Brian: Robin, how the hell are you? I am good. Thanks for asking. How about yourself? Pretty good. Finally got a little bit of riding weather, and it's mid-February here in Indiana, and finally got about three days of riding weather this week, and it was glorious. It was glorious, and I'm still working on siting my house. This is going to go on for like months probably. I I'm sore. I ache everywhere. Been up and down ladders for the last two weekends in a row. The house looks so much better already. Oh, that's good. I'll be glad to see the end of that project. Yeah, and I just, you may recall that I once advised you on buying a battery for your BMW because it was like dead, and you wouldn't invent it. Oh, yeah. And so we went, and we ended up going to O'Reilly Auto Parts because O'Reilly has, their battery supplier is Deka or Eastern Penn. They make most of their batteries here in the U.S. for motorcycles and so forth, and they're a little bit better, I think. I really like their AGM batteries. They have these big chunky lead terminals. You know, they don't have that little tiny weak sauce crap, you know, other batteries. Usually they're really good batteries. The battery in my bike is four years old. The previous owner put it in, and it's starting to get a little sketchy. I had to use a jump starter one, so that's it. Does it have any obvious corrosion? It does.

Robin: With a specific flavor on the outside of the connection points?

Brian: Yeah, it's kind of minty, I would say. It's kind of minty on the positive terminal. Looking a little green there, but it's still working. So anyway, I rock down to O'Reilly. I pull the old battery out because core charges is $10, and who wants to deal with that? I go in, you know, blah, blah, blah, get the battery, put the new battery in, struggle, struggle, get the terminals. You know how it is. And basically, the new battery has 10.8 volts. It's pretty much dead out of the box. Did it have a couple bad sales on arrival? It was several months old, which, you know, is to be expected in early spring. But anyway, I took it back in, and that's when it started. The guy really took it personally that his wonderful battery that he sold me, he just... Would he not accept it? Oh, he accepted it, but he didn't like it much. But he took it very personally that his battery... I was like, dude, this battery's got 10.8 volts. It's dead. It's done. Stick a fork in it. Well, don't stick a fork in it, but this thing is done. And yeah, he got a little spicy with me. So anyway, got the deed done, got it returned, put the old battery back in the bike. It still works, kind of, even though it's kind of turning green on one end. Here's my money. Give me a battery that works. Come on, people.

Robin: The current logic is extremely the seller is the customer at the same time. They are both the victimizing and the victimized. I don't understand. I am honestly working hard to make this podcast the more positive experience for the listener, but there's just so much that you can look at and be like, why in this world right now? Let's double back on you for a second, though, with the battery that you said you feel that's the better battery. Okay, one, I love a battery that has double angle terminal connections. It has the top and the like if it's an upright battery, it's on top. If it's on its back, it's on the front. Yeah, and this one has that. Yeah, it does. Okay. So number two, what is this thing threading into? Does it have like a nut on the inside or does it allow for that little dowel that has the dual threads on the side and top? Which one is it using?

Brian: The battery you put in your BMW has these giant chunky lead terminals with holes in them. Yeah. Now the one that fits on my Yamaha, it's this tiny little booger.

Robin: Well, that's what we replaced on the Beamer too. Remember because we pulled out my original battery from it was like, yeah, you pulled out a little like it was a matchbox car. Yeah. It said Atari on it and it was like, oh, this has Pac-Man on it, you know, and then it had a bunch of styrofoam under it. And you were like, well, let's just ditch that and get this flex capacitor.

Brian: Yeah. And when you started your bike, it was, it was genuinely frightening how fast it cranked. I mean, that thing that took care of the problem.

Robin: That was my next point was that the people at the store, they open the box, they pull the battery out, they check the charge. Yeah, we should have confirmed at 13, you know, between 12 and 14 volts, put it back in the box and take it. So they didn't do that.

Brian: Nope. He just took, took the new one out of the box, put it on the counter, put the old battery in the box and off I went. It's a well-built battery. It's, it's got like these really thick brass terminals on this particular model, but yeah, they go at different angles. Well-designed battery. This particular one was just, you know, dad, it was done. But anyway, so what I have to do now is I have to go around to, there are like six O'Reilly stores around Indianapolis. One of them has got to have a good one. So I'll go in with my volt meter and poke it and see what I get. So one day I will have a battery. I yeah, but the one that's in the bike is still working sort of, but I carry my jumper and yeah, that's not a good way to live.

Robin: Well, let's talk about tour planning. Cause I know that's going to be in the mix on this episode. I'll give you an example. Lodging. Planning tours is time-consuming and the communication, depending on the number of days, eventually at some point it might take an unexpected turn. In my case, here comes the New Mexico tour.

Brian: Yes.

Robin: And everybody is already paid because I already got the quote. The quote on one stay is situated. So I knew what I could bill everyone and did so accordingly. That has not changed except that now, thank you for that quote. I understand that there's a time limit and it's it, let me give you my money. Let's get this taken care of. Let's get everything squared away. I have that money. It is dedicated to your establishment. Thank you so much for these rooms. Here's the credit card number. Yada, yada. All right. I get a voicemail. We couldn't bill the card because it comes up as prospective fraud. That's all right. That means that my bank's trying to protect me from you in case that were the case. All right. Call the bank. I get any variation of randomly assigned American name and discuss that I'm trying to make a payment for something. This is legit. And they see a figure that is half the sum of the total figure that had been trying to go. They try to put that through twice. I think that's just a system they have. I didn't recognize that figure. Some should have been this amount, which was that times two. Okay. Well tell them to try again. So I call them up and say, Hey, give it another go. They try again. It does not work. I call the bank back. I have to do a call back cause I'm on hold. Okay, fine. I'm starting to get just a little bit like it's my money and I want you to have it. Please. Let's get through the motions here.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: This ends up at a point where I've got my bank on speakerphone and the hotel on speakerphone and I'm sitting between the phones while they duke it out. And I can tell you right now that the establishment said that they had tried to run the card again. And I know that they did not because they were worried they were going to get flagged as a fraud source or make themselves put themselves on some kind of a list. And my frustration with this came with a conversation of we're not sure we want you to come stay here, keeping as calm as can be. I'm just like, I really don't want that to be the case. This is, there are other solutions, but I'm not interested in a situation where I say, hi there, I'm planning a trip for multiple rooms. This was money in your pocket. Sure. There's a deadline for which we can pay to make those rooms, you know, keep those rooms on hold me. Here's the source for those funds. Them were unable to do that. You have five days to recover from this on your own. We are being victimized here, even though we're the business that is trying to provide you with a service. I can't, I just, there's, this is part of tour planning. If you're going to plan professional tours, this is one of the things you have to sit through and hope to God doesn't create a massive fracture in the effort. And yeah, I feel you. It's like, there's a lot of that in the air right now and to remain positive and try to keep these amazing, wonderful events happening, getting a battery. Come on. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that happened. It's the same thing where it's like you had to deal with, oh, I'm not sure if I believe, dude, I was just here five minutes ago. I don't remember you. Can you prove that in court? Come on. You want to have a, do I have a debate about it?

Brian: I was literally right in front of the door, like with the seat off the bike, you know, I like, I, I took it, you know, but yeah, I get it. But yeah, that was minor. Yeah. And, and you would, it is a thing, you know, hotels like that, their job is to sell rooms to people and somehow they really seem to get in the way. The essential one, you, you, you couldn't get to the person who could say yes. And it's kind of, you know, this, that's not that unusual where somebody is making bookings for a group.

Robin: And I don't, I don't know why they think that's something new and novel and weird, but well, in their defense, the person who was actually taking the call at that time is a, they're all, they've all been sweet and lovely over the phone for the most part. But it seems that her frustration points come with the very same pleasant voice that, you know, like there's no sign of disturbance until it's just too late. So I was frustrated that I was like, can you explain to me what system you're using for the, yeah, whatever. Anyhow, that's a long opening. Let's get cool. Let's have a good time now. Let's have a positive hang here. What do you want to talk about?

Brian: Segment one, something really interesting popped into my email, uh, last week. And it was, uh, there's like two big motorcycle rental websites, twisted road and writer's share. And it was a very small detail, but it's something that really caught my eye. And, uh, they have something they're calling writer's share experiences. And I was like, Ooh, what's that? And the idea is basically you can sign up to be an, uh, experience giver, I guess, or a guide or something. And so using their bike plat, they're the kind of the same platform. You can sign up to be a guide or a experience or something. And, um, and, and sign up some people and take them out for a ride and show them a good time that can, I gather there's not a lot of details on the website, but I thought it was a really super interesting idea. And we have different perspectives building off of that as a professional tour guide. What do you think of that? And me as a guy who likes to go out and lead rides with, with good friends, does taking a bunch of strangers out sound kind of interesting? I'm not sure.

Robin: Well, I'm booting up the page right now. Where will you ride in her location? You know, if I put in, uh, let's see here, let's put in Wisconsin. Writershare.com forward slash experiences forward slash Wisconsin. Okay. So there's the Lake Michigan, Lakeshore, the tip of the mitt and the tour, the Chicago land coast. Oh, okay. It's saying from $0. I guess there's a pricing system going on here. Fascinating. Yes. Yeah.

Brian: Yeah. So you're as the guide or the experience, uh, giver, uh, you earn money from people signing up for this.

Robin: Now here I am on the next page about the Lake Michigan Lakeshore tour, which is a new listing. And they're saying from $250 for a group, the person who is hosting it is Mark.

Brian: Okay.

Robin: So first off, shout out to Mark. Good on you. No beef, no negativity, but not everybody knows Mark. Not everybody knows Robin third person and not everybody knows Brian. So how do we know what makes Mark tick as a motorcycle ride leader? You know, I do see a great bike, probably a competent guy who knows how to put on a good show and keep everybody going, but that's going to be the trick is where's the vetting, uh, right here. It says I'm a retired merchant Marine officer who loves to ride motorcycles, hunt fish and travel. My first bike was a 1971 Kawasaki H1. Okay. So on down the line, he's got to sit information in there. He's got a verified email address, verified phone number, verified license to successful bookings. And you know, a lot of how we got our tours started was just by convincing friends to help me find out if I've got it, what it takes. And then they gave me the head nod to say, yeah, you need to build on this. And here we are. The question becomes what is any ride leader? What are they doing to ensure that you're getting what you want from the ride and surviving the entirety of it? Anybody who's going to be leading or writing sweep on a TRL tour is onsite CPR and first aid trained. So we've got a spot X, which if I need to contact somebody, it is direct to satellite communication, just sucking down battery and giving me a permanent ability to smell sound. But it works and it's got an emergency beacon in case you need a $70,000 helicopter ride to the nearest Mickey D's, whatever it is. I want to make sure that what's at stake is allotted for. I know that we ride spirited. I know that not everybody on a TRL tour rides as fast as the next guy. And that's a good thing to know that they're riding inside their own personalized limits. But I also want to know that if anything were to happen, that I can call in the Calvary and make sure you get to play chess the next morning. Ultimately, my goal is for that not to happen at all. So I'm excited to see this. I think this is a wonderful thing. I would like to know for a fact that there is a certain amount of scrutiny in how the person who is going to operate such a ride operates that ride.

Brian: I think there is a high level of scrutiny. At least I know when I signed up on Twisted Road and found a motorcycle and so forth, I know there's a lot of checking and vetting and so forth that goes on for both me and for the people renting out the bike. And it's the same on rider's share. They do a lot of scrutiny. They run you through. It's probably something that's like a credit check, except it's a mojo check or something for your riding career or something like that. The one thing about these online platforms that is tough is that you don't get to have that conversation first. You don't know who, you don't really, you can see a lot, like I'm sure this Mark dude leads a great tour and so forth, seems like a solid dude. But yeah, you need some sort of personal interaction in order to decide that you're going to be compatible, that you're going to just have a good time. That's one thing that's kind of missing from these online platforms a little bit. And also, unless it's something that, like I'm the only Brian Ringer on the planet. If I'm on ADV Rider or the GS Resources website or Book Facer or whatever, people know who I am and can ask other people, is this guy an idiot, that kind of thing. So that's the one thing that's missing, is there's a large personal element to it that is a little, you're still not getting. You're getting like, you'll probably have a good time. Like I'm sure you'll have a good time and it'll be fine. But it is a little bit of a leap of faith. I'd love to see more information and so forth. And I think what the platform is trying to avoid is people getting in contact directly and going around them. So that, they just say it's Mark, but you don't know who. Proprietary communication. Yeah. Yeah. You don't get his email until later. So there's kind of that. But yeah, it sounds interesting. Yeah.

Robin: It is. It's interesting. I'm excited for the energy of it. I'm excited for it to be a possibility. I'm skeptical from personal experience, bringing legit strangers together. There might need to be some sort of a chemistry map in play to help people find the right environment for them to do such a thing. So you're right. I was coming at it from the, okay, how many, you know, like right here it says infinite number of people, unlimited number of people. All right. So that's a hell of an accordion where I will take five and a sweep. There will be seven of us total, no matter which one we're doing. I got five in between me and a sweep rider. That's it. And you know, like you and I, even at the rallies. So if you look at it from a rally perspective, that's more just a gathering of folks who are going to go on a ride. They can get together and decide what they're going to do. I think if they can make that work and everybody's on the same page or they discover quickly through some organic social code, whether or not this is right for them on arrival, then it can operate sort of like a spur of the moment rally anytime. That's kind of neat. But even when you and I go to things like the Brown County stuff, which by the way, three letter, John, friend of mine doesn't have a GS, but definitely wants to go to Brown County. A shout out to three letter John. He wants to meet you as well. Good guy. We might have an extra guest to introduce around.

Brian: Excellent.

Robin: But those rallies, it's like, we still kind of say like, who's going with who. And there's always a point where somebody who everybody wants to ride with has to say like, no, this is 15 people.

Brian: No, what, what, yeah, what you do, what I, what I do is just leave. I disappear. And if you know, you know, and, you know, to, to, to watch and I'll just, you know, it, it, yeah. And otherwise just, yeah, I have to leave or else I'll get like 15 people.

Robin: I am so honored and proud to be at the point in my riding career where when we first met, I wanted to ride with you or a friend, Joe Conrarty or Greg White or Bob Theeta. I wanted to be with one of you for specific riders. And now honestly, you can all fuck off and anybody who wants to follow me can also fuck off, but we could talk about it beforehand and maybe we'll work our way into a friendship.

Brian: Yeah. Here's, here's some tracks figured out. Here's a map. I don't know. Go over there. Yeah.

Robin: Oh, look at that. We ended up at the same spot. I guess that's what we're doing.

Brian: Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Robin: All right.

Brian: All right. All right. Horse is dead. Let's stop beating it. How shall we? Yeah. All right. You've kind of mentioned this before and a bike. I really want to get some, I really want to ride and see what it's like because it's just looking super tasty, man. Yeah. Yeah. Suzuki's new GSX 8 platform. So they have the GSX 8 S which is the support. I guess that's what these S stands for. And it's got the fairing. It's got a little bit better suspension. I don't know how different the ergonomics are because I haven't really frigging seen one yet. Just read about them. And then they've got the GSX 8, uh, dash R, which is the naked one. Yeah. I like, I like naked bikes a lot better personally. I don't like plastic.

Robin: Well, the R the R is not the naked bike.

Brian: Okay. Which one's with the S is naked.

Robin: The S is standard. R is road or race.

Brian: Oh, okay. Well, let's just delete all everything I just said.

Robin: Anyway, no, that's good. That's good kit right there. They're both the same posture. They're both standard, uh, modern sport standard. So you're in a standard posture, but your feet are about an inch or two further back. And all I got to say is that is a pretty freaking bike.

Brian: Yes.

Robin: And I know it's going to speak to me if I throw a leg over it. Yeah. I think I'm always in the market for the next bike. It doesn't mean there's not going to be something better. That's going to come out. One thing Suzuki has done in the past that's upset me is when they came out with a, uh, it was something banded E the fully liquid cooled had the GSXR light and they made it for a year. It's almost like they made it for like a year and a half, you know, then it just disappeared. And you couldn't like, it was infinitely impossible. The plastics are not, they're going to be unobtainable. The engines, the same basic engine, the liquid cooled jigsaw motor. But this, I just, I mean, it's got so much hype around it and such a beautiful bike. Hopefully the market's good on it because I would love to see them really keep this hanging out for a while. It's just, it will be my next bike when the time comes, if that's what's happening.

Brian: Yeah. It's just, I got a lot of appeal. Uh, yeah, it's one of those new flat plane crank, blah, blah, blah. I'm not going to get into the technical details.

Robin: Wait a minute. No, no, no, no, no. Get into the technical details. I don't understand. So it's not the old school jigsaw motor. It's not the old bandit jigsaw or rebore jigsaw, nothing like that. What are they doing with the engine and all that?

Brian: It's a parallel twin, but it was a cross-plane crank. That's right. So it's not, yeah. Yeah. So it's basically a parallel twin architecture, except the pistons are like at a 270 degrees, something like that. I think it's 270. Um, so you kind of get a little bit of a lumpy firing order and a Fortnight has a really good video on that.

Robin: So, okay. So it's already been covered to death by Fortnight on the mechanical specs is what you're saying.

Brian: Yeah. And why they're doing that and why there are so many of these coming out, you know, KTM, all the manufacturers, uh, and, and Yamaha has done it like Yamaha has a cross-plane triple, which is in my bike. And then they also have the twin. They've had that for a while, but that's, that's, there seems to be a convergence around that architecture and believe it or not, has to do with emissions. Oh, quite a bit of it. Yeah.

Robin: Okay.

Brian: And also because you can, there's some, there's some technical reasons with the balancing shafts that where you can, you can actually achieve a pretty good balance with these a little easier than you could with a 360 or 180 degree twin.

Robin: Interesting.

Brian: Uh, and a lot of this is, it's enabled by newer manufacturing techniques, uh, or make it less, uh, less of a expensive proposition to do this, to build an engine like this. And also there's actually some, some emissions benefits going on, uh, because you have less, uh, ring area or something like that. It's it's.

Robin: Don't expand too much on it, but the geometry of it, when you're talking about the cross-plane, does that mean that they're the, the pistons themselves are forming more of an X inside of their, like the stroke is diagonal on one and opposite that diagonal on the other.

Brian: The pistons sit next to each other. So there's a left and a right. Okay. But instead of, instead of like, uh, like a GS 500 is a, is a twin. And when piston number one is all the way at the top piston, number two is all the way at the bottom. Bicycle pedal. Gotcha. Yeah. Bicycle pedals. These newer ones, uh, basically they twisted one end of the crank 90, about 90 degrees. And so they're, they're not, uh, synchronized like that. So you don't have, God, it's hard to describe it or auto and audio. So anyway, here you go.

Robin: Musicians, instead of a straight eight Latin groove, it's based on a, a sort of a swung jazz groove or a bit of a shuffle.

Brian: A little bit of a bossa nova going up.

Robin: So at least it's not potato though. So it's getting into Harley territory, sort of no potatoes here, but no potatoes. I tell you what, here's the, my bit of advice on it. Go get yourself the base model. And that's what I want. I want the base model. And then every other accommodation I want to install on that bike, I will install my dang self because I love my BMW. I love the R 1200 RS. This bike is approaching the a hundred thousand mile Mark Brian knows when I bought it, but I will never do that again. That's done. I will never do to myself what I did in buying this bike. Super happy. I did totally happy from it. Complete recovery. The next bike will be a base model that is ready for my own personalizations.

Brian: Okay. Not, not all the toys all the time.

Robin: Yeah, absolutely.

Brian: Yeah. I'll do it myself. Yeah. And this thing it's narrow. It looks great. It's light. I mean, I, there's a lot to like here just on paper. Yeah. I have not seen one in person. I do like, I know Yamaha's cross-plane engines and like I've written a triumph triple, for example, and it's got an even firing order and I'm a Yamaha triple it's uneven. And it just gives, Oh, it just, it gives so it's so much more character. And I know that's an overused word, but it's really like when you really rip on it, it, Oh man, it's just, you got two tones go, man.

Robin: You got the actual pistons burning fuel and you got the space in between that fills with a completely different tone. And that the combined is that's just glory.

Brian: Like I was once in traffic and there was like a carload of broccoli heads and their dad's BMW 740. I, you know, the, you know, the, the young, you know, all the young guys have the broccoli head. No fellow old man. They were kind of goofing around and swerving around through traffic and just being idiots. And they were next to me at a stoplight and I uncorked a Yamaha a little bit and man, you know, I mean, it sounds great. Anyway, a couple of miles later, they, they catch up again. And one of the guys leans out of there and goes, man, that sounded great. I'm like, I agree. Is that thing Italian? But it says Yamaha on the side, really big anyway, but yeah, he was, I said, I said, it's a Yamaha, but thank you. All right. Yeah. So yeah, GS, the GSX eight, we like it. And maybe we'll write it in this pile of trash, but so far all the press reports are great. So I see we have a listener question, listener questions. Yes. So we'll just say, if you have a question you would like us to deal with email podcast at TRO dot bike, that will place electronical signals into our brains. And if your question is selected from the enormous quantity we get every day yeah, you will get an answer. It may not be the answer. It may not be a good answer. You'll get an answer, no guarantees, but Hey, so this question, I thought this was interesting because I, I have this problem and I never seem to take any pictures. Uh, and when I do take a picture, it's like a bunch of dudes at a gas station and it's really boring because gas stations are not in interesting places.

Robin: We already beat the shit out of this topic though. And I mean, not this topic, not the question, but like, I, I, I am well aware of how many pictures I've seen of us fueling up everywhere. And this is the gas station that had the pumps. That's the one that had the door and he went in. Yeah. This one had also restrooms. This one had an actual outhouse, you know? Yeah. I've got a solution. A lot of it comes down to accessibility. Even if my phone is on the X mount on my bike, that's a little bit inaccessible. Like it's like, I, okay. Disconnected from the jar and get off the, okay. Open up the, Oh, I'm locked out, but my gloves are on that. That's a little bit of bear, but accessibility is a big thing. There are two things I definitely like to do. The first one is I've recently started taking Brian's advice in that. Get the gas. If you need water, get the water, use the restroom, whatever, get on the bikes and ride even 10 more minutes. Just anything that's not that. And you let your, let your downtime be in front of anything. That's not the gas station. Secondly, I mean, you could either have a teeny tiny extra camera that you keep on your person. I actually have two phones. So one phone is dedicated. If you're, if you use the phone that you use as your motorcycle's GPS to take pictures, that camera is probably beat to all hell. So I've got a second phone that is it's in my jacket. And I just bust that out. And I've got a, there's a great, great camera app called camera. No open camera. It's called open camera. Now I don't remember if it's available for iPhone. I know it's an Android phone. It's configuration in the most lovely way depends on your phone. So you can really set the thing up to do exactly like how long do you want the exposure kind of thing? If your phone allows that, whatever the maximum resolution is, it'll have that in the settings menu.

Brian: Okay.

Robin: I've found it to be really good. So if that's in my breast pocket coming up to a stop, bust that out. I know that it's ready. Oh, this is a beautiful scene. Then I'll take a couple of photos, but it's more like, I guess, trying to get that glued onto the tail end of, I just field up is the real game. Remind yourself that I don't want to be here, but I do want to stop and I would love to get some good shots. So then that's your next task is where, where am I going to pull it off to the side?

Brian: Excellent. That's a, yeah, I, you know, and I'd almost forgotten about that part of it, but my, and, and usually it, like if I'm leading a ride, which is usually the case, uh, you know, when I'm writing with some people, uh, I I'm too busy, I've got too much on my mind to think about frigging pictures. And so like, just enlisting people, like, please take some pictures.

Robin: Yeah. That's one good way. I was about to say, go to rent a sweep.com. Yeah.

Brian: Yeah. And one thing I, I, uh, I found this out when I, when I was, uh, took my niece for a ride, um, when she was 12 or 13 or something, I basically gave her a disposable camera. I was here, here, take some pictures and I will have them developed and you will get some pictures, uh, from this experience with uncle Brian. And, uh, we got a bunch of just absolute pictures of the ground and stuff, but she, uh, yeah, she, and this was back in the film days, obviously, but, uh, you can still do the same. Just designate somebody is kind of what I, if I think about, I don't even think about it. Uh, I don't have time.

Robin: You know, that might be a really fun party favor to bring to any one of our tours is I'll just bring a stack of the tiny, uh, Kodak, Instamatic, whatever's.

Brian: They still have those, don't they?

Robin: Yeah. They still have those. Yeah. And just get them developed and then, you know, get them or you can get them developed to digital and have them send you the file.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. They, they do that. They put them on tables at weddings and stuff. So just outsource is one thing, but I do like the idea of just splashing go and stop somewhere else. Uh, more pleasant. I like that a lot. Splash and dash prime, splash and dash, splash, splash and dash.

Robin: Okay. Segment two swap meets bike nights and weenie bites.

Brian: What you got your tribe, finding your motorcycle tribe, you know, who are the people that you, that kind of vibe with your vibe and the way you like to ride. What the obvious thing, you know, especially for people just getting started or who'd moved to new city, it just, just kind of look on local events. And so there's a whole question, you know, can you, can you find local events and, and, and if I have a good time, like if you look up, if you find a bike night or something, why not, you know, check it out, keep an open mind, see what happens. So many times I've, you know, when I see something like a bike night or a swap meet or something like that, I mean, these are, they're kind of really traditional stuff, which is not usually my bag, but you know, I've got nothing else to do on a Wednesday night or a or whatever. Go check it. I've gone and checked them out many times, stuff like that. Sometimes it's just boring, you know, sometimes it's just guys that want to sit and chug beers all night and stuff like that. But yeah, if you go, go early, you know, before, before things get really weird and gets after dark. And I usually try to like, I'll try to ride my, my vintage bike just to get people something different to look at, you know, or I'll get an extra, I'll take an extra pass or a cow pasture, get the KLR good and aromatic and filthy, you know, you know, and park next, park next to all the park, next to all the Chrome machines, you know, hi, how you doing? Don't get too close. It'll, it kind of stinks, but I I've, I've actually had a time with some of those just kind of walking around, you know, it's something to do. It's really low key.

Robin: That's really the exhale of it. The something to do thing. And even for the introvert, you know, these opportunities to just forcibly get out there and interact with people, never the worst thing. So long as you can stay on neutral ground with everybody, of course, you know, just come, come in from a neutral standpoint and just enjoy the fact that they're all there for the bikes. That's a lot of fun, man. I used to love doing that with Chive and Moto. It was a great moment in sports just to get to know the basics of what the hell this 1982 twin motor was and was not worth. Totally agree. A great way to socialize. I wish I could put something like that on here, but I think that I'm a little bit too remote. It's just way. Yeah. You're way out in the middle.

Brian: There's actually, there's actually around Indianapolis, there's, there's at least one regular vintage bike night. That's kind of neat to go see the old, old school stuff and bring some old school stuff. If you have it, the triumph dealer downtown has a, has a regular monthly vintage bike night where you go bring your old stuff. And, and, and they have their own, they, they put on different events at different times. They're, they're, they're doing very well at that. But even, even the ones at a bar, the big tip is to go and like leave before it gets dark and things get too weird and people get drunk, get a couple of ice waters, grab a burger and get the hell out of there. There are actually swap meets here and there. They'll say like metric swap meet, you know, I mean, if you're, if you're into American iron or between fine, there are lots of those everywhere you go, but yeah, every so often, but these guys are just super bad at publicity. So you really have to keep your eyes open. Facebook is a good way to keep up on stuff like this, but it's something to that's not, I think it's just super low stress and it's just kind of interesting. And a lot of times you get to look at a little bit of a different culture. Very cool.

Robin: I agree. Let's talk about a rant about water is what the outline says the Brian wrote. And I have no idea what we're about to talk about. All right. I think, I think we have enough time to do this and then we'll call it. And then with Melissa Holbrook Pearson, who is appearing on the next episode, we're not, we're not worthy. This is going to be a hell of an honor. I'm fangirling. She knows the deal. She knows that she's going to come on and we'll hang out and talk books and talk about what she's up to these days. But that after that, it's all about socializing and hanging out. And I think that the entire episode could be a map, Tastic mayhem, where we randomly discuss Wisconsin writing in the presence of that'll be, that'll be good. So I, what I'm saying is we're about to jump around here for one second, but we have a Wisconsin tour coming up. And honestly, I had originally planned that way up North, West Wisconsin, deep woods pavement. And then I realized I've ridden some of those roads and while they look great, they can be pretty rough. So that means I'm going to need some help building the tour that is already up on the site, ready to happen. Sweet. You like this plan? I like this plan. Where are you basing again? What did you say? Well, let's just say for the sake of safety and record keeping that it's out of Dodgeville. Yeah. But that general vicinity, basically just West of Madison area is where we'll be building the tour out of and looping back around. And I want the best that we can build. I really want it to be stupefying curves. I know that we had a route that you led us on by accident. Oh no. Was that you or was that Conrarty where we crossed the river into Iowa, which was great. And we, it was just dip shit corners, constant felt like we were roller skating, like just constantly digging into the right, dig into the left, dig into the right, dig into the left.

Brian: Yeah. Some of the stuff on Iowa and overlooking the Mississippi and yeah, Joe did a lot of route research and that was like paper maps and so forth. And it would be I bet I have a lot of those resources around. I'll bet I'll like dig them up and maybe we can turn them into GPS tracks.

Robin: That would be really, really cool. We will not be based in soldiers grove. Okay. So back to the tuck of boot.

Brian: Yeah. This is a minor detail. Also, these are like riding into rain happens. And these are things that would make my life easier. I don't know if there is a good solution. Anyway, I know there's one company that making a semi almost waterproof USB connector for a phone, but I haven't seen it yet. Generally what I do is just have them kind of tuck behind the fairing. So as long as I'm moving, you know, the water's not getting into the USB charger. And also I use like cheap USB chargers. So if it actually does get a lot of rain into it, then it's a no big loss. It, yeah, there's not a good solution. I've wrapped them in tape before to help keep them. I've, I've like goobered on art, you know, putty or RTV. I've, I've carried like a poster putty.

Robin: Yeah. But it's also got to connect to the phone.

Brian: Yeah. So you plug it into the phone and then you goober poster putty around it. And I've made that work. I don't know if it helped. I've, I've tried a lot of things. Somebody out there, somebody in China has got to do this at some point.

Robin: Well, I'm thinking that dielectric grease can only do so much. Yeah. You know, I've used dielectric grease on the 50 amp power cable that connects to our RV. You know, it's like you'd hose it up with that and clamp it against as long as you see a thick seal, water won't be getting in, but with USB stuff and banging it around and going riding and bumpy, bumpy, bumpy, I don't know.

Brian: It's not a thing with a, with one good solution. Yeah. But I bet it's out there. And, and just as I mentioned, like I, I use cheap Motorola phones and they're water resistant and I used to, you know, spend a lot of money on Samsung phones that were water. And, but now like water resistance is fairly standard, even on cheap phones or water resistance ish.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: Yeah. Enough. Like if it's behind something or you're moving forward and it's not like pounding water into the, into the USB connector, you're probably, you're, you're going to be fine.

Robin: We wrote a lengthy article about some USB ports and I tried to stack about five of them and went into detail about what I could find. My favorite was when I wrote the article, my favorite was the iMestu, which is, you know, whatever I M E S T O U two ports. It's got a switch on it. That's what really got me was it had a rubberized click switch that was lit.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: So you could tell what was going on. It seemed to try to do fast charge, but I've gone through two of them. The fuses have blown the one that I'm now on the single port SAE to USB by battery tender junior company. Well, whoever the company is does that. That's a good one. Yeah. That one has the exact amount of zero respect for my phone that I want. Like it is putting out the, my phone is always at a hundred percent because it just does not care. It's not, it doesn't have any chips in it. They're like, well, let's be careful. What does the phone want? What is the draw? What's the resistance? Let's see the homes. What does the computer say? No, it's just like here eat the power and the phone's like, okay. And I'm good with that. And my trick is if it starts to rain, oh, I just disconnect, just unplug it all, put the cable in my pocket, plug it up, leave it and ride on and just go on battery for, I mean, cause the battery will last me two, two and a half hours with the screen on. It's just not a big deal.

Brian: Yeah. If you can do a little planning ahead, you can, you can figure out your weather, but yeah. But yeah, the one thing is when you get raindrops running down the screen, the phone is like freaking out. It's like, oh, I'm being touched everywhere. Yeah. You kind of have to put a plastic bag over it or something. I have not figured out a good solution. Turn my phone back on. I've made 40 stock investments. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. I have actually just stuck a Ziploc bag on an upside down. You know, if I can't memorize where I need to go enough, you know, while it's raining, but, uh, I'd love to see that on a related note. The, the same thing applies to the motorcycle itself. Like there's most any car you get into, you know, uh, the crappiest little Hyundai, there are no unsealed connectors anywhere. That's exposed to weather in that car. And for some reason that's still really common on motorcycles. And it just bugs me. It's like, we ride these in all weather, you know? Yeah. And sometimes we're really pushing it.

Robin: And sometimes there's road salt. You got me thinking about back to the USB thing or anything that's wiring is it comes down to casing. I remember at what point I had an Otterbox, but my God, that Otterbox was as big as a laptop for a standard size phone. Those are big cases and they take up a ton of space. They did the job. And the other problem with that is that you get heat. So if you get heat contained, your phone starts to act up for different reasons and then it doesn't know its own name anymore. But yeah, no, if I lift up the gas tank on Maggie's bike, I can see that it's just, you know, just bare wires, just bare wires hanging out. Hey, what's going on? We're just looking for a bucket of water. Got a cup of water, man. A little thirsty. I'm going to say it's time to go. I wanted to get on the map testing mayhem this episode, but it's just been too fun. And we're trying to keep this down to the, the hour or less the format and see what we can build off of that. Because Hey, guess who's producing these things? You're looking at them.

Brian: Well, you're sticking together all kinds of bots and automations and scripts to do it for you. I'm trying, man. I'm so trying. It's push button.

Robin: This is not interesting, but I'll make listeners hear it anyhow. So the advertising and the intros are self-stitching into the conversation files on the server, which then generate an MP3 file. That is the entire episode. And the production process on my computer is a the entire document, open up and Reaper and get all the production situated. So that can just come in here and eliminate me saying, um, uh, um, uh, start Brian sentences from the actual start of Brian sentences, and then pretend like we are cohesive. And that's what friends are for tune in next round because we're going to have Melissa Holbrook Pearson on. And then a week after that, we're going to have the one and only Dylan code of California super bike school on. So these are going to be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks for listening.