Robin: We're on our way to Texas, so I get to hold my microphone up to my face like a field reporter.

Brian: Wow.

Robin: Like a measly, meager, desperate field reporter, Brian. This is what you've done to me. Ever since you joined the podcast, I've just been demoted and demoted, and here we are. So Brian.

Brian: Robin. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Did you ride today? I did ride today. Did you ride today or did you just pack?

Robin: I just packed today. The whole jenga is going on with the back room. We got the 37-foot fifth wheel toy hauler, and both bikes are next to each other in their pit bull stands, anchored to the floor, actually straps up front too. And then the scooter, it is perpendicular in the back because it's the only way we can do it. We have our scooter with us too, because hey, you know what, 70 miles to the gallon.

Brian: Sport touring scooter. Sometimes you just got to go somewhere and get a bottle of Pepsi or something.

Robin: Yep. Or you might be fed up hauling it around, so you got to take it someplace where you can try to break it in the middle of the dirt somewhere on a gravel road, full speed at 45 to 50 miles per hour. Great to see you.

Brian: Great to see you too.

Robin: It's been a couple episodes. How did everything go with Travis?

Brian: Went great. I think we had some interesting tech talk. I hope it was interesting. We broke it down. We trashed some things, you know, and we also admitted that sometimes good technology is good technology.

Robin: Sure. I remember us getting into some of that two episodes ago or three episodes ago. The last episode he joined us for, yeah.

Brian: We'll make that. It's kind of, we kind of made it into Travis's thing, I guess. Which is fine.

Robin: So long as we give the listeners something to enjoy, boring or not.

Brian: And we had a little Honda talk, learned about Travis's new Honda. That's a sick bike. I couldn't tell you, it's CB something, yeah. Yeah. I looked it up. Wicked Machine looked really fun. Yeah.

Robin: Less displacement, more whoop-ass. I think he's got the right bike now. We can bring him along now.

Brian: He's allowed in the tree house. Yeah, yeah. Right. Tell me about your ride today. Well, I left my house and I rode to work and now I'm in my office. It wasn't that exciting. I did not see that plot twist coming. Yeah. Not that exciting. You know, it's one of those things, I think commuting on a motorcycle is kind of important. It keeps you sharp. Like I know guys who will not touch a motorcycle for literally six months, show up and ride like the wind, like a bat out of hell, like grace and beauty. I don't know how they do that. I got to practice all the time. I'm not very good at it or something. I need practice in order to actually have any idea what I'm doing.

Robin: So it's like you need constantly integrated access.

Brian: Yeah. Plus I get all itchy if I don't ride for a while. It's horrible.

Robin: It's a very real thing. Yeah, I don't know. There have been times where I've just been thinking about it so much and I can imagine moments in previous rides where then I jump on the bike and I'm ready to rock. But that doesn't change the fact that until I have felt a low lean angle G-force that is safe and secure, I'm not ready to do that at all. So a lot of corners I'll go and I'll be very, I don't know, I forget if tires are, whether or not tires are made of ice. They're not. They're made of rubber. They stick to pavement. But that first few, maybe even the first couple of rides, I'm just not comfortable with anything that could be slippy until probably, you know, a good many miles under my belt for a given year, which right now, it was a hell of a ride, Colorado.

Brian: Tell me. Tell me. I am itching. And I don't, I've heard nothing. I know nothing. I want to share this moment. Robin, tell me about Colorado. How were the moose?

Robin: I'll make it happen. And hopefully I'll keep it interesting. And if it needs to be cut off for another topic, we can do that. I can venture into this for small moments over the course of a few episodes if need be. I'll give you the beginning and the end to start. The beginning would be, I got everything on the bike packed up and ready to go. Not my first rodeo with going on a motorcycle camping trip or having a dry bag on my pillion seat full of whatever I need to, for example, go coach an FSF course. You know, I just need that extra space. That's materials or it's, in this case, camping materials of sort. I have the bike ready to rock. And the one thing that I can't figure out is how I want to fasten the bag down on my pillion seat. It's the only thing.

Brian: Twine.

Robin: Well, it could be. It could be.

Brian: It could be a rope.

Robin: So I think that it matters that this being a paved sport touring machine of a certain subtle sexiness, I don't really want to mess up my plastics. Like, you know, there are a lot of people that are just like, oh, whatever, just strap it. I just let them go. You just let them go. If it's somebody else's bike, you know, this is my bike. And so the first thing that happened was I was getting suggestions from third parties. Just do this. Fasten to that. And I'm looking at every line that their approach takes. And it either goes directly over clear coat or through the sidewall of my tire. I want to keep the bike happy and pretty and cool. That's how that bike has made it to 94,000 miles of constant curvy chaos. And people still walk up to it and say, that's pretty right. I've managed to do the job and keep the bike streamlined and intact and elegant minus a deer hit. But you get the point. It's like, I want to get this right. So all of this pushed aside, this is just the beginning of trying to get this thing ready to be roadworthy for this trip. And I'm just staring at it. You get to that blank void of just waiting for the solution to enter your mind. And it really never did. Fortunately, I've got a Maggie and she was like, come on. I was like, what are we doing? We're going to the store. Like, okay, the store, get in the truck, drive to the store, walk into the store, walk over to the hardware and fasteners. And I find what are the equivalent of Titan straps. If you're familiar, you ever seen Titan straps? I don't. Should I have them right here with me? I could have shown you.

Brian: But they're like the plastic. They're like plastic.

Robin: Yeah. They're kind of like a plasticized rubber latch strap. They got, they got perforations. You go around a thing and you go around the other thing and then you feed it through and the tooth, a single tooth on the inside catches one of those outlets. And then it's like bungeed in place, but a lot better than bungee.

Brian: And it's like, yeah, it's like you could hold your pants up with one or you could strap a dry bag onto a BMW.

Robin: Yeah. This still ended up being kind of a rig because in the end, I went through the D rings thinking that would do it on the bag and then compressed it down. And about day two or so, first off, every time I strapped it in place, the metal tooth that is holding it in place ended up exactly a half inch between my metal grab rail and exactly a half inch between my tail light plastics and was just exactly where it needed to be not to damage anything. And then I just said, well, I give up. Here we go. Let it be. Eventually, it turns out those D rings, which are intended for the shoulder strap, the stitching can start to go and they weren't intended to go in that direction anyhow, so began to peel back. At this time, it just so happened during the tour that we had Joanna Noble, who did interview with us a while back. Bumbles Bounce. If you look up the Bumbles Bounce episode, she's an amazing person who does an amazing thing for fellow military. Sweet. It's like a motorcycling for military vets kind of vibe, trying to keep people mentally well and getting their spirits back, things like that. Beautiful cause. She spent two days riding with us. And I'll say it again. I've never said this about anybody else. She rides like she's trying to outrun nuclear fallout. She's not messing around, nor is the guy who rode the Harley the entire tour, John Berthal. He rode his ass off on a full dressed Harley. It was a pleasure riding with that guy. Fantastic. Yeah. Those things actually work anyway. She stayed here for a couple of nights and she just leaves me a pair of rock straps the next morning before she takes off. You didn't know about rock straps? I knew about rock straps, but I couldn't get them here. I couldn't get them here. And I figured I've got this bag, I got the D-rings, everything will work out. You're the third person to ask me, did you not know about rock straps? Yes, I know about rock straps.

Brian: Do I have any? No. Now I do. Angels sing when you get your first rock straps. They're a revolution in holding crap on your bike.

Robin: Yeah. It worked out fantastic. And that's like how it began was just getting the bag on the bike. And there was a punchline to how it all ended when I got back. But I think I'll mention how there were a lot of people who appeared for the time they could be here to ride and then disappeared. And now all is quiet. That's a little bit hard to have everybody gone like that after one intense six day ride.

Brian: Oh, yeah.

Robin: That's heavy, man. The silence is deafening.

Brian: Yeah. Even a three day ride or whatever. You kind of got to deal with that depression like after summer camp. I don't know if you ever went to summer camp and you're a kid.

Robin: I did.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. And you come home and it's just you.

Robin: You might see him next year. You might not. But you remember there was a lot of like, I know exactly what you mean.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Do you want to hear about that brief day by day on this thing?

Brian: Yeah. I mean, obviously you rode the mountains. It was really, really scenic and it was really, really twisty. And so what do you got to add to that?

Robin: It wasn't all a thousand percent twisty chaos the entire time. Tim Clark made excellent arrangements. The routes were a little bit more balanced out with. Now we're seeing the sites and now we're riding the twisties and now we're seeing the sites. So there's a lot of like National Park. Oh, yeah. To National Forest. If I were to pick the best roads for each day, like six roads. Where did you start in Gunnison? Yeah. And they're doing construction on 50, which is a total train wreck. Like 50 is messed up. And that is kind of our hub route to get anywhere. The first loop took us out to mouse over the elevation map. You can see the order in which we wrote everything. Now Tim and his lovely wife, Sylvia, went to some other things first. So our real route from Gunny starts around the 130 mile mark in the elevation map. And we headed due east. So the east loop, which takes us from Gunnison through Salida and Bureau of Land Management stuff and up to Cripple Creek and Colorado Springs. So this was curvy and twisty as heck. I don't remember half of it because my brain's fried from the whole thing in general. But I will tell you that one of the most majestic events took place when we rode Cottonwood Pass back. I've tested Cottonwood Pass. I've ridden it twice beforehand just to get a handle on kind of the kind of riding we'd be doing. And when we came back, it was raining and we all had our rain gear on and we still managed to hose it. We were hooning the whole thing. And I think Tim would say it was his one and only oops moment where when you get to the top of the pass, I don't know why they do this, but at the top of Cottonwood Pass heading into Gunnison, there is no warning sign about the 15 mile an hour right turn that's at the viewpoint. Take a picture, please. There's just nothing. So I knew this and I've got a rider behind me. I come to a slow. I make a louie and I stop there. And the person who's riding it back, also on a Harley, a little bit more mellow rider, Dennis, great guy, he pretty much was always about five to 10 miles behind us, which is just fine. We made it work. Tim, however, has not seen this. He's on his XSR and he comes flying up and it's just hey, to a stop, like did not. And there's no no guardrail, no sign, no chicanes, no warning, just a cliff and a lake. I was waiting to hear.

Brian: OK, this. Yeah, I'm looking at it. OK, I see. So it's so the Tim drag you down any dirt, goat paths or anything like that.

Robin: We did. So the first night of camping was dispersed camping about three and a half miles into a national forest or park. That was a great night. It was smooth, a little bit of roughness. You know, I don't like my plastic shaking off, but we got where we're going. We got set up every good time. One of our fellow riders pooped in the woods. So it was really everything you wanted to be. Once somebody takes a shit in the woods, you know, you've you've really landed the goal of a sport touring motorcycle ride.

Brian: Yeah, I used to. I used to ride mountain bikes a lot. And basically, if you needed to bust a grumpy, if you needed to take a number two, basically you collected all the cameras and took them with you otherwise. And this was back when cameras were a not a thing that everybody had with their phone. You remember that? Yeah. Anyway. Otherwise you would get documentation and you didn't want that. Yeah. Yeah. All around my neck. I'm going into the woods. You pretty birds stay back there. So anyway, yeah, that that was the rule back then.

Robin: I'll knock this down faster so that we can, you know, we can always go deep into this at another point. Maybe I will have an extravaganza episode where I talk only about this or we'll bring everybody on board and discuss it. So let's talk about like the three peak roads of this venture. I think the first would be Cottonwood Pass of that loop. Instead of doing six roads, I'll mention three for the East Loop. Cottonwood Pass in Colorado was fantastic. We beat the hell out of it at an hour when there was no traffic. Excellent. It was in the wet and it didn't stop us from riding like we were in the dry. It was grand. Those days kind of built up. It got curvier and twistier and more and more blastastic and awesome over the course of the entire loop until it smoothed out and we were back in Gunnison. The second loop, that's days three and four, that one was more like we're going to start out super hectic. Then it's going to taper off into some mellow scenic stuff and then we'll get some more hectic elsewhere. And the road that really stood out for us, 92, 92, it's on the north side of the West Loop and it's right next to the reservoir near Seponero, Seponero.

Brian: Oh yeah.

Robin: So you take that right hander there and we all met up at the dam right next to the reservoir and just went berserk out the gates right there for, I think it's probably 40 some odd miles. That may be a little bit exaggerated, but what a, wow, just an amazing road. I could have doubled back on that and done it a few more times. After that, things got a little bit more mellow. You know, we went and saw some, you can't deny the beauty of what you're looking at. I know you can say I'm here for the curves, but when you know that, hey, to get to them, you know, what do we say? You have to cut diamond with diamond. Getting from one set of curves to the next, if it's beautiful, take it for what it is. Live it up. Embrace that. Totally worth it.

Brian: Yeah. Sometimes you really do have to stop and look. And I think you get to that moment sometimes where if you're riding well, your consciousness expands. You know, you get into a state of flow and you're like taking in everything for 365 degrees or 360 degrees, sorry. You know, there's moments when, you know, you see the Hawk over there, you see all that, you know, you take that in. And if you're in that, if you're in a, if you're kind of somewhere below that is where you're focusing only on the road, but yeah, if you can get through that into that state of flow, that's what we're here for. You know, it's not just a, not just riding a roller coaster. It's it's a, it's an experience, you know, it's a, it's a full mental body workout. Agreed. And this is a place to do it. Yeah.

Robin: One of a few, definitely. I tend to be careful when I say things about this is why we ride, because there are people who don't ride for the same reasons that I ride, who say that the thing that they do is the reason that we ride. And my response has been, you're incorrect. It's a personal thing. However, in the case of this would be day four. That's when things for me got a little bit weird. We had a little bit more hooning fun on our way into Grand Junction. But once we got there, we were camping outside of Fruita, which is a great town and our campsite. That's a, is a national, it's Saddlehorn, Colorado National Monument. I knew for a fact that my wife was getting up and heading to the airport early in the morning and that our dog was going to need me to get home. So I made sure everybody knew that while they may see me in passing and we might interact over the course, I'm not part of the group. You know what I'm saying? I'm just some guy.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Well, I'm Robin, but they are not to wonder where I am. I am gone. And this raised some eyebrows because they were like, well, but the route, my response was what about it? I'm going to be on it. I'm just not going to be going at, you know, I'm going my, my way. And there were two writers, one of them, Joanna herself, who basically said, well, we're going to follow you. And I said, so long as you understand that I'm not waiting for you, you're not with me. If you keep up, you keep up. And when you don't, you don't. That's fine. Which I think is acceptable. They totally high-fived on that. And the first thing they did was, you know, we went and got some breakfast the next morning and immediately John Bertholdt, who was super excited, was like, I have the answer to the equation that is the route and I will save you from the mistake you're about to make. And he proceeds to pass me and make a right turn and Joanna follows him. And I waved at them and I continued going the correct direction and started hauling arse on Colorado 141, which is a amazing Canyon riding. It's big. I mean, it's the sweepers are bigger than I like. I will say.

Brian: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's a point when there's a point when a sweeper is so big, you're like, I gotta, I gotta be deep into triple digits to get a giggle out of this. So this is not smart.

Robin: Thank you. Thank you. Like, so here I am. It's like one of those ones where it's like, you know, recommended orange sign speed is like 55, you know, for the next curve. That's a little ludicrous to me. I want to see 45, 35, 25, 15, but when you get to 55, it's like, just say that this is a highway, put trucks on it, you know, let the truckers let them do their thing. So, but I'm just barreling home and loving these roads, loving them. And I stopped for the, what Tim has marked in here is the action photo spot along state highway 141.

Brian: Okay. I see it. Yeah.

Robin: Somewhere towards what in, so we, I don't know how to say these. So we mess up wilderness study area.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: That is the creme de la creme. But I'm trying to make this a short story. It's turning into the entire episode. Sorry, Brian. So I just kicking butt all the way home and getting back to my dog and Tim and his co-counsel, Dennis, they rode back, made it back in a couple hours after us. Dennis is the kind of guy who doesn't really like to go more than five miles over the speed limit. That's him. Let him be. Don't mess with him. He's not holding anybody back. He knows that. So everybody arrives back into Dodge and Gunnison for a night of hang time and went out to dinner. Then comes day five, right?

Brian: All right.

Robin: Day five, Tim's lovely, the wife has volunteered. I wasn't going to go. I was going to do an out and back and then come home out and back and then meet them at halfway into the next out and back from the next day because dog Tim's lovely wife, Sylvia says, I've got this. I will walk the dog. So she takes care of the gyps and we hammer it south to this. I don't think I've ever been on a tour, Brian, with Tim Clark, where at some point we didn't tell each other to go off. I'm swearing less for you, by the way.

Brian: Usually I swear in these episodes, so I'm chilling myself. I didn't know if we could or not. I don't know. I didn't want to get it. I didn't I didn't want to get an R rating.

Robin: Well, we've we're we got a lot of swear words in our episodes. All right. But I'll hold off on this one. Fucking A. I've never been on a tour with Tim Clark where I didn't tell him to F off and vice versa at some point. He's not here to defend himself, so I'll defend him when I say Tim organized this entire thing and it's a beautiful, beautiful ride. And what happened was he was in some pain for the third loop and he was also hungry and a little dizzy. He missed a turn in. I think it was in Durango where we didn't need to go through town, but we went deep into town. We could have bypassed all of it.

Brian: You kind of bounce off of it. Yeah, I see that. Okay.

Robin: It's got like there are bars marked in here and hotels. We didn't need to do any of that because we were going to go camp at the site. Okay. We went through town kind of for nothing and that's okay. You know, I was like, okay, whatever. Then we end up in, oh, there's this beautiful tourist trap of a town. Where is it? They don't have any pavement. It's all dirt except for the main road. So one main road going through Dodge is paved and the rest it's a resort town for off like side by sides. Tim misses the restaurant. I already don't want to go to this restaurant. It's Maggie's kitchen. I think his name of the place. I got a photo of it. I know it's going to take forever. Tim misses it. I'm like, okay, let's just keep going. Tim doubles back and passes me going the other way, trying to figure out where it's at. Now I've got one guy behind me. He's got a guy behind them and we are going back and forth in this tourist trap town repeatedly to where then I called him on the phone and I'm yelling at him, but he doesn't hear me because my Bluetooth isn't on. So he just hears, he's screaming back at me through the phone and then we're both irate and we're both just screaming at each other. And then finally we meet up and we're not talking. And when we yin yang, we go to Maggie's kitchen and it takes all of five minutes to get all of our orders cooked. Delicious food. Excellent stop. This Maggie's place in whatever this town is. Hooray. Hooray. Thank you. Delicious food. Took no time to make. Tim is sitting on the long corner facing the opposite direction. We're both not talking and we eat.

Brian: You were kind of a little hangry was going on there. That word came into play.

Robin: I will admit the real trick was this. All we had to do was admit that this was dinner. He was calling it lunch and it was 4.30 in the afternoon. If we had just admitted that this was an early dinner and we could get some snacks before we went camping, all would be well. And immediately after we felt better, went to our campsite, which was beautiful. That was the cold night. Two episodes ago, I told you I might not be into it if it was like 35 degrees or less. It was. It went deep freeze and you know what? It was fine.

Brian: Yeah. You lived apparently. Yeah.

Robin: So what a guy. Yeah. I mean, we had to haul him. He handed him out when he got here. You need to take this blanket just in case. Got to haul it yourself. But here it is. He did that for all of us. And it came in handy. That next ride, Murray Haynes meets us in Pagosa Springs. It turns into this epic, awesome breakfast, turning into an epic, awesome ride that was mostly scenic. And I had given up the fight on this. I didn't want to give anybody crap for creating such a great thing. When we got to Creed, we went to the mining museum. A lot of fun. Very entertaining.

Brian: Yeah. I see that on the map. Yeah. Okay.

Robin: Great stop. So I'm thinking, okay, maybe this entire thing is turned into a scenic get together and we're going to wind it down. And that's fine. Cause I get to see my friends, right? Always good to be able to say that. And then Murray lets loose and warns everybody. All right, it's about to get good. And it did. It got ridiculous. It got just dumb. And I had passed off John Bertholdt onto Murray. So those two could interact because they're both fellow MSF instructors. And I kind of went about my own thing and Tim and I were totally cool again. And he's like, all right. So he goes to write some dirt and get foolish. He got shots of us on a mountaintop from an angle that we didn't know where he was, where we're just specs on the map. And it's supposedly pretty cool. But I don't remember what the pass is called. Murray's doing his thing. I'm doing my thing. John's doing his thing. I think the punchline is this. Dennis, who was with us on his Harley, he was the resident storyteller. And I got to tell you, Brian, we all have family members, friends that when they begin to tell a story, we want out. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah. We couldn't figure it out. Every time Dennis started telling one of the stories. He's only been in Colorado for two years. He learned everything there is to know about the entire state. And every time he started telling a story about anything, we thought this is going to be the one that sucks. And it never happened. Not once. Every story the man told was pure gold. Excellent. He nailed it every time. So my punchline is this, that at some point I thought I was going to catch up to Murray and John. I've told them to go ahead. And usually I thought, yeah, I'm going to catch up to them. No problem. But here's how it went down. I had a bee in my helmet. So I stopped on the side of the road. I opened up my helmet and I found the bee and I let it go. And then nature called. It's all right. I'll take a leak. This is no big deal. I'm going to go over in the woods here and take a quick pee. And then I'll walk back to the bike. I'm going to jump back on the bike. And then Tim goes by and we're laughing. He rides by, doesn't stop. We just wave. We have a giggle. It's like, yep, I knew you're on this route. There he is, waves. And he's off. He continues on. Then comes Dennis and Dennis rides by on his Harley. He does a big sweeping U-turn and he pulls up next to me. And he says, you know, there's a funny thing about this mountain range right here. If you look off into the distance and the story begins again, and it was an awesome story and it took 10 minutes and I loved every word of it. And I was just laughing at how behind those guys I was going to be, because I was not going to tell this guy to stop talking. I wanted to hear it. This has never happened to me. Usually I'd be like, uncle Dennis. Take your medication. I'm gone. I gotta, I gotta go. Yeah. Gotta go. Good chat. I wanted to hear every word. The rest was just epic writing. Epic writing. Stir and repeat. Yeah. Best route on the ride though. I gotta tell you, it wasn't on the ride. Murray went home the next morning. He stayed with us. We hung out, drank 10 year old bourbon and told lies. John Bertholdt got up 3 a.m. after riding with us the entire time, all six days and did a saddle sore 2000 back home. Yeah. Good to be young, right? Murray, on the other hand, gets up. Colorado is his backyard. So he jumps on 114. Let's see if we can find on the map. Barely seven miles out of Gunnison. What'd you say? 114? 114 due south all the way to Saguachi. If I said that right, probably not.

Brian: Probably not. No. Oh, there it is. I see it. 114. Got it. Excellent.

Robin: Oh, best road of the route. Wasn't part of the route. Murray texted me and said, Robin, I found the most majestic road that I've never been on. And I insist that you take your wife on a ride on this road. Who knows what could happen as a result of this? Do it. And I did. So now I'm packed up and that concludes everything. Which means, I don't know, man. We started this at 530 and I need to pass the baton to you. How much of the outline have we completely abandoned for the sake of this story? That's what I got to say about the Colorado rally. And I will turn it into a group tour.

Brian: Man, that was a long one. And that was good. Your turn. All right. I spent some quality time with Ride With GPS last weekend. And what I discovered in the process is that I am an absolute weirdo. Because I use a GPS in a very, very weird way. And yeah, I'm not supposed to do this. And that's what and I was trying to make Ride With GPS. I was trying to make the app do things it didn't want to do. But I do like I have the premium and I did the and I did route planning. And the online tools for route planning are absolutely amazing. Really great. Excellent stuff there. Then here's what I found. If I show you my phone, which is what I use for my GPS. There's a map on there and there's and it's a terrain map. It's got the elevation shading and so forth. It looks like someone like through melted a bunch of crayons and threw it at the map. Because what I and I guess I didn't know this was weird until now. But what I do is I will load up several maps, several routes in an area. I'll put them on and I'll put them on the same map. I'll give them all a different color. And I'll be like, I'm probably going to mostly follow the blue one today. What do they call that in the app?

Robin: It's a name of something you when you it's like a grouping system that they've made. And I've used every now and then, but it's where you can layer all the maps.

Brian: Yeah, well, basically, you have to combine them into one route. And the problem is that it combines it into one route. So it keeps telling you you're off course when you're just going or you're going the wrong direction. And I'm like, no, I'm just I'm going. I want to see. I want to go down this line. And actually, you know, it's totally on a whim. Like I don't plan anything. And that's it can actually drive people nuts to try to follow me. Like if they just just just lay back and enjoy, because I'm going to do stuff that I don't have planned. So I think that's kind of weird. Like I just have a whole splatter of routes. And, you know, I may follow different ones depending on what I feel like if I need to, you know, get gas or look for a restaurant or something like that. And yeah, so like, you know, a quarter of my screen was that whole off off track, off route, off route the whole time. I don't know if you can shut that off, but you can.

Robin: I mean, so if you go into the settings at any time until to stop annoying, you're like I personally wanted to tell me when I'm off route because I'm usually doing a linear route.

Brian: Yeah. If you're doing if you're if you're like, I'm going to ride this route and, you know, I have a plan for the day or, you know, you're running a tour, you've got people you're responsible for in some way, stuff like that. Or if you're like, I want to I want to see what this is like. I want to see how long I want to ride this route. Then it's absolutely just started up. Take your brain off the hook and go. It's great.

Robin: Well, I'm in there right now and they've got the collections. That's the collections. Yeah. Left hand sidebar tab. That's the one where you can merge multiple and keep them on the screen. But I think in the end when you're that is weird, but it's also cool. I get what you're after. You're trying to say if I'm on a line, I know where I'm going. Whereas in the case of when you're even dealing with a collection, I would presume if you're not on the right line, it thinks you don't know that you're on the wrong line. It wants to help you follow the route that you intend to follow based on your selection.

Brian: Yeah, I may have been doing it wrong. I'm sure I was. So, yeah, I'm still still working on it. Me too. Yeah. I think I'm the weirdo here, but it's it's a anyway, I was in Kentucky scouting out some routes and I was able to to hit some of the stuff that we came up with for the end of the triple sevens.

Robin: Are you serious now? Are you serious?

Brian: So I hit some of that. I rode the ferry. I rode the ferry across into Rising Sun into nowhere. Rabbit hash area. So I rode. Yeah, I rode the ferry across. I did some of the stuff in Indiana, rode the ferry across and then got on some of that route. And I think the and I got the farthest west I got was Falmouth and then and then did some stuff south and east of that and came home.

Robin: Is that the right pronunciation is Falmouth? There's a foul mouth or fall mouth.

Brian: Yeah, I don't know what they say in Kentucky, but I call it Falmouth. But the the and that's what's cool is, you know, I was by myself. I didn't have to wait, you know, like I could, you know, it was a 400 mile day in not that many hours. Just, you know, like if I'm with people like 250, like 300 miles is really dragging people along. And 250 miles is pretty doable with two or three people or a group. But yeah, I'm by myself. I can just ignore the pain or whatever and just keep moving, you know, during the tank, you know, that sometimes that's a lot of fun just to pile on a bunch of miles, have a bunch of really great roads, you know, in the middle. And yeah, it was a blast. So what's the committee consensus? How was it generally? What did you think of the roads? Epic. I mean, yeah, southern Indiana and Kentucky are amazing. It's not Colorado, mind you, but, you know, you don't have the elevation changes, but you have all these little lumpy roads and you have a lot of options, which are a lot of fun.

Robin: Even when you say it's not Colorado, I think that that isn't necessarily a negative because the West Virginia, Kentucky combinations, Wisconsin's driftless combinations, these lowland high hills and small mountains really make for easier road building. So there's a lot of them and you can always divert. Whereas with Colorado, you remember we talked about this. Yes, what we did was an epic adventure in self-reflection, but it was also there were big laws to get to the next ridiculousness. You were going to have to just accept that. Yeah. Stare at the mountain and enjoy that and deal with it.

Brian: Yeah. And you mentioned like 50 was under construction and it was a pain in your butt, you know?

Robin: Oh, yeah.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Yeah. There was humor in it. I mean, it never really got the better of us psychologically. We knew we had to deal with it because hey, roads get rebuilt, right?

Brian: Yeah. And the other thing, and maybe we talk about this later, maybe we don't, but one thing I do that's odd is in early November, 10 years ago, I hit a deer and broke a leg, broke my wrist. It was not fun. And what I learned after hitting the deer was we were out riding on the very day that was the absolute peak of the rut. So like if you're a deer hunter, that's when the deer are going to be at their stupidest and you're going to be able to shoot them. And I had no idea. I didn't know anything about deer and so forth. So anyway, that's the day I hit a deer. It sucked. Sorry. Anyway, and ever since then, like I psychologically cannot go ride when the sky and everything smells the same and looks the same outside. From about late October and through December-ish around in there, I pretty much can't leave the city on two wheels or I just, I'm not going to enjoy myself. It's no fun. I'm going to be creeping along, staring, you know, looking for deer. Yeah. And they're out there. They're stupid and they're out there. And you know, it's just, it's one of those things I just have to, you know, you can do a lot of great riding. It's warm enough or not, you know, not too cold. Like you can do a lot of great riding in November and I have in the past, but I'm like, nope, not going to do that anymore. Just that's off my risk management table. And maybe, you know, maybe some brand of PTSD, you know, where like the sky looks that really, you know, that really deep blue and the leaves look like this and it smells like fall and, and, and, you know, it just creates a fear reaction. So it's like flashback fodder. Yeah, the choppers and the, yeah, but I, uh, I didn't, I didn't get a chopper ride. It was just an ambulance. But anyway, the, uh, yeah, I can't, so can't do that. Um, but I will like, I'll ride the work and back and stuff. Like I'll ride in the city. There are deer in the city, unfortunately, but I'll ride in the city, but I won't go out in the country.

Robin: Don't mock me for this question. And don't judge because I don't necessarily believe these things either. But do you have deer whistles on your bike?

Brian: I do not. Okay. I've never seen anything evidence that they work.

Robin: I totally agree yet. I do have them. I put two where nobody could see them. They make a noise. I know they probably don't do shit, but it doesn't change the fact that maybe there's one deer that's that stupid. It's like, that's a weird noise. I'm going to run away. Yeah, that'd be nice. But trying to gauge the, the dumber version of each type of venison meat. And so far the dumbest I've seen are mule deer. I don't know if you've ever encountered those.

Brian: I haven't, I haven't ridden where there are mule deer, but I've seen them in out in Colorado and so forth. Yeah. They are the dumbest. Dumber than white tails.

Robin: Yes, they are dumber than white tails. They stand there and until you can kiss them on the nose. And when they do move, they move slowly and they look like they're embarrassed because they're constipated and pooping. Like, they're just like, they have this awkward walk. Really, really messed up. Now I brought this to the conversation with Murray and he was like, how did he say? He was like, oh, the elk are dumber. Went into the elaboration of this and I was dumbfounded. The elk are the dumbest of them all because they're bigger. They don't see us quite as a threat, just like a really fast giant mosquito. And they just, they don't, they don't look for you. They're not listening. They don't stop. They don't move. Yeah. They don't care. Yeah. Pick a topic, any topic.

Brian: This is from stuff our listeners have asked or might ask. If you'd like us to field your questions, email podcast at TRO.bike or go to TRO.bike and you'll find ways to electronically stuff communications into our brain holes. Anyway, this is one we can milk for a long time. What are some of your controversial motorcycling opinions? Let's start a fight, shall we? Do it. I dare you. Draw. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to start with one. I think my opinion, my controversial opinion is that Harley's actually sound pretty good, but only with the stock exhaust. You put straight pipes on it. No, no good. But from the factory, if you've ever heard one, they're rare. But from the factory, Harley's actually sound pretty cool. Now, is that controversial? Am I going to get letters? Are we going to get letters on paper?

Robin: Not after what I just witnessed. I had the absolute farthest boundaries of Harley riders, two of them along for that ride. And they both had a stock exhaust. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Maybe Dennis has a Vance and Hines or some aftermarket something or another.

Brian: Yeah. There's some in-betweeners that are not bad. Yeah.

Robin: They were loud, but they didn't sound awful. Then again, I wear ear protection when I'm riding. So, you know, there is that. Yeah. But I hear you. I don't know if that's controversial. They do sound good. They just don't sound good for long because usually I'm pulling away from them.

Brian: Oh, he went there, didn't he?

Robin: If you're going to redline at 4,000 RPMs. Yeah. I mean, sure. It can sound great.

Brian: I'm happy for you. That's not controversial enough. Yeah. What are some other bikes? Yeah. I mean, are there some bikes that just kind of don't sound good no matter what you do? There's a guy with a Honda here, a Honda Cruiser.

Robin: I love the Honda Cruisers because, you know, they're reliable. They tend to look pretty good. They tend to be kind of quiet, which is not a bad thing. But this guy has a straight pipe on his Honda and it sounds like shit.

Brian: Yeah, I know. Yeah. It sounds terrible.

Robin: It doesn't sound broken. It makes that steady pulse of a V motor, not Harley's potato, potato, potato, potato. You know what I'm talking about?

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Yeah, yeah. You know, we have a real question here, though. Lay it on us. Melbolt asks, any idea on the value of a 2001 BMW K1200LT with 37,000 miles on it? I got a guy that made trade one of his for his Suzuki TW200s.

Brian: That's a, that's a, that's a strange equivalence.

Robin: It is a bizarre bridge, but the TW is a great bike. It is. It's awesome.

Brian: Yeah. The thing about the, the, the, the early 2000s K1200 is like, I believe they have those, I believe they have that braking system that it's got this weird power brake system that has problems, you know, like, like there's, there's certain BMW, there's some BMW crap you're going to have to deal with. And with 37,000, it's coming in 22 years. It's coming. So yeah. I mean, is this your answer in the call?

Robin: That's a great response. Cause I don't know K bikes. Hell, I barely know BMW. I know my bike and I know the R 1200 motor from 16 on.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: But my answer is way different from yours. I like your answer a lot. Like the person who asked this question, I know him. He has a Honda Goldwing that he rides the living daylights out of. He doesn't need a K.

Brian: Yeah. So there's that. Yeah. Does he need the bike? And yeah, so the K, you know, and, and it could be maybe the K's in great shape. All the, all the junk's been taken care of and all that stuff. Um, I do love the idea of trading experiences that radically. I think that's, I think that's hilarious. Like, like if this, like if this K bike had any flies on it, you know, it'd be sure what the hell I'm going to ride this fat, tired little booger and see what that's like. You're going to giggle more. I love the idea. I love it. And, and TWS are worth a hell of a lot too. They go for a lot.

Robin: Totally opposite scenario. Here is the answer. We wrote an article about this a minute back. I think it was right around the time I was selling my bandit. I don't really remember. But if you go to TRO dot bike and you look for used motorcycle value, I wrote a lengthy article that goes deep into how to really nail down what one bike might be worth. My formula goes something like this. Brian, tell me if you agree, maybe we'll have a fight about this.

Brian: Oh, sweet.

Robin: I'll take the Kelly blue book value. Then I'll find the nada value. The NADA value.

Brian: Okay. Yeah.

Robin: These are two similar outlets that are pretty reliable, but I'll set those two figures aside. Give it the year, make model, give it the mileage. I'll set the Kelly blue book value to the left and the NADA value to the left or whatever. And then what I do, this is where it gets kind of hairy and complex. And just bear with me here. The what's out there part. I will go to eBay and I will average the price of those bikes on eBay. Set that figure off to the side. Then I'll go to Craigslist and I'll average the price of those bikes on Craigslist. Set that off to the side. Then I'll go to cycle trader. And this is the last one. And I'll set that off to the side. I take the eBay average price, the Craigslist average price and the cycle trader average price. And I average those three results together to get a third figure. Then I take the Kelly blue book value, the NADA value and the averaged trifecta price from the other three. And I average all three. If you want to get exact, that's how I narrow it down to this is about what I want. And then I ask for less.

Brian: Yeah, you want this to move. Yeah, that's a good way to get a sense of what people, that's a good way to get a sense of value. And you can really converge on something. And if you're on eBay, look at like actual sales prices. Don't, you know, like people ask all kinds of, people ask a lot, some weird stuff like, oh yeah, I know what I got. No law ballers. I mean, these two bikes, they could, I don't know what year the TW is or anything and it doesn't really matter.

Robin: You know, it's between 1980 something and 2000 and something.

Brian: Right. Yeah. They're not that far apart, honestly. Right. Like if, like if the K bike has ever been dropped, it's, it's, you know, then it's a no brainer trade. Um, and especially since he's already got a touring bike, what is it? The Honda Pacific PC 800, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I've, I would, I would tell him, and this is what, yeah, there you go. I tell people like a friend of mine is always like, oh, should I buy this bike? And I was like, you should totally buy that bike every single time. You should totally make that trade, hop around, try something new, man. And the thing is like, and the thing is you can sell a TW like tomorrow. Instantly go to ADV rider, ADV rider. Tell people you're selling your TW. You will get a stampede. Tell people you're selling your K bike. You're going to get a bunch of suspicious bastards. You want to know, you know, if you've ever farted on a seat, stuff like that. It's just easy. You know, the people love those things. I'd totally do it if I was him.

Robin: Place the ad while you're sitting on the John. You'll hear a knock at your bathroom door in your house.

Brian: Right? Yeah. Yeah. People love those things. Like, you know, they put ATV tires on them. And so, yeah. So I'm like, dude, you should totally make that trade and then tell us about it. I can't believe I'm saying this, Brian, but I think this is where we need to cut off. I know we've got so much more, but let's. You want to take us out?