Brian: Hi, Maggie. It's been a while. How have you been

Maggie: good? Yes. Good. It has been a while. I think the last time we talked, I recorded a

Brian: that gal session. You did. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. And is your triumph running correctly? Now? I, last time I talked to Robin, it was.

Maggie: Still iffy, although she started today, I went on a ride. So it's only been, we're at the end, we've been here two months and it was only the second ride I was able to do, but we rode the sisters and yes, and it was fun, so it was a

Brian: beautiful day. Let the record show my extended middle fingers here in Indiana. Uh, That's all I can do. Actually, it was a very nice rideable day today and yesterday, but I am, as you can hear, I am still in respiratory recovery. This is a lot better than I was a week ago. I don't know what it was. My wife thinks it was something we caught from the cat because she got it and she's getting over it and I'm I was a little behind her. Oh. Yeah. Like the cat was sick and then she got sick and then I got sick. So we're figuring, yeah, we're blaming on the cat. Bats,

Maggie: monkeys. Why not a cat? Yeah. Pigs, birds. Yeah. Why not a cat? Yeah. At

Brian: least

Maggie: it's cute. Yeah. It was, we've had our share of cold fronts too, but today was like, I think a high of 70 and it was. Oh, it was just nice. It was a nice day.

Brian: Oh, you're killing me. You're killing me.

Maggie: All right. Yeah, I, but yeah, so we're still trying to figure it out. I do. Somebody told us it could be the tip over sensor. You're saying it's a bad ground. I'm not looking forward to trying to get to the bottom of the bad ground because the, my wiring diagram for my bike. It, so in my Haynes manual, it starts with the Daytonas and then it gets to the Triumph without the, without the R and the ABS. So then my bike model is the last wiring diagram. So you've got the first three diagrams. They're like, well, okay, I can follow those lines, the different colors, the, the legend of what everything, the key, then you get to my bike and it's like, they took everything and through twice as many wires. So the diagram, the scale of everything is tiny. You need a magnifying glass or a phone to look at it. I'm like, oh, seriously. Yeah.

Brian: Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to stay for the record here. I think you've got a bad wire in your wiring harness. It's intermittent. That's what it. Okay. That's what I think. I'm not there, but I'm going to throw that out there and when you figure out what it is and prove me wrong, come back and say, ha.

Maggie: So in the pool of money, that's your bet. It's the, it's a bad, bad ground in the wiring harness. Okay. Or

Brian: they're just a bad wire, like somewhere in the middle of the wire. Yeah, it's intermittent. Like the wire, the wire looks fine, but inside where the copper is, something's wrong. So wire got pinched somewhere or something like that. That's my guess. All right,

Maggie: I'll write you down. Yeah,

Brian: I chased a lot. Yeah, I chased a lot of these down and it can be. Yeah, it can be super frustrating. And the other thing you find deep in wiring harnesses, and I don't know if Triumph does this. I know all the Japanese bikes too, where you'll have wires that branch and there's just a little, there's like a little copper cuff that's crimped around two wires and sometimes those can, so basically there's two wires that are run together and there's a little copper. Clamp around it little tiny thing and sometimes those get loose and go bad and in your case You really I believe it's an aluminum frame. Am I correct? Yes. Yeah, so you're not gonna have a frame ground on those bikes So all the grounds have to be through all the grounds have to be through wires And so they branch off those ground wires quite a bit. So sometimes those can be an issue But yeah, when you have an aluminum frame, you can't ground through the frame. So that's why, uh, but at least part of your frame is aluminum. What it looks like. All right. So that I'm throwing down the bet. If I had a 20 bucks on me, I, anyway, uh, we'll see, but yeah, I came after it. Yeah. And Robin said, you should write an article about that tracking down electrical problems. I'm like, that's like a subject that you should write. That takes three books, so I'm trying to figure out what to put in an article.

Maggie: Yeah, even in the Hanes manual, they talk about if you have, if you're trying to chase down bad wire, bad ground, bad, whatever, they just refer you to the electric diagram. They don't, there's a couple of tests, obviously you could do like you, if it's a battery, that's a little more obvious. It's not the battery. Yeah. But anything beyond a really easy tell, it's like, uh, refer to the diagram, follow the diagram.

Brian: Yeah. They don't give you a lot of troubleshooting tricks and things like that. So I had to dig some of those up and put that together. That was anecdotal chit chat. And one more thing I wanted to. I wanted to bring up, because I think you're going to have some interesting answers. Robin and I talked about this last time, but what are some the question is, what are some kind of weird motorcycles like that are not like in your wheelhouse? You like it. You're writing a triumph street street triple, I believe. What's something very different than that? That's interesting that you'd like to try or that you have tried. And what are some weird things that you'd like to own? Maybe 1 day, if you had a lot of room and money. And what are some things you'd like to just try out and ride around and see what they're like?

Maggie: Good question. I, a lot of, I like a lot of the same kind of bike, so I don't have that many in mind that are different. A T dub. We have a T dub though. I like those. Yeah. I'd love a, I'd love a small street, a small dirt bike. I got on one in Idaho and I was like, Oh, super light. I was like, I could do this.

Brian: That's thew dirt bike. Yeah, that's the tw. Anyway, but yeah, you'd probably want something a little more, little peppi, I dunno, think this

Maggie: was even smaller. I think it was. It was a Honda. It was the smallest dirt bike they had and they just had some models sitting outside and it seemed lighter than the tw, like even on a tw, I'm still tippy toe. Yeah, but on this bike, I was able to crunch down and touch

Brian: there's like a one 25 dual sport. They have that's really, yeah, that's pretty cool looking. I don't know what it is. What else? Is there something weird out there? Like antique stuff? Have you ever, I don't know, what have you, are you just, what have you seen in a dealership? That's cool looking.

Maggie: When we were first looking at motorcycles, I loved the look, the older bikes that had those. Toaster tanks. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I thought I wanted one for a long time until I realized that I am not as much of a wrencher or I don't have as much time for the wrenching as you would probably need. I'd have to look at bikes in other countries. Oh, uh, a Ural would be cool with the sidecar. Oh, yeah.

Brian: With the sidecar and everything? Yeah.

Maggie: yeah. That would be fun.

Brian: Yeah, Rob and I both had Royal infields on our list too. And they've got several really interesting models too. Like what the continentals, the six 50 twin that's their big bike. That's really good. And they've got the Himalaya Himalayan, I think is how they say it. Himalayan four 50, which is a new one. And that looks really pretty interesting because it's got. Let's see, I think it has this about the same, or maybe even a little more power than a KLR 650, which is 1 of the things I'm used to. So that would be, it's an adventure quote adventure bike. That looked really interesting. I've ridden a monkey for about 100 feet. I just, I couldn't go far on it because I was trying to get it running for a friend. What about. Scooters and monkeys and things like that, that, that seems like a lot of fun. But I don't know. I, yeah, I would look ridiculous on it. You would be fine on those . . You could go a lot faster than I could. .

Maggie: I would, yeah. I would ride a monkey any day. Actually, there's somebody staying next door. Who's got one? I I had a little envy there. Yeah. Who's got a little monkey? Sweet. I would take a ves butt. Any Vespa

Brian: any day? Oh, yeah. Yeah

Maggie: Yeah, we still have my buddy 125 which is a yeah a Vespa looking knockoff

Brian: Yeah, I believe those are made in India.

Maggie: I don't know there. It might be made in China. I'm not sure but Yeah, yeah, it's it's I can get it to 60 65, but it starts getting death wobble Cause those little wheels are like, what

Brian: are you doing? The little wheels are no good.

Maggie: Yeah. Yeah. Those are fun. Oh, the other day I was in town and this, this, this woman pulled up at the local grocery store and she had something, she was writing something I have never seen. At first from the front, it looked like. The Honda cub, but then it was actually a tri it had two wheels in the back and it was vintage. Like it was an older, whatever it was. I've never seen anything like it. Oh wow. Yeah. So it was not like a, like it was not big. It was small. So it was more of a scooter

Brian: style. Was it a gyro? Like the wheels are pretty fairly close together in the back? Okay, it was more like a three wheeled bicycle. Yeah. That had power. Okay.

Maggie: Yeah. In fact, probably I could see where maybe it was used to deliver milk or ice cream or something because it looked like it had a big Oh, sweet. Okay. Yeah, like a big Trunk in the back, but yeah, she wrote it to the grocery store and she had like little yeah. Yeah. She had like little not tassels She had what I can't think why are words hard right now? She had these things hanging off the handlebars anyway, but yeah, it was motorized. It was actually motorized. I can't imagine it It goes very fast. It looks like it's just around towner.

Brian: Yeah. What was it called? Oh, Harley made a thing called a servo car for a long time. It was like a delivery vehicle, has three wheels and had a big, you could do all kinds of things with it. It was like a pickup bed and you could do all kinds of things with it or the. Or something like it that's that you see in Thailand and other countries. Yeah, three wheelers that are zooming around with people on them. Yeah, it'd be fun to try. I wouldn't want to own one, but Yeah.

Maggie: Oh so not Not the spider, but the other one. Is it the Vanderhall?

Brian: Yeah, yeah. I think those kind of a bathtub or something with a, yeah.

Maggie: I don't think they look that bad. If you're going to go to Three Wheels. Yeah. And not like a Harley, Three Wheeler or a, a spider, but they're cool. I think they're cool. They would be cool to, they would be fun to try out.

Brian: Excellent. That's a pretty good. And that's. I didn't know what to expect, and you fulfilled that. I had no idea what you would come up with. So we've got a sidecar rig. That was cool. I mean, I didn't think of that, but that'd be fun. That'd be cool to try. Yeah. Yes, sir.

Maggie: Now, you didn't ask me what my next dream bike would be. That's a different question.

Brian: What was okay? Hey, Maggie. What would your next dream bike be?

Maggie: Robin showed me this picture of a Bermuda.

Brian: Oh, which one?

Maggie: I think he showed me the Tessie h2 But I would also take the kb4 either one of those so they

Brian: got a new Tessie.

Maggie: Yeah, I don't know It says H2. I don't see, there's Tara, Tessie, H2.

Brian: Yeah, because the Tessie's got the, yeah, the swing arm front end. They must be using, is that using like the Kawasaki engine? Wow, what are they using? Supercharged engine, so they must be using the H2 for the Kawasaki. Sweet.

Maggie: That makes sense. Uh,

Brian: but yeah. There's some cool stuff like that. Have you ever ridden a monster or looked at one, one like that? I think those are okay. Not your thing. Okay.

Maggie: No, not that it isn't, but if I mentioned another bike that's European and not easy to find parts for Robin will not be happy. I started to say something about Ducati and he was like, nope. Nope. Nope. Okay. He's trying to, I think he's trying to steer me back towards Japanese, which is fine. Not like it wouldn't be fun. Not as many people have a street triple, so I like it. Plus, up until this year, for the most part, she was pretty reliable.

Brian: Yeah, this is a recent problem. You'll find it, you'll get through it, and you'll be like, Oh, ah, er, yeah, we could have handled this months ago. Yeah. It'll be one of those things, I'm sure. Yeah. Bimoda. And then there's, yeah, there's all kinds of really interesting European stuff I wouldn't want to live with, but I, it would be fun to try out. Yeah. Go fun. All right. There's one section we have here and I'll go first and then I'll put you on the spot. Maybe you've got a rant, maybe you don't. But the one minute rant, what's chapping your ass today? Let it all out. You have 60 seconds, go. So, I'll go first just to show you how it's done. Maybe you've got a rant, maybe you don't. But, uh, the thing I keep seeing is the chislers. These are people who, uh, will, they will sit on their butt in their house and they won't ride motorcycles. They will not ride for like years just because they won't. They wanted to get that last 100 or 25 out of, like, they wouldn't just go buy a bike. It's no, I got to get the best deal in the world. And this guy wouldn't come down 100. So I'm not going to ride at all. This went this summer. I was, I just seen some forum posts from people like that. And I'm like, why? Motorcycles cost money. This nobody rides for free you trade money for fun. Just go out and have a good time So that's my one minute rant this week. I may have others

Maggie: Do I have one? I don't

Brian: know.

Maggie: I have I probably have many that would take longer than a minute It's usually, I see it, this is when I see it in the big, in bigger cities on the expressway. So you already have a lot more traffic happening and inevitably a sport bike will ride by or whiz by. And I see this person riding, sometimes they'll have like a helmet on. Most of the time, not, we won't even go into the whole, I won't even give those people, let's forget those people. What gets me is I'll see the back tire. So they're riding this hot little motorcycle fast and I get it. We get it. It's fun. But I see that silver strip. On the, on their back wheel, cause they have no idea or they don't care. Mostly they don't have any idea that they have worn their tires down. And I'm like, Oh, you are waiting. You're an accident waiting to happen. And

Brian: I don't want to, I don't want to be around the stupid. It's splashes.

Maggie: And if it happens on this major expressway, that's going to be a big thing with a lot of cars around. So that, that irritates me. Plus. Plus the Hayabusa bros that ride in groups and they're like, they whiz by like they're in, like they ride, like they're in the fast and furious in and out and they weave in and out.

Brian: Yeah. It's do your thing, but you're giving us all a bad name. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little bit of a rant there. Cool. Yeah. That's it. Okay. Yeah. Like I said, I think your minutes up. Okay. What one of the, and we had a really interesting conversation with the Joanne, um, you know, which will be coming up soon, which by the time people hear this, they will have heard that, but there's also a really interesting article and I've seen some interesting articles on, I want to get your thoughts on ways to make writing more accessible and more popular with people. And a lot of that. You're one of the short, Joanne was talking about, and one of Joanne's blog articles is, so you're short and here's how to ride and here's how to, and I've seen people that are really short. It takes a while, but you can acquire the skills to write anything you want pretty much. But getting there is really tough and a lot of it is, a lot of this machinery just doesn't have the adjustability. Stuff like that. What are what are some of the things you'd like to see manufacturers do other than they make more bikes that women and short people can ride. But what are some of the things you'd like to see?

Maggie: There's a lot of that's an inch. So I think there are things that manufacturers can do, obviously, and there are things that. There can be classes provided.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. And that would help everybody. Sure. I'm not just talking about stuff for, for short people, but yeah, like making it safer to jump in. Yeah.

Maggie: Yeah. So 1 thing there is, there's the idea that you. Anyone who's mildly interested can jump in and just see if it's for them, because I don't think this is something you can be lukewarm about either, either you are in, or you're not. And we see this in classes when people are not quite committed and they give up easily, or they get really frustrated. And then you also see the people who really want it. That's not a thing. You can manufacture, but for those people who might be interested, I think having more opportunities, there's this group, they just have these, these events where it's not a full class. I just teach people to get on the bike and ride for a short distance. And so just to try to remove that intimidation away, you'll figure out if it's interesting to you or not, there is also just. Scooters are okay. People can ride scooters. There's nothing wrong with scooters. Buell made the flow and the fuel that is not necessarily a big motorcycle and it's designed for the city. It's designed for urban environments. And I think that's. Cool. It's aerodynamic and it's electric and that's, and it's also an alternative way to travel versus having to get in a car or look for transit. But there's also, I think it's also,

Brian: I think that one has a storage space too. Yes. Yeah. Things like on the bikes could be things like having just some sort of practicality built into the thing would be important. Just ability when you talk about the machines themselves and manufacture having more ways for people to just to get a taste safely without, without having to commit to a giant whole class and all that makes a lot of sense.

Maggie: I actually think that can am has done a good job with making writing more accessible with the spiders and they're the Rikers that they have out there. It's very appealing for a lot of women who may have been. Interested, but two wheels was always hard a lot of women and there's a lot of groups out there that and they have a lot of storage and so they, that is making writing more accessible and for the people that ride two wheels that deem three wheel riders is not real writers. Just don't. Okay. Just don't. So I actually think they've done a good job of making writing more accessible. Yeah. States that require a class, that doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt. But like in Chicago, when we lived in Chicago, I took a course to learn how to ride a scooter. That may sound lame to some people, but there were people in there that took the class because they bought the scooter first, thought it would be easy and dropped it. While they're returning. Oh, yeah.

Brian: Yeah. Like you go to the, you go to the Caribbean and they rent a scooter next to the beach and the roads are just like covered with people on the road falling off the scooters. They don't know what they're doing. Yeah. And that's interesting. Can am had to deal with the spider and Riker because it's a new type of vehicle, even for people who are experienced two wheelers. So they. I had to start from scratch and that's interesting yet. Yeah, Harley's done some of that. They've had some, they've had some good classes and so forth and not. And I don't know if they're still doing much of that, but yeah, it's yeah, more of that support would be done and going back to the machines adjustability where you can customize the machine a little more engineering and a little more of that you're seeing more of that pop up where you have different seat heights, things like that. I think Triumph does a pretty good job. They have some of their later models have, you can buy a low version or you can buy different seats and stuff like that. So just so you're not, yeah. So there's a lot of, and one of the things I would love to see on the machines is to pay more attention to the seat because so many bikes now come with seats that are absolutely just awful, like 50 miles and the human ass just can't deal anymore. Hire some of the people from the gold, the Honda was using for the gold wing and study the study, the anatomy of the human ass a little bit and get something people can sit on and enjoy your bikes. There's a lot of little things I think that could be done to, to bring more people to motorcycling in general. Yeah, I think that's a lot of it. Even on something like a sport bike, just having places you could hook, like you could hook your rock straps to. Like on most sport bikes, there's no place to put anything if you need to strap something on your seat or whatever, just little things like that, like where it's possible to do that, or it's possible to accessorize, it would make life, would make ownership a lot easier.

Maggie: Yeah, I agree. There's the world of aftermarket part, aftermarket parts, there's a lot that, but you end up spending so much money and sometimes things don't fit even though it's supposed to fit Robin's tail tidy kit that he got says with luggage, but it took weeks for him to actually get it to actually fit. He had to do, he had to make all these adjustments because the lights were hitting his luggage, his hard luggage. his It's supposed to be like, I didn't understand why he had to still go through all that. I think another thing that would make writing more accessible is I think we just also need some more writing ambassadors that aren't Marquez or the super big names, but just more people that people can see, because there's a reason that like influencers became so big for a while, especially online, but it does people still follow and look at, Oh, that's cool. When some, when people see somebody or something, making something seem, Oh, Is that something I want to try?

Brian: It's doable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's the, there's the big names. Itchy boots. My wife doesn't ride anymore, but every she's so is it your boots have a new video? It's really compelling. And there's so many that are on YouTube. Do a lot of motorcycle. There's I'm really bad with names. There's several others that are just out there. Doing different stuff, riding around, stuff like that. Yeah, and it shows people, there's a lot of different, there's a lot of different ways to go ride a motorcycle and travel places and have fun. And I think that's, and a lot of different people doing it. The motorcycle doesn't care your gender or whatever. It's, it's for everybody and you can start to see that, you know, you can start to see that on social media and see it on YouTube, things like that. Yeah.

Maggie: There's a woman that I got certified to coach with. Her name is also Robin and I loved the fact that, so she was over 60. She is someone who wanted to ride. Her reasons for writing were a little different from. I think most other people, she is a very green minded person. She had an electric car and she bought a zero. And so she wanted, she needed the license and she had to go through, I'm not saying her last name. So hopefully if she ever hears this, she won't be impressed. She had to take the BRC three times. In part, some of it was some of the exercises were tricky, but also she had not great instructors the first couple of times. But this is somebody who wanted to, she took it three times to pass and she She rides that bike when it's not sowing. She rides it every day. She uses it to commute. But I think that would have been interesting to have that some like that a little bit more known, like this is an everyday person. This isn't someone who's traveling. Across India, which it's so cool to watch that, but it's not as relatable for maybe some people.

Brian: Yeah, and just being visible and I think it's, I'll put it this way. I used to park in behind my office and I started parking in front of it because I think it's important to be visible and just make motorcycles ordinary transportation in some ways. So pretty much every day in front of my office. It, it's, there's a bike sitting out there, the UPS driver knows when I'm here, that kind of thing. Cause he's always bringing me tires. Oh, is it for that? No, it's for another one. I just brought you tires. Yeah, I know. Go through them a lot, but yeah, that's my wife's quote. It's didn't you just buy tires two weeks ago? Yeah, that was for a different bike though. Oh, okay. Whatever. She doesn't care.

Maggie: Speaking of ways that you can. Show some love for your machine. His name is Sean. He is from the San Antonio area and he can do custom wraps, paint, protective coatings. Robin took his headlamps over and found out more about how he does what he does and why.

Robin: Here we are with Sean Haley and a barking cat somewhere in the deep background there. I hear a small dog yapping. I call them barking cats. And at any rate, Sean Haley owns and operates Encore Trim. They do pinstriping, custom graphics, leather and vinyl repair. The website is EncoreTrim. com. That's E N C O R E T R I M. com. Uh, you can email him at support at Encore Trim as well, support at Encore Trim. com. And I had, I'd already prepared to be tired from the road trip. I had no music on the way here. So all I had was me and one of my thoughts and like my ears ringing and now we've had two. I arrive to him preparing me. Turkish coffee in an authentic, he's got the pot and the powder and now we're hopped up. Sizzly. Yes. What's it called? Sizzly.

Shawn: Where's the name? C I Z V E. And where's the name come from? I have no idea.

Robin: All I know is now I'm wide awake. And have to pick questions asked, but there were four particular questions I thought would be fun for you to answer because you want for services that are extremely helpful to people who ride motorcycles flat out, we, we find bikes will sometimes appear in their model form for a year. And that's the only year they did that bike and then the parts become impossible to find or they become damaged and or they the paint goes south or just about anything or they need customization people start motorcycle related businesses and you provide just about every type of service that can complement the interest of any given writer to any given bike when it comes to visual design repair Protection. And for anybody listening, this started out, I am here with Sean Haley, the man himself. And when we first met, I needed paint for parts that I did not want to replace on my bike. And he said, I can take care of this. I can paint that and I can protect it and jacket it. And now I get to sit down with him because I'm here in San Antonio to pick up my headlights, which is the only part he ended up taking with him after consulting my accountant, Maggie, repeatedly on the matter. But Sean, tell us, how did you, first off, how did you start into this industry? How, what drew you to performing these kinds of services from, for automotive types,

Shawn: any automotive type? Initially it was scheduling. I was looking for something I could do part time. I wanted to be able to balance out with my life and make. Enough to get by and a relatively small amount of time and I had a friend actually at the time that was putting on vinyl tops Okay, vinyl tops. So I started installing vinyl tops. What is

Robin: a vinyl

Shawn: top? How old are you? 1980 I started and they would take A sheet of vinyl and put it over the back end of a car or over the whole roof to make it look like it had a convertible top, but it was just really vinyl on top

Robin: of the sheet metal. So it's a rag top, it's a

Shawn: solid rag top? It started as just the sheet vinyl and then they came out with, some of the companies would make it look like a rag top. So they would put supports, not really supports, but the structural support looked that way and then canvas over the top so it looked like it had ribs. And a convertible top, but it didn't really.

Robin: So you didn't have the, yeah. So I'm thinking like, not the Chrysler little Baron, the Buick. Yeah. Buick's did this. Okay. Yeah.

Shawn: I'm with you. Oh, we did it on Mustangs, T Birds. We put a vinyl top on anything you could sell to somebody.

Robin: We did. Yeah. Here's what we do at the dealer level, where the sun's really hitting. I'm sure that's really. Did you ever look at somebody and be like, why?

Shawn: Oh, always. I always didn't like him, but that was what he did when he had a free schedule. So I, but pretty shortly you have to cut and trim and I should have learned how to do vinyl repair before I started doing that because pretty quickly you'd cut too far and then you need to the repair process. After cutting a couple of tops too far and having to replace them and pay out of pocket, then I started drifting more towards the repair side, learning how to do vinyl repair. And some of the guys, when they put on a vinyl top, they'd actually do pin striping along with it. And so I learned how to do that. And amongst all of those things that matched, I have A short attention span so I could do a little bit of this and a little bit of that and a little bit of something else the next

Robin: day. It's interesting. So you were bridging something that it's something that you might have been bad at once or twice and had to get good at as a result and then it bridges over to a skill. So you're clearly a pretty quick learner and pretty. Attentive learner to take on stuff like that because I remember you mentioned doing plastic repair or vinyl repair at least yeah Both these are no joke. I just tried my hand at painting clear It was just rust oleum on black metal. I managed to mess that up I want to get it right but here I was it takes a particular some people are good at one thing and not good at another and you seem to have Not only a jack of all trades going, but a master

Shawn: of many. The flip side of that is, for most consumers, they don't get their hands on the equipment that actually allow them to do the job right. Like a vinyl repair kit. You go buy a vinyl repair kit. They'll give you this tiny little thing that says, heat it up over the stove, stick it on the vinyl. Yeah. You need 300 degrees for at least three minutes to cure the liquid vinyl. It's not going to

Robin: work. Or the knowledge of how to use a heat gun without burning your kit.

Shawn: Yeah. Or how to mix the colors. I get repairs all the time where somebody tried to repair something. They bought a kit that was easy to use if you know how to mix colors. Otherwise you got a weird color blob on your repair. Learning to mix colors. That was a big one learning how to create surfaces that look like the original surface. That's an ongoing project. There's always new surfaces coming up and new plastics. They come up with new plastics that nothing will stick to. And so then you have to find what's the new process for getting something to stick to this plastic and the new adhesives are coming out one year. When they change from solvent finishes to water based finishes on cars. I put moldings all around the car and the guy called me the next morning and said, Hey, all your moldings fell off. I thought he was joking. No, they don't just fall off. Yeah, come on out. They're laying there right by the car. They literally just fell off the car. And so I find out a few weeks later that 3M had still been using the formulation that they used for the old paints. But now they're using The new paints are a high solids paint and it has what they call a lower energy and the adhesive has to be different. So that was the transfer from the green back adhesive tapes to the orange.

Robin: You've got a product, you've got, it's problem solving. People say here, me, me, motorcycle, ugly, make pretty. And you have to be the one who says this resolve is not going to work because of the new, some new factor, some new. Element in the mix that just says, okay, I'm gonna have to figure that out for you then, which I'm sure there are countless people that are going to be grateful for just because you've got the, the willpower and the time and the interest try to figure out the solution to the puzzle.

Shawn: Um, a lot of us just that the interest because it's fun trying to sort through and figure some of these things out on somebody else's. Equipment, so on

Robin: mine is more frustrating if you were. Okay, this would be a fun way to do this. We didn't talk about this, but If we stack up my question two that we were talking about, we stack this up in an interesting way, if you were to go through the one hand primary topics for each finger of the things you can do and summarize your process for each of those things.

Shawn: Can I use your hands too? Yeah.

Robin: Inside of a marginally well structured paragraph or five, what would it be, like, down the line? I can help with this, I can help with that, and the way I go about it is yada, without letting out your top secret information that has made you the go to guy in San Antonio

Shawn: for such things. Oh, wow. Okay, so that's, yeah, that's a pretty

Robin: big topic there. I like to be lazy, so I'd make you do

Shawn: all the work. Uh, somebody comes to me and they've got, I've just got a

Robin: Use my bike. Use my bike, because then I can

Shawn: Okay, yeah, you brought some parts. It was carbon fiber. It had what was probably a very poor quality clear coat over it that started peeling off way too soon. Was I happy?

Robin: Not with the way it was. No. Continue. Yeah,

Shawn: you look at the clear coat on my wife's car. It's a 2011. I don't regularly wax it, but the clear coat's still good.

Robin: Yeah, I will say this. I would look at it directly, but I'm afraid I would lose my vision. It's beautiful. It's got another machine

Shawn: to it. Go on. But Toyota clear coat is notoriously weak. And here you've got these parts that are only, what, a year or two old, and the clear coat's all peeling off. It was a bad job to start with. Yes. Some adhesion failure there with the coating. So being able to strip all that off, you gotta look at different ways to approach it. It's gotta be smooth, and it's also gotta have a way to adhere. And so, I'm getting into too many details here. No, this is good. This is fantastic. Okay, so you've either gotta strip off the rest of the clear, which I watched back in the 90s, Chevrolet went through this, all the Suburbans were losing their clear coat. They shifted into waterborne finishes and they were waiting too long from the base coat to the clear coat and then it wasn't adhering. So then a couple years down the road, the clear coat starts peeling because the base coat had cured too much and didn't get a good chemical bond. You've got an 80s rust bucket. So you've got a whole body shop full of guys with razor blades scraping clear coat off an entire suburban. It's 40 hours of work for suburban is that type of thing you gotta get in there and you gotta scrape off all that clear. You get it all smooth and you get your base primer, but everything's got to be clear. So it's got to be a clear adhesion promoter. Then you get your clear coatings to go back over it. So that would just be 1 approach. If you want to see the carbon

Robin: fiber, you're talking about time. Yeah, a lot of it's all about time and prep work, and I've been told that about painting and here we were just discussing how impatient a person I am versus all of my friends. I hang out with people that are very patient. I have to because they have to

Shawn: tolerate me. So another approach, if you're okay to switch colors, would be to blend out like feather that clear coat that's been peeling and then cover it with a wrap film. And there's carbon fiber wrap film, it doesn't look exactly like real carbon fiber, but it's really cool and going 100 miles an hour, nobody would notice.

Robin: I don't, I wouldn't want that. I would want something that is, if it's not going to be real carbon fiber, just do something, wrap it like you're saying,

Shawn: with something really cool. There's like 200 colors, there's like half a dozen manufacturers of real high end wrap film. And it's a good UV protected product, it's designed to conform to Pretty tight corners, certain things, but if you get, in your case, you had a lot of angular.

Robin: I handed this man this jagged Chinese star of a front motorcycle fairing that was all just sharp edges and corners and random, it looked like bad teeth. And I said, here, can you do that for this? And I remember immediately you brought up the term seam. There were going to need to be some seams. And at first I was like, well that's So, you know, and then you, he shows me his truck, you showed me your truck was there and the scene, I couldn't see the scene until you pointed it out. And then when you did point it out, it looked like a contour line that belonged on there, like it would have been pinstriped

Shawn: in a manner of speaking. That's the idea, try to make it look like it belongs. I mean, me explaining things to people sometimes is overdramatic because I'm used to looking at stuff six inches away as I'm working on it. Most people look at their car in passing as they go out to get in it in the morning. So, Or their motorcycle, it's like when you're washing it, you'll be close, you'll be dealing with that, but other than that, it's not something people would notice.

Robin: Yeah, so you try to be meticulous about it, because that's part of the service.

Shawn: It is service, right? It's just me, how I like to be. Oh,

Robin: these are the magic words. I'm tedious. This is what our listeners, this is where it's at. Most of our listeners, they can wedge. Some of our listeners, they might be able to paint on them. I actually know a little bit about what you're saying, but you're using the words that tells them, you know what, there's hope for that part that they're like, that's never going to get buffed out, but you could always just protect it and then cover it and then reprotect it is a way what's another one of the things you do. Outside of that, I know you mentioned

Shawn: pinstriping. Yeah, I do pinstriping either with vinyl or with paint. I've striped a few bikes. I don't go for the crazy designs, but quite a few of them. I had one that went into a show magazine years ago. He had done a set of double flames, and so we did the outlining of the flames with a paint stripe, and then he had a mid coat clear on it, and then they cleared over the paint stripe. Outline of the flames. It makes it go faster and gives you a little better gas mileage. Thank you.

Robin: So then, your process, all the prep work, all the time you put into it, what goes into some of the, what is your favorite thing to do of all these things?

Shawn: Different. Different. Yeah, it's just the variety that I enjoy. Like the, so I had been doing pin striping with vinyl tape for 13 years. And I kept getting people that would ask me, cause I was dealing with shops that were half body shops. And sometimes they would need a paint strip and I would run across guys periodically that did paint striping. And so. Oh, this is great. They're so awesome. And some of them were so artistic, they didn't know how to answer the phone. I would give their card to my customers, and then my customers would get mad at me because the guys were at the coast doing t shirts, or otherwise just weren't available to do service. I

Robin: decided If you're reading some of the Google reviews on Encore Trim, just know that they may not have been Encore Trim just yet.

Shawn: Some of these guys, yeah, I just decided I was going to have to learn how to do it. I started laying out guidelines because I could lay vinyl really straight, and I got the brush, and I would practice painting between those lines, and I did that for about three years, and it was excruciating. And one day a guy came out, and I was getting ready to lay the guidelines on. It was a new shop. They just called me first time. I've got the car out behind the shop where nobody can see me, and he comes out, and the manager says, hey, you don't do the Guidelines like those other guys do you know because you can't make it look right with that. What are guidelines? Laying down a like a paint

Robin: masking so it becomes like a trace

Shawn: Yeah, so you lay the tape down above and below the line you paint it and then you peel off the masking tape It leaves a little edge. Okay. Yeah, which most people would never notice but this particular manager was That was important to him. He didn't want it to look like that. I said, oh, of

Robin: course not, sir. So it was

Shawn: the real deal. Yes. Yes. So that afternoon I learned how to do freehand paint striping.

Robin: He needs this. It is job. I learned

Shawn: it. I had to redo it like 15 times, but I finally got it to where I wasn't at least crying over it. And the guy walked around the corner. And just express shock and awe that it looks so amazing and I felt shock and awe that he felt that way, but okay, this will sell up down the road. So from that day forward, I started doing freehand pinstriping and in about three more years, I did the very first one that I liked. It was excruciating. I was doing all this work and it bugged me to death. I could see every little dip.

Robin: So then were you learning the other things while you were masked? That only makes sense. You didn't learn one, master one, then move on to the next. They just blended.

Shawn: No, it's all together. Cause it's a weird in the body shop industry. I get these runs of different stuff. Like I might have a month where I didn't do hardly any striping and everybody needed repairs. They got bullet holes or they got. Glass scratches and plastic panels or leather seats and punctures in leather seats or wear

Robin: areas. I'll go ahead and assume for legality that nobody's ever driven up and said, Hey, there's a bullet hole in my car. Don't say nothing. Can you fix it?

Shawn: I've had people that were in denial. It's usually shops. Okay, yeah. I went and looked at one. I said, who got shot? They said, oh, no, it's just, it's a hole in the door panel. I said, yeah, it's a bullet hole. And once I got in the car, I started looking around. I realized they had covered the headliner. Turned out it was a detective's car. He'd had to shoot somebody that was with him. Wow. Like they had a, somebody in the passenger

Robin: seat. Yeah. Okay. That shot. Keep that from incriminating. No names on that. But I was, I will say

Shawn: that. I did find a bullet. It was in the bottom of the door panel.

Robin: Oh, so you actually found, wow, the shell casing and all or not? No, just the bullet itself. This is where it takes a gun person. I'm not a gun person, but I have tons of friends who are gun people. I've gone shooting before, but I don't, you know what I'm saying? But it takes somebody who know what an entry looks like and an exit looks like for a particular bullet to be like. No,

Shawn: that's a bullet. Yeah, it was just, and then there was still blood down at the bottom of the seat, but it was really

Robin: grody.

Shawn: This keeps getting better. I just did the door panel. That was my part of it. They'd already covered up everything else, but apparently it was a legal thing. It wasn't. Yeah, I know. It's already reported already.

Robin: Apparently, but this is another skill that was layered on top of a skill you had been already developing. Now you're developing and it all blends in and the reps you use. Those air. Let's talk about the designs that people get, you know, as a sport bike rider is a sport. We're a sport touring website. We're all about Jagged lines, sport profiles. I made the comment the other day that made me feel like finally I figured it out. We're all about motorcycles that look like the frame is trying to

Shawn: eat the front wheel. Interesting. Very aggressive

Robin: profile. Like my trailer. Yeah. Yes. Downward angle. Yeah. Make go fast. It's aggressive. So I guess. When it comes to getting a design, you're not big on doing the design work. You're the guy who can put that design where it's going. You can do design work or

Shawn: you have a person. I can do, that's not my strong suit. All through the 80s, we just had rules of film. I got a really big one, six inches wide one time and I would just go crazy with it and I would cut things out. And I had a friend that had been an architect and he had his architect's tools out on the side of the cars. He was my competitor. But, uh. We were friendly and yeah, he'd make these amazing shapes. I was like, how are you doing that? And I see his little plastic architect tools. And so we would, the problem for me with designing is I would have a blast on the first side of the car. I could come up with great designs, uh, but then my attention span was gone and they would still want the other side of the car done. And that was excruciating. I think I got lazy with design because by the 90s and into the early 2000s there were so many that printing came in to play. And so they could print amazing designs on vinyl, which wasn't the case before. I used to take an airbrush and do Like sunset seams on vinyl with vinyl paint.

Robin: It was the canvas. Yeah.

Shawn: Yeah. And you paint on the canvas and mostly to match something that had already been done, but man, there's so much available now in the aftermarket of it's already been designed. All you got to do is put it on. Yeah. That's not a bad thing. My brother had a. What's the Montana trailer and he repainted it and then he ordered on Amazon this kit and it had all these like wild designs, pages of this stuff, like large sheets. And so we laid them all out in the yard and we figured out what goes where and where it was going to go. And that was fun. It was the hard work of that was

Robin: again, this is, and that was early. That was a while ago. Oh, this was two years ago. Two years ago. Yeah. Two years in this industry, I imagine, development of tech, that's a long time. And so now you can probably get even more design and more systems. But it also, again, I bring up that word hope where it's like. It gives riders with, and otherwise, paint's gonna be difficult. Finding somebody who can do it well is gonna be difficult. But there's a way to go about it that'll give you a design you like. And you're a person they could reach out to about such things. Do you receive packages, do people send to you and have it

Shawn: sent back? Every once in a while. Okay. Probably more, because I do wood grain repair also. If it

Robin: starts to happen

Shawn: more, are you okay with that? Oh yeah! Yeah, no, it's, I have people send me Wood pieces from the East Coast that had damage. It was fake wood, but being able to recreate a wood grain look I know it was a lot of fun. Who wants to do that? Me when it's fun.

Robin: Okay fair I'm at the other guy not the guy doing this work. I like that It sounds like you would like you like the puzzle one.

Shawn: Yes a challenge. Yes. This is your 43 Of doing this. Yes. 43 years. Yeah. I started in 1980.

Robin: Well, you should have lived with that. We wouldn't have to do the entire interview .

Shawn: I don't know what I like the best. It's the different part, the variety of it. It's always something a little bit different and, uh, a new type of damage, a new type of plastic finding out, oh, these plastics, you can't weld this plastic. Or there's a $6,000 welder to weld this type of plastic because it. Oxygen causes it to have problems. And so you got to inject nitrogen gas and it sounds like that's a real thing. It is.

Robin: Yeah. Yeah. You're speaking from not an imagination.

Shawn: No, no. It's polypropylene. It's like aluminum. It oxidizes when it's exposed to the oxygen. Oh, wow. So if you're going to weld it. It just doesn't bond right. It's like you've got a contaminant in between the plastic even though all you're working with is the plastic because of the oxidation and the temperature change. So you create a barrier and then it's a weak spot. So you have to flood it with nitrogen gas to be able to effectively load it. I

Robin: won't announce your address, but This is a tool that you have access to.

Shawn: I approach it a different way, but I make it work. Very

Robin: cool. I like that. Yeah, I

Shawn: didn't have enough demand for it to have a 6, 000 tool. Besides, I wasn't sure I could get the kitchen pass for that one.

Robin: Very cool. So, my last question is, what?

Shawn: Why do I say yes? Because, yeah, I've got several guys that work in the field, I work with a lot of body shops, but the last couple of years I've really started scaling back. We got a trailer during COVID and I enjoy traveling. I

Robin: enjoy that you travel,

Shawn: because that worked out pretty good. It was fun.

Robin: This is a new friend in our industry that I'm very happy to have met.

Shawn: And I don't hesitate to refer people. So somebody, probably every day, my website is

Robin: crazy high on Google. That's EncoreTrim. com, E N C O R E T R I M. But

Shawn: if you just search Leather Repair San Antonio, I'll be one or two. Nice. It's for leather repair. There's not that many competitors and probably 80 percent of the ones listed don't do leather repair. There are upholstery shops or some other type of thing, but to actually take a piece of leather that's got damage on it and refinish it so that it looks new again. There's not too many people that do

Robin: that. Oh, we're going to have some fun now. Because I thought this would, I was. This, I was going to let you go there and we're going to do a cool little wrap up, but no, we're going to make this a little more fun real quick here. If I could get my hands on an extra passenger seat, or if I could get just my passenger seat to you with a tail bag, the type of tail bag I have, I happen to mail those to you. Could you create an adapter system for it, whereby if the bag isn't on that seat, a person could still sit on it, but if they wanted to, they could pin the bag directly into the seat. They could take the bag and place it on the seat and pin it to the seat and then it would be fastened to the seat, take on, take off. Is this the kind of thing, do you do that?

Shawn: Possibly, send me pictures.

Robin: I would, there it is, that's the best answer. Let me see what you got. So if it were a, do you ever work with seat cushions? Boom.

Shawn: That's a great answer. I get people to call me almost every day off my website and they a lot of times are just asking questions and I have no hesitation to point somebody to somebody that will do the work like I get people with purses and they want to strap sewn on or something and I can do it, but usually if they can go to a sattlery shop or an upholstery shop, They'll do a

Robin: cheaper repair. You get to pick and choose what you work on. And ideally you're trying to help people

Shawn: solve their problems. Yeah. So like yesterday, a guy pulled up and he had a pool cue case that he wanted to put a snap on, but he actually brought me an extra strap that he wanted me to cut the strap off. And so the new strap on, it was going to get very complicated. And then he wasn't really wanting to spend much money. And so I just put a new snap on it for him and painted it black. So it would match the pool cue. And so he came and left in about 20 minutes. Okay, it was just, yeah, it was fun and my wife beat me up for doing a job that cheap, but it was fun, but otherwise I could have sent him to, I don't have a hesitation about that. If I know how to resolve something and it's not me doing it, I am plenty happy with what work I've already got. That's

Robin: pretty cool because you're here to help people, you're

Shawn: helping people obtain. Whatever it

Robin: is they're after and the look and feel of their vehicle, in my case motorcycles. So he clearly only works on motorcycles everybody, only motorcycles. And this has been an interview with Sean Haley. The website is EncoreTrim. com. That's E N C O R E Trim. com. You can email him at support at Encore Trim. And I can't thank you enough. It's pinstriping, custom graphics, leather and vinyl repair, paint protection, film. He can put on racing stripes and signs. He can put on clear shield and wraps, dash and plastic trim repair. It's all on the card. He's also got full interior repair and restoration, leather furniture restoration, custom leather, auto interior upgrades, clear paint protection film. Check out the website EncoreTrim. com. I'm out of breath. This has been an interview with Sean Haley. Sean, thank you so much. My pleasure.

Maggie: So where do you dispose of your tires?

Brian: One thing that's cool here in Indianapolis, they have curbside trash pickup and in our, there's different vendors doing different neighborhoods, but in our neighborhood. We have these huge trash cans, basically on trash day, you roll the can out and you put the tires inside the can, but on top of your trash and they go and that's it. That's all you have to do. They take care of, they recycle them. It is a beautiful thing. Oh, wow. That is,

Maggie: okay, that's

Brian: really nice. Yeah, pretty much. Wherever you are in the U. S. anyway, and I'm sure most of the world, you may have to do some digging online for your county or your city or whatever. But there's going to be a, there's going to be a legitimate way to get rid of used motorcycle tires or whatever that it'll be there. There'll be look for look for talks drop or something like that, or hazardous waste or in your county or. Household hazardous waste, HW is the technical term, and you'll find it, you'll find something. And some places they take it to the such and so tire shop and you might have to pay a buck or two per tire to get rid of them. But it's, it's worth figuring out unless you, I don't know if anyone's ever come up with much use for used motorcycle tires.

Maggie: Yeah, that's a good question. You hear sometimes some playground material is from used something, but it's not, I've never heard that it's tires.

Brian: Yeah, like they'll chop up tires, car and motorcycle tires and make rubber mulch and things like that. Yeah, in our neighborhood, it's super easy. Um, they go away with the trash and they pull them out and as long as you put them on the top so they can pull them out, don't hide them. Then they just, they go away and I don't know what happens next. I'm. I hope they don't just end up in the landfill or something, but yeah, it's, uh, wherever you are, there's a way to get rid of them. That's legit more or less. Let's see here. Let's do a little bit of stuff our listeners have asked or might ask. If you'd like us to field your questions, email podcast at TRO dot bike. That's podcast at TRO dot bike and you will get an answer. Eventually, whether it's a right answer or a useful answer, you'll get an answer. We'll be happy to answer a question. There's a couple of these that you may have some input on a Maggie. One topic I think is pretty interesting is what are your tips for being able to work while you ride, or if you're on a trip carrying a laptop, being productive, things like that, do you have, do you want to talk about that?

Maggie: Yeah, ways to work while riding a motorcycle while there are people that can do everything on their phone I am NOT one of those people. Yeah, I need some sort of thing that I can type on

Brian: What do they call those what they call is something it sits in your lap, I think Yeah, I call there's a name for that.

Maggie: I would bring either Either a tablet or a laptop and by laptop. I don't mean my main laptop. We actually have a specific What we call affectionately as the lappy. It's a smaller laptop that if something happens to it We're not going to be in the hurt Um, yeah, we never, we generally try not to travel with our real laptops on the bikes. So yeah, I've brought my, I've brought the Lappy before I've brought, I've brought a tablet definitely. So we each have two phones because as a full time RVer, you need a phone, you need a, you need mobile service and you need backup mobile service because different parts of the country have different types of reception. Oh, okay. Different.

Brian: Yeah. Okay. One's Verizon, one's something else. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Something like that.

Maggie: Yeah. So one, one will be stronger in some areas and the other one will have to come in. Yeah. The first one, the primary fails. Yes. That is a must do if you're full time traveler and you can't trust the maps when they say, oh yeah, Verizon's got this covered or T Mobile has that. No. Yeah. Covered. No. You can't trust that. So I travel with both phones. We, so we each have a plan on both a phone on each plan. I also have a, uh, a fast charger for the phones because phones run out of juice. Yeah, that's really it. It's so it's not a ton. It's not. It's not too heavy when you have a couple of phones and maybe a small laptop, a small little lappy.

Brian: Okay. But yeah, interesting. Yeah, because 1 of the things and I, for the last several years, I've. I've carried a Chromebook on trips, and they're small, they're cheap, they're durable, they're entirely disposable. And pretty much everything I do at work or personally, everything's, you have to sign up with someone to run your life, and some people that's Apple, for me it's Google. All the Gmail services and so forth. And yeah, Chromebook worked really well for me for quite a while. And yeah, if the thing gets stolen or bit in half or something, I can go to Walmart and Best Buy or something, 300 bucks or so I'm back in business in 20 minutes. Same.

Maggie: We also carried a Chromebook for a while until it was disposed.

Brian: Yeah, they, and they have their limit. You have to really understand what they can and cannot do and work around those limitations. If you think a Chromebook is a computer, you're going to be very frustrated. So that's what I always tell people. They're extremely useful. But it's, you have to understand a lot. You have to have a pretty good understanding of what they can and can't do. I recently bought a MacBook Air and it rides into bike. It rides into the saddlebags just fine. But it's also a little terrifying because it, it's one of the little, the less expensive Apple machines, but it's still a lot of money in my mind. And, but it's a lot more capable. So I used to switch depending on what I'm doing. Um, But yeah, I'll commute and so forth. I'll bring my Mac book back and forth. But, but yeah, the Chromebook is a really good machine. If you understand its limitations, older laptop or something like that. And you said tablet, are you talking about you have a tablet and then you have like an iPad with a keyboard so you can still type. Yeah. Cause and do your writing. Okay. That makes

Maggie: sense. Yeah. I

Brian: was going to say, and then there's obvious stuff. You have to get a good case, which, you know, or I, on a Chromebook I used, I got like a good foam sleeve that fit it tightly. So it fit better, not take up as much space. And I had all the accessories in another bag so you can pack any way you want to. So you basically use like an iPad with a keyboard for something. My

Maggie: iPad is pretty old, so I don't use it anymore, but, but I did. The other advantage of having an extra LAPI is you can take it out to the garage and you have your specs. You have, if you have an online Hanes manual, like that can live out there without having to transfer your main computer over. So that's nice too. So that's also how we use it. And also for us, sometimes in the old days, anyway, when we would coach a class, there was a classroom portion and sometimes you had to make sure you had the slides ready to show the class during the classroom portion that did away with that, but now it's all online, but yeah, it was, it's just nice to have the extra that, yeah, like you said, maybe it's only a couple hundred bucks, but if something happens to it, you're not like, yeah. You're not dead. You're not dead. Yeah. Because your whole life is on the other

Brian: computer. Yeah. You're not dead. Yeah. And I, there's nothing stored on the hard drives. That's all. I'm also, most of what I do is writing and of course emails and stuff like that. I'm not doing a lot of graphic design and with web development, most everything's on servers and stuff. So when I do that too, it's. There's not a lot, like, if the hard drive poops out, there's not actually a lot there most times, depending on what I'm doing. Do you guys

Maggie: only do one question per episode?

Brian: We could talk about another one. You and I are going to have very different answers on this, I think, and I think it's going to be interesting. But how much do you really need to know about maintaining and fixing motorcycles, changing tires, and so forth? What level are you comfortable at? Are you trying to achieve more? I know you're, I know you're working through this problem on your triumph and so forth, but my answer would be, you need to know how to change tires, change, check valve clearances, blah, blah, blah, or at least you will enjoy yourself and have a better time and spend a lot less money if you know all that. But then we've talked to some people lately who buy a new bike and then take it to the dealer and just, they don't, they just. They don't spend their energy on that. And that's valid too. That's a way to do it too. So where do you sit in this continuum?

Maggie: When I first got the bike, I was on that side of the continuum. I would take my bike to a Triumph dealership and I would have them do the major stuff. Robin showed me how to change the oil. And he's got a thing about paying somebody else to change tires. So we would change. We would change we by him, mostly him change my tires. I did learn how to clean the chain. So I did their super simple stuff, but I paid somebody else to do anything harder than that. Now I've come through in the middle and I'm more on the other end where we're traveling into different states. We're in different rural areas. I'm usually far from the Triumph dealership. I also don't make the income I used to make. So, uh, it's not. It's not so easy for me to just drop money on here. You fix my problem or you may, you do this for me. Also, I did pay a garage in Austin last year to fix the starting problem. They did not fix the starting problem. They thought they did. They didn't actually. So you can do that. And again, if, and it's not a, it's not a, I don't want to make any judgments about whether you can or can't spend the money it's that even when you do, that's not always going to work. And again, because we're, since we each can only have one bike, we only have the space to pull a bike, so we can't just go to another bike. I have come to understand that. It's nice to be able to know a little bit more about your own ride. And funny enough, it was a stipulation when he, when we, he first got into writing, I was like, okay, but I want you to understand and know how to work on it. And here I was not doing that. And so now, now with the starting problem and we, we've tried a few guesses and it seemed to be it. Nope, that wasn't it. Nope, that wasn't it. Now I understand how that would be. Nice if I had been more knowledgeable and had been doing a little bit more, I'd been more involved in my own bike.

Brian: Excellent. Yeah. And the short way of saying that is the more, the better it gets, I think. Yeah. Some people aren't interested, true, but, but yeah, I, I think the more about how this thing works, that just the more confidence you have and the better writer you can be, I think that makes a difference too.

Maggie: Yeah. Cause you're putting, you're putting time and effort into maintaining that care into this machine. And I, I do think there's a relationship between you and. I think it just helps the relationship. Like I was talking to my bike today, I was so happy that she was cooperating. And I got nervous because I heard a funny sound and I thought, do I have a flat tire? And I was like, no. And I talked her out of it. I'm like, we're not letting that happen today. It's been over a month since we've been out. We're not getting a flat tire. And we didn't. Yeah. I know it sounds silly, but I do have a relationship relationship with my bike. So I, even though I don't ride nearly as much as Robin, I've had her since 2016, actually the end of 15. So this is a long term bike. This is, this is the bike that I'm still invested in.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. And that's a whole nother topic. Is this like for a law for what? 15 years, I had one motorcycle. And so. There's a lot of benefits to that, too. You can just, you have this telepathy between you over time. And then when I bought, when I had to put a 2nd motorcycle in the garage, it was really an adjustment to learn to switch between them. It was. Like, I could ride one for a week at a time and then by day five, I'd be comfortable again. And then I'd go back to the other one the next week and be all messed up for two or three days at least. And now I have three bikes and I can just hop between them and it's not a big deal, but that's a. It's one of those skills. You don't even think about it. You have to learn as time goes on, but yeah, like on my old GS 850, I built the engine that's on it. I built, I have had every nut and bolt in there, so I know exactly what's going on with it. And that's a pretty cool feeling. And, uh, like we were talking with, we were talking with Jasmine, she's in New York city and they have some excellent high quality mechanics and dealers there. And she's just, I don't want to think about it. I, so she, so she's got people she can trust. And so that's a different approach, different people she can trust and she just. Has them deal with it because she's got a, she's got riding to do. She's got other things to think about. And yeah, that's, that's a valid approach too. And I've, I've taught, I don't know how many people I've taught several people to change their tires and. All but one or two, what they learned is they don't want to change their tires. They're like, yeah, this sucks. I'm not going to do it. It's here's what I learned today. I could do it if I had to now, but they're not interested anymore. And that's fine too. That's just, there's no right way to approach this approach. This whole silly hobby.

Maggie: I think it comes down to. What is more important to you and how you're spending your time. So I agree. I, Jasmine has a totally valid point and I was on that side of it too, but that was because we were in one place. We were stationary. So yes, I could find, I had a dealership. I trusted with mechanics that we knew. And actually when they left that dealership, they went to a different garage, we followed them and I took my bike to them. So I totally get that now. I'm in a very. different place, a very different situation. For me now, it's also my chain is rusted. And maybe if I had paid more attention, I would have gotten that taken care of. I would have gotten a new chain or I would have cleaned it more often. Those little things are happening. And yeah, that's. It just depends.

Brian: Excellent. All right, let's do Two headed coin stuff happens quick. What's the right thing to do and slow and why? What's the rocket surgery reasoning here? So today's topic for two headed coin quick. What do you do? Slow. What's the reason? Um, we'll just lump in together a lot of, like, mental slash physical issues. Uh, maybe you didn't get enough sleep. Maybe you've got a hangover thanks to strong waters the night before. Uh, maybe you're hungry. Maybe you're doing a little pee pee dance. So what do you do in those situations where your mind is being pulled away or it's not there or it's a ball of fuzzy pink yarn? What do you think, Maggie?

Maggie: Quick, what do you do? I have been on the sevens tour. I was the sweep rider where that wasn't an option. So I just made sure to, once I'm on the bike, I'm focused. So that's not usually a problem. It's before getting on the bike. And at least for me, I find the mental game is all about my confidence. So you can tell, you can very easily tell when I'm not confident. And so I try to get myself hydrated. I breathe, walk around and pain relief at the, if I have to.

Brian: Yeah, that that's, yeah, that's real close to, yeah. The quick answer is stop and deal with it. Whatever's going on, stop and deal with it in some way, whatever. If you're, if you didn't have any sleep, try some caffeine. If that's your jam, uh, walk around, do some deep breaths. Uh, drinking water will handle a lot of those, except the last one. If you got to go, then go and get that off your mind. Yeah, that's the thing people are. Sometimes they're, Oh, I don't want to hold up the group or whatever. If there's a problem, just, you got to stop and deal with it. I always tell people it's okay. We're not 90 percent of the time when people stop, it's just, they need to put on a sweatshirt or they're cold or they're, they need to eat a granola bar or something like that. But yeah, like you said, things like drink some water, if you're hung over, drink some water, eat a little something and keep doing that. Don't overdo the caffeine if you can possibly help it. Um, and I always carry a few, a little bit of. Carry some water, carry some snacks. When you're out sport touring, you're the good roads don't have stores on them. Right. You know, everybody has to carry something. And if I see somebody that's looking hangry or whatever. Here is my food and water just here. Take care of yourself. You're a human. Good Lord. And yeah part of like what I'm leading a ride Robin, I've talked about this before when you're leading a ride you gotta you gotta be aware of the bladder Situations and and first the first segment stop after 30 minutes because everybody's gonna have to dump some coffee It's just part of the deal but and get that off of people's minds is the main point of it. I

Maggie: will say That males have an easier time of just pulling over and doing the pee pee wherever they need to. It's not that you can't as a female, but it's a different mechanism. And there's a little bit more splash back that you have to deal with. That's not as easy to control, but I found that they do actually make these. Gadgets that you can travel with if you had to, I have not pressed the button to buy yet, but just the fact that I'm aware. So if I were going to do another tour, I would, I think I would get one. I think

Brian: it's called the Shienel. It's like urinal except Shienel, which is just terrible.

Maggie: That's a

Brian: terrible, awful. Yeah. And yeah, so, even with a bunch of dudes, I really do my best to find an actual gas station, rest stop, something, Walmart, whatever, just, nobody wants to, nobody wants to see that, but, yeah, it's real important.

Maggie: You know what, a plastic cup would do. Yeah. If I just carried an empty plastic cup.

Brian: Yeah, all you need is a little privacy and that can be done. Yeah, I could just. I wear like a big skirt just put it there was some right. Yeah, there were women were like they had on like Armored pants and stuff, but they're all wearing like these big skirts over them, which I don't know Seems like it would get in the way. But anyway, let's do a tiny tasty tooltip So here's Tiaro's tiny tasty tooltips and you want to do the jingle Robin always does the jingle I could try

Maggie: it one or two per episode This is my

Brian: favorite part. We talked about this a little bit earlier, so I'll elaborate on this a little bit. One of the things you have to do as a sport touring rider is, you have to be able to deal with a flat tire. And so if your bike has tubeless tires, we talked about that before, you carry a, The little rope plugs, they work fine. They're fine. They're not going to, you're not going to die. Just poke, pull the object out, poke a rope plug in there, pump the tire up because you brought a pump, right? And you'll be fine. You can rock on. Now, the tip is, if you have a bike with tube tires, you have to carry a little more stuff to get you home. And, you also have to know how to use it. Like I said, I've taught several people how to change tires. They don't want to change tires. But, Generally, they could if they needed to. We need tubes in a tube bag. And generally, if you're doing any, if you're on pavement at all, you really need to have both tubes. Although most flats are on the rear, there's an old legend that you can put a front tube in a rear tire and, and it'll get you home. It really doesn't work on the street. It really doesn't work on pavement. It'll work on a little dirt bikes and stuff. Yeah. Tire irons. And I carry a couple of things to make this easier, and that includes a little tiny container of tire mounting lube. You can get a camping store, a little tiny container of talc, which makes the tube easier to deal with. And it'll slide around. It's like a dry lubricant. And I carry a few little squares of, uh, plastic from like a, um. Uh, milk bottle or something like that and use those as rim protectors and three tire irons. You can do it with two or three makes a lot easier and then a little, uh, valve snake, like you can snake it. It's a little wire. You snake it through the, uh, the valve hole and you can hook it on to the valve and tube and guide it back through again. And it'll save you like an hour and do that. So, yeah, basically. So if you're right about go tube tires, just make sure you carry a tube kit with. Everything you're going to need to get home because AAA is not going to be real interested in coming and helping you.

Maggie: Nice. That's awesome. A great, tiny, tasty tool

Brian: tip. It wasn't that tiny, was it? It was, it was just one, but all right.