Robin: Brian, meet Jason. Hi, Jason. Jason, Brian. Hi, Brian. This is the, I think, fourth appearance on this thing? Lacking of camera, but I make an appearance. I wanted to invite Jason on because there's been a lot of discussion about Brian is determined to attend his first track day. That's cool. Between the two of you, Brian is one of my first riding mentors on the street through Wisconsin.

Brian: Soldiers Grove or was it Fenmore? Fenmore.

Robin: I think I did both. Yeah. We did Fenmore one time. So I used to ride with Brian all the time. Jason is, as coaching is concerned, a little bit of a moral compass. And then as far as like track riding has learned me a good many things on the reg. So I'm happy that you two are in the mix for this episode. At any rate, anecdotal chit-chat real quick. Brian, what do you got?

Brian: Well, it's minus two right now in Indianapolis, and it just hurts. I'm sorry. It hurts to go outside. But I ordered a new helmet Friday, so just to make myself feel better. You know how you, yeah, you just have to do something. Right. Still working on the Harley. Haven't got that on my garage yet, but I'll peck away at that and get that all finished up sometime in the next few weeks.

Robin: Yeah. At some point, you want to discuss the bikes on Twisted Road. Is that what I'm saying?

Brian: I do. Yeah. When I come out to New Mexico. Yeah. Well, we'll, we'll, we'll get to that and maybe Jason can help since he doesn't have any idea who the hell I am.

Jason: I do not understand the Twisted Road thing at all. I mean, in concept, it sounds okay, but it just sounds like bad idea.

Robin: A lot of business plans make Jason nervous for all the right reasons, though, I would say. Let's look at it this way. Brian is going to attend his first track day. I am pushing him to go towards Motovid. I think it'd be a lot of fun if I got to be there as well. And Murray Haynes may actually be able to clock in as well. Goodness. This could be an interesting gathering. Epic. Brian, what would you like to ask Jason? And Jason, what can you tell Brian?

Jason: I can't tell him anything, but I'll try my best to answer some questions with your first track day. As I'm a friend of Run What You Brung, a Harley is not out of the question, but what do you want to take to the racetrack?

Brian: Well, the Harley isn't mine. It's a long story, but I'm working on it in exchange for some work on my house because I don't know how to do house crap. So anyway, no, what I'm, what I'll probably take to a track day is I've got a 2015 Yamaha FJ-09. So, you know, the 900 triple should be, should be a good choice for that. And I got it a couple of years ago, so it's, you know, it's got some good brisk, high lean angle miles and so forth, and plenty of power and all that stuff. So it should, should be a good tool for the job. It's either that or a KLR 650, and I don't think anybody wants that.

Jason: Yeah, the KLR. I mean, if nothing else works, that KLR will survive. So what the heck?

Brian: I think it would be fun. Yeah, I would, it would be fun to thrash a KLR on like a shorter track or something like that. But no, I'm not going to do that to everybody. Okay. Blackhawk. That could be a hoot.

Jason: If it's really your first on-track experience. It is. Blackhawk Farms is a good starting event. It is busy enough to tire you out for the whole day, because it seems like you're constantly turning, you're setting up for a turn. You know, practicing going around in circles. It's fun. I like it. But, you know, because I do what I do, I'm clearly biased. There's other places you could go. You said you're in Indy. Is that right?

Brian: Yeah, I'm in Indianapolis.

Jason: Um, so the guys at Fastlane do Putnam with CarMoto. I've only met the guys from CarMoto once. Chris Carr, I believe is the owner or his dad was the owner. I don't know how that takes over. Seem like super nice guys and could go that direction. From what I think I know, you're not going to have a better first time experience than you would with Motovic comparing it to everybody else for never been there before participant. Yeah, that's what I've heard. You set up on gear and leathers and that kind of stuff.

Brian: Um, basically, textile gear, all the stuff, you know, good stuff and all that, but I don't have leathers.

Jason: At Motovic event, textile gear is good if, and I don't mean like the gear is not good if it doesn't work, but to be on track to meet the rules, at least in the new rule book hasn't come out yet, and I haven't talked to the owners yet. But last year, it would have been just fine if you have a textile suit that, you know, has a full zipper all the way around it. So I tell people 270 degrees, which is three quarters, but you know, yeah, bigger than the small butt crack sized flap that connects the back and front to the old Joe Rocket gear that was scary as hell.

Robin: I believe that's the cool off at the gas station zipper. Right. Hang the jacket and back. It's the ass mullet. There's no anagram for that.

Jason: Right, right. So got to be better than that and stuff. Probably every motorcyclist has like, you know, gauntlet gloves and you ordered a helmet. So that'll be great. Yeah. No, if you don't, though, Motovic does have a gear supplier. To the best of my knowledge, it's going to be Moto Union, which is a Ducati dealer in Milwaukee, shows up, has, brings a truckload of Alpine star stuff. And you just sign up on the Motovic website that says, Hey, I need gear costs this much. And they can supply it for you if you don't have it, which is pretty nice.

Brian: Yeah. And honestly, that sounds like it would be a good thing to do. Because I don't have anything that's got a zipper like you describe. I don't have like a arrow stitch suit or anything like that. Yeah.

Robin: Well, where are the leathers at the track? It is confidence inspiring. It feels way better being in leathers on the track just because of all that's going on in the overall environment, which is actually a very safe and calm environment. But when you're in leathers, it just feels like, okay, this is purpose built for exactly what I'm doing, which is great. How far is Gingerman from you?

Brian: I've been to Gingerman as a mechanic for a friend of mine. It is, I want to say it's a good three or four hours, at least something like that. It's not terrible. Yeah. It's about two hours to get to the Michigan border. And then from whatever it is from there, as I remember, it's a pretty long track. And I remember that weekend they were running backwards for some reason. And I got a lot of practice fixing crash damage because my friend was a little enthusiastic, shall we say. I got real good with the zip ties.

Robin: Well, our friend Murray has mentioned that he's looking to do Gingerman again. And if we're elsewhere, he'll pass by and do that as well. But he kind of wants to get there. I mean, does MotoVid do Gingerman anymore or did they ever?

Jason: Nope. Blackhawk and Road America. And this year, I think there's only three days at Road America, where there was four last year, which is no big deal. I believe the days after the Moto America event this year are going to another track day organization. So MotoVid is not doing that, which doesn't make me feel bad because that's when the crazy people show up at Road America. Because people just got done watching the pros ride and they all think they're pros. They have never been on track before. And that means they're my problem.

Robin: This is probably when I should tell Brian, you're going to want a trailer to the destination too. There was a time where I woke up to my phone ringing and it was Jason. And he was calmly saying, so where are you? And I was about two and a half hours away. And I was supposed to be at Road America to chase around the new kids and get my free sessions. And as a result, I rode my bike there while putting on my gear. I was on my bike riding, you know, and got there, got the tsk tsk from everybody. And it was a nightmare getting my bike prepped in time to head out. So you'll want to get it prepped the night before. Oh yeah. Jason, do you have a propane heater? Yes. That is totally the heat in the shop because it's cold as hell outside.

Brian: We were talking about the one at Blackhawk farms, you know, like several of my friends have been to, and I'm like, okay, that sounds like the one for me. At least to start very mild, very fun. You know, and I've had like, I've had some training. I've had the, the total control riding, which I guess the course I had about 10 years ago was kind of the OG, you know, like it's different now. I'm not sure what's different about it, but yeah, I had the total, I've had the total control. I've had some dual sport training. I've had to refresh our courses, stuff like that. You know, so it's not, uh, not starting from zero, but it'll probably, I'm sure it'll feel like it.

Robin: Um, well, that's cool. You're going to have fun. Yeah. And Jason's the guy to know about it. And if you're, you know, if you want to reach out to him, he can probably tell you any questions, answer any questions you have. Brian asks quality questions and I think he's going to have a really good time. I'm glad you're doing it.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Yeah.

Jason: After you get the basics of, I got the gear, my bike's really ready to go. The rest of it's just riding around. I mean, it's for folks that never been before you get stuffed in the classroom with us for a minimum of four sessions before we go out on track. So, you know, you get a 15 minute briefing, a 15 minute on track and a little bit of reflection, come back, make sure everybody didn't die and move on to the next thing. That's purely basics. That may be things that everybody knows, but hearing it to make it a front of mind mission before going out on the track seems to help the overall safety. And we get more green flag laps because of it versus going, Hey, track goes that way. Have a great time. Yeah.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. And that that's, I, that, and I know of some track days and I know some people have been to them where, yeah, it's just basically we're going to, you know, we're going to rent a track with my buddies and go race and we're just going to call it a track education. And that, that's not what I'm, not what I'm all, not what I'm all about at all.

Robin: One cool thing I like is that in between the sessions, if you're in the classroom, they might say, okay, for this round, we're going to try this. And that round, we're going to try that. And it's all progressive and a building block way to look at whatever it is you're doing and also make it an educational event of sorts. One would be that, okay, this session, we're going to try to find a gear that feels right in the RPM range for the entirety of every lap and see if you can ride the entire track in that gear the entire time. Jumping a little bit ahead.

Jason: The thing that sets Motovit apart from others is to have some events that we term clinics. Clinics are very much so it's drills all day long. So everybody's trying to do the same thing at the same time, not just orbiting the track the same way, but it may be, as Robin said, pick a gear we're going to do this, or we're going to focus on where our roll off point is, or where the next time we might focus on no brakes whatsoever. It's just so we can work on lean angles and approach speeds. The stuff we do in a clinic is, it's not like it's something you couldn't do during a track day, but in a clinic, you are set up with a coach and maybe two other riders that are also sharing said coach and having some feedback. So that part really matters. We're in a track day. Usually it's my mission to sit in front of the classroom and deal out the, Hey, remember to do these things. I just want to make your life easier to go around the racetrack. People are a little bit high strung. They're like, Oh my God, this is like, okay, let's try and remove the distractions. So the gear thing that Robin talked about, that's one of the big things that I see people, especially on midsize motorcycles, they are rowing gears as fast as they can, because somehow that makes them feel like they're doing something.

Robin: Ride fast, shift a lot, Brian. Ride fast, shift a lot.

Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Some inside joke. Now shifting and going into a corner. And like, if there's a way to mess up, they do it like, Hey, you know, what if he just focused on this? Well, then it won't be in the right gear to pull out of the backside of the corner. I'm like, but if you do it my way, it will go faster through the corner and it won't matter. I preach the safe line. I don't talk about the race line. It's yes, we're at a racetrack. We're going to have a nice day. We'd like to do the shiny side up thing. I'm here to help people have fun. We want to get people fired out of our novice group or the beginner group as fast as possible. We tell people straight up that you can choose to enroll yourself in our first level intermediate group and you don't need my permission to do that. However, when you get there and you are not maybe as smooth and predictable as you might need to be, which then correlates into speed, of course, but we'll talk smooth and predictable first. Jeff, who is the leader of the Wiener Patrol in that group, has every right to send you back to me so we can work on those things because everybody's like, oh, I want to see about getting a bump. I'm really getting held back. I'm like, are you really? Yeah. Then the cool part in the last two years, my kid's been doing this. It's cool and scary. It's past scary now, so it's just cool. I occasionally take the bike he started with that he is still learning on, a KTM 390 Duke, and then proceed to go out and ride with these people that are being held up, which is a little bit entertaining, at least for me. So, fat guy in a 390, how'd you do? I know my bike only goes 92 miles an hour down the front straight. That's it. I still need the brakes to get through turn one a little bit. It's not the same as riding a leader bike. It's fun switching stuff up. I'm so glad I have this opportunity to A, ride with my kid is cool, but when he's not there, I still take his motorcycle to the racetrack to make other people look dumb.

Robin: Oh, you could see and feel the pride in the video. Sometimes there's some videos on YouTube of his kid riding around the track there. And it's just really cool to see. I was going to say that also that Jason, speaking about the 390, he has one of the two fastest machines I've ever been astride and was kind enough to give me a chance to ride. You know that I've ridden Kelly Howard's H2, which is ridiculous. Jason's got a turbo Busa. Busa speeds, man.

Jason: That's another super fun to take the racetrack because it's just a big lumbering pig. I tell people like you drive it like a dump truck, just short shift and let it happen. And they're like, what? I'm like, oh, it doesn't, doesn't really matter, but it's fun. And it's, oh God, if you want to wrestle an alligator, that it's pretty close.

Robin: It looks like one. It's almost Kawasaki green. It's more of a lime though.

Jason: Yeah. It's a bright, bright green. Horrible choices for the racetrack. So if you want to bring that Harley that's in your garage at the last minute, I've done something dumber than that. So you can still have fun with all these motorcycles. And I think your motorcycle of choice is a good one. So lots of fun. Also, it's more of a things that we do. Of course, I think, well, I just assume that every group communicates with their customer base, but I actually shot videos about how to get on and off the track and what to expect when you get there. Little, little things that go out with that. Hey, your track is coming up. Please watch these videos on and off track procedure, you know, try it out. And then for the new people, we go out and practice that, but it's, it's gotten a lot, a lot better. They started actually using the video last year, even though I shot it two years ago and I'm like, okay, everybody raise your hand. If you actually watched the video Kathleen sent out and like, yeah, I'm like that guy looked like he was going really slow, right? Yeah. You're going to go that slow. It's going to feel much faster.

Robin: Reality, what Jason's referring to is known as Titan, right? And it's basically how you enter the track. I know it very well because of how I ruined it during one of my first events, right in front of Jason, but Titan, right? Enter the track, stick, slow stick, right? All the way around what it was that road America was all the way around the carousel. No turn three, three, Mr. Robin turn three, you were eating the grass as close to it as you can. And then when you reach turn three and things straighten up, then you may move about the cabin.

Jason: Absolutely. We're setting people up to be good. My techniques work for every group, even though you will hear it from the mid intermediate guys to whatever road America, they come to be like, we shouldn't have to do this because this is right. You know, this could be fine. There's plenty of time. Like there's time for you. There's not time for that one new guy and he's going to fuck it up for everybody. So, or if somebody spazzes out, Oh God, there's so many things that can happen. And at road America, the closing speeds are colossally different. People being a hair off pace totally screws things up. So again, you know, I look at safety and I'm not the only one. I'm not, I'm not, it's not like I'm the guy that makes the rules. However, I did get away with making those. It works every time. And we have more green flag laps because of it. And for as many people, staff included that come to me and like, Hey, we should change this. No cool story, bro. We help people. And again, that being ejected from the beginner group, because we want you to go on like, Hey, you've got this. Um, we want that to happen because new riders went into this. That's the bread and butter of what lets all the people that stayed past year three, because most people get out inside of four years. They're either, um, focused on racing or they want to go do other things because ultimately being at the racetrack costs a lot of money. Yeah.

Robin: Yeah. So Motovic runs four groups, Brian, right? The only provider left that I know that offers three groups is STT. That was the first place I ever went with gun show, Nick and all that, which I had a great time and they put on a good show. Motovic runs four groups. You've got novice dual intermediates. One is going to be hotter than the other. And then they've got a blue group, which is basically contention round.

Jason: We'd like to have, it's, it's so funny with the, you know, motorcycling is a heavily, heavily, heavily ego driven sport, right? Yeah. And we're somehow associated with colors to the words, beginner, intermediate, advanced. And then, Oh my God. If you tell somebody they're riding in a different color group this week, you swear to God, you shit in their Cheerios. Like, Oh, I'm a, I'm a whatever rider. Like, well, today it works out better to be here. Just, just go ride to have fun. But yeah, that we have a couple depends on the day. I mean, we, we take the SV 650 people. We have SV and we have some legitimately fast, you know, fast route to go out and do what they do. We'll call it your average spirited street rider on an SV 650 is going to be reasonably placed in the first intermediate group, mainly because all street riders think they're fast. But then you couple that with 72 whopping horsepower of not going anywhere quickly. It's not that good. It's, it's a little bit better than a warm bologna sandwich. I mean, it could be toasted cheese with a little bit of ham inside, but not quite steak, but it's, it's the ego, man. Just crushing people's ego. It's just like, Oh man, I, I feel bad for you. But you know what? If I give you a blue sticker at the end of the day, just to be like, you got a blue sticker. Is that, does that make you happy? Don't lie. You don't even feel bad. He doesn't feel bad.

Brian: I hear no regret. Yeah.

Jason: Yeah. So regular stores know that the yellow group is where you start.

Brian: Yeah.

Jason: And I essentially been in the yellow group for 14 years this year. I mean, they do let me run the show and everything, but it's been a long time and we will back to doing good things and we'll try and get those customers. It is really cool though, to see the customer progression. Cause I've had some that after a couple of years, like I go out and try and ride with them. It's like, Oh yeah. All right. So I'm not mentally prepared to do this. I have to go back and sit down.

Robin: If you get to go to the Motovid session and you get Jason to chase you around, I think you're going to have a damn fine time. Plus he's a lot of fun to hang out with.

Brian: So we, yeah. So we just need to pick a date, right?

Jason: Yes. Um, so Motovid calendars out and Oh, I didn't get to the point about the clinics, which I have no idea where the signup stuff is, but you may actually be more interested in going to a clinic, even though they cost more. Motovid.com. Got it. Yes. Motovid.com. So the clinic thing, sign up, it's you get assigned to somebody. We go through drills all day. The last time on track, we're really asking everybody to put it all together. But at the same time, we ask everybody to keep it together. We need to go home in one piece because most of us have jobs tomorrow. And it makes for a slightly more intimate experience, a little, a lot more focused as far as an experience goes. And people dig it. I've never had bad feedback from a clinic yet.

Brian: Cool. Yeah. I'm looking at it now. I see like, uh, like I see sport writing one-on-one introduction to track writing.

Jason: Yep. That's totally where I tell you to go. That could be anywhere from customers that have been to our beginner group and those that have never been on a racetrack before. It works out pretty good. And when you sit in the same room with everybody, that's one of the great things about our intermediate or I'm sorry, our novice group experiences. You're sitting in the room with everybody. It makes it personal, not in an aggressive sort of way. But I remind everyone that in 15 minutes, you will be back in the classroom to look everybody in the eye. So if you could wave at others with all your fingers and try not to be too important out there, we will all get along and have fun. And we'll figure out how to sort ourselves as far as who's going out first, who's fastest, who's this, where are you going to pass these other people? Because that's just like reading traffic on the street.

Robin: I wanted to hang out too. Oh, geez. Oh yeah. No, that's right. I mean, I got to make sure everything is up to TRO standards.

Brian: Hey, spring market, the dates for sport riding one-on-one suck. So I don't know. Oh, uh, that, that the logistics is here. I'm not sure.

Robin: Blackhawk farms raceway, all levels track day.

Brian: Yeah.

Jason: That's totally okay. It's whatever works for you. Cause you know, you could be a never been to a track day before and show up for any one of our days.

Robin: There is a novice group going to those dates said, okay, so that he'll get to do the stuff with the classroom portions and all that. Right. Yeah. The classroom portions just aren't the same as the clinics. Still. It's a good time.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: I mean, my first track day, I didn't even really know there was a classroom until the third session, but that wasn't motivated. You know, they didn't really stress it and what if it does, which is awesome. So you got to take them up on that. If you look at the Blackhawk, I see may 1st, we get to Wisconsin may 15th ish. And then I've got sevens in June, but July, August, September shoot, man. What do you want to do, Brian?

Brian: Like I wanted to get in there sooner, but yeah, it looks like later in the summer is going to work better because June's a little busy for, for us, for us, but other benefits in previous years, camping is free.

Jason: I don't know that it will be free this year, but you know, they have warm showers and a place to set a tent up. It's not horrible.

Brian: That's not bad at all. Yeah. July, uh, track days and so forth, but yeah, well, let's talk about that. We'll get it set up, but yeah, I'd like the idea, like what I'm hearing. I like the philosophy.

Robin: So now you've got the schedule, which means, you know, we got, we got material we have to cover and Jason's going to hang out while we do, but material, I can't wait to, whatever you talked about.

Brian: Yeah. I'm coming down to New Mexico in April. Um, and Jason, you don't know a damn thing about me. You've never even seen me.

Jason: Oh no. I see this video. You have some sweet, uh, doll boxes going on.

Brian: Uh, yeah, yeah. Those are goofy anyway. Um, yeah, we never ridden together that I know of. Um, so, but, but, you know, bear in mind, I, I write, I've done a lot of writing with Robin. Uh, I've led a lot of rides with Robin following and, and kept him reasonably entertained and I followed Robin and I've been entertained. So if you know, Robin, then you So anyway, I'm flying in Albuquerque and there are, I've got it down to like four or five bikes that are actually for rent on twisted road. Um, and kind of like you said with twisted road and it, I don't really understand how it works because like, I don't, I, how would you, how do people rent out their bikes to people? I don't, it's really a hard thing to psychologically to do. But anyway, there's some people that do that and make some money. Um, and there was actually a friend of mine who, who bought a bike just to rent out in the Chicago area. Well, Maggie's bike is for rent on there. Yeah. And just, yeah, he just bought the, like it was a little Suzuki cruiser. He, he didn't want to ride it. Didn't like it. Uh, but it was in good shape. It looked nice. And he made, he made good money on that until someone wrecked it and, and then twisted, you know, and then they bought him another one. And, and so he, he bought another Suzuki cruiser and, uh, and you know, low seat height, you know, it's, you know, a lot of people like that, which.

Robin: So you're between the, but I've seen some interesting bikes on here. I do like the Moto Guzzi Stelvio, the 1200.

Brian: Yeah. So, so the, the, the choices are the 2016 Moto Guzzi Stelvio 1200, which seemed really interesting. I need something with luggage because I'm going to be flying in and I've got some crap with me. Um, there was a 2021 Triumph Tiger 900, which is yes. I'm looking at there right now. Yeah. That'd be great. It's a little more expensive.

Jason: How many days are you talking about? Five days. Well, okay. So let's say you're renting at a dealership. You still beat the bejesus out of that.

Brian: Yeah.

Jason: Five days. That bastard is going to need new tires.

Robin: It's true. You better. I mean, you might want to check to make sure the tires are fresh on there anyhow.

Jason: Yeah. Uh, I think people are going to laugh at you when you start asking for fresh rubber, but you know, good enough rubber would be good.

Brian: Good enough is good enough for me. Yeah. And, and another one that was kind of intriguing was the, uh, the BMW F 700 GS, which I looked it up. They've got like 75 horsepower. So it's a little parallel twin. That might not be bad.

Robin: It'll be forgiving. That's not a bad thing on these roads for it to be forgiving at the throttle.

Brian: Yeah.

Jason: In all, you know, because I have serious bias and I'm staring at it, there's a 2018 super adventure are, you know, we were just getting to that.

Robin: Yeah. Brian has a marked right next to it. It says, holy shit right there.

Brian: Don't even have the giant hairy balls needed to even consider that KTM get it done.

Jason: The cruise control is great. Be cooler if he had side bags for you, but at least he's got the one bag.

Brian: Yeah, I can throw a bag over, but yeah, that that's kind of the winner in some ways. And then there's a, there's an older BMW GS.

Robin: Maybe just go for the Honda monkey. I like the monkey.

Brian: Yeah. There's some, there's some freak raining out as a monkey. Yeah. Monkey, monkey.

Robin: 63 bucks a day for a monkey. Holy crap. Well, it's the gold plated version. It's made of platinum. Comes with a decoder ring. It is the toy at the bottom of the box.

Brian: Yeah. And so, so, so it sounds like Jason's like, get the KTM. You're, you're an absolute moron if you don't do that.

Jason: BMW is a fantastic middle bike choice, but if you're going to ride with Robin and you're not going off road, I don't think any of this crap matters. No. Okay. Here's what I don't know. Brian, what's your inseam?

Brian: 32. So I can, yeah, I can ride whatever I want.

Jason: The 1290 is a large pig. I also have that inseam and yeah, there's, I mean, if you're insistent having two feet touching the ground, that is not the bike, but because I think that's totally optional. It's awesome.

Robin: Sidebar. There is one portion of this tour where you may get the chance to ride off road and that's the junction of 59 connected to one 52 by heel initial forest. So you do have an opportunity to do that if you want to, I'm not going with you because I want to keep my plastics and my fillings.

Brian: So which one, okay, let's put it this way. Which one's going to have the best suspension? I know the answer to this one.

Robin: I mean, maybe the GS might have the DSA on there. You don't know. Good point. There was one of those at the bottom of the page, wasn't there?

Brian: Yeah. There's like a 2011 and then there's a, then there's a newer BS, but yeah, I would not, I would get the, but anyway, yeah, the, the, like the KTM probably has the better suspension out of all of them, but probably that BMW 700 might, but I don't know what the, anything about the suspension on the, on the Stelvio. I know it's a, and it's kind of like, that's the one that, that caught me. Cause I'm like, you know, one day I would like to ride a Moto Guzzi just to see what that's like, but I want to spend five days with it. You know, I'm not sure.

Jason: I think a hundred bucks is a great year for that Stelvio.

Robin: What the hell? Okay. USD front suspension, probably fully adjustable. I can't answer that. That's got a monoshock rear. The things I've seen you do on a 1980 GS 1100E Suzuki style are unreal, but then you've upgraded that suspension, right?

Brian: Well, yeah. And it's, it's an 83 GS 850. So it's the heaviest Suzuki vintage shafty. It's even heavier than Dale's GS 1000G.

Robin: Which is hilarious because that thing looks like it's made of lead. The Stelvio has a 35 degree. I'm looking at the photo. It's like 35 degree shaft mounted single-sided suspension. I think you'd have a lot of fun on it.

Brian: Yeah. Isn't that weird? It's kind of like, I keep coming back to the Stelvio and I like, it's got 6,443 miles on it. So it's got about 7,000 miles. Yeah. So it's nothing's going to be worn out or anything like that.

Robin: The other hard part is you got to make sure they're going to let you, because when you actually apply to rent the bike, they have to decide. It's not just like, oh, it is available for sale and now you're going to rent it. You have to actually convince them to let you write it.

Brian: Oh, that should be no problem. I mean, basically I had a Vstrom 1000, which is same weight or, you know, not to go through my resume.

Robin: Yeah. We talked about that last time.

Jason: Hey, on your Stelvio. Yeah. Odometer on the condition reported is now 13,000 miles. Oh, okay. And the front tire, well, let's just assume this guy does some maintenance. He'll have a tire on it. It's round. Hopefully it holds air. That'd be great.

Brian: He'll have two tires.

Robin: Man, on the finest recycled eraser heads we could find.

Brian: I've signed up on Twisted Road and I haven't, but you know, I haven't like, but I haven't picked one yet, but I'll, but yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll have to go through the, the process of like, well, are you worthy of writing this? But yeah, whatever.

Robin: Well, it sounds like it's decided.

Brian: Yeah. When I bought my FTO nine, I had to, you know, the guy, the guy I bought it from was just really concerned that some kid was going to splatter himself. And so we had to go through my resume. It was like a fricking job interview. I'm like, and I guess I passed. So he was, he just kept saying, oh, it's a fast bike.

Jason: It's a fast bike. I'm like, well, you know, if you want it to be, there's a dude that owns this 2022 monkey that would get on any of these other bikes, including the Honda 250 L and be like, this is a fast motorcycle.

Brian: If someone throws me the keys to a monkey, I'm going to go for a ride. You know, I want to, I, I, I, I worked, I fixed a monkey for, for a, for a neighbor one time. And I wrote it like 200 feet just to make sure that it was doing, you know, the problem was fixed, but I really should have taken it out for a longer, just to see what the monkey life is like.

Jason: You know, you need a large population density and it needs to be after 9 PM. So all the other monkey people come out, all the monkey stunt is out there.

Robin: I'm going to grab the wheel here and start steering the boat for a second and say, we're going to change out. Now we're going to website updates, revisits, announcements, corrections. I got one thing I want to say, that's that if you can hear Jason here, I'm in this amazing episode. You've tolerated a lot because the audio quality of this and the one previous, this, the previous episode was an absolute audible disaster, but I worked my best on it to make it listenable. We are working on a new conference platform that will record a higher quality in the future. So give us time. And that's about it from there. Ooh, ooh, we have a listener question. Let me, okay. We have, we have a listener question. I don't know if you could hear my phone going off there for a second, but I believe you're Robin. The listener question is what is better air cooled or liquid cooled? Feel this question, gentlemen. All right.

Jason: Who goes first? Well, for talking about toasters, I'll go with the air cooled version. Motorcycling. There's not a lot of air cooled horsepower to be made. It's just not fun.

Brian: I like it. Yeah. If there's any twist of logic in what you're thinking, then, then yeah, you got to go with liquid cooling because you're going to get more power. You're going to get better reliability. It goes on and on. So the only reason you would go with air cooled is some other reason that's not logical. And it's kind of like it just because you like it. And when you think about it, motorcycle, I've said this before, motorcycling doesn't make a goddamn bit of sense anyway. So what you ride does not need to make any sense either. It just has to make you happy. You know, it's just, that's all, that's all it's there. And if something that's air cooled sounds right and looks right and has enough power to keep you out of the way of traffic, fine. You know, that that's, that's what you like. Like I, you know, I, I still ride very regularly, a 40, well now it's a 41 year old Suzuki GS850G. It's air cooled. It's, it's slow. It's got like 70, 75 horsepower and it's heavy as hell. You know, handling is a challenge. You know, it's, it's kind of, you know, it's, it's a wrestling match to, to hustle it down a good twisty road, but it's a lot of fun. I love the thing. I love the way it sounds. I love the way it looks and it doesn't make any sense and I like it anyway. So there. Yeah. Yeah. Like liquid cooling. Yeah. You're just going to make more power. The engine's going to last longer. Like on my KLR650, like me and all my friends have added a thing called a thermobob, which actually makes the radiator, it keeps the temperatures more even in the cylinder so that the, and then the engine actually ends up lasting a lot longer over the stock arrangement where it has a lot more variation and I won't go into the details. That's cool. But yeah, liquid cooling does a good job on that bike. You know, 35 raging horsepower, but it's going to do it forever.

Robin: You know, I got to go look at what, what does my, what's my Cuisinart say underneath it for horsepower by comparison. That's pretty good. Then I all answered that, you know, there's also the middle of the road and that's going with the oil cooled engine. You know, my bandit was oil cooled, which is, I thought was fascinating. Heck, you can turn an air cooled motor into an oil cooled motor pretty simply. If you're not afraid to drill in.

Jason: All internal combustion engines are well cool period. But yeah. Okay. But I understand the idea that, Hey, I have a separate, you know, cooling circuit front oil path and it goes back in the engine and cool stuff down. But really it's engine oil in and of itself. It is cooling stuff.

Robin: What about cooking oil, Jason? Is cooking oil cooling stuff? Huh? Answer me this. In your engine? Only in an emergency. Don't answer that. I already, I already know that it's going to, you got another awesome question here. And I'm really glad Jason's here for this one. This is perfect. What are some of the ways to get paid to ride motorcycles? I'll first answer by define paid. That should set you both off an exchange of what an exchange of.

Jason: Let's, let's just take this for what it is and say, in order to get us issued currency, Negotiable instruments.

Brian: Yeah.

Jason: Easiest way to do that is to hook up with an established training school of, there are a ton of different varieties to be had. Do you happen to know of one Jason? A few, but I mean, there, there's all kinds of people like, let's look at the ones I haven't gone to ride, you know, go, go out there and work on the West coast for Jim. He's got his pick of all kinds of people that came to take a school. I do not believe for a minute that he's paying all of those people to do that thing. They're still trying to prove themselves in their way in. He's probably paying a few of them to do it because they have a lot of responsibility. It's beyond first aid and CPR. Like I know how to put a bandaid on somebody, but I do not necessarily, I'm not the guy to split the leg and carry out on a stretcher for the masses. Go find yourself, you know, what in your state who does licensing chances are whatever curriculum they tend to use. They tend to pay people for that sort of thing and help out. Ask how you can help out like, Hey, can I be of service here? And then, you know, work your way into, so do y'all get paid for doing this? If you can't stand hanging out with them for a day for free, you're not going to like it for a paycheck either.

Robin: Great answer. I'll stretch it to the off ramp there and say TROs tours. I'd be lying if I was saying that, yes, if you are the person in charge, you can make money trying to lead some tour of some kind on an annual basis. But the truth is I'd totally be lying because the way to make money doing that is by being very, very good at math. And that's not riding a motorcycle. The way you're going to make money leading a motorcycle tour is by being really good at math and making sure that after the math is done, you have a markup. And that's all that is. That's rather difficult. Become a mathematician and then it won't be motorcycling anymore.

Jason: In order to really make money, I say, make money like paying for your rent, that kind of making money, which I do not see as most people doing. You have to come up with a scalable plan. Yeah. If you, you are the person that knows your thing and you're really good at it, it's just you, you're still not going to make money at it. It's gotta be you and a whole bunch of minions to help. So you can sit back, train some and control some and train some. They do the thing and it's scalable. And then I can say, you know, you can make money doing this. Anybody that lives south of the Mason-Dixon line that may have the opportunity to train motorcyclists for 10 plus months out of the year, you can make a living doing this. But then are you riding motorcycles anymore? Or are you just standing around the parking lot and telling them what to do?

Brian: Gotta have another outlet. Gotta have a day job, right? I'm going to throw in one more angle, one way to get paid for riding motorcycles. And I, which I have pulled off a few times, again, nothing's going to pay, nothing that's going to, you know, pay for dinner or anything, but, um, uh, just, just use your motorcycle to go see your clients and stuff like that. Charge mile, you know, and get, get, turn in your mileage reimbursement. You know, that's, that's pretty, I guess that's pretty basic, but it's not a lot of people don't think of. Uh, I have found when I ride a motorcycle to go see a client, it, they're thrilled. It like makes their day better. So I've never had a negative reaction to, you know, showing up with helmet head business Fonzie. They're like, oh, that's cool. Yeah. It gives you something to get a little, do a little bit of there. Um, another, another thing that I've pulled off is to, it's a very long story, but basically I ended up renting a Harley for 10 days, uh, and doing this whole 3000 mile, uh, odyssey with my boss at the time. Um, it was sort of a combination publicity stunt and it was sort of a grand tour of a lot of our clients, uh, kind of all through the South. And, um, so basically, yeah, for, for 10 days, you know, I got paid to ride a motorcycle and, and attempt to, to, uh, you know, plan the routes and all that stuff. So I kind of got to be a tour guide and it was just part of my normal as part of my regular job, but it was, it was kind of cool. A lot of ways it was kind of aggravating and a lot of other ways, but, uh, those, those are about the only ways I've managed to pull it off. Um, and as you said, as Jason said, uh, getting involved in training, you know, a lot of times there's, you get paid something, uh, you know, to run a training session. It's not a lot. Nobody's, nobody's going to retire on it. You know, it's, it's a retirement gig. Um, yeah. And unless you hit it big on YouTube, uh, which is pretty limited.

Robin: Getting paid to do good for the world is an act of desperation.

Brian: Two-headed coin stuff happens quick. What's the right thing to do? Slow. What's the rocket surgery reasoning here? My butt hurts. I've got a long way to go. What the hell do I do about this?

Robin: Stop. Get off the bike. Stretch. Breathe. Right again. Repeat.

Brian: That about covers it. Do you even need to elaborate or?

Jason: I mean, there's more ingredients. What do you got to say, Jason? Get off the bike, stretch a little bit, you know, some personal massaging. I'm not going to do it for you, but maybe if you're on a group trip, switch bikes with somebody else.

Brian: Oh, I didn't think of that one. Nice.

Jason: That's not bad.

Brian: Brian, what do you got? Stop and play with your butt. You know, get, get some circulation back. Don't, don't keep going. Don't keep going because it's a distraction and distraction is you don't need a mental distraction. Stop and address the problem. Whatever it is.

Robin: You're starting to get in the long version. I did. Yeah. The long version. I'm going to say it's pretty much the same stuff, but add in the, all the ingredients of things that help you move along. So long as you haven't already, I guess the word would be exacerbated those things. Coffee. Okay. Water. You need to hydrate. If you're dehydrated, that can cause you to cramp up. Take a long leak, drink a big thing of water, grab some coffee, breathe in, breathe out. Take a few moments to just clear your head. Music. I always write with music. I don't know. I rode to San Antonio, which is barely an hour, Brian. And I don't know how you do it without music. I have to have music going while I'm riding. All the ingredients of you being more comfortable than you were, throw them all into a bucket and pour them over your head, get back on the bike and stop more often as needed. That's my long answer.

Brian: Yeah. And part of my long answer would be to move around on the bike more, um, stand up if you can, or at least get some weight off of your, get some weight off your butt. Do a little dance, do a little hula, entertain the cars behind you, that kind of thing. Air it out a little bit. Gotta stand up like a prairie dog.

Jason: Moving around, standing up, all those kinds of, as it's safe for you. Some skillsets do not allow for such a thing, but that's good. But the other thing, back your mind, what kind of gear should I have considered before doing this to begin with? And I can't say enough good things about bicycle shorts. They may look silly. They should not probably be outerwear for me. But man, it's, it's got some benefits. So are you saying you're getting into speed walking? No, that instead of corduroys, we could start a fire. That's not for me. But a set of bicycle shorts goes a long way, especially if you're the rider that only rides in jeans and you don't happen to have gear that has hip pads and all that kind of other crap in it, because you can't afford it maybe, or because it's not your bag, whatever, that kind of stuff. It really goes a long way.

Brian: Yeah, we, we had this conversation. We had that, that, uh, bit of conversation a while back, Robin, but yeah, yeah, the bicycle style shorts and, uh, and giblet powder. Oh yes. And, uh, get, get some gold bond going on in there. And, uh, yeah, you can.

Robin: I never thought there'd be a headline title on TRO that was involved the word giblets or they would have uncle Fester introducing them. AKA Brian. It's perfect.

Brian: So, you know, we were, we were young and experimenting. I don't know. It was like the second episode I did.

Robin: I don't know what can I get away with test one? All right. Well, anybody else got anything they want to add?

Brian: I think it'd be interesting to talk with Jason about what technology is, is like a must have and which technology is just a bad idea.

Jason: Let's start with down to types of riding we're talking about. Because there's all kinds of technology that can take us here at TRO dot bike. We promote sport touring where your sport touring motorbike fix.

Robin: I've heard of such a thing before. TRO the bike. TRO the bike.

Jason: I'm going to go with ABS is a must. Traction control is eh. And mapping stuff would be handy for people that do not read maps.

Brian: Oh, okay. Like a GPS. Yeah.

Robin: Yeah. We keep a Garmin because it finds gas stations really well, but otherwise check out our episode about ride with GPS. A lot of insight on how to use the RWGPS.com platform, which is a great map planning platform with turn by turn directions. If you want online or off, it works.

Jason: And the communicators, the helmet stuff. I know the purists are going to be like, I got a tank bag and I have a map and I can do it. And good for them. That's awesome.

Brian: We had a bad experience. I had my wife and I bought intercoms and these were early versions. And what I found out was having a direct line to her husband's ear without, and I didn't, you know, with these, I didn't have the ability to actually do anything about it. It did something bad and it just didn't work out for us, but that's our problem. It wasn't the problem with the device, but yeah, that's the other thing. I haven't tried yet is having an intercom with people I actually want to talk to. Maybe Robin and I'll have to figure that out.

Jason: That's an interesting take. Mine, I tell people when they ask me about it in classes, they're like, what do you think about communication stuff? I'm like, well, I'm, I'm so old that my first one was like 20 years ago. Helmet to helmet communication saved my marriage.

Brian: Nice. Almost ended mine. Wow.

Jason: My wife was a untrained passenger. Yes. Also possesses a motorcycle license. Walk our way through stuff, made everything safer, made it a more calm, enjoyable ride. I did not have to interpret what different poundings on the head meant. Stopping, gotta pee. You're riding too fast. Stop being an asshole. You know, all of those things could then just be said. And, and I liked the radio bits and the current one. Man, I still got the SMH 10. I think all of their stuff is great. The, the latest, the S 50, I think is what the latest one that I have is.

Brian: I don't know what their latest version is.

Jason: The thing I like is if you have it hooked up to another S 50, you can listen to your music and talk to somebody at the same time.

Robin: Yeah, totally. Wow. Great. Yeah. That's the way to do it. Like, I know that the mesh stuff is really good. And that also being able to play your music to your passenger, if they want to hear it is also cool. But being able to like just dial down your tunes while you're talking to whoever you need to, that is gold. Side chaining is beautiful.

Jason: The mesh is wonderful. The only downside with mesh is that y'all got to have the same system. Like Senna mesh doesn't talk to card mesh. They'll still Bluetooth. We'll do the mesh. And the audio quality difference is huge. We found that out two years ago in Colorado. Noise canceling was better. It was just plain good. So I, I have nothing but good things to say with that. And I know everybody's got their favorite brand that they, they started with and they use for whatever reason. I had people trying to talk me out of Senna because it's not.

Robin: Because it's not Scala. And then you went talking about Scala because it's not whatever the other one is.

Jason: It had everything to do with the water resistant rating, like whatever the standard is. And the, the Cardo model was like qualified to swim with or something.

Robin: I'm like, dude, I just installed a snorkel on my bike. I could go under four feet now.

Jason: I've done that. So after being a smart ass about that, there's a picture of my motorcycle on the internet, pretty much submerged in water, except for the air box where I've completely been in a puddle. And they're like, yep, well, hell it wasn't underwater. So I can still talk to fine individuals. But yeah, the Senna stuff. And if you're riding in a group, people kind of drop in and out and it doesn't bother it. It just happens, which I think is really slick. So your stuff, Robin, you know, group up at the stop sign and everybody's back to checked in if that's what you want.

Robin: Not a bad thing. That's usually how we try to, but honestly, I want as little interaction with them verbally as possible.

Jason: Well, hopefully somebody's not saying it to you, but it would be nice. You know, if you're the idea that it skips through riders to get, you know, front guy to back guy. Being that we're talking about technology and this, this communication stuff, something that might be interested in, even though you're not, because you're going to be cheap about this. Garmin's new, I think it's on Xumo XT, the two version, and they have a couple other platforms with it that are kind of geared towards side by sides. It has the ability to show you where your buddies are on the map. That's pretty cool. Slicker shit. You basically do all that and then it's, you know, satellite or whatever.

Robin: Does that require any kind of a satellite service subscription or anything like that? It's all just built in.

Jason: Yeah. So the best I can figure out, you're not paying a subscription fee with it from Garmin.

Robin: Somebody has to transmit information about their location upward for it to be projected downward to the next guy. So if that's already included, that's a hell of a service.

Jason: I know, but it's, it's not a cheap thing. And Mark got a new one. I don't know if they bought the latest one, but I was looking at it and it's got like friend tracker or something like that.

Brian: It might be something where they, it's a, it's a kind of a, like a mesh, like on the where they're talking to each other and they can bounce from one to the next.

Robin: They all have to have line of sight with one person in the group for that to work. I might be wrong.

Jason: Maybe you got to pay for something extra because it requires a rating.

Brian: Okay. One thing I've been on a, that's related. I've been kind of getting interested in and I don't know anything about is basically you can buy these ruggedized Android tablets and, and you know, like I use my phone as a GPS. Um, and, but you can buy like a ruggedized Android tablet. So you've got like this, you know, like a seven or 10 inch tablet or whatever mounted on your handlebars. It's rugged. It's waterproof. It can take a beating. And all it does is it sits there and it's a GPS. And because it's an Android tablet, it can do a lot more things than, than like a Garmin or something like that. And they tend to have a lot more capability for, for the buck than, uh, than some of the, you know, the name brands.

Robin: Yeah. Android device. It's still offline. If it has a GPS antenna, you can get the data offline. You're it's going to work.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. It's like grabbing an old phone and making a GPS out of it, which works great. Uh, you know, I've done it a bigger screen. Yeah.

Robin: If you could get like an Android smart television, like a full size, big screen TV. Oh yeah. Then if you can get the GPS, then the mount that on your handlebars, you got 48 inches of freaking GPS information. Right. You don't need reality. Yeah. You don't need to look at those ugly ass roads and stuff. We're going to hybridize virtual reality and reality, reality, and just see what happens. Maybe that's what the safer riding needs. Probably not, but who knows.

Jason: That's why I want a race simulator. So I don't actually have to pay for the race car parts. I don't want to do motorcycling like that, Robin here. I just thought I saw a cool thing in the last two weeks. I'm like, how not to lose your friends. This seems like a good feature.

Robin: I want to take this moment to forcibly tell Jason Araheim, thank you for being here. This has been another episode. Brian, of course, flying the plane and Jason, I want to thank you very much for all the information you've provided Brian on track days and hanging out with us for the episode. I'm going to go make tuna steaks. So with that.