Brian: Brian, did you ride today? I rode today. My bike is sitting outside. I rode seven miles through the city. That's it. We went to see the grandkids today. So we did about five hours of driving in the minivan, whatever. But I did get at least a little bit of riding today. Not bad. How about you? Did you ride today?

Robin: Yeah, I rode four miles. There's a gallon of fuel in the tank and the bike is in our possession, which is nice. Excellent. Anything new to tell in the past four days since we're rushing a new episode for your paid podcast vacation?

Brian: Literally pink pennies and nickels. Nothing much has been going on. The plug in my tire is still holding as I fully expect it will until the damn thing is worn out. So maybe that's a topic for discussion. We can just... It is. Yeah. How many plugs and how far... I've just stopped giving a crap. Yeah. I plug it. I go on until it's roached.

Robin: Is it holding air? Does it seem secure? Okay. I'll give you that one.

Brian: Never had an issue.

Robin: Maybe with two plugs. Three plugs. Let's say three plugs, I'm done. This thing's out. And I probably need to not be riding wherever I'm riding too.

Brian: Yeah. I don't know why riding through this construction... You know, this apartment complex under construction caused any problems, but yeah.

Robin: Broken glass factory, home of the state's best broken glass parking lot. Oh yeah. This sounds good. Do that.

Brian: Yeah. The drywall screw. Yeah. I found a nail and anyway. Yeah. I've just stopped caring. It's like I almost forget about it when it's done.

Robin: Really, when it comes to sport touring tires, yes, I want reputable, but I'm not top tier anymore. It's sort of like whichever tire has a good siping is dual compound and as cheap as possible.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: That is the best sport touring tire in my mind. I'm watching these guys talk about the R6 Michelins and I'm just laughing. I feel like I went ahead and let everything go and I'm watching the audience, all the lemmings spend these mass dollars on these tires.

Brian: Yeah. I cannot get behind that. I mean, those things are, they don't last long. I, this is a, this is a family podcast, so I can't use the right words, but those things are expensive. Yes. Those things are just, that is unconscionable what they're charging for those. Those are gosh, darn expensive tires. And I can't, I can't get behind. I'm sure they're lovely, but I'm still rocking. You know, we got a good deal on the road. Smart three Dunlops. Exactly. They work great. I love them. They work great in the wet. They work. They're fine. I found if people are complaining about their tires, it's not the tires.

Robin: Once in a while, once I've like, I've only like, I've had like one or two legit complaints about tires, but the change out, we have a legitimate complaint depending on the sidewall stiffness during a tire change that I will claim. Yeah. Well, okay. Brian, Brian's been looking for a fight. So I'm like, I'm looking for one. I'm trying.

Brian: Try people like conflict. Don't I don't know. Maybe they do. I, I like I've I'll, I'll, okay. I'll throw this out there. I'll just, I'll, I'll slap it on the table. Um, uh, the, like, I've seen a lot of people bitch and moan about how hard a tire is to mount and I'm like, get good. I mean, if you have, you know, if you have experience mounting tires, there, there are, they're going to go on eventually. You know, I don't think there's, yeah. I, I don't think there's such a thing as a tire that, Oh, I just can't mount this tire. Now I have run across bikes. Like, um, no, I know BMWs are used to, maybe they, I don't know if they still do this, but BMWs used to be a little bit harder because they didn't have as much of a drop center. Uh, and maybe that's not true anymore. Maybe that was like early two thousands, but, uh, but I mean, you don't, you know, you've never seen how any problems with yours.

Robin: So I've had some problems with mine actually laughably. And Travis has heard this before. Travis walked out into his garage while I was, I had three, four tire irons and was on my knees with knee pads, sweating, angry, and saying terrible things to the sky. And he had to rescue me while I was beginning to curl up into a ball, hide behind the dumpsters and just start sucking my thumb kind of situation. But weeping was near. Yeah. I'm not afraid to admit it. You know, I do have the tow hitch no mark. Oh. And what I've found is even with a Michelin or anything where the dual compound bleeds into the sidewall, that one will pop on pretty easily, but Dunlops can be pretty stiff. And what ends up happening is the bar that goes across here are the two teeth that go into the tire that you walk around and supposed to pull the tire in. I'm on this side. The two forks will eventually, if it gets to that point where I'm clamping everything down, clamp it here, clamp it here, clamp here all the way counterclockwise to where that last bit is. I put all the pressure I can on the opposite side. And then this thing will start to kind of tilt and pop out of the tire, repeat, pop out of the tire, repeat. And it's, it becomes a DJ remix of getting that thing to just go on the dang rim. So worst, worst of it is if it's cold out.

Brian: Yeah. Well, that's kind of obvious. I've, I've, I've, I've used a Nomar. I've seen it done and I'm not, I've not been impressed. But I, I can say that it takes a lot of years of doing tires with, with levers and spoons. Yep. Like, like when I saw, you know, when I, when I worked with a Nomar, I'm like, okay, this seems I'll, you know, like we could get together with some guys here and get, and get a Nomar if this really is a better. But if you have enough experience doing it the old fashioned way, it really doesn't save any time. And that's, it's kind of, but that's a, that's a hill to climb. That took a long time. That took a lot of sweat to get there.

Robin: I love the clamps, those plastic clamps that get under the rim and represent your knee and you can have four knees. So you just lock that all around. That's been great.

Brian: Well, and you can buy, anybody can buy those, you know?

Robin: Yeah. They're not hard to get. Just I'll link to them on this episode for Amazon and all that stuff. TRO to bike. TRO to bike. We can talk that into Oblivion, but let's see if we can do some stuff with the outline here. Let's talk about something else. We were on four poops, according to your icons and as a bookmark in our Google doc, we're on the four poops, the two headed coin. You pick the topic, simple answers, then elaborations. You and I should both give simple answers first, then we'll both elaborate and argue and debate and we'll bust out sporks and whoever bleeds first.

Brian: All right, we'll try. We'll try to get a fight going on this one. Two headed coin. Stuff happens quick. What's the right thing to do? Other side of the coin, slow. And why do you do what you do? And today's topic, I think we're going to talk about rain. Rain happens. What do you do? Robin, give a quick answer.

Robin: I ride. I ready myself physically for the surface conditions is my short answer. Brian, what about yours?

Brian: Pretty much it. I just slow down. I ride. Obviously, if I'm, you know, if I'm rocking along in a mesh jacket and, you know, on a thong or whatever, I, you know, I, I take care of dressing myself for the weather if needed, or if I actually have a rain jacket with me or whatever, but other than that, but as far as controlling the motorcycle, just keep riding, but, you know, back it down. That's the short answer.

Robin: There are also situations when you don't need to back it down, but you do need to be mindful of what those conditions exactly are. We do have an article. Identification number is 22135. So if you go to TRO.bike forward slash question mark P equals 22135. That's where I wrote about the built one piece motorcycle rain suit only because I have one and I wanted to write an article about something. So I figured I'd advertise a giant piece of plasticized rubber. But there's a video from our YouTube channel where I really wanted to give this thing a good ringing and went out in an 80 degree rainstorm and honed it. Yeah. Honed it a little bit. Yeah. But it was, it was a good time. Okay. So now the rocket surgery version of these answers.

Brian: The rocket surgery answer. Yeah. I've got a few things I'm sure you do too. First thing, and this is not rocket surgery, but it's worth remembering is if it is not rained in a while, a lot of times it is a worth stopping. If you can, for the first 10 or 15 minutes preach, because when it first starts to rain, that's when it, like all the stuff that's been cooking and baking in the pavement, you know, and all the, the grease from the squirrels and the, and the dust and everything kind of rises to the surface. And if you, and if you're in for, well, two things, much of the time, especially when the hotter it is, the more active the weather is. So much of the time, 15 minutes, you're the rain will be gone. So there's that. But if it's going to be an all day sort of thing, then give it 10 or 15 minutes if you possibly can. And you'll, you'll find that there's a lot less crap remaining on the road. It's kind of washing it off. The other thing to bear in mind is where you are. Like if you're in a smoky mountain somewhere and you can see sparkles in the pavement because they use granite when they're, they grind up granite when they're making it, that stuff is like sandpaper. I mean, I found that you can just rock on in a lot of mountainous areas. Yeah. You can just keep it moving. Cause the other thing is modern tires are really, really, really fricking good. You know, it's not like the eighties. It's not like the seventies or eighties when you're Dunlop gold seals would get squirrely with a little bit of, you know, I know you were, I know you were not even born in Robin, right? Anyway, the, uh, so yeah, when you're on your mini bike or whatever, but yeah, the eighties. So modern tires are really good. So you don't have to back it down. You do have to be mindful and it's really good practice. I find it's like a really good exercise to just be very mindful, various, you know, work on smooth, these are very smooth. Um, you know, everybody says be smooth, but really do that really work on that. It's a chance to do that. It's kind of like the rules change. So you just have to learn how to play with the new rules. And I think the last thing I ended up doing is I ended up kind of testing traction a little bit once in a while. I'll give it a little goose. It's kind of an off-road thing too. If you're off-road, you kind of goose a little bit, see what happens, get a little, uh, see if you get a little sidestep or spin or anything like that, uh, go once in a while. And I'll spend, and I'll obvious stuff like stay out of the grease spot in the middle of the road, that kind of thing. But what do you have Robin?

Robin: It's very much a music related thing. Feel is a difficult thing to get out of a book or technical manual on what is the correct way to explain your broken legs to the adversary in court.

Brian: And you can't get it from two goobers on a podcast either.

Robin: No, no, it's up to you. You got to feel your way through your own bike. We can point you there. But what I like the idea of is when I'm concerned about the surface, not literally, but philosophically, I am sort of physically distancing myself from the machine, the loose part. We talked about that with loose surfaces as well to relax. The bike may dance. You need to let it, and it will likely correct itself. So long as you are maintaining the kind of feel and control that leads it the way you normally would. That I think is easy to say, but hard to practice. I really like when you brought up, you'll goose it a bit because that takes a moment of understanding bravery and acceptance of the assessed risk. It's not something I would do today. Maybe it's something I would do on Wednesday, you know? But it all depends on what kind of day I'm having. If I'm feeling that bold, if I'm feeling brave enough to go for it, I'll be like, okay, let's get a little zip and see what happens here. But really, it's all about, unlike when all things are perfect conditions, you're dividing the space between you and the machine. So there's some give to let things happen, process it on the fly, and then adjust to suit that situation. Brian is talking about large-scale overhead perspectives of what you know could happen, and you're observing in the distant horizon. Everything ahead of you, ways to be. I'm giving you an answer that hopefully satisfies the, how do you deal with the instantaneously unexpected, or how do you prepare yourself to not have to? They're both equally important. You got to have a big worldview of, I felt that, but I'm still turning. I felt that, but I'm still riding, and I accept that the bike may shift around a bit.

Brian: Keep flying the plane, yeah.

Robin: Keep flying the plane. I remember riding with you in Wisconsin on a rainy rally, and while I don't wish to return to that experience, I do remember it did not suck, and we had a great time.

Brian: That's exactly what I was going to say, is riding in the rain, you're still riding, you're not at work, it's still a lot of fun. And Robin, do you want to hear the meanest thing I ever said to someone, to a fellow rider once?

Robin: Was it, I'm the one that turned off your cutoff switch?

Brian: No, no, no. The meanest thing I ever said to someone was, this was a business trip. I was on a rented Harley. It's a very long, stupid story already. Anyway, yeah. Anyway, so there we were somewhere in Georgia, I think, and rain was coming, and this guy was about to put on his Harley Davidson brand rain suit for the very first time in his life. And he was like, what do I do? I don't know how to ride in rain. I said, the meanest thing I've ever said was, you're nowhere near the limits of this bike and these tires under any conditions. Just keep riding the way you've been riding. You will be fine. And he was like, that's cold, man. I'm like, I'm sorry. That's just, he was so slow and so careful and scared because he is so new to this whole thing. I was like, just don't even think about it. Just do what you were going to do. You'll be fine. You got brand new tires.

Robin: Did you say to this man, basically, you already sucked and just continue sucking and it'll be over soon? Or you can suck at the level you already were through the rain and it'll be just fine?

Brian: Yeah, basically what I meant was, you're so freaking slow that you're not going to overwhelm any traction at any point at any time ever. I don't care if it starts snowing. Yeah, and he got it. He's like, man, that was kind of mean. I was like, yeah, that was kind of, or he said that was kind of cold. I'm like, well, that's, yeah, just, just go. You'll be fine. And he did. And he was, he couldn't get a cigarette lit though. He had, he's one of those guys that had to, had to smoke like four cigarettes every mile. But anyway.

Robin: That brings us all the way through where we were from last time. I'll jump up to the updates, revisits, announcements and corrections. There are none. Though I will say that our discussion of total control may have inspired one, Mr. Don Beran to take the class. And I'm excited about that. I sent him a long message.

Brian: I would like, I would love to hear a report of what the class is like now. Cause I took, I took it way back when, like 2010, I think. When it was just cornering and that's it. Yeah.

Robin: He mentioned taking the advanced course and I wanted to warn our entire listenership that the difference between the MSF ARC advanced writer course and total controls advanced writer course vastly different total control advanced level training is pretty dang hardcore. I consider the MSF ARC to be intermediate with a lot of space for thought at best. It is not advanced. Not in my opinion. It's not advanced at all. You do discuss trail braking and you sort of use it for a second in a parking lot at slow speeds. And it's a great class. I love everything the MSF does. I don't necessarily like everything that instructors claim it to be because they've never seen anything else. And I tell you right now, most of them will shit their pants full fury. If they took the intermediate version of anything, total control. I don't subscribe to it as the one and only thing to do. I subscribe to it as an outlet among many, and nobody should boycott an outlet just because of some opinion. They can only embrace one platform.

Brian: They're too different to compare. We've talked about this before. They're very different things. Let's move on. Here's stuff our listeners might ask and we hope they eventually will. If you have a question, email podcast at TRO.bike. And we can guarantee that if we choose your, if we choose your question, you will get an answer, whether it will be the answer or a good answer. We don't know yet, but there will be an answer of some sort. Yeah. By submitting a question, you accept that we do not promise anything. Robin, people like it when people, when there's conflict, when people fight. So let's see if we can get one going here. Your sister's a meth head, Brian. Oh man. How'd you find out? All right. On your GPS, are you on team Northup or team TrackUp? Fight, fight, fight.

Robin: I don't know what we're fighting about.

Brian: Okay. When you, when you have your GPS on your handlebars, however it works. TrackUp. TrackUp? I am TrackUp. Oh, excellent. Yeah. All right. Let's have a go. We're going to tussle here. I am, I am Northup. Okay. And Northup, now Northup requires you to be smarter. So, oh, it's on. This is, I see the look in his eyes. All right. I have my reasons for Northup. And what, now TrackUp is easier, like to, to follow the line and know which way you're supposed to turn, right?

Robin: Keep going, Bri. Use your words. Say your feelings.

Brian: All right. The reason, now Northup is harder because if you're like, if you're southbound, it's honestly hard to, to, to know whether you're turning left or right when the, you know, when the track goes to the left, that means you're turning right. And so there's always a moment of mental manipulation to understand where the hell you, you know, which way you want to go to follow your track. Which is dumb. Yeah. And plus the other thing is, and I have not yet taken advantage of, um, like the voice prompts and stuff like that. And right with GPS. Oh, you can actually, did you subscribe? I need to, I will. Um, but I will, I will before I go for a ride next time, but yeah.

Robin: You can type it's the exact words you want it to say to you.

Brian: Yeah. So I need to take advantage. So that's a great advantage. You have the voice prompts there. It's like, you know, yo, there's cows up here or, you know, whatever. And do things like that. Anyway, the reason I go to the trouble of using Northup is because when I'm leading a ride, uh, and it goes back to one of my commandments. I forget which one, uh, is that you really have to keep the big picture in mind. Like I, in order to stay oriented, I'm thinking about like a radius of a hundred miles. Um, and I'm keeping that in my head. So, and if like, if we need to detour around something, you know, I've got a good idea what to do if I'm looking at weather coming, you know, like most of the time the weather is coming West to East, you know, it's coming out of the West or at least most of the U S anyway, uh, may vary depending on where you are, but you know, you can lock it. You can look at weather patterns and get an idea. You know where things are going to go. And if you need to route around storm cells, things like that. So I find it like keeping the bigger picture in mind is really helpful. Um, and so, yeah, I've always, I've always used North up when I'm following a track, just, just because I think, I think you have more, it's, you don't have more information on the screen, but you know, more about where you're going, how fast you're getting there, what hang, you know, whether you, if you're going diagonally where you might end up, things like that. So that's why I use North up. I don't know if I explained it very well, but are you through? I am done.

Robin: Jane, you ignorant slut. How, how ruthless can I get? I am wrong. Tell me why to all of our listeners. This is the difference between a once was professional musician and a bass player. So when I'm riding the bike, absolutely. I have it in track mode and I zoom out. This doesn't mean anything unless you're on a, unless, you know, your platforms, I zoom out three clicks. This gives me pretty much a 10 to 15 mile view. Cause most of the things I like to do involving the roads, I know, or big tours will have instructions that, you know, you're going to turn left and 10 miles onto the next thing or whatever. A lot of them will automatically zoom into that turn. Anyhow. So here I am riding along with the track view zoomed out far enough and lo and behold, there it is down in the bottom right-hand corner or top left-hand corner, or in my imagination or somewhere on the moon, a dial that represents a compass and the red arrow is pointing North. So I don't actually need to attune myself to where North is, which direction I'm headed. I know exactly what I'm looking at. Thanks to that little red arrow saying this is North. I immediately have a handle on what is happening with the world as it spins beneath his Highness Robin Dean's feet or wheels, as it might be. It's just, I don't have to work harder to be in tune with the road and direction of the track because of a Linus from the peanuts dependency on my security blanket. That is a complete shift in worldly dimension that contradicts the direction of travel.

Brian: Nice.

Robin: That's my take on it.

Brian: Nicely done. One thing you said was very, very interesting. And I think you're using automatic zooming differently than I am. Yeah, I am. I am using automated zooming where, like if I'm, you know, when you slow down and zooms in so I can see which of the five fricking roads in this intersection, you know, that kind of thing that's platform dependent. Well, and you like, I'm used, like I've been using a locust quite a bit or most of the time, and you can, you can, you can set the scaling and the speeds at which you're zooming. It changes scale and zooms in and out and so forth.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: So I am, I am making full use of the zooming. So when I am, you know, when I'm sitting at a stoplight, it's zoomed all the way in. And I don't, and I have to remember the big picture. I don't have it in front of me. And it sounds like you're not letting it zoom in that as far.

Robin: This gets into something very complicated. I'm going to stand on a pedestal with this one. And that's, I can't even express how many people just don't get it. That yes, you can ride and listen to music. And yes, you can ride and know that there's a GPS for your use while you're riding. There are way too many people who think of the concept of these things. And I think, Oh, I don't know about that. Sounds like a distraction. I've got very specific names in mind who just can't get a grip on themselves. And so outwardly they've already set themselves on this shelf of, I am the authority on what other people should or should not be able to manage. And they say, well, you should not use GPS or listen to music.

Brian: It's a distraction. And one thing I will say, uh, using a GPS. And again, I, I have mine set up and fine-tuned so I don't have to touch it. And I'm, I think, you know, pretty much everything is set up the way I want. That's the way you want it. And you don't have, so we're not touching it. We're not talking about that. But just using that navigation aid is a skill and it's hard one to learn. It takes time, you know, and, and just in the same thing, like leading, right. Leading a ride with, you know, two, three, four, five riders, leading a ride is a skill that takes, you know, you're, you're slicing your attention to a degree. So you have to work up to it and you have to build up to that skill. So, so the idea is these things, yeah, these things can be done. Um, but you, you still have to respect like it. Yes. It can be a distraction. If you just stare at the pretty blue line or pink, depending, then no, you know, you have to keep your head in, in the world outside of you.

Robin: You don't duct tape the GPS to your eyes. You're not riding in virtual reality. And there are people that with my bike and my bike's Facebook page, where they have been I finally moved the GPS up to the windscreen. What's more viewable there. I don't want to see it.

Brian: Yeah, no glance and look away, glance and look away.

Robin: I'm not stingy about the use of it. I don't have to be because I'm already practiced at when not to, but that's the goal to be positive about it. It's something that is completely useful. So long as you are not leaning on it, it's more just like, do I have a full field of view? Can I double check that full field of view? Can I triple check that full field of view? Quick glance down. I see a red line. We're good. Continue on. And even better if it's speaking to you on a rare moment when it just says, Hey, your left is coming up in about three miles. That's all I need.

Brian: Maybe we'll come back to something that lists later, but there's a saying in aviation is get your head out of the cockpit. You know, be looking outside, stay in reality. Don't look at your instruments all the time. And that's exactly what applies here. And again, again, it's a learned skill. You have to learn how to do this. You have to take your time with it. So, you know, obviously you and I taught ourselves and we're, you know, one of the things, one of the symptoms of doing a good job at this is that you make a lot of U-turns. If you're following me, you're going to be U-turning a couple of times a day, at least because I don't have my head in that GPS when we're coming up on a turn, you know, we're coming up on, like there's two turns in a row or it's one of those weird angles in the mountains or something. I have my head out in the world around me because that's what I need. And sometimes that means I get the wrong road or I miss something. And the consequence is, okay, we're going to have to turn around. I go, you know, spin my, make my little finger signal and yippee-ki-yay, we're turning around and you just have to deal. Well, that was good. I had, Robin, I honestly had no idea that whether you were track up or north up. So, I'm glad we had this chance to work this out. I feel a little pummeled. I like it. Anyway, excellent.

Robin: All right, Maptastic Mayhem. I've got the mastermind next to me here and I'm going to plan a map and he's going to make sure I get this right. All right. Where are we starting today, Uncle Robin? Well, we want to get to the beginning of your revised route that is the last day of trip sevens into Indiana, Kentucky to Indiana. But I don't remember where we start. Was it Cumberland Gap?

Brian: Um, yeah, I mean, then the first choice to make is whether you want to redo the whole day fresh from where it starts. You don't want to redo just from crossing the border into Kentucky. I didn't know where that last stay was in Kentucky. It kind of goes around through Knoxville. Yeah.

Robin: This was the last lodging stay over here in Lebanon. And we have moved that completely to near...

Brian: It's in Moorhead, Kentucky, which is just about the same distance over to the right or over to the east.

Robin: Okay. So we're trying to get to Moorhead and we were coming from Middlesbrough.

Brian: Were you staying in Middlesbrough? Okay. Well, that's easy. Yeah. That's right at the border crossing. Okay. Yes. So just keep that. Yeah. Okay. Easy. We might be able to do something better.

Robin: I'll tell you right here, this squiggly stuff here, look how beautiful that is. You seeing this? Yeah. Yeah. Well, here's the bad news. It's surprisingly high traffic and there's a thick police presence. It's not a yellow line. It's a white line, but it's in deep, heavy use. We wanted to have a ball here and I imagine it's stellar, but I don't know. Maybe we can rebuild something that's more to the Moorhead caveat. I like using words I'm not sure I'm using right. Let's try it. So here's what we're going to do. We'll start in Cumberland Gap in Tennessee. Start route here. Now I'm going to type in Moorhead, Kentucky route to here. I'm going to switch over to terrain and just look at this. We can do anything we want, anything we like, and we've barely used. I'm going to start designing. You tell me what you think. So here are in Cumberland.

Brian: You were talking about using 66, correct?

Robin: Yes, here I am using it again and presto change-o. We're on state route 66 in Kentucky.

Brian: That's the one that's full of cops and trucks and so forth. Well, I have an idea for you. Talk to me. Okay, go back to the gap.

Robin: I am at the gap because I'm fashionable, Brian.

Brian: Now you see how there's two parallel roads following a ridge line. So there's 119 and 221.

Robin: I do see 221 heading to the northeast.

Brian: So that 119, which I believe, yeah, it goes through Pineville. So take that 119 is epic.

Robin: 119 this way?

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Okay, I'm on 119.

Brian: Isn't that pretty?

Robin: I'm not angry about it. That's 421 right there.

Brian: Yeah, so you'll be on that for a little bit.

Robin: What if I jump on over to 221?

Brian: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. See, yeah, picking up what I'm laying down here.

Robin: Yes, this is the right methodology. Big changes coming to the Trip 7's tour. That looks baller.

Brian: Now, see, it took you off of 119 down here. So you might want to correct that.

Robin: You want to stay on it until I cross over in Chad?

Brian: Yeah, stay on 119 until you see that 463. Yeah, right there. Yeah.

Robin: Got it. All right, so we've headed northeast along the ridgeline. Still in Tennessee, I think, right? Maybe not.

Brian: Can't tell, yeah.

Robin: Yeah, I can't. I think this is, yeah, that's the, I don't know if they divide Tennessee.

Brian: Pineville is in Kentucky. Yeah, no, you're across. You're in Kentucky.

Robin: Here we are following 221, which looks stupid. We're heading directly north, and I think I want to, I think I want to jump over to this 476 up here.

Brian: Look at that, yeah.

Robin: All right, but GPS, you're a wonderful thing.

Brian: We're at 206 miles, so we've still got some mileage to play with. Look at that 30 and for this thing. Look at that. Look at that.

Robin: You got to do that. Yes, that's what we're doing. So we follow, we're following 475 up to state route 2466 over to 542, heading due north, and then we're going to go to 542. 1665, where I think, yeah, I'll accept this breather here off of seven.

Brian: I think you might need it, but I think we could work around. But anyway, yeah, let's see what we got here. You know, we're going to find more, but I think this little, this little moment of. That looks, that looked stupid, didn't it?

Robin: 364, we're starting to lose. We're starting to lose access to anything directly chaotic as before, but it's still all good. I mean, yeah.

Brian: And if you get into the, like there's some of those four digit roads, which are super sketchy sometimes. So you want to, the three digit roads are generally, generally just fine.

Robin: Well, I think four digits roads, they're repaved in cycles.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: It's a crapshoot. You got one in three chance of it being a brand new pavement kind of thing.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Now we've kind of loosened up a bit and we're looking at sweepers.

Brian: Uh, when we get to, how far do we have to go? Okay. We're crossing that Lake, whatever the hell that is. I can see you're looking off to the East a little more like, well, maybe there's, yeah. Look at that 172. It's just sick. It's diseased. It's mental.

Robin: Yeah. I see. Now we can do this. I'm going to pull this all the way over to here. Well, let's think about this. What we just lost. I'm not sure we want to lose. That would be the 364 stuff and 1081.

Brian: That is awfully nice. Yeah.

Robin: Let's keep that. And then look what it did.

Brian: Make sure that little connector there seems to be navigable. Yeah. Make sure it's not, uh, oh, it's yeah. It's three digits. It'll be fine. Oh, look at that. Look at their switchbacks. It's so cute.

Robin: So let's talk. Let's see. I'm going to drag the dude on here. We're going to use the street view just to get a feel for what we're talking about. See if this is real and it's freaking.

Brian: Of course, it's got a yellow line. That's all we need. We don't need much. I'm going to bust and undo. Yeah. Well, you can see it's kind of backtracking here. There's something going on there. So yeah, I had to fix that top. Right.

Robin: We're going to undo and we're going to take another look at this from a different perspective. There we go. So this is what we had. Look at that. Jesus. What we lost was down in here. We need to be careful about that. So let's go to where this trains up.

Brian: Yeah. There's a bit of gravel happening there.

Robin: Yeah, that's okay. I don't mind that. But what I will say is right here, I'm creating an anchor. It's in Salliersville, I think. Yeah, that sounds about as mispronounced as Kentucky. I'm going to create an anchor point right here. And now it will not change anything below this line. Now we're already on 480 or 460 or whatever. I haven't adjusted my transparency, but you saw me looking off to the east there.

Brian: There's still a segment of gravel south of Salliersville.

Robin: Let me look for it. Oh, this?

Brian: Yeah. Well, let's have a peek. Take that over to... Yeah, it doesn't even have a... But if you take that over, you keep going to... I keep pointing like you can see me.

Robin: That's why we do it with cameras off. We have listeners.

Brian: Yeah. So basically, yeah, you want to get down. You want to stay on 542 off to the east a little more, and then you can turn. Then you can get back on seven. Yeah.

Robin: So then a Louis on seven heading northwest. We're at 262 miles. So some choices are going to have to be made here soon. We're going to ditch and stick on 219, which I've ridden 29... Well, to tie it together, how about we rock 173?

Brian: Oh, that's so nice. Yeah.

Robin: Because we can make 270 miles. I know we can do that.

Brian: Yeah. One nice thing also I'll mention is there's some lake outside of Moorhead, and you want to avoid lakes because they're full of people pulling boats.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: The roads around lakes is what I mean.

Robin: I think this is a lull, and it's a proper lull for a lunch, which may take place in Salieri'sville or Shabadoobieville.

Brian: Yeah. And the last bits into Moorhead are something of a cool down because that's where people put down. Oh, my God. Look at 32. Look at 649. It's already happening. I think that we've found our route.

Robin: What do you think?

Brian: Yeah. You're at 275 for the day. If you want to save some, if you want to cut off a little bit, you can. But look, that's a rocking. Now, think about when you're getting over to Lebanon. Yep. I mean, you were kind of in the flats because you're trying to get further west in Indiana. It was a good day. It wasn't this. This just keeps beating you senseless. I mean, I can't wait.

Robin: I can't bring myself to change it. And we'll still come up with a bonus loop.

Brian: I'll tell you, well, what you can do, you can tell people is like, look, if you're shagged after 240 miles, then oh, yeah, cut off on these zigzags, you know, easy.

Robin: Yeah. In our interview with Alex Gay from Ride With GPS, that's last week's episode, according to our recording that we're doing right now, he mentions how something they have been receiving requests for often and are getting more into is making it so if you put a point on the map that it will alert you that it exists. What I can do is I can put escape exit points where we stop, take a break, and I say, hey, if anybody's shagged out, you want to go this way. You know, like I see a big line right here. Just take 15 and you're there. You know what I mean?

Brian: Yeah. Like if you're shagged out at West Liberty, there's an obvious escape route, you know? Yes. Straight to Moorhead. This is day six, right?

Robin: Day six, Brian Robin rebuilt. That's going to be, there's no reason it should be that good. I need to make this private because this is a commercial enterprise and this is for.

Brian: Riding a motorcycle. Yes, it's saved. It is good. I want you to zoom in on Moorhead. I want to look at that again. Look at that stupid stuff, like off to the east of Moorhead, like it crosses, like it's somehow like an Elliottsville, Elliottsville, look how it transforms into just like.

Robin: I will find a way to turn this entire section with 955, Kentucky 955, 182 and 3295, 986, all of that into a non-repetitive loop. 649. Look at 649. Oh my God. See, I grew up in these parts, by the way. We haven't had that talk yet, but like I'm from Columbus, Ohio, and one half of my family was from Kentucky. And then the other half was from Chi-town, Chicago, all of that. So this was my backyard during holidays.

Brian: Okay.

Robin: Yeah, just me and a couple of king shepherds running around these freaking awesomes.

Brian: All right. Yeah. And, and yeah, like Moorhead is pretty close to interstate 64. So you're going to have choices for, you know, all the stuff you need and place to.

Robin: Man, that was gold. There's only one route left that needs to be given our full attention. And we'll do that next episode. That's going to be the hardest man. You and I are going to have to team up and think about how do we get to the destination with as little Blue Ridge Parkway as possible and as much of everything around it as possible inside of a limited number of miles.

Brian: That's going to be tough. One of the things you said last time was, was I think it was the last time was really interesting and really mountainous regions. Sometimes you don't have a lot of choices. Yeah. Like in, like in Idaho, there's only a couple of good ways to get to Boise. Everything else is unpaved.

Robin: Yeah. I still never got to ride 12. You were looking at 12 going, Robin, you gotta do this. Robin, you gotta do this. And I never got to do it. It's like three times, four times longer than 21.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: It's an entire day's event.

Brian: And in areas that are just hilly, like this part of Kentucky we're looking at, you're, you have an embarrassment of riches. You, you can just, you can just stumble around and it'll be amazing.

Robin: So that was an excellent planning process moment. So yeah, we've got that. That day is now official. I think that's going to be baller. All right. No interview this round, but that does bring us to Brian's Tiny Tasty Tool Tips.

Brian: They're tiny. They're tasty. They're tips. They're about tools. And that's all I got. Okay. I promise you, we will do a hunk on wiring. I've got a hunk. I've got like a whole, anyway, we'll talk about wiring at some point, but I'm not going to talk about wiring today because that's a big topic. Um, here's something I think you'll have some input on. Um, one of the, one of the most basic tools I think everybody should carry with them. And not a lot of, not enough people do is you need to be able to plug a puncture in your tire. Uh, and there are different ways to do that. Um, and there are some that aren't that promise something that they can't do. You need to be able to plug a puncture in your tire, no matter who you are, no matter what you're riding, no matter where you're riding. And you need to have a way to put air into that tire after you have made it so that air will stay inside the tire. Now, um, you know, just in general, we'll talk specifics later, maybe, but just in general, the sticky string tire plugs really, really work the best in tubeless tires. Um, I've seen things like Dyna plugs, uh, and they're, they can work, uh, depending if you do it right. Um, and then there's like, uh, there's ones that are like these little rubber mushrooms you compress and put in there. Those do not work in motorcycle tires. A lot of people have those. Um, and I've seen people carry a CO2 cartridges and that's a problem with a motorcycle tire because they just don't have enough capacity. Like you need like six of them to even get a rear tire rideable. And then, so if you have a continuing leak or something like that, so anyway, so that was a long way around. What I'm getting to is the thing to put air into the tire. What do you carry? I carry a small electric pump and I've got a couple of them. Uh, it's from a brand called slime and you can get them in any Walmart, Kmart. If you still got a Kmart, anything like that. Uh, it's a little square pump about, uh, it's, it's like a four or five inch square pump. Um, and you plug it into your charging lead. You, you probably do need to put a bigger fuse in your charging lead, but you plug it in that little two wire lead and it runs off your bike's battery and it'll put air back into your flat tire. Um, and there's another device, which I've seen Robin use, which he will now talk about.

Robin: Yeah. I pulled up an article about this. I actually got this from Don Beran who honestly, I've got some ideas about this podcast and segments. If you're out there listening to this and you have an idea for something you want to talk about and you're prepared to hear us say, no, that sounds boring as hell. Submit it. I mean, the worst thing we could say is no, that sounds boring as hell. If you want to come present on Radio TRO, podcast at TRO.bike, tell us what you want to talk about. We'll give you your 10 minutes in the spotlight. It's pre-produced anyhow. I would love to hear what this particular product came from Don Beran. He wrote this article and it's the Cyc Plus A2. I don't know that you can still get these. Cause I think it was like a, uh, you know, spur of the moment Chinese product. Yeah. They're not here. Let me see here. Cy Plus.

Brian: There are a bunch of these things under different weird brand names. There, there are tons of them.

Robin: They're just, they're shaped like, what would you say? That's they're shaped like a flashlight. They're pretty compact. They're pretty lightweight. And they're usually intending to try and be multi-purpose. Like, look, if you didn't need to pump up your tire today, why don't you use this to charge up your phone? Or if you don't have anything else to charge your phone with this, we'll do that. And that's okay. But I've never used it for that. I have a jump box that actually has all the extra ports.

Brian: I have seen devices that are portable compressor, and they also have a jump box function. I don't know how well that works. Oh, that's not bad. And also they'll try. Yeah. So I've considered that, but I haven't jumped in, but.

Robin: Link me to that or do me one better. Write the article for it because I, that would, that would eliminate, you know, that's two birds with one stone. You know what I mean?

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: So the Cy Plus, it's not bad. What I like though, this is important to me. It's set it and forget it. Now, whether or not it's hyper accurate. I don't know. I think it was Dale Dunn who said Ryobi air compressors, the handheld ones, they measure PSI in Ryobi's. This, I don't know how accurate this one is, but I can tell you right now that when you're riding a big tour and you change altitude and the next morning, wherever you are, you've discovered that you're 10 PSI low. You can use this to inflate it to an exact spec and put enough faith into it to just write off. So these flashlight shaped portable air compressors, they're very compact. They charge up by USB. I have found that whatever their chip set is with their probably lithium ion battery thing and going on, they do tend to be fully charged and not power on. They might lose some understanding of their own.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: The circuitry is not detecting that it's charged. So all you do is you plug it into a charger of any kind. It'll realize it exists and then it'll pump up your time on the side of the road. They're reliable. They last a long-ish time and they are pretty much as accurate as I need them to be on the roadside.

Brian: Yeah. I wasn't sure if the one you had was also a jump box. I do remember you, like the jump box was pretty much run down. I'm like, Robin, here's where you're going to go buy a battery right now. The jump box, whether you like it or not, it was like, whoop, we're done.

Robin: It's still good. It's still fully functional, but it's one of those things where we got to get into the that guy thing a little bit here and talk about the fact that before your tour, charge everything, charge it all, make sure everything is fully charged and then be gone with you. So yeah. Well, the article, if you want to read about the CYPLUS A2, that's by Don Beran, 22814. That's t-r-o dot bike forward slash question mark P equals 22814. And you can learn all about that there. I got to make that easier. I really do.

Brian: Yeah. Or you could tell people to just search the site.

Robin: All right. So on to reheated rehash.

Brian: Tasty leftovers served hot and crusty. In this segment, we'll read an excerpt from one of Brian or Robin's past TRO blog articles on sport touring motorcycles and discuss.

Robin: We're on the fifth commandment of the 10 commandments to lead an insanely fun sport touring motorcycle ride at t-r-o dot bike.

Brian: That's right. Written by me, Brian Ringer. All right. So commandment five, thou shalt always bear in mind the big picture. Now, earlier I talked about the reason that I prefer north up was I kind of, I, it was my way of thinking about the big picture. And then Robin rebutted with his way of thinking about the big picture with track up. There's a little bit of a callback there. So, and I wrote, it's simple and obvious, but the ride leader needs to also know where you're going. Duh. I'll save a discussion of route planning, wayfinding, GPS options and such for another post. And also there are other posts on that on t-r-o dot bike. But even if you're just following a blue line on a GPS, it's important to stay oriented in time and space in a larger sense. That means having a good mental picture of where you are at all times. Example questions for the big picture general plan. Are you crossing a river or interstate soon? How long until you'll need gas? Do you have another 20 minutes of flatlands before you hit the twisties? What's a good point where people could shortcut the route if they're done for the day? If you're on the west side of a mountain and the hotel's on the east, what are the alternate routes back and how long might they take? Weather is another reason to carry the big picture in your head. If you're always aware of where you are and what direction you're headed, and you're flexible about your route, and you keep a close eye on the sky and wind, you can often dodge rain and passing storms, or at least judge when to hold up for a bit and let a storm blow over. The ride leader also needs to be able to maintain an interesting pace. At least the speed limit. At least. Now, that doesn't mean you need some knee-down, drag-out struggle to decide who's fastest, but the rider in front, let's face it, does need to be able to stay out of everyone's way for the most part. Boredom is one of those distractions we're trying to avoid. What do you think, Robin? How do you put this into action when you lead a ride?

Robin: Well, first off, all of the above. When to do which is always a state of immediate circumstance. One thing we do is we always have an escape route pre-planned that outlines the current main route. That doesn't necessarily mean that wherever you are, you can say, okay, now I need the escape route. And then you clap your hands and you're on it. You still have to know how to get to it. Learn to tell north, south, east, west without anything, without any compass, without any software or module. Even if the sun is directly overhead, if you have a sense of what time it is, that is the one thing you might like to know is the exact time. And if you can determine which way is west in a three o'clock and five minute sun, you are doing an incredible service to yourself for maintaining a sense of direction on the fly. It changes everything you know about what you see in a GPS unit. So, you know, I need to get over, like we were talking about 15 in Kentucky, I need to get to 15. Where's the sun? Boom. And I know 15 is direct west of me. That means this little road here. Then you bust out your paper maps, your GPS, whatever's going to get you there. There are people who subscribe to the idea that you want to have the lead rider, then the slowest rider, then the next slowest rider, then the worst rider should always be right behind you so you can keep track of everybody. That's not adult behavior.

Brian: No.

Robin: That's babysitting.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: So we talked about pass and be passed. Let the accordion become what the accordion is going to become, but do so as responsibly and safely as possible. Find your way into your mix and then make sure that you're not hindering everybody else's good time by not being prepared to do so.

Brian: Yeah. And in commandment six, we'll talk about speed.

Robin: Oh yeah.

Brian: We'll talk about velocity. But one thing I think is interesting too is dodging weather, like in the Midwest and the Southeast. In some places you have enough choices where you can actually, you know, I've actually been able to dodge storm cells. You can see them out there and so forth. And there are also times, like you were talking about your ride up. It was in the Devil's Highway or something. Devil's Highway, yeah, 666. Where in mountainous regions, for example, there just aren't any choices. You can get trapped. And then what do you do? You go, you go, and then you just deal with what you find there. And, but yeah, like in Kentucky, for example, I've, I've done some, you know, I've done some, you know, some little sea captain, you know, staring at the wind and putting up my sails and, you know, so we sail a different direction to get around a storm cell.

Robin: There's so much to what you just read in that specific discussion point, that commandment of sport touring. I can miss almost all of it. Having only said what I did. Travis has nailed that several times. Weather, if it catches you in the dead center, well, guess what? You're in the dead center. And I don't mean to say dead, but you're just going to have to deal with it. You're going to have to deal with it. And so you observe, you stop. If you have cheap rain gear like me, here's one, then it's going to get hot in the rain gear. So ditch the layers for the jacket. All of the armor stays, but as little of anything else underneath that stuff. And then just, okay, you got a windbreaker on, go get wet on the bike. Have a ball. Enjoy.

Brian: Yeah. We're weaving a tapestry of callbacks here. I like that.

Robin: We'll conclude this episode with Tales from Planet That Guy. We've all been that guy. We've all ridden with that guy. Let's talk about that guy and we'll say goodbye.

Brian: This is going to be a short one. That guy, a dear friend of mine, dear friend of mine, who's no longer with us. So I can talk bad about him because he was a wonderful human being. That guy who was a highly qualified engineer and decided to modify his motorcycle's wiring. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Robin: My wiring is all direct to battery and I've got a whole hub. What you want?

Brian: You're not a highly qualified and trained radio electrical engineer. See that? That was his problem. And George, I'm very sorry for what I did. I walked up, I stared at the mess and I pulled one red wire and it came out. I don't know how I did that, but I found the one wire that was the problem.

Robin: Brian, you want to lead us out?