Robin: So Robin, did you ride today? I didn't ride today. Oh, today was a good day. The weather, I can't complain. I am going riding, Maggie and I are going to ride the Boise route. That's Maggie to Boise, Monday and Tuesday. We have a dog sitter. Sweet. It's going to be great. Yeah. 93 to 75 to 21 through the forest and the hills and the mountains to Boise for the night. And yeah, I think she's looking forward to that. I'm excited about it. How about you? Any riding today?

Brian: I rode to work today. You can see my helmet and jacket back there. I did. I do see, do our listeners out there see this? I have no idea. That's not how that works. Picture a white helmet. That's what I've always got on.

Robin: Glad to hear it. So that's the 20 minute trip to work, right?

Brian: Yep. 20 minutes to work. No excitement at all. Just dodging traffic, staying sharp. Well, did any of our non-listeners ask any questions this week? This is stuff our listeners might ask us if we had any listeners. We'd like to change the title of that someday. So please send in a question. Any question, we'll do our best. This is one, I think, I think we're going to have very, very different answers on. So I'm going to ask it and I want to hear your answer. I bet you're going to have some, something I've never heard of. And the question is into most rides, some interstate must fall. How do you do to stay awake on the interstate? Caffeine? Is that it?

Robin: Oh, caffeine's always in the picture. Are you the one that came up with the 60, 60 rule or was it the 90, 90 rule? 90 minutes or 90 miles, something like that per, between breaks?

Brian: I think it just sort of, I don't know. I, I was in the article and you're like, yeah, I do that too. Except the one thing you do differently, the, the, what you introduced was I think stop after about 30 or 45 minutes for the old guys to pee for the first one. Yeah.

Robin: Yeah. The first one is like, we've all had our breakfast and we are ramped on coffee and ready to take on weekday roads that are wide open, right? But after 30 minutes, it's like, Whoa, the caffeine stays, but the liquid's got to go.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: You know, the blood's already pumping, so we're good to ride, but got to take a break.

Brian: That was a bit of genius, but yeah, we sort of converged there without ever even talking about it. You know, who's, you know, he gave me that.

Robin: No, Dave Rocco. Oh, okay. Yeah. Rocco gave me the 30, 30. I thought, well, it's 60, 60 is pretty good too. Cause 60 minutes or 60 miles, you can stop for 10 and just breathe for a second. Then keep on going. It's still, you know, 240 miles. If you're averaging 60 miles per hour in the rural goat roads, not necessarily a wisest choice, but not impossible. Anyhow, back to caffeine. Let me think going down the expressway. There are a lot of trains of thought on the topic of having earbuds in while you're riding. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've heard instructors say, Oh, I can't do that. You know, dangerous, you know, like they need to pay attention to the sound of the wind in their helmet without protecting their ears or the motor or whatever, but quite frankly, my best writing is done under calm decision. So first I see a lot of the sound using really nice construction. The cone rubber, it's like the almost like a percussion bell cone rubber that you put into your ears and it seals out almost all sound. Minor audio active plug phones. Yes. Plug phones.

Brian: Good to know.

Robin: So they're not super pricey. They make some that are nicer, but I've got those in, uh, sound is sealed out and I always have music on when I'm writing excellent, I mean, 15,000 miles a year now and then, if I'm lucky, that's the big brag chip on my shoulder thing, but big miles of constant hectic, twisty, challenging roads. The music is on say what you will about it, but I've got, I've always got good tunes, which brings me to something I'd love to do. I haven't really had enough of an opportunity to do this, but talk about songs we love to listen to. What are my like big three right now? And, uh, I definitely just returned to audio slaves, bring them back alive, which is just big rock, big rock, you know, excellent, anything grooving. That's what I did. So if I'm going on the expressway, it's music, get the good music going, you know, start having imaginary thoughts of being the superhero on a motorcycle. Leave all the cars around you alone. Go to reputable pace, nine, you're fine. 10, your mind, nine, you're fine. 10, your mind, nine, you're fine. 10, your mind stay away from the tickets. You know what I mean?

Brian: What about you? I really didn't realize that you're a music while you're riding, like all the time person. I did not know that I've ridden with you many miles. Excellent. Good to know. I just wear earplugs. I've not found anything that works under the helmet very well. Although maybe I should get some plug phones because I've, I've kind of improvised something like plug phones before by, you know, poking a little tube through anyway, whatever.

Robin: Are you talking about the self molding gel, whatever it is?

Brian: Yeah. That's never worked for me. Uh, just foam earplugs are all that's worked for sealing out sound. So I really don't like some, and for me on, I would not want that on the twisty technical stuff, but I would want some music and you know, some, something going on, some streaming going on while I'm on the interstate. That's a great idea. Um, but yeah, no, I just, I just got it out. I have, you know, the cone of silence, uh, so to speak and so forth. Um, yeah, the biggest way to stay awake is just move around on the bike. And I, I, you know, I apologize for having just stupid physical practical advice here, but, uh, keep moving around on the bike. You know, don't let things go numb, that kind of thing. And you can kind of keep yourself awake that way. I really like in a car, it can be so boring. You want to fall asleep on a bike. I never, you know, I never get there because there's always enough. There's always plenty of room to be paranoid. Uh, so that and the oncoming wind.

Robin: Yeah. Random wind gusts, just knocking you a diagonal.

Brian: So mainly it's just physical stuff. Just keep moving around and, and you know, if somebody's watching they probably wonder what the hell's wrong with me, but, uh, yeah, that kind of thing. Um, and yeah, maybe, uh, so since I don't have music in my ears, I can make my own, you know, uh, singing different stuff, just different bits of songs just for no reason.

Robin: Uh, and that brings us to the special event of this episode, ladies and gentlemen, the next 20 minutes are going to be Brian singing helmet songs to you. Take it away. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants that at all. It's pretty good. I like that. That's a good answer. I feel like your answer is solid. I never even realized how effective standing up on the bike is. Oh yeah. Even if I'm doing 65, if I stand up for 30 seconds, I sit back down. I've got at least another 10, 15 minutes of refreshment until the next break. You know what I mean? Like if I need a break, I can probably squeeze out another 10 to 15 minutes by standing up for that amount of time. And then I'll find somewhere to take a little, you know, you get a point.

Brian: Yeah. That's a great opportunity to dry out the old giblets and, uh, you know, good for you.

Robin: L giblets, a thousand L's.

Brian: We're going to have callbacks. You got to listen from the beginning to understand the callbacks.

Robin: Yes.

Brian: Oh, we're developing culture here.

Robin: Yes. It's B it's becoming site updates. I don't even remember. I've been working so hard on getting a couple of articles out. Brian just published a new article. That's stellar. Uh, checking out how to, you know, find curves where there may very well not be any and improvise, you know, some opportunities to feel your bike's handling more than just the direct beeline to the commute. Uh, but as far as website updates, yeah, you got new articles from Kelly Howard, Brian Ringer. I'm working on one about the muck off pressure washer, as well as what one that has just been a mountain to climb about how to convince a person who has ego, have we met my name is Robin. I work on it every day. But to collapse that so that you can go about learning new things and be humble in a new learning environment where the information might not gel with what you already know. So that has been an Epic and I blame Brian for this. Cause I was like, Hey Brian, what should I write about? He was like, huh? And I knew, well, there goes the next couple of months. We are selling maps through Stripe now, or we're selling everything through Stripe now. So if you buy anything, you'll receive an email about what that thing is, and it'll be explained much more clearly about downloading maps. Just remember all of our maps are free. If you sign up as a member to the site, which also gives you the maintenance logs area, as well as personalized weather settings and crazy stuff like that. So that's it, which, uh, and the site is at okay. Ready? It's H T T T semicolon. Shit. I got to go back.

Brian: That's wrong. Oh, damn.

Robin: No, no. Yeah. I see. And it was a colon, right?

Brian: You've got SSL, don't you?

Robin: Everyone HTTPS colon T R O dot bike, T R O dot bike, the writing obsession. Uh, so do we want to save the map testing mayhem for last? Cause we're going to be going on for a minute.

Brian: Let's knock out a tool tip and then come back to that. I love it. Brian's tiny, tasty tool tips. They're tiny. They're tasty. They're tool tips. They're from me and I'm Brian. One or two per episode. We need a jingle for tiny, tasty tool tips.

Robin: That was it. That's how it rolls off.

Brian: That's all we get. Okay. All right. I'm going to do two quick ones. One, you got your toolkit for your bike. Grab your toolkit for your body and for other bodies and go through it and throw out the dried out stuff, replace the stuff, go through it at least once a year to make sure that when you grab a bandaid, it's actually going to stick. That when you grab some Neosporin, it's actually still going to be a goo. Uh, when you need eye drops, they're still going to drop, you know, just go through the thing once a year, review everything that's in there. Uh, refresh it. Don't be afraid to throw stuff out. It's going to be worth it. And, uh, and make sure, you know, and, and also make sure that you update it based on stuff that happened to you. You know, if you're like, oh, I could, I could have used, uh, you know, is there somebody who's allergic to Tylenol? I could have used some ibuprofen, stuff like that. Just go through once a year, update your first aid kit. You'll thank me later.

Robin: If you go to TR2Bike, mouse over DigiTools up in the main navigation and select Moto Packing Checklist. It's the very first thing under DigiTools.

Brian: Excellent.

Robin: Somewhere on that, you'll see first aid kit under utilities. And the things we do specify are the pack kit, P-A-C-K-I-T, the trauma pack kit, and the SWAT T tourniquet. Now I had an article about this somewhere. And if you go to, yeah, the idea is 15, 5, 8, 9, 15, 5, 8, 9. So TR2Bike question mark P equals 15, 5, 8, 9. That gets into more detail about compact first aid trauma and rescue kits. But some of these things, I mean, they're super compact. They've got all kinds of antiseptic and little pieces of piping to wrap gauze around and things like brace. And it's just good to have. It also gets into matters of the spot trace, which I can't really afford at this particular moment. But eventually, eventually. What's the next one, Brian?

Brian: And again, this is a tiny one and so I'll keep it tiny and tasty. So it's just branding, Robin. This is how you do branding. Two or one per episode. The other thing is go to the hardware store and look for a little package. And they're also found in auto parts store under like the help section, stuff like that. But look for these little things called cable stops. And it's a little brass cylinder and it's got a hole in it and it's got a screw in one end. And you can use that. If you break a cable, you can kind of unwind your clutch cable like the last episode. See, these are callbacks. That's important.

Robin: I love that you're leaving these in the outline so that I can return to them and build off of this. Cause a lot of these, I mean, I've got a pretty good setup going when I go on a ride, but these are really great. A lot of these are new to me as your co-host, so please.

Brian: Yeah. There's nothing like pulling out the thing you need that nobody else has thought of anyway. Uh, anyway, Carrie, yeah, these things, so you can unwind a little bit of your cable, uh, and, and you can make a field repair that's pretty workable for like a broken clutch cable or even a throttle cable, things like that. Uh, the cable stops can also substitute for the little drum that breaks off at the end, uh, or you can just kind of clamp them on there somewhere else. Anyway, they're tiny. Uh, you know, they don't take up any room cheap and could save the day someday, especially if you have a bike with a clutch, uh, with a cable clutch.

Robin: I would love for you to write like 600 to 750 words about any of those that are good enough to be the default. You know what I mean? Like if a cable stop is a good permanent fixture of any, if there are any versions of a cable stop that could be like, Oh, that's even better. What comes stock?

Brian: I don't know. Can't think of it. Yeah. I'd rather just replace the cable. Cause you know, the rest of it's, but yeah. And I, like a friend of mine, once we used a pair of ice grips to fix a clutch cable, uh, so we unwound a little bit, pulled a little extra and we had a vice grip hanging underneath there. And then we zip tied that. So basically he just used as his clutch lever for the next six months. Uh, so if it works, it can work quite well. Just don't try to convince anybody. It's stock, right? Like that's, that's custom. It's totally custom. It's it's a race setup.

Robin: Well, awesome. Which brings us to, Oh, you've got reheated rehash after this.

Brian: And the idea is we'll read an excerpt from one of our past blog posts on, uh, TRO dot bike that's TRO dot bike. We'll discuss and debate. Um, and we have not discussed what we're going to debate. So, uh, last time we had a difference of opinion and it was quite spicy. It was also quite mild.

Robin: I think we should go back to the, the, the 10 commandments to lead an excruciatingly good sport touring motorcycle ride.

Brian: All right. Last time we read commandment one, thou shalt stay the hell away from each other. Space is life. Okay. Now commandment two, these all build on each other. And yeah, I totally meant that. Um, these all build on each other, so you need space between each other. So let's read, let's let us read from the scripture here that I came up with. May I? You go ahead. I'll be talking.

Robin: Roman numeral two, thou shalt pass and to be passed. This is the logical corollary to space is life. Don't bunch up. If you're feeling frisky that day, don't crowd the rider in front of you. Instead, hang back a little and pass as soon as you safely can do so. If you're feeling a little mellower, keep half an eye on your mirrors for the frisky folks, then move over and enthusiastically wave them around as soon as it's safe. Enjoy the show. Soon. Everyone is sorted into place. They prefer that day. And you'll have the lovely spectacle of a line of writers spread out and the spaces between them gradually getting wider and therefore safer. Well read, sir. You are an English speaker. Excellent. Totally a simple thing like pass and be passed. I guess the rule I play is honestly, when we were doing K&M demo rides, absolutely not. I've never met you before.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: This is a commercial enterprise. We need these bikes. This is the order. They're not going to let me break any speed limit laws there. And I didn't, except for on the SR slash S thing, because well, different story. But the fact is that no, just, just follow the line, test out the machine. Feel free to rubber band it. This is not the worst thing in the world. If you're stuck in the goat road, super tight curves, then there's no harm in slowing down, let people know that that's what you're doing. And then pick back up for a second and enjoy what you can. But it doesn't change the fact that if you have the opportunity to pass, if, if the person ahead of you is like, yeah, man, I see what you're up to. Get around, do it. And at the same time, if they just don't seem like they're that available to they're not, they have no 360 awareness going on at all, then all you need to do is make sure you're not going to scare them or anybody else. I've got a side story for this, but I want to pass it to you first. And then when you get a chance, ping pong that noise, have at it.

Brian: All right. Yeah. This one here is very different than some writing rules. You will find like, there are some types of bikes where you get in line. You're in a certain order. There's a road captain. There's the road major. There's the road general. There's the road brigadier general. No road Lieutenant.

Robin: No, absolutely. Pause a shot. No, I don't, I don't know.

Brian: Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah. And this is, this is intended for this. We're all about sport touring here. Again, branding, branding, Robin. We're about sport, touring, motorcycling, and it works in that context where it's a small group, hopefully you kind of know each other. And the other thing is you really have to let your ego go. People have to be capable of, of the priority has to be enjoying the ride and enjoying the ride safely rather than, um, I'm thinking of a polite term rather than flexing or, you know, figuring out who's faster, all that stuff. I mean, some of the fastest writers I know have slow days where they're like, eh, I don't feel like it today. And they, you know, whatever, you know, loaf around for the morning and then they suddenly speed up in the afternoon. That's all fine. You know, and everybody's sort out what you're feeling like in the moment and so forth. Uh, once you get this working for a group of people, it's just fricking magic. Everybody, you know, everybody has a good time. You know, they get to see the guy pass them and that's kind of fun. And, you know, and everybody has a lot more fun riding the pace that they like and they get farther apart and they get safer and safer, I like it. But it is very different than a lot of people are used to. So you have to explain it.

Robin: Yes. The, what are we doing mentality? Amoeba isms and group think there's really no place for that. There's certainly no place for that in skilled writing. I do remember one time to a good friend who I will not name. I will not name this person, but I do know that I wanted to pick it up a notch. And I asked this person, do you mind if I, I get up ahead, I'm going to pick up the pace. And the response was why I did not. I, that, so I stopped asking and just went ahead. Like, that's not a response. That's the ego stepping in. Really? I maybe, I don't know.

Brian: Yeah. I, and I, I remember you asking me that one day, like, Hey, do you mind? And I'm like, why the hell would I mind go be free? You were nothing but courteous.

Robin: I was like, I, yeah, I'm going to say, I know I'm going to go up here. I'm going to go to my thing. Everything's beautiful. I love everyone. I'll see you at the next stop. And we did, there was, there's nothing to that. There are days when friends are absolutely on fire and there are days when they are absolutely not. Oh, that's the story I remembered was coming back from Boise. When I got off of 21 back onto 75, which is where things become more big sweepers and rivers and open views. Uh, there was a perfectly pleasant pair of Harley riders ahead of me. Cruiser riders. I'll just say cruiser riders. Uh, no negative vibes, no anything. Uh, I didn't hug them until I found an opportunity. I don't know that they noticed me or not, but I went around the first guy and got in between the two. And it was clear to me that the person ahead of me who was significantly further up than their buddy that they were riding with or whatever. That person was trying to figure out what happened only after they noticed that I was behind them, that they tried to figure out where their friend was, who was right behind me. You know, but it was, it was a little disconcerting to watch them constantly checking their mirrors. I don't, I don't understand it. I don't understand, but he just seemed very confused by the situation. I wasn't crowding. And then I went around and I waved and just keep it pleasant. Usually people want you to have a good time too.

Brian: Yeah. It can be a little hard to, to just, to see two bikes or three, you know, behind each other, behind you, but you know, well, Murray's story was the best.

Robin: That was a great day. You're a mad man. Okay. Uh, so you know what, I need a story, Brian, can we do a tale? Maybe tell me a tale, tales from planet that guy. We've all been that guy. We've all run with that guy. Let's talk about that guy. I got to go with the guitar.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: You were, you were so inspired by this one last time. Let's talk about that guy with the, with the bullshit guitar rock, the Belushi moment.

Brian: Well, I mean, you already said it and this has happened multiple times. I don't know why. I don't know where they come from. It does. It's, you know, and, and don't get me wrong, Robin and I are both musicians. We appreciate music. It is not welcome. If you're going to bring your guitar out to the fire, out to the hotel parking lot and, and, and start doing Bon Jovi songs that you're that guy. I mean, sorry, you're that guy. You didn't read the room.

Robin: It's not that he said Bon Jovi, by the way, people, it's the fact that he said somebody else covering Bon Jovi acoustically on the guitar. That's true. Yeah. If you're going to play three chords of the truth, you better be the person who nailed those particular three chords better than anybody else, or I don't want to hear it.

Brian: Yeah. So yeah, that guy with the fricking guitar that, you know, time for the time for the Belushi moment. You know, I gave my love a cherry bang, slam crash.

Robin: Sorry, it didn't Belushi. He was polite when in that movie. Right. He was first. Can I see that?

Brian: Didn't he say, may I, and then he says, sorry, I gave my love a chicken that had no bone. That was the line where I think he broke. And if I hear one, a dead or alive from somebody who did not write the song. It, it, yeah, it's on anyway. So that guy read the room, read the room there. That's what I'm gonna say. Know your audience before you act in front of that audience. And does that audience want to be an audience? They do not trust me. Here's another one.

Robin: It's okay to be weird when you know, you're not used to the environment around you ask about every individual thing that involves the version of weird that you feel they might not approve of. Hey guys, I'm kind of like the acoustic guitar kicking back guy. Are you into that? Now I will say that the response to these questions from that person who's courteous enough to acknowledge their weirdness needs to be addressed with direct. Polite wording, not the kind of sort of, not the, not the vibe of, I don't think they want me to. It's gotta be like, don't put the, do not bust that guitar out. It is not appropriate. This rally, not this rally. Maybe another one, maybe some other gathering and then leave awkward silence and just keep maintaining eye contact.

Brian: Yeah. The, the Martin backpacker was a horrible invention. It's a, it's like a micro guitar anyway. Two headed coin.

Robin: We call it two headed coin, but that's usually means there's a flip side. That's completely opposite of one response. It's almost like a contrary opinion type stuff. So it just needs a better name. But the idea here is that you've got a simple and a complicated answer to anything that may be curious to the average writer. Stuff happens quick. What's the right thing to do slow and why, which you must've written in there. I think that's fantastic.

Brian: Thank you.

Robin: And I'm going to start with loose services.

Brian: Excellent.

Robin: I don't write as much dirt as Brian. I certainly don't write as much dirt as our own Tim Clark. But it doesn't mean that I'm afraid of it. And I'm certainly a lot more adept to riding through loose debris in the road now that I've learned to relax. So the short answer in my mind is don't change a thing about how you get through a corner. Look through the corner, stay loose. The bike might dance, let it correct itself. Storytime, Greg white. I think there's like three years ago that he and I were riding along. The Greg white, the Greg white, and this road, there was more tar snake than road, tons of tar snakes. And I did not care. I was just going, I did every turn. Yep. It's all over. The bike was all over the place. Did not matter. Did not even, I mean, oncoming traffic, the bike was always in my lane. I knew where it was. So for the first time, the entire ride, I hear boop and it's Greg white. Oh, wow. Cool. Hey, Robin. You know, I can't really do a great wife. This is my best. Hey Robin. So tell me, look, are these, uh, are these tar snakes bothering you at all? My first, probably confident response to a great white conversation ever. Me, not even a little bit, just kept on going. Ride your ride. I'll see you at the end of them. But I was in Greg's words, haul in the mail. Excellent. That's my short answer. What do you got?

Brian: Yeah. My short answer is what should I do? If there's gravel in my corner, blah, blah, blah. Nothing pretty much keep flying the plane, aviate, navigate, communicate, keep flying the plane, don't change anything that also means don't, don't like let off the throttle and grab a handful of front break and, you know, and visit the ditch do not tense up physically. Yeah. So, yeah. And, and I guess that's gets into the rocket surgery. It's basically don't destabilize the bike. The bike wants to live. It wants you to live.

Robin: Yes. And for the logical minds out there, it also doesn't mean now forcibly go through the motions of what is technically, according to this book, I read the way I'm supposed to address this situation, even if that information is correct, you don't begin to act blindly. You still maintain a very disciplined sense of what the road is telling you, feel the chatter of the bike. So what is happening? One example, I come up over a blind crest on a road I've been on before. I'm going at a pace that I know that I can break in time for anything that catches me off guard up there, except what catches me off guard is the fact that in the next corner is a, let's say foot and a half trail of P gravel. That's about three inches deep, which may seem like a lot or not a lot. I don't know. Now it may be strewn wide beyond that. This does make me nervous. And there's video this on the article I wrote about it, where the bike, it was a moment where I, myself was like, well, that was a little, that was a little too much. So what happened? The bike arrived at the gravel, body of motion tends to stay in motion. The bike needs to correct itself, but it will continue to turn. After I was in the thick of the gravel, there was more light gravel. So it continued to kind of say like, Hey, you need to, what did I do? Well, we're sort of told to not roll off the gas or use the brakes while in a corner of that nature. I didn't use the gas, but I did find a neutral state in my center of gravity. If the bike is hovering through the situation, you can probably find a way through it, maybe with a little bit more heavy breathing than normal, but you stayed relaxed to the best of your ability and you navigated. So I've said it before and I'll say it again. Because it was said to me once and it's stuck. The person who said this knows who they are, but when you get to the turn, turn.

Brian: Yeah. That's the thing. Don't freeze, stay active, stay involved, do what you need to do. Keep riding. Don't just freeze or, or just like, okay, I went off. I'm going to grab a handful of front brake, that kind of thing. Or stab the rear brake, which is actually more common. Yeah. Do what you need to do. And there's another saying, I learned this in a duals, in a adventure riding class. You know, there's always some traction or there's something like that. You know, there's, you know, less traction doesn't mean there's zero traction. And there's always, you know, you can always go out and find your traction a little bit. So yeah, it's, but yeah, just last weekend I had a moment, you know, I came around to came around the corner pretty quickly and the whole road just turned in a corner. And I hit the gravel and there was a guy cutting, there was a guy with a weed whacker off to one side and it had to, it had to have scared the hell out of him because I came bust around this corner, you know, hit the gravel and I'm, you know, and I'm riding through it. Like I'm like, you know, and it's fine. I'm and I'm, and the thing is I'm staying in the throttle because I need the throttle to point me in the right direction. So, you know, to, from his perspective, he's just whacking weeds. And then suddenly this goofball in this red motorcycle and a blue fluorescent jacket comes busting around the corner. Does this power, you know, anyway, it had to have been noisy.

Robin: And you ever see the movie Memphis bell? I have not. Sean Aston's he's a belly gutter and they get so close to a fighter. And he says, that guy had green eyes. Yeah. I think we sucked all the meat from that bone. One thing is if you want to read our write-up about, uh, the article called pucker up unexpected changes in road service, the identifier on that one 29, nine, four, six. So if you go to tr.bike forward slash question mark P equals two nine, nine, four, six, you can read all about it. You're ready for map testing mayhem.

Brian: Okay. So here's the thing. The route that you came up with starts in Lebanon, Kentucky. So you, you some, somewhere around in here, you, you jump over from Tennessee, you get into Kentucky and you go over to Lebanon. Okay. Um, so what I did was I started in Moorhead, Kentucky, which is quite a ways away from Lebanon, but it should be, I will leave. I don't know where you enter Kentucky. Uh, I don't know where that is. We enter Kentucky. Oh, let me pull that up. Basically, it's not going to take, you know, you can put together a route to get to Moorhead, uh, in the same amount of miles and time pretty easily.

Robin: Well, let's take a moment. Let's gather our wits on this one. Let me load up my bit here for, okay. Seven, seven, seven, the full perfected routes. Mine's loading on my side. And I can tell you that I know we ride the Chirajala and after the Chirajala that puts us in maybe Middlesbrough.

Brian: Yeah. That, and which would make sense. Yeah.

Robin: We have a day still in Tennessee. That's right next to Cumberland gap. Now there's a, that's, that's day five of seven. There's two more days of writing. The next ride out of Middlesbrough is what lands us in Lebanon. The mileage marking on that is, uh, 1632 is the landing point. I remember this, this was a weird number. 1632 by 1360. So 1632 minus 1360 day six is a 272 mile day. So if you're telling me that you backed out of two days, I'm good for that. So long as there's going to be some discussion points about this at the, uh, at the end of your first presentation.

Brian: Yeah. So all, all you'll need to do is you'll cross into Kentucky at the exact same and instead of going all the way over here to Lebanon and see all this pale stuff, it's kind of flat instead of crossing all that, then, then you're going to go up here so that, so, so I haven't done that part yet, you know? And you see how there's a spine here. There's kind of a spine of ridges by up here.

Robin: He's talking about Middlesbrough, Kentucky, and then we're going to look up at what it looks like to be more head pretty much straight North. Yeah. Northwest. And this goes due North, maybe a little bit East, but not by much. And the roads look way more fun.

Brian: So the, the day before you get the more head again, I haven't put that together. I'm, you know, I'll leave that up to you, whatever. So yeah, I, I, I, I told you, man, I threw away everything you did. So I hope you're not mad anyway. So even half of the day before, so, but look at this, look at it. You can't ignore that. Look at this. You can't. Yeah. You're going to get the more head and you're going to be spent.

Robin: When you set the view to Google terrain, and then you've got all those mushy green blobs next to water zones that are all mountainous glaciated. This is, this is a dream. Yes, sir. Well done.

Brian: So we, we start in more head and we, we, we get out of town. We head off to the East a little bit. And the idea is we want to get to the North. The centerpiece of this ride in Kentucky is highway 22. It highway 22 is just the crown jewel of the entire state. It's, it's amazing. And so we have some very enjoyable meandering to get up there. And then we end up on, I think it's five 37, something like that. So we meander through several towns. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail.

Robin: It goes due West. I mean, let's think about the listeners and just to make sure they know.

Brian: Yeah, it goes North and goes a little bit West. We go through Mount Olivet. He didn't say all of that. It's Mount Olivet. Mount Olivet. Yeah. Yeah. And it's all really enjoyable stuff. And see what I'm struggling with is the ride with GPS, like hides the road number with your line. Again, that's, it's not right with GPS. It does that.

Robin: It's Google. Yeah. Google does that. Everybody does that. They call it the overlay and it's actually the underlay.

Brian: Yeah, that's no better.

Robin: Anyway, I think there's a setting somewhere to change the opacity of the line, but I haven't gotten to that yet. I'll do it another time. It's six, five 65, 20, 60.

Brian: Yeah, I wonder. So anyway you meander North and then you end up on a high on a, you go through a town called Milford. And then, uh, you end up on a road called five 39. Um, and this is just north of, this is, this is nice here. I mean, this is all great. And, and these are all kinds of back roads. Uh, the triple digits in Kentucky, the triple digits in Kentucky are all kind of, um, like they're, they're wide enough. They may or may not have lines in the middle of that kind of thing, but they're pretty, you know, I'm trying to, I really tried to avoid, I believe I did avoid all the, those little half lane ones that are, they get pretty dangerous. Okay. Um, so that's, that's what the point of this is. So anyway, you go up five 39 and then it's on like donkey Kong. You get end up on 22. You're basically directly East of Falmouth, Kentucky. Um, and you're all in the tasty bits of 22. Yes. Now there's also 10 and there's a lot of great roads. You just gotta, you know, you gotta skip some. And 22 goes on for, I don't know how many miles that is. Let's see.

Robin: I'm gambling. That's about 40 miles.

Brian: Yeah. That's at 93. That's at 93 miles into the day. So it's 93 miles into the day. And then we have about 190. So we have, we have a good 30 miles of 22 and this is. That's pretty close. Then not bad. Yeah. So 22 itself is about 30 miles. You will be exhausted. It's all sweepers. It's all high speed. It's, it's really hard to describe people like move out of your way and let you come through. It's, it's just amazing.

Robin: Now, and every other day of the tour, I can tell you right now, it is constantly like that with the exception of when we get to the North Carolina part, which you and I are going to work on at some point, but even the stuff that looks like it's more wide open, I get the feeling. Are you telling me that stuff's kind of thrilling too, by default? Oh yeah. Then what am I going to worry about? Throw the guy on that? Like that a little, any of that. Let's take a little peekaboo here. Yeah. I mean, even that, even that, so we just did a street view.

Brian: 467. Yeah. 467 is immaculate pave. This area of Kentucky, the pavement is immaculate. I don't know why.

Robin: So here we are looking at this and it looked like it was like one of the doll zones and it's, it's just a giant hard hook and curve of a sweeper. It's beautiful. Yeah. Look at that. Yeah. Dial it up. Yeah. See, that's fine. That's fine.

Brian: That's going to be fun. Yeah. That'll be, that'll be very cool.

Robin: Yeah. What Brian is doing for us, ladies and germs is basically putting together like the grand finale fireworks display of a final day of writing. This is wicked.

Brian: Yeah. So that 467 is wicked. And then we, um, this road has a name, but it's actually, it's actually wide enough and so forth. Okay. Um, and then what, what we're doing is we're actually going North. We're winding our way North and we're going to cross the river. Um, we're winding away North and we're winding our way East. And again, this is all near the Ohio river Valley, kind of in and out and so forth. We talked about river valleys before the, um, and you can see like right here, this road, right before we get to the river, you know, it kind of skips and dances along this Ridge here. Uh, and then these others kind of go along the front of the flats. It's it's, and we go past now, try not to giggle like Beavis and Butthead when you go past Lake state park. Okay. Anyway. So here's the thing I discovered and I didn't know this until, um, until a few weeks ago, but there's a new, uh, ferry across the Ohio river, uh, that's run by rising star casino, which is in rising sun, Indiana. Um, and so this route ends at the ferry boat. So you can get on the ferry in Kentucky, ride the ferry across to Indiana and continue.

Robin: Um, you know, we're gonna, I'm looking at the mileage. You've got 160 mile day so far of nothing but pure awesome. Right. And we still haven't gotten into Indiana yet, which has got to happen for the seventh day, right?

Brian: The seventh state. So we have 160 ish miles, 163 miles in Kentucky and we cross in Indiana that gives us 80 miles to play with 80, 90 miles to play with, uh, to get to your two 40, two 50. And don't worry, I got you covered. So anyway, this, this, and one thing you'll notice there's a town called rabbit hash, Kentucky. It's right on the river. We go past it. Um, basically it's full of pirates. Don't bother. You know, some people like, Oh, we're going to go to rabbit. Don't go to rabbit hash. There's nothing there for you. Okay. So anyway, we have, do you have any questions, Robin, about this route?

Robin: I'm enjoying the presentation and I want to make sure I keep the listeners listening. You and I have done this a couple of times now, and we're perfecting how we deliver an explanation of something that is a visual environment to a listening person. But what we've done is from more head, Kentucky, right. Do Northwest to the Indiana. Borner is created the absolute creme de la creme of sport touring environments. I knew I was talking to the right person. There are two days in trip sevens that are great, but need to be bettered. Uh, there's always going to be a worst day, but I'm not going to pretend like that's an actual thing. This is way better than what we had originally. Originally we would ride Indiana's 450, 150, and the first time we ran trip sevens, we ran counterclockwise. So it was a really great curvy warmup, but as a grand finale, not so much. So Brian has nailed that down. I got to see, did you already do any Indiana yet?

Brian: Yes, I have. I will get to that in a second. Yeah. One thing I'll mention is I, I picked out more head just because it's a big enough city that it's got some different, interesting lodging options. And you'll also see that it's, it's definitely more in the mountains and hills and so forth. So that's brilliant. That's another, you know, you'll have to figure out places to stay and all that stuff.

Robin: I get to practice again too. So what I'll do is I'll start with the end of day five, getting day six up to more head, and then you and I'll do some cross-referencing on that and you can give me some suggestions about the terrain and which roads might be better.

Brian: Okay. So here we are. We have 86 miles in Indiana. So bike on a boat. There's nothing better than your bike on a boat, right?

Robin: We know, we know this man. I knew he was speaking in your head right now. I can hear it. Bikes on the boat.

Brian: Like, oh, like in a boat, love to bike on a boat. So you got your bike on a boat. Now, one thing I will mention it, it, you to cross the river. If you're, if the boat is, if you can check the website, uh, if for the rising sun, for the, uh, rising sun ferry.

Robin: Yeah. Let's say that they aren't running. Where's the nearest bridge?

Brian: So you can cross down here at the Markland dam. Okay. And then you could, and you could come back and pick up a good chunk of the route, however much you want to, if they close it down, you could kind of come down these roads on the Kentucky side. And then right here is the Markland dam. It's, it's, it's a good haul. It's probably about 40 miles. And then you can kind of climb back up and pick up because what we're seeing here, uh, whatever we're looking at here is kind of, if, if Indiana is a sock and, uh, we're, we're in, we're in the heel of the Indiana sock and we're in these, uh, hills and, and valleys and cliffs overlooking the Ohio river. So from many pieces of this route, you can look across into Kentucky, into the forbidden land.

Robin: Our mutual friend, Dale Dunn, who's been on the tour several times. Yeah, he's from Cincinnati. So we're, we're starting right side of home, do some riding, take a break. He's going to have no difficulty making them commute back the next day.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. And that's one thing this, this route ends and I'm skipping ahead a little bit, but we'll, we'll go through it. Believe me. Uh, this route ends in Madison, Indiana, which is a, one of the oldest towns in Indiana, it sits right on the Ohio river. It's one of those old river boat towns and it's extremely historic. It has several really cool, really unique hotels. And the downtown is there's like a downtown by the river, the old city down by the river. And there's several hotels. They're overlooking the river, blah, blah, blah. Uh, lots of places to eat. You know, it, it, it's a very, it, it, it, I hate to say hip, but it's kind of hip. It's really interesting place to be eclectic syllables, make you smarter, bigger, the world, the more important your opinion is more important.

Robin: You've now validated why that's the destination and not the crossing point. Figuratively, you can ride down to that uses the crossing point and go the other way up to rising sun. But the town in Madison is that charming that now take the ferry, take a break, have a laugh, ride the twisties down to Madison, chill there. I like it.

Brian: Yeah. And, uh, whatever you do in Madison, don't basically the old town sits down by the river and then at the top of the cliff on kind of a Mesa and really, yes. Indiana has a Mesa says, uh, at the top of the cliff is all this Walmart and all that noise and garbage. You don't want to go up there. I take all of my used tires to Walmart.

Robin: There you go. I leave them in their dumpsters. That's what I think of Walmart. Screw you Walmart.

Brian: So anyway, rising sun, rising sun. It's a little town. It's got a casino. If you want to stop and lose even more dollars, I don't know how anybody who buys motorcycle tires gambles, because we're throwing away money either, either way, but one's a lot more enjoyable. So the whole tactic here, when you really zoom out and you look at the big picture is we're going in and out of the river Valley and we're staying on. And if you look at the terrain layer, uh, the Google terrain layer, you can see we're staying in, in the bumpy bits. Yeah. And those are always going to, you know, like right here is a little bit of a plane. We don't go there. We go in and out of the river Valley. So we're diving in and out of the river Valley. Second thing is this area is full of gravel roads. And so last weekend I did a scouting ride down here to sort out and make sure these are all paved and they're all reasonably wide. Some of these country roads are kind of narrow, but even on a fully loaded sport, touring bike, Tiro da bike, you should, yeah, you'll be okay. And we'll get to it. There's a road, there's a road that I could direct you to, and we'll talk about it, but it's literally pretty damn unsafe. And I really hate to tell people to go down this road, this route here. These are all roads I've looked at that are plenty wide enough. Some of them don't have lines down the middle or anything like that, but there's still, you know, it should be, you have sight lines, you can see what you're doing, um, and you can have a good time and be reasonably not safe. However you want to put it.

Robin: Everybody can thank Brian for this massive, polite and kind favor that I'm incredibly grateful for. But it does not change the fact that trip sevens is, I think our second most challenge. Yeah. It's four helmets out of five for the most challenging rides. If not just for the duration of writing, you're going to be due for the, the incredibly technical roads that are, it is just bathed. It is just, it is tangled hair. It is a bowl of spaghetti for seven days.

Brian: It's relentless.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: Relentless and ruthless and, uh, be prepared, be trained, be prepared. And just because you're in Indiana doesn't mean it's all cornfields again. Absolutely. So just as an overview. Okay. So we go straight West, uh, or not straight. There's nothing straight here. Uh, we go West out of rising star casino up to 62. It is a state highway. Uh, and it, you can see that it, it basically follows a valley and in crosses another valley, goes up on a cliff, follows a ridge. It does some really fun and wild things in and out, but we're basically going up out of the Ohio river valley. And then we go down. There's like a, this little Creek valley we go through, and then we plunge back East. We go back down the Ohio river valley all the way to the river. Uh, this is a County road here. That's a pretty major one. So we're stitching the best of what Indiana has to offer at the river. Yeah. And one of the things I did with this is Indiana has a lot of patches of the fun bumpy stuff. Um, but so I stayed within one patch because that way you don't have to have any lulls in the action. You don't have to cross the planes in between to get to the next patch. So that's one reason we're going in and out. This is compact. This is actually like, if someone wants to tap out, they can tap out and be in Madison and you know, an hour, 30 minutes or whatever, you know, it's not. Um, but if they want to, if they want to commit and go to it and go up and down, so you're going to go up and down. So we go back to the Ohio river and we go along highway one 56 for an extremely brief, for an extremely brief session. Yeah. And then we're back up out of the valley and then we're, and then we're, so we're back up out of the valley and then we're, we're coming almost to the edge of where do West is like this little flat area starts up on a, on a Mesa. Yeah.

Robin: East is covered up by red line or Allensville basically just, just West of Allensville, but heading due East into whatever that town is.

Brian: Just when you think you can relax, no back down, you go, you go back down to the river. So we go back down to go back down to the river and we end up in a town called VV. It's it's, it's spelled VV. No one says VV, just letting you know. It's VV.

Robin: That is an Indiana, Kentucky thing right there, man. Well, there's some of that in Wisconsin too. Like it says here, the name of the town is Bart. It's pronounced Al.

Brian: Yeah. There's, there's like Rush-a-ville is pronounced and no, no, it's Rouge-a-ville. You don't say Rush-a-ville. And, and the town is not Peru. It's Pee-roo. Anyway. So we, yeah, we, there's a little bit of highway 56 for which I apologize profusely. And then we're back on the County roads back down this Creek. It's not even a river Valley. It's a Creek Valley plunging back to the river and we end up in VV and this is, you know, they got a couple of gas stations, Moe's Steakhouse, Moe's Steakhouse, which it looks more like Moe's Crack House. If you want to be honest, Moe's Crack House. Yeah, I think there are some good, I think there are some restaurants here and they've got a nice waterfront park. If you want to stop and look, there's, you know, stuff like that. And it's kind of sitting underneath a big cliff. A lot of these towns along the Ohio are sitting under a big cliff. And then you're, then we guess why you come back out of the Valley on 56, which is a lot, very entertaining. And then you plunge back down. So we go basically Northwest for a while. And then we're there. Oh, there's one straight segment. I think it's about a mile. Yeah, it's a little under a mile.

Robin: I do love that. We're making a left in front of a blind left. It'll be fun.

Brian: Yeah, you hang a left bang down. You go down in this river Valley or Creek Valley, actually, and then down a road called Dry Fork Road. And then, and then you can see if you zoom out a little bit, you'll see there's kind of this Creek and river system. So we're plunging back down into that. And then we're going to cross over. Yes, there's really a bridge there. I verified this.

Robin: I mean, you got to get a lot of speed going, but if you, if you hit it just right, there's definitely an air bridge waiting for you. You'll land it. Don't worry.

Brian: You'll be fine. You don't have a hair on your ass unless you pin it and send it, dude. And see, it's really tragic. Like there's like, there's this road here. It starts out paved and then turns, turns the gravel up here. It kind of climbs this ridge. It's kind of cool. Anyway, I, I, again, I, you know, I checked it out for you. So we're inside of the river again in some Berg called Brooksburg. I mean, there's nothing in Brooksburg. There's like an RV campground on the river. You know, don't stop. Don't breathe too long. And then we plunge back up the hill, um, back out of the river Valley. And then this section here is nuts.

Robin: North Manville Hill Road. Maryville was a Merrill man.

Brian: Mansville. Yeah.

Robin: That looks stupefying. Is that the right word? Stupefying.

Brian: Yeah. It gets stupid. It's fun. Anyway. And there's switchbacks and yeah, be on your, a game people. You've had six days to practice. Don't screw it up now. All right. Anyway, so we go to Mansville. We're back at that little Creek. Uh, we hang a left. We hang a left again. When we follow another Creek back out, back out, uh, and there's some sweepers and so forth. We're on a little bit of a plane. Yeah. Southwest. We're almost to Madison. And then we go through there's, and then we go down, you know, there's another little Valley and another Ridge system, a couple of downhill cannonball curves. Yeah. And then we landed Madison. That is lovely. Mr. Ringer. My goodness. What do we got? 86 miles. So you put that together, you get right at what is that? Two 40, two 50.

Robin: Yeah. And, uh, the butterfly house bed and breakfast. I'm already looking at some of these places. This is, this is outstanding. So for your trouble, you know, having you plan a ride and then get on your motorcycle and go ride it.

Brian: Yeah, it was rough. What do I owe you? One of the things I skipped over, we'll go talk about this a little bit. Um, someday, Robin, you're going to have to come ride the worm with me now. It's right outside of VV. Indiana is a little road called fish and worm fish and worm Ridge road. Um, and this is, um, it's just got a stupid name and it's, and it's fun. And so I go right at whenever I'm in the area, but this is an example. One of those roads, it's like, you know, I'm not going to send people down this road. Is it by Alpine taxidermy there? Yeah. There's a guy with dead animals who lives on fish and worm Ridge road. Welcome.

Robin: You've arrived.

Brian: I'm going to go ride the worm and to highlight this road. So you start in VV and then you, um, you, yeah, you go up the hill a little bit and then you divert and this road, you know, it's there's switchbacks. There's all kinds of stuff. It's maybe five miles. If that.

Robin: See, we should get them to put on a professional road race right there.

Brian: Right there.

Robin: Look at that. Zoom out to the full scope of that. Yeah. Zoom out so I can see everything. Yeah. And then I'm going to take the mic for a second. If there's something we don't have a lot of anymore. Oh, look at their patients. Dean photography. Uh, but we don't have a lot of like Isle of Man ish type road racing of professional, you know what I mean? True. So here we are in VV in VV Vive, as I like to call it. Cause you know, I'm VV. Yeah, we, we don't, she hasn't called in a minute, but you've got all of that awesome curving curves going through the mountains and then a big ballsy straight back to the start. Repeat, repeat, repeat. That could be a, if they could get the town to let that happen. How cool would that be?

Brian: Yeah. You have a nine mile TT race there. Yeah. Yeah. And like fish and worm Ridge road. Okay. It's about eight feet wide. Um, and they just repaved like the, the center six feet of it. Like they took some asphalt, loose asphalt and like dumped it down and then went over it once with a roller and then called it a day.

Robin: It'll be guests.

Brian: Did you get air toy? What's that? I was gonna say, did you hit that and get some air? No, it didn't get, didn't get air on it, but yeah, it's just, just, just something to be aware of. So you've got like this. So you've got like this little tongue wide stripe in the middle of this road. There are people with giant Ford's who live up here. Um, it's super steep, super tight switch backs. Uh, can't see a damn thing. It's a, it's, it's got it all. And, uh, you know, and plus, yeah, like if you get too close to the edge, then it's kind of crumbly and there's no lines. I mean, come on, that's, you know, try not to jump up and down too much. Yeah. There's a guy up there, the Alpine taxidermy, who's got a bunch of dead animals and knows what to do with a knife. That's a little diversion. I'm not going to recommend it to anybody, but it's there.

Robin: Thank you, Brian. I'm going to do it.

Brian: You got to ride the worm with me, Mr. Dean.

Robin: Thank you. I came to the right guy to make this better. I mean, I've already done so much work on it, but there are just some things where I was like, Hey, you know what? I got a phone, a friend, you nailed it. Like, this is what's going to happen. It's about to get that much better. You know, I can't wait to see, we'll have some banter back and forth about whatever I come up with to conjoin the start of that route. I can't wait to see what we can figure out about the whole Blue Ridge Parkway situation, which is a situation.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: I just heard another rider saying about how this is why we ride. Look at this beauty. I'm like, yeah, yeah. I mean, I can handle that. Now I need to go. I need to go to where there's beauty you don't know about. Please don't ever know about it. I'm going to go to that. Thank you so much for helping out. You know, that did it. So.

Brian: Very welcome. Yeah, it's a blast down there. And you should arrive in Madison well spent, and you should enjoy your time in the town. It's really pretty cool downtown. Dinner time.