so you can maneuver and do what you need to so you can ride like you that. So only share lanes at stoplights. So like when you're stoplights Yeah. Bunch up so you can get through the green. You know when it turns, uh, each rider needs enough room to maneuver instantly as needed in any direction without wasting any attention on other riders. You know, you, an alligator jumps out at you. You gotta react right then without having to think about the guy next to you. Ask us how we know. Yeah, I, I'd swear I once saw a python, but it was a stick anyway. Um, and so if you wanna be close and you wanna hold hands, you know, go ride a rollercoaster or something. But if you wanna ride motorcycles, get the hell away from each other, give each other lots of space. And one important factor in this is you really need to keep the number of writers in your group to a minimum, uh, three to maybe five or six writers is ideal. Um, and it's still, you know, you really have to pay attention when you get into five or six riders. If you get more than that, things can get really pretty cumbersome and you run a lot of risk of like running into each other and damaging each other. Um, and kind of the big, the classic example is I do a lot of u-turn. Um, you know, that's what happens. Whatever deal with it. And if, if you need to u-turn and you have like eight or 10 riders, it becomes, it becomes like a, a circus and, and people fall over. People go out, you know it. There's always one, there's always, there's always, there's always one that has trouble. You know, people are looking in every direction. They're trying not to get hit by trucks. And so forth. So that is commandment one. Stay the hell away from each other. Don't hold hands. The next week we'll do number two.

Robin: Yeah. Now this is actually brilliant. So are you open to argument? Absolutely open to argument. I am completely all about the minimum of two seconds more if necessary. Right. A school bus. Yeah, I get it. But if we're really hauling the mail, the school bus won't do. That's true. It should take you at least two seconds to reach the object. The right ahead of you just passed minimum. And that's if your attention is on high alert, like you've just done the double shot coffee thing or whatever. And otherwise it's like three seconds, ain't bad, five seconds, whatever. But the whole idea is that whatever you're counting as it goes by, you reach that telephone pole, you should be able to one 1000, two, 1000, me. You know what I mean? Right. That grows with speed. And if there's anything we won't ever admit to, it's that we're all about speed. Well, you know, to it. Figuratively to some extent. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Write fast. Write fast. Shift

Brian: a lot. Go, go, go, go, go. Yeah. That's a great way to, that's a great way to think about it. Um. Yeah. And like, like the school bus works at quasi legal speeds and, you know, but you know, there are times you need more. And, and yeah. And you also, those times when you need to count those two seconds and it's like a, you know, a really long bus or it's a airplane, um, those are also the times you have to really, it's, it's better to. You need all your attention and it's better, you know, the, the further away that guy is, the better. Yeah. You know, the less your, you don't want that red mist to come down and start competing. You don't want to think, oh, I can, I can, I can do that too. You know, you don't wanna base anything you're doing off the guy in front of you. So the more the speeds come up, the more seconds you, you know, the two seconds is like the absolute dirt minimum. You know, more than that is even better.

Robin: The red mist is delicious, so long as you're by yourself, so long as there's enough space, just enjoy. Enjoy all of it. Very cool. Let's go and wrap this thing up.

Brian: That's our episode for this round. Tune in next time for more discussion on all things specific to sport touring or universal to motorcycling as a whole. For radio T R o, I'm Brian Ringer. And I'm Robin Dean. Safe travels everyone.