Robin: How are things in the great white north,

Brian: Robin? Things are good.

Robin: Yeah. Are you, I mean, is it covered in snow?

Brian: Not, not right today. Yeah. Like we had, we had to actually really good weather this weekend. And, and, and I spent the entire weekend doing manual labor. Uh, we're putting siding on my house. And so I stood there like a hog, looking at a watch. Um. And doing what little I could to help, uh, my brother in law, Marge's brother, who actually does know what he's doing with house stuff. I don't know what anything like he doesn't know what he's doing with the motorcycle stuff. I don't know what I'm doing with house stuff. So he's helping, or he's doing the siding on the house while I like try to do, uh, try to help. And, uh, I'm doing a bunch of work on his Harley. So

Robin: it's a good trade. Yeah, it's a partial trade, like match made in heaven for that.

Brian: I am sore in place, you know, like I, I work out, I am reasonably active, but I'm, you know, I work at a desk and oh my God, I, I am so sore just from a day of, you know, it's not like we're laying brick, it was just two days of really manual, just up and down ladders, yada, yada,

Robin: but that, I mean, so the two nights ago. Our friends, our neighbors next door, I've got some college friends living next door for the next three months next to us. The wife of that couple wanted to learn backgammon. And this has been a thing. So, two nights ago we went over there and finally, after watching videos, we were going to learn backgammon. So that we could revisit these videos. I held my phone up and I held that phone up for 10 minutes and my arm was in the same position. Do you see where this is going? It doesn't necessarily matter what you're doing, but if you're contorted in any particular fashion for an extended amount of time, you are working muscles. Just by having them exist in a position that is not what they're used to being in.

Brian: Yeah. I haven't driven a nail in probably literally 10 years, everything's screwed together, you know, and, uh, it's like my little hand hurts. I'm such a weenie, you know, you know, I'll get, you know, I'll get used to it. We did, we have one wall done and now we've got three more to go. So,

Robin: well, real quick, let's do some, you know, we got, I know we got the banter going banter. Banter, corrections, website updates, because now we have a nice clean slate outline going on here. I will ask you, have you gotten a ride recently at all?

Brian: I have not. I have done motorcycle mechanicking, but I have not pulled a motorcycle out yet this year. It's bad. Is it keeping you sane? All the wrenching? No. It's helping, but I need to, yeah, I need to, I need to get out of the garage and on, on two wheels. That's the

Robin: methadone and you need the

Brian: real thing. I need the real thing, man. I need to, I need it straight into my head, into my veins. This

Robin: might inspire you a little bit then. From the last episode we recorded, you had asked a question about a product that combined both a jumpstart and a compressor into one item. Lo and behold, click the link. Here we are going to Amazon. Steve Bezos. We're looking for a, I call him Steve. He and I are cool. Okay. There you have it. The Lockithor JA300 Jump Starter with Air Compressor, 1500 Amp 12 Volt Portable Car Battery Booster Pack for up to 7 liters of gas or 4. 5 liter diesel, 150 PSI tire inflator with digital screen, 24 months ultra long standby. Bye. Now. The first thing that came to mind when, uh, by the way, shout out to Seth Leader for finding this for us. Seth Leader, uh, good friend, nice guy, solid individual. He pointed this thing out and he's like, weren't you just looking for something like this? Cause the timing was weird. He listened to that episode and then was on the hunt for this at the same time. The dimensions, trying to wrap my head around this. So it's five and a half inches by just shy of 10 inches wide by about four. Inches tall. And I think that's because of the handle. It's a chalk. It's a chunk, but let's talk about that for a second. Because if you think about the individual components that go into this thing. The benefit of having them independent of one another is that they're going to fit into your bag a little bit more loosely. Like you can actually control what's going to go where, right? However, if you are able to geometrically fit this into one of your bags, it has the same amount of general real estate going on for the two things that are having, that are being put to use. But it's one unit that's combined, which means the, the lithium ion jump battery, which Stays charged forever. Of course. I mean, based on the one that I already have, the jump back, I have, it's still charged now, You don't have to worry about whether or not the compressors run out, which in my case with the, we have the Cyplus 2, we have an article on the site, just look up Cyplus 2 on TRO. Bike. Right. I've got that one. Every time I pull that thing out, it doesn't know if it's charged or not. I have to plug it into something long enough for it to get a charge. And then it's like, okay, we're good to go. We're ready to rock. So that's been the experience this thing would eliminate that problem and it's got a

Brian: giant light on it Yeah, and you can use it to charge devices and so forth. Yeah, it's a little chonky. It's a little chonky and it's got like a big It's got a big handle on it to kind of would you know in a car sure no problem But on a motorcycle it would take up but yeah, this is this is getting there. This is getting to that This is this is getting real close to what what we need You know, and it could work, like, uh, on a lot of day trips, uh, like, we have a rally or something, like, most of my junk is at the hotel, you know, and this would fit or my, you know, this would fit in a saddlebag real easy. You know, it wouldn't there's plenty of room in there for for a lot of the day trips. So.

Robin: I don't think there's power going through that handle either. So I'd just cut

Brian: the handle off. Yeah. You could buzz the handle off and not that people listening in the future, but what I'm seeing is there's like a sale on it that ends in half an hour. So. Oh yeah,

Robin: all right, well it ends in 26 minutes and 37 seconds, 35, 34, 33. That's not good. We have to hurry up. This could be a rush production.

Brian: It's a lightning deal. They have a lightning deal and whether that's coming back or not, I don't know. But anyway.

Robin: It's got two forms. So they have a 1500 amp and a 2000 amp. And I don't, let's see what the dimensions are on the 2000 amp just out of curiosity. That one is, no, it's the same dimensions. Get a higher output, but let's see, this one can do a, an eight liter gas or six liter diesel. If you ever find yourself in the situation where you need to jumpstart five bikes at the same time,

Brian: you do have what an eight liter diesel that you might have to jumpstart. I don't know.

Robin: We have a six, six

Brian: liter diesel. It's conceivable. Back to the outline. So what's this about reverse engineering, Robin?

Robin: Website updates for TRO. bike. I've been sort of going through some older code from an older version of myself and swatching that out. In favor of some new code that I've developed on the side that is sort of pre packaged and ready for all the sites that I've worked on in the past. Some of the same components I've used with other clients are going to be used on TRO. So I had to go into the code, figure out all of the mess that tied this piece of math to that piece of math. And as a result, I immediately saw the weather page collapsed before my very eyes. That strangely enough was when we started getting a lot of hits to the weather page. It was no longer functioning, weather pages back, everything is working. So my notes per se, what do I got? There may be a bug or two in the mix, but for the most part of things back and operational again, and I'm happy about that, which is making my life easier. Nice. Another thing I've been doing is recording a pre tour rant video about like the same stuff we used to do with the Can Am rides. Like, hi everybody, I don't know you, but I'm about to let you follow me on the street. Here's how that is going to go. Right? And I've recorded one that is more. Comedy than anything and another one that's up at a beautiful scenery here in New Mexico. We'll see which one I go with after I produce them both. Nice. And then I see you got some down here for manual labor. Oh yeah. Because you've been doing all that work on the household. Yeah. Good stuff. Brian, you're steering the ship, segment one, what do you feel like

Brian: getting into? One of the ways I'm keeping myself sane through this God awful winter is looking forward to my visit out to truth or consequences, New Mexico to do some writing in April with Robin, with Maggie, with some awesome people. Anyway,

Robin: we'll also get to update our photos for the podcast stuff too. We'll have pictures of us.

Brian: That's true. For a picture, we're going to be in the same place at the same time. I think the last time we were in the same place at the same time, like we may have gotten a picture because we were in Missouri and in a gas station in front of a sign that said Dave's doobies,

Robin: that's the, that's the best I got. That is the best I have for the pocket. It's, it's you in the orange shirt with the suspenders and me and some disco moisture wicking nonsense point at the camera being like, yeah, it'll do for now.

Brian: Yeah. So for this trip, I'm going to fly out. I'm going to, I'm going to try this. I suppose if I had, you know, if I was a real whatever, I just ride out to New Mexico from Indiana. But so what I'm going to do is I'm going to fly into Albuquerque because they've got, they got the airport. Uh, you could fly in El Paso, but it's smaller. Anyway, I ended up renting a motorcycle on twisted road and it's going to be awesome. It's a, they had a lot of bikes, they had more people renting their motorcycles out than, than the other guys. But yeah, it was a little complicated and, uh, there was some problem with the verification. So my rental didn't go through the transaction got flagged by my credit union because they're like, Hey, you don't often rent motorcycles in Albuquerque. What the hell? Uh, sorted that out, had to go back anyway, throughout it all, the support people at Twisted Road were really fantastic, got things sorted out. I mean, it would have been nice to, to just kind of self serve, but you know, that, that requires coding solutions and sticking together things for a lot of different contingencies.

Robin: That's the thing about website design though, is when it comes to what they've done, okay, yes, we have to see it progress. Yeah. It has to get better. So they've done a thing. It's a statically placed site that you can access and, and you can get the bikes. It will happen. You can rent the bike. However, no website should ever give you any kind of vibe of. Look, uh, you have to understand, you know, the complications that come into play, you need to, all those sloppily mal measured cogs that are happening behind the screen, those have to be invisible to the viewer so that what we know is a guaranteed, uh, rental. You know, Hey, uh, let me, let me explain is not something that any website visitor wants to deal

Brian: with. And I understand like, and some of the, some of the scenes showed a little bit, but that, you know, the people, uh, the people there really took care of it and, and, and took care of the problem. No doubt. They are pretty cool. Yeah. And, and the thing is, you know, they're putting together, okay. So they, they not only have to deal with credit card issue, you know, PC, you know, deal with managing people's credit card data or not managing credit, you know, getting, getting payments and all that stuff. But they also have like a, an insurance company that has to like, look at you and approve, you know, is this guy just some schmuck who never rides or is this, is this somebody who's Got some history. You kind of have to give your writing resume and so forth. Somebody has to review that. And I guess the automated, the automated decision came back. Like it, I don't know what happened. And, and then they, and then they, they're like, well, I didn't make any sense. And they, and they did it again. It was fine. So I got approved to do that. So now that I'm in their system and it's all working the next time I rent a bike from twisted road, it's going to be a smooth silk. I'm sure. Uh, the owner of the bike. That I'm, uh, renting in April is, has, has been really cool. He actually asked me, uh, Hey, you want me to put some knobby tires on that? You're going to, you're going to go do some dirt. And I'm like, well, probably not. There's a chat was what a guy, you know, like what kind of tires do you want, sir?

Robin: That is kind. That is really nice of him to decide. So it sounds like you worked your general social magic just to get in good with whoever you're working with there, which is really hip. You have that effect on people. I don't doubt that that's gone well so far. I will say, however, as I said before, there's a chance on the very last day, at the end of the out and back route, it could become a loop if you decide you want to try to connect the dots and do something. Which may turn out to be pretty amazing, especially since GBW is bringing his, uh, his, uh, speaking of which, what did you, what did you rent?

Brian: I got a BMW F700GS. It's about the size of a V Strom. Same kind of about like that. So it's not like a hardcore, but it's, it can do a little bit of, uh, But yeah, if he's got some new magic, fantastic BMW or whatever he's got, I don't know what he's doing, but yeah, if he's coming out on something like that, maybe I

Robin: highly doubt he's going to be doing 60, 70 thirties for 700 miles a day though, he's cranking a big ride here. I think he's a madman, but that's all right.

Brian: Just, I'm going to throw this out into the universe and see if somebody throws it back like they did with the, uh, uh, with the, with the jump starter. But, uh, I really want to find like a backpack or a bag that I could carry on the Southwest flight and I can like stuff my helmet into the bottom of it and a few other things in the top of it and then throw it in the overhead and in your, in your average, uh, 737 and go somewhere with that. Cause I don't want, you know, I. Checking my helmet is not happening. You know, I need that with me.

Robin: If you go to TRO. bike, yes, it's a sport touring

Brian: website. What is it called again? Robin, TRO.

Robin: bike, TRO. bike, the riding obsession. And if you type into the search bar, which is still loading, cause my internet's been slow today. Dry bag ditty. And that's D I T T Y, dry bag ditty. You're gonna see an article I wrote, I'm sorry, that I composed About dry bags, their usefulness, and their general utilitarian ease of organization That article points to a really good dry bag that is just a giant open can of keep it dry. No water get any or what's I something catchy. I don't know, but the point is that that bag is the way to go. If you get one of those, it is huge and you can fit everything in there for one go. You'll knock on the heads of every person that you walk by in the aisles. It'll be great. I

Brian: actually have a 40 liter dry bag. Yeah, that could do it. I, uh, I don't know if it'd be really, it'd be good. It'd be good for checked luggage because yeah, I'm going to have to check something. And then, uh, that's what I was planning on doing. I wanted something to carry on the plane. It's a little different. Yeah, I think I've got an S. W. Motec dry bag. It's, it's something and it's a 40 liter.

Robin: 40 liters is good. I think I've got a 40. So if you organize things that are going into it in their own separate bags and manage to shape them to the contours of that, you're pretty much gold.

Brian: Like if you can squish it. Yeah. Like you can kind of mold and squish things and change the shape a little bit and make it soft enough where you can, you can cram it in there. It'll be all right. Like, uh, yeah, that's the

Robin: great thing about compression bags is. Electronics, cameras, computers, compression bags make it great. Cause you could just fold the computers into the shape you need them to be. And yeah,

Brian: the, um, helmet is technically a tiny bit too tall for a, uh, A fit and a carry on, but I've seen people in Southwest spring, like live goats. I mean, nobody cares that people are bringing stuff, ridiculous things. I think a helmet that's like half an inch taller than the 10 inch limit is going to be fine. Probably.

Robin: I also like that the idea is to be the bike. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Be the bike. So if your sport touring bike has two saddle bags and a top case, then you can have two small bags. And a backpack. So those three combined are the way to like, that's how I would do it. I would have a bag on my back, two bags and, you know, one in each hand. I would be the bike. No, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Brian: no. Where your boots onto the plane. Some people are like, Oh, you should wear your, wear your jacket on. And it was like, no, that's going into carry on. I'm not going to wear my jacket. My, you know, anyway, let's talk about listener questions.

Robin: I got a good one, and I'm pretty sure that if I can just get the momentum going, you'll pick up the baton as a know how kind of guy when it comes to bikes. The question is, I don't know this guy. I, I just yanked this off of Facebook on a forum, uh, a Facebook page that I'm a part of 'cause it belongs to my bike. All right, so this is regarding an R 1200 or R 1250 Rs BMWR 1200 Rs BMWR 1250 Rs. This one goes out to Ian who is not going to hear this or whatever, or maybe he will, let's find out. He says, guys, some help, please. I've installed a hex easy canned and auxiliary lights on my RS. And I'm wondering if I'll ever be able to refit the rear pillion seat without some serious rework. Can I please have some advice on how this has been successfully accomplished? So there's a picture here. And I remember being at this point in my. Wrenching and wiring expertise where whatever came in the packaging has to be kept intact, forcibly stuffed into a small area on a small machine. So the, even though it's a big bike, it's still a bike and motorcycles don't have a surplus of storage space. They're not a U Haul. So he has taken this. Easy can, which Brian, the easy can system is basically a way to get by the can bus or not to get by. It's a, it's a fully vetted or sanctioned way by BMW and other companies that make use of a can bus. Anybody who uses an ECU, there's usually some system that allows you to plug into that ECU. So long as you spend the 300 times more than you should have to, to get the thing that allows you to do so you have to buy the product connected to the system and it's all plug and play, which, okay, good, good on you. That's cool. It always comes with about 30 feet more wiring than you need. And this person, I'm guessing that Ian doesn't necessarily like to cut and splice and create connections and go through the motions of getting things sized for the bike. So he's got the whole thing under the seat. That's where, if it were me, if it were me, I'd say cut, cut, splice, reconnect and size to suit. That's what I would do.

Brian: What do you got, Brian? The easy can, the actual device is that little, I'm looking at their website too, and I am like in like, in real time learning about what the hell this thing does, you know, so it's actually, it's a small device. It's about the size of a, about the size of your average vape. You know, someone's, someone's sucking on a vape. That's about how big it is, and it's got a bunch of wires coming out of it. It looks like it needs a wire going in from the can, you know? Pulling power and acting like I'm, I'm just a happy, perfectly compliant CAN bus device drawing only what I should draw, feed me electrons. And

Robin: reporting what I'm drawing so that you can have that data. Here's how much draw I'm using so that you can recalculate how you let people ride on the weekends to a Starbucks.

Brian: It's actually a really small device, but what I'm seeing here is, and again, I'm, I'm just guessing I'm going, I'm learning this in real time. There's a whole bunch of excess wire for that, that he's not really using. You can cut and splice wires in the middle. So you get like a wiring harness, something like that. There's going to be two wires in there, maybe three.

Robin: When you say that somebody who knows enough to get themselves in trouble or have a problematic opinion. That person is going to tell you, Oh, you don't want to do that either because the impedance of the wires can create a specific voltage draw. And if the computer doesn't get the right report, uh, you know, and no, no, this is coming from a person, me specifically who. Screw the CAN bus, I went around it directly to the battery. So I did exactly what I, you know, I did a relay into a fuse block and ran it directly to the battery and I never looked back and it's never been a problem. People like to buy these things. I have no need for it. I get that they want, they're concerned about. Computer behavior, things like that. And back to what you were saying,

Brian: basically unplug everything you can unplug. I I'm, I'm sure it's made so that you don't have to have, uh, there's probably 15 feet of wiring in that. And it's all jacketed with this. Beautiful, uh, abrasive protective. Oh, it's lovely. It's beautiful. He's only running a pair of driving lights with it. You could probably remove most of that. Yeah. So you don't need to unplug in all the options and yeah, cutting wires in the middle and splicing them, you know, once you know how to do it, if you're using good crimps, uh, and you stagger them so they don't form a big blob in the middle and so forth, that's all a skill that you need to learn. Uh, the other thing is the jacketing on these is kind of that Chinese finger trap stuff. So one thing, a lot of people don't know is that you can kind of slice off that there's a little bit of heat shrink near the end. Like if you look near the plug, there's a little bit of heat shrink transitioning from that, uh, jacketing to, and you can just see a little bit of the bare wire, pull that off. And then you can expand the jacketing and pull it off of there. If that would help make things better.

Robin: Yeah. And then as Brian has said in the past, then you can put it back together with amalgamating amalgamating. Amalgamating

Brian: tape. Amalgamating. So that would be one way to get in there and then shorten those wires, get something that really works for you. And the other thing, if you really want to kind of get into the advanced class, learn how to de pin connectors, uh, sometimes that helps too, you can de pin the connectors, and a lot of these things, uh, I don't know for these connectors, maybe BMW connectors are weird, but figure out what they are and where you get them. They don't look like Metropack or Weatherpack or

Robin: something like that. I think coming up with those connectors is a whole language by itself. Like they're using some standard Latin that amounts to the geometry and the click points that these things have. But when you look at them, it's, it is, it's like to translate that back, like to reverse engineer that visually into what is it, how would you describe this triangular connection with three outlets to anybody?

Brian: There's a website. Uh, this is a, this is a guy from Canada who lives in Japan and. He didn't know when he, anyway, the website is called Eastern Beaver, easternbeaver. com. This guy has access to all the different weird little connectors that the Japanese OEMs use. Another popular one I've run into on Harley's is a Deutsch Connectors. It's a brand of connector. You know, you can get the connector shell kits and connectors and you can get the crimper that you need and all that stuff to make factory connections that are watertight. That's one way to really customize, get exactly the wire length you need without it, all that extra junk.

Robin: Or another good one is wire nuts. Not everybody's into the wire nuts thing, but I do say that those Wago connectors, they're just, uh, flip up tabs, put bare wire into each outlet, climp them down. Shout out to Tim Clark about that one, because quite frankly, it has made my wiring that much easier. Now I just strip the wire, put them in the thing. They're not waterproof though. That's the thing. If you're going to use those, they need to go under something because they're not designed to like go swimming. Next segment, Brian, you got a new helmet. And you've got some really cool ideas for the helmet manufacturers out there. Let's see if we can claim this as our own and, uh, sue them when the time comes, when they steal our ideas from tear at a

Brian: bike. Rob and I have a confession to make. I have a diseased head. I have a cranium that is misshapen. The thing that contains my brain is just a lumpy mess. And, and so I have hellish problems finding helmets that actually work. You know, I want to go buy a motorcycle helmet. I can't just like order up a shoeie.

Robin: Is the natural form of your skull augmented

Brian: reality? It's something like that. It's like, damn it. I would just want to buy a helmet. You know, I had literally tried everything. Anyway, so right now at this point in time, the only high end helmet that fits me is, I don't know why, I don't know how, but it's the AGV K6. And so I had an AGV K6, five or six hundred dollar helmet, um, bought it three years ago. And it's kind of like, Worn out. It's got a lot of miles on it. I mean, three years is about all I can get out of a helmet.

Robin: That's normal. That's not, I mean, cause you and I write a

Brian: lot. The, before that one came out, the only helmet that fit me was this cheap for a hundred dollar helmet. The thing was fantastic, but it was a bell qualifier. That was the only helmet on the planet that fit me. I went through three of them. Probably if I had tried to do a track day, they probably wouldn't let me on the

Robin: track. The Arise are more transformable. You can sort of deconstruct the padding and order different pads to take their place. The helmet you buy is of course the standard specs for their measurement system, but that after the fact you can sort of pick and choose what contours. We're going to get to your theory in a second here, but.

Brian: I had an Arai salesman, uh, I think he was, if he wasn't in tears, he was close to tears. I went to an Arai dealer. I was like, I have money on hand. I will exchange for, we can even order the helmet. I just need to find something that fits. And this poor guy, I mean, he did his best.

Robin: Was he just like, why would God do this to a man's head? Yeah,

Brian: yeah. I feel so sorry for you, sir. Nothing Arai had would fit me. You know, and they pulled the liner out and check this blah, blah, blah, nothing showy has something now called, and I just learned about this and I saw a video on it. It's called showy personal fitting system or PFS. Yes. You basically go to a showy dealer. That's that has a guy or somebody certified in this, you make them make an appointment and they basically do what you were just talking about. They take a showy helmet. If you already bought your showy helmet and it's not that old or stinky, you can bring it in and have them do this, but they take the liner out and they have a system where they can measure your head, document and map all the lumps, and they can cut and insert pads around, you know, between the EPS line and your liner. They like position the eye line of the helmet. It's not just for comfort. You know, they get the helmet like sitting correctly on your

Robin: head. You're standing inside a Hadron Collider and just all of a sudden you hear boom. And they've got the thing you need.

Brian: It's basically a pretty simple measurement device and some special training and some very basic materials. And it's like 80 bucks, which. I would pay 80 bucks for a helmet that feels good and fits.

Robin: Yeah, we're adults. Our heads aren't going to change that much. Like to have the data for future references is going to, that's going to guide us to the next time. And if, if Shoei is now devising a system where they're able to match contours that they didn't use to match a lot of people, myself included, I had jumped ship for Arai because I put on the Arai helmet and I was able to get there. The exact fit for my head shape and showy. They don't typically have that variety of head shapes available to their helmet structure. So if they're starting to come up with their own system to do this, I just see that as a stair step in competition. That's for the better. They're now saying, okay, fine. We'll level up the game. You want better? We'll show you. We can now fit everybody by way of personal assistance.

Brian: It's very reasonably priced. Uh, you know, The only problem at the current time is there's only like 12 of these in the U S and of course, like everything else in motorcycling. And this is another rant. It everything's in fricking California. I think it was bell for a while. It was like 1, 200, but bell had a process for a while where you could go into room. You could get your cranium laser scanned. And then they had like. Chimpanzees would carve out the perfect helmet for you, but it was ridiculously expensive and very difficult to get. And this is like you buy your helmet and it's like 80 bucks on top of that. And it's, it's fairly low tech, but it's, you know, they can fine tune that liner with different pieces of foam and cut and shape it and so forth to get it sitting on your head. Right. They'll figure out where your eyes are and make sure you're. Eyeline is in the right spot. Stuff like that. Like a lot of people, the helmet sits too low. And so if they move the helmet up a bit, then you can see better. It really needs to spread. I would, showy helmets are just jewelry. I would love to buy a showy helmet. I just can't. I've, I've had them before and then they stopped making the only one that fit me. I would go back to showy in a heartbeat. And then that led to my, my spray cheese idea. Maybe someone in China is already making this. Well, here's my idea. It's a concept. Please take it and run with it, whoever you are. You open up your box from wherever. You get a helmet shell. You get a plastic bag of some sort. You get, like, a helmet liner. And then you get a can of this, like, spray cheese foam or something like that. You know, the spray cheese you put on crackers and stuff. Problem is

Robin: you keep saying it. Now I just want to eat crackers with spray cheese for the next hour and a half.

Brian: So you put the plastic bag over your head, poke some air holes, put the helmet liner on, put the helmet on, and then you bring in a good friend to plug in the can of spray cheese, light the fuse, the cheese or the foam, like spreads through the helmet in a controlled manner, hopefully. It needs

Robin: to be, it needs to be rapid fire, man. Rapid fire. It needs to be like. Grenade. Yeah. Yeah. It needs to be like the fire foam that they use to . Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? Like, it's just like, and then all of a sudden the whole helmet's just, you're just sitting there like, Ugh, you know, I was supposed to think of like airbags in a car. It's like, are you ready? Okay, now, now this is gonna take a little bit,

Brian: so I, yeah. So, and then you wait five minutes, the, the, the spray cheese or the foam hardens, pull it off. You end up with a perfectly fitted helmet. I mean, wouldn't that be cool? And a small hitting. Uh, you know, what's a little chemical poisoning, uh, or formaldehyde.

Robin: Are you bleeding from the other ear? No. Well, then be grateful.

Brian: Yeah, you're fine. And you can put speakers in there and everything. My other idea is just. You stick your head into this box and then like a robot scans your head. I

Robin: would spend upwards of 500 bucks for a one time moment of having them send me that, go through those motions, and then you mail it back to them. Realistically, yeah, that kind of thing could work. That does go south for some, though. Sometimes you'll Like for earplugs or something like that. And you, you put the foam in and you start fiddle faddle them with your jawline or whatever, cause you're just like sitting there and you're not sure. And you're not sure what it's just working. And then you send it off and you get like 600 worth of, this is uncomfortable. However, I think the concept of sound, I think it's a, this is a great

Brian: thing. Speaking about my head being weird, um, I have like really huge ear canals. So I had to like seek out special earplugs. What? And like custom earplugs don't work. Whenever I move my jaw at all, it breaks the seal and the custom earplugs don't work anymore. I have

Robin: no way to bridge this next topic. The structure now says anecdotal chit chat. So, uh, how you doing, man? Chin over wrist or counter steering or counter weighting or counter weight steering or steering with counters? I don't remember which one's which. I always forget. There's counter steering, there's counter weighting. One is when you're leaning away from the direction you're steering in. Who cares? The point is, chin over wrist or the opposite of that. Let's say it that way. What do you have to say on the matter in taking a corner?

Brian: I mean, if you're taking a corner at speed, sure, the idea being get to the inside of the corner somehow, move your carcass, bring your ass off to the side, and create more of a safety zone for yourself, you know? Okay. But counter leaning, I think is what you were talking about, where you have to lean the bike left and you're leaning off to the right because you're maneuvering at slow speed, that kind of thing. It's real common off road too, to do that. It's just, it's kind of like, there's all these mnemonics that people come up with and all these words that people, everybody defines in their own way. Like. Like, one of the things I just won't talk about is counter steering because it's automatically an argument because everybody has a different idea of what it is. Yes, it's not worth talking about. It's just not worth having that argument. Whoa, what's counter steering? I never counter steer in blah, blah, blah. It's like oil or tires. You can start an online argument just by trying to discuss counter steering. It's like, it's not even worth talking about.

Robin: You're talking about having the talk and I want to get a little bit more into the forest talk and discussion of it because yes, there's an argument out there and I would like to, for us to discuss the argument because there's a ton of confusion about which one's which I don't even remember right now. I do know that chin over wrist is a known way of stating that you're leading forward and in John Del Vecchio from cornering confidence and street skills. Good guy. Great course. Well mentioned in a variety of different planes and, but the idea is kiss the mirror is what he would say, chin over wrist, kiss the mirror point is that you're bringing your chin to the hand in the direction of travel that you're turning in and using a little bit of body weight off the bike. And I've heard people say, well, if you do that, you're more likely to get pulled over because it looks like you're riding aggressively. Okay. I don't care. I'm going to do it anyhow, because I like doing it. And the opposite being, I don't know, counterweighting countersteering counterbalance, who gives a crap. But the point is you're leaning. Opposite the direction of the turn definitely handy in dual sport. My response is I don't care I do not care if you go 90 miles an hour through a curve and you are leaning opposite the direction of the bike So long as you enter the curve with a smile on your face You exit fully conscious and aware with the same smile on your face It doesn't matter you found a way through the turn. There is no this is how you do that There are no absolutes. There's simply the method you chose before that turn and successfully got through

Brian: the curve. And hopefully it worked out for you. You know, you didn't run out of ground clearance or whatever. One thing I, one thing I saw pointed out not long ago in a, in, in one of those, uh, F9, Fort nine videos. And one thing he did point out was when you're going chin over wrist, you are giving up some vision. You can't see as much to me. That was a learning moment. I'm like, you know, right. I didn't realize that. This is the way to create more safety margin, so you're not running out of cornering clearance, but I completely disagree.

Robin: You've always wanted to have a fight, we're having one. Alright. If I'm taking a lefty, and I go chin over wrist, my eyes can only see stereoscopically what they're pointed at in any direction no matter what. Now maybe to my right There's going to be more handlebar and windscreen, but my actual field of view, looking where I'm going, sees a horizon that's wider to my general left than it did before. It's just a different vantage. It's not any less vision. I like fort nine plenty. I also agree with most people that disagree with him, so it's cool. It's just a way. The either or, the this or that, it must be one or the other. That is in my own terminology, crap

Brian: tastic. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. There's not like a, anybody making pronouncements about the right and the wrong ways is, is wrong. Anybody who

Robin: says this way or that way, that's usually the time when people will step in. And that's when they say, what I learned was that you do it like this. And then it's like, you just missed the entire point of what we said. There are no absolutes. Oh yeah. I hear you. What I learned was that this is the way it's just shut up.

Brian: Yeah. If you're on a twisty road to mountains, two lane road and so forth. Get low, kiss the mirror, whatever you call it, smooch the chin over wrist. That's fine. That's great. And if you're in the city and so forth, maybe being able to sit up straight and look around and be paranoid is more important in that context. That's beautiful. It just depends. You know, like I write like the perfect bike to ride in a city is a KLR 650 because you can take potholes. You're you're sitting up high. It looks weird. You know, I like looking weird because people look at you. That height does help. I think. But yeah, you're railing along a 2 lane so forth. Smooch the, uh. The grip or whatever, uh, that's fine. That may be the perfect way to, to smile the most as you ride.

Robin: That was almost a two headed coin right there.

Brian: The way this works is first out of the coin is we have a problem. What's the answer? Quick. What do you do? The other side of the coin, we flip it over. We explain. And why all right, you're bopping along out in the middle of nowhere. You're having a great day. Suddenly the sign says bridge out. What the, what do you do? Evil can evil.

Robin: I mean, how fast are we approaching this bridge out and how many notifications did we get? Cause I mean, I'm not, it's

Brian: not, what are you going to do Duke boys? No, let's bridge out. And the bridge is more than like 30 feet away.

Robin: Okay. So, you know, it's common. You're coming to a stop is what you're saying.

Brian: Yeah. You're coming to a stop. I will answer first. Fast answer back and forth. Oh, Hey, a bridge out sign. I'm going to go see if the bridge is there. What are you going to do, Robin?

Robin: I'm going to go check. You're

Brian: going to go check. Okay. Yes. We're on the same page. The long answer is a lot of times you can get a motorcycle through there that you couldn't get a truck or, you know, whatever through if no one's looking, especially no one's looking. Hey,

Robin: that's the idea. If it's what, like a quarter mile in and you've got a slow pace and you're just kind of keeping an eye, looking out for the landmines, whatever's going on with this thing. And you get to the point where, Oh, they've shut down both lanes, but they left the concrete and the rod iron in, and I'm light and I can make this. And I see the road ahead. I'm going to go for it. And then you of course see. Who out of nowhere shows up with his truck and he's been doing this all the time. Anyhow, they don't know what they're doing. These people, they keep taking taxes and yeah, and all that crap. I'll go check it out and then carry on. But the more interesting discussion comes in the form of you didn't know that bridge was out and it is definitely out here. I am. I'm actually recording this hangry as we've discussed. I could eat. I'm hungry. I'm sitting here and now I've arrived at a bridge. I know that my lunch stop is five miles up, but I'm gonna have to go around. Either I'm gonna have to find some crap ass gas station lunch. Or I'm gonna have to go I've got no phone signal? My GPS, I haven't updated the maps in over a half year. So I'm not even sure if that restaurant was still there in the first place. What are, what am I doing now? I know that I'm going to have to look at the map, figure out, see what's what, what goes around this way, what goes around that way, which roads are still there and are real on my map and which roads aren't worth the risk because they look like they're all probably actually a driveway, that kind of thing. Yeah. That's where, you know, keep calm, carry on and frick sake, keep snacks on your bike. I always have food on my bike. Keep food on the bike. These things will happen. Do not be angry with the ride leader. They did not invent the roads that you're on. Yeah. Keep snacks on the

Brian: bike. And I will point out there is, there are many times when a bridge out sign is fricking awesome. If you remember in Missouri on Highway 32, the bridge was out just outside of Piedmont for 32, which is an epic mountain sweeper road. Take the word epic and make it all capitals. 72 point. This was a surprise, but we were able to basically route Around on letter roads, figure out, or, you know, figure things out, blah, blah, blah, blah. And get to the other end of 32 where it plugs into whatever the hell that road is over there. Anyway, bridge out. What's that mean? No traffic. My God, it was sublime. How many times did we go back and

Robin: forth? We did it three times total. Tires

Brian: fried to the edges, you know, all blue and crispy and Oh God, it's just wonderful. And the bridge out was great because it really was out and there was nobody else there.

Robin: There's an article on TRO. Bike about Idaho, it's a long one because of some events that took place. That article, which I think I've spoken about in the past. I think I even looked, used it as an opener for an episode, riding Idaho 21. They've been working on that and they would close it down for lengths of time. And somebody called me up to the front where there were two more motorcyclists that I didn't know. And we had to wait for 45 minutes, which means when they opened it up and they sent me ahead, you'll see the camera footage that all of that. Yeah, it's, it's just, here you go, go do you one car oncoming that I passed the entire time in 30 minutes of footage, the scale down to a five minute video or 10 minute video or something.

Brian: When the heavens give you things like this, you take them gladly with both hands. No hanging around

Robin: the gift reasons a person like me might think, yeah, maybe I'll go to church this week. Why not see what it's all about. After that, I owe somebody a Sunday sandwich. Hey, I'll tell you what, this has been fun, but we've managed to make the time.

Brian: I think Robin, you need to go get yourself a sandwich or something. It's what's

Robin: happening.

Brian: All right. You go get yourself a sandwich. I'll go get myself an ibuprofen, man.