Robin: Dylan Code, welcome to the show.

Dylan: Thank you very much.

Brian: Yeah. Glad to have you. Yeah. Good to meet you, Dylan, or virtually meet, or e-meet, or whatever you call it, z-meet. We need a new verb for people you've only met online. Yeah. Z-meet. E-meet. I don't know. Z-meet. One thing, I'll start with something we ask almost everybody, and we talk amongst ourselves quite a bit, is, so did you get the ride today, or at least recently? Yeah.

Dylan: So I was in Thailand riding for five days, did a whole moto tour. So my girlfriend and I went over there. It's run by a guy named Brandon Kreetoo. He's done the Isle of Man a bunch of times, an American. And he likes Thailand. He's got a friend, a childhood friend, who's also in Thailand, and they run these tours up north. So we did five days of riding. Oh, that sounds sweet.

Robin: Five days of riding in northern Thailand.

Brian: Yeah. I think that's the best answer so far, Robin.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: I rode to the grocery store today.

Robin: I doubt you're angry about it.

Dylan: No, it was outstanding. It really was outstanding. And the tour group that they had, they call it Thailand Moto Tours, they just took care of everything. And the guys that run it, it's not all about them. They're level-headed, and they tell you what you need to know. They don't necessarily like to listen to themselves go on and on and on. They'll move you from one amazing thing to the next. It's just like you'd expect, all your luggage is at the hotel room when you get there. But I was pretty surprised. I was expecting to be somewhat tropical, which, of course, it was somewhat tropical. You get the banana trees. But when you go up in the hills, see, we were in Chiang Mai, and they've got mountains behind them. They go up to 8,000 feet. So in the space of like two hours of riding, it seemed like we went through three different climate zones and a couple different seasons. It was really, really fantastic. But aside from that, I'm going to Las Vegas tomorrow to run some schools. So I'll be riding Saturday and Sunday on track.

Robin: Yeah. Talk about that a little bit. What big plans does California Superbike School have for 2024, and what's happened so far, I guess?

Dylan: So far, we've just had our foreign branches. So we did six days in India, and then we've done four days, I believe, so far in Australia over two different venues. We've got Philippines coming up month after next. So we've got some foreign stuff, foreign action happening. We're going back to Luganeseca because they repaved it. I was really... The people that run Luganeseca aren't really experienced at running tracks. They're not the easiest people to deal with, and it's not just us. I'm sure they're getting better. So we're going back. But the main reason why we left is they were hard to deal with, and the track was not in good shape. So if it rained, it was an ice rink. It was just basically unrideable. I mean, you could go out and ride, but you'd get too many crashes. And we were lucky we didn't get any rain there. But now that it's repaved, we can go there and ride with the confidence that it is misty or wet in the morning, or if rain comes through, we can still run the event without it being a real disaster.

Robin: So is the corkscrew a popcorn festival right there? People just hanging out watching bikes fly through that? Safe line, straight line, jump them all, and hope you don't slip. And now that's been remedied a little bit?

Dylan: Yeah, I'm sure it's been remedied completely with the new surface. I mean, any time you repave a track, they're great. But as far as the popcorn showed, OK, it's not that bad, but anything more than zero crashes is something that is unacceptable. And in the rain, it's just far more likely to happen. But when we run a track, I mean, we got the whole place to ourselves. So it's kind of strange. You go to this gigantic venue that can host tens of thousands of people, and it's a fairly small group. It is kind of fun. It's kind of special. It's like playing baseball in Dodger Stadium when no one's there, or there's 10 people in the stands or something. Yeah.

Robin: People just hanging out, having lunch. You've got the whole stadium to yourself. You can just own it in the quiet, almost peaceful.

Dylan: Yeah.

Robin: Well, what else do you have going on?

Dylan: We had a whole off-season, which I ran around. We did the Thailand thing, and then I went over to Germany and got a tour of the BMW factory in Berlin, which was really interesting to see them. I mean, essentially, the tour starts at one of those, I guess you'd call them a blank, a blank crankshaft. And then they machine it, and then you move all the way through the cases, etc., etc. And then the parts warehouse and everything getting assembled on the assembly line, all the way to the final getting tested and then put on the pallet and wrapped up in the pallet and sent off to wherever it's going. I had never seen anything like that before.

Robin: That sounds like a good time.

Dylan: That sounds very cool.

Robin: Yeah. Part of the way that this happened, this gathering, was that I wanted to use a beautiful image from one of your training events on an article about trying to help riders feel a little bit more open and free about finding what kind of training they want to take next. You just reminded me in the conversation that those are BMWs. I think, are those S1000s, and are you doing the M1000s?

Dylan: The S1000. We've been using the S1000. I switched over to BMW in 2010, and we've been using the S1000 ever since. So we had a couple M's for a little while, but it was just kind of a halo bike for people to look at because it's nicer. But we've got a full fleet. We have 32 of the S1000RRs.

Brian: Nice. So, Robin, if you buy 32 of the S1000s, then maybe you can get a tour of BMW, but yeah. Anyone can get a tour.

Robin: Yeah. No, that's walk-in, isn't it? I mean, they don't want to push people off. Welcome. Become one of our branded customers.

Dylan: They welcome it. Yeah. They've got sort of a cool kind of cafe display area with bikes in it and so on. You book online, you go there, and then someone takes you around the plant for, I guess it's about two-ish hours, maybe a little longer.

Robin: Did anybody show up with the driveshaft from an R1200RS and say, you had a recall on this? I'm just here to collect. Can we do the thing? I just happen to be in the area.

Dylan: Yeah. It's interesting. When you go to the factory, you really get the sense that the people at the factory, they're not really even, some of them may be mechanics, but you don't need to be a mechanic to work in a factory. You go to a station, you've got your tools, you've got your parts, and you put it together. Everything's torqued down to spec, and then it gets moved on. The designing, of course, that's going to happen to the engineers behind the scenes and they'll tell the production line what to do, but the production line is just there and they're like, hey, I'm just putting the parts on you told me to put on. They're certainly not the ones accountable for, if anything, does need a recall, unless they just had a bonehead there that was just messing it up the whole time, but it's not likely.

Brian: I can see that. Oh, that's Hans. Yeah. We got rid of him. He's in charge of one bolt. One bolt. Yeah. And they mess it up. Yeah. One thing I wonder is, is it like you go to a Harley dealer and it says Harley parking only and you have to put your Yamaha over here, or is it like, I wonder if they have that on?

Dylan: I didn't notice that. No. The thing about that plant is it's very old, and being in Berlin, they don't really have a whole lot of space to expand in different areas. It's not like it's some suburb in Texas where they just build a whole new building. So you'll notice that when you go through, especially the machining area, the CNC's are like very close together. It's packed in pretty tightly. The campus is relatively large, but they could easily do a triple the space, but they make everything happen. That's amazing.

Robin: Yeah. Systems in place. Why not?

Dylan: Yeah, exactly. And I'm sure there are advantages of having things close together rather than some massive campus that's 800 acres that you need to take a car to get to the other side.

Robin: Yeah. What did you say his name was? Franz. And he has to go, he's in charge of one bolt, but he left the wrench for that bolt in the other building. Three campuses.

Brian: Not a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Robin: Here's a sensitive question, because this one is, I'm curious about this. In that same article that I was writing, somebody brought up, and it's been brought up before, they're not contesting anything. And there's also, and they bring up what sounded to me was like Yamaha's Yamaha Advertising School, where they advertise the Yamahas at the racetrack for the Yamaha Training School. My question for you, knowing that you're in the requiem of we don't belittle learning, can you tell me about some of the differences that you know of, the takeaway of any of your courses, versus, you know, the benefits or the takeaway of what Yamaha might be doing?

Dylan: Let's just put it this way. There's been a lot of schools that have come and gone over the years. Kevin Schwantz had a school, Jamie James had the original Yamaha Champion School that was probably away, that closed down, Freddie Spencer School closed down, Yamaha Champion School then reopened and then closed down again. And then I think the current version is now still open. But there have been a lot of different schools that have come and gone. And right now, there's really only two arrive and ride schools, meaning they've got the bike and you just show up and take care of everything. And really what that tells us is that it's a very, very difficult business. Supply and demand. Yeah, it's a boutique industry, and it's just difficult to get to make the ends meet numbers-wise. But what you find is many, many years ago, schools are fairly far apart in their philosophies, but things started to move together. In other words, the general consensus is starting to come into focus. Now everyone wants to be unique, so they're going to deliver their version of something and package it as, this is quite special, this is unique, no one else is doing this, right? And it just really isn't the case anymore. Yes, you're going to have some people that will emphasize one area of riding more than another, but really that's more of a marketing thing. The Alma School is very heavily centered around braking, but we have a whole module on trail braking in our second level. There isn't anything that anyone covers that we don't also cover in some way. It really, I think, comes down to the economics and what someone is able to provide with the amount of money they're able to charge. Because if someone says they're the best, it would be better stated, we think that we're delivering the best products we can within the economics of it. Because if you were sponsored by Aramco within blank checks, you'd probably have a school that had, you'd have a whole track to yourself as far as your dedicated facility. No one else uses it. There would be lots of mechanics, bikes and spare bikes, bikes already mounted with rain tires, it would just be an amazing thing. So really, any service provider, no matter who they are in this space, is going to have to deal with whatever constraints they have. As far as our business model goes, we spend a lot. We show up with 23 staff. We've got 218 wheelers. It's a real deluxe thing. The Alma School is a little bit more boutique, right? It's not terribly boutique, but it's a little more boutique. Their business model is different from us. It's a little bit leaner. And that's not to say that you can't get excellent or even better service, because that really just depends on the person's individual experience. But everyone who runs a school always have their students come to them and say, hey, I went to your competitor and I think you're much better. And of course, you feel better about that. But you know that people are saying that elsewhere, you know? Oh, yeah, I love the Ford. It's way better than the Chevy. And then, of course, people are going, yeah, I love the Chevy. It's way better than the Ford. But, you know, at the end of the day, what really matters is the rider. Sometimes you can convince a rider that they're better. You can kind of pump them up with a bit of a Tony Robbins type approach. And you can get them to think it. And of course, there's a not so known cognitive bias called choice-supporting bias. So someone makes a choice. They make a decision to do a school or buy a motorcycle or live in a certain neighborhood or take a certain vacation. And they're constantly trying to justify why that was the best thing. And then when someone says, you know, oh, I went to, you know, I went to Jamaica and someone says, well, how about some other Caribbean town? They go, oh, no, that's trash. That's trash.

Brian: That's trash.

Dylan: Where I went is great. They want to convince themselves that what they invested in is good as well. But at the end of the day, all that sort of noise is really irrelevant. The focus, at least for us, is just to make sure that rider gets what they need proved. And I'm sure that's everyone's goal at the end of the day. But if your approach becomes more of a PR marketing approach with your students, you're already diluting your message.

Robin: And, yeah, we've been guilty in our efforts to become successful at all with even the website. People hold on to their time very near and dear. So if they've had an experience and it's within that block of time and they can see anything good in it, they want to hold on. They want to amplify that in the way they express the experience to others that they talk to. That brings me back to sort of like the different kinds of learners. Who cares, really, if they receive the information and put it to positive practice through a different venue? Well, any venue that is worth their weight in their desire to make riding better for anybody would support that. And I've gotten the feeling from short communications with you that that's kind of how you look at it, that it's sort of like it's we offer learning. The known knowns are the same material. We're presenting it the way that we present the known knowns. And those knowns are growing and developing as we learn more about, I don't know, particle physics, really, at some point. And remember, I'm talking on my butt here. I haven't taken the class. I haven't taken any super bright classes. It's something that will have to happen. And I promise you it will.

Dylan: Yeah, it's on the technical side, of course, or at least that's the way I like to view it. We've got the pedigree. Our graduates have won 103 world and national championships. We are the only truly international riding school in the world. We're all over the world. Not because that was part of our plans. It just organically happened. We train more riders, more tracks with more champions and all that type of thing. But really, does that matter to the average person who's coming to us to become a better rider? Does it really matter?

Robin: Oh, we're going to get to a question about that one that I think you might have a lot of fun answering.

Dylan: Okay, yeah. But in my opinion, it doesn't really matter. The only thing that that really does is it at least gives the person a small amount of confidence that when they show up at our doorstep that they should be well taken care of.

Brian: Yeah.

Dylan: That's really all that we can say because it's not like everyone that comes through our doors is going to be a wild success. But we do have a pretty good success rate. That's for sure.

Brian: Like in the article Robin wrote, there's a bit in there about you have to go in with like blank slate. You have to be ready. And that involves trust.

Robin: That's plagiarism because Brian wrote that in an email.

Brian: Okay, I wrote that part of it. And I claimed it. The tabula rasa. Yeah, you have to go in and just let go of all that stepping on your own self stuff that people bring in with them. But yeah, that requires a high level of trust. That's what California Superbike School brings. This is decades of experience. And one thing, like I said, I haven't taken the class either. But in reading articles from your dad, from you, and all the press over the years and so forth, it is a continuous improvement process. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's a big thing.

Dylan: It's kind of like watching the hour hand of a clock moves. If you come back a short time later, it's going to seem the same. But if you come back six months later, we're constantly refining it. Which is great. It's fine. It keeps it interesting for us.

Brian: Yeah. The great comedians would throw out all their material every year and start over. You're not throwing anything out. You're just adding. You're learning new things. I mean, physics hasn't changed. And the bikes have been much the same for several years. You just learn more about human psychology, human performance, human physiology. Again, that's one thing that's been really apparent over the years, just from what you see in the press. People write an article about going to the schools, things like that. Back when magazines used to be a thing. I remember that. Dale, that's one of the amazing, it's not a fixed curriculum and it changes all the time and people can, and also, by the way, it gives you a repeat customer. So that's gotta be a good thing. Yeah. They can come back and get something new.

Dylan: Yeah. Anyone who's done any real learning and what it takes to actually become good at something, if you show up at a school and do two days and expect that to be all you need, I mean, come on. Let's just talk about the Marine Corps rifle training. Everyone in the Marine Corps has to take the rifle course, right? It's two weeks. And that's just so you can send a projectile down a straight path to where you want it to end up. If someone said, oh yeah, the Marine Corps rifle program is now two days, you know, and we're going to tell you everything you need to know in order to be, in order to hit your targets. It's just, it's a joke. It's laughable.

Brian: And one of the things, and you wrote an article about this for, you did some writing for RevZilla, I believe a little while back. Yeah. And one thing I found in personal experience, cause I live in Indiana and Indianapolis, I have to take whatever I can get because there's not much that passes through the Midwest. Although I did see you do have a couple of days in Kentucky coming up.

Dylan: Yeah. And that's a neat track. It's a neat track. I like it. It's got amazing grip.

Brian: It's a Corvette Museum. I guess they have a track and you guys are going to take it over for a couple of days. Yeah. We've been going there for about four or five years now.

Dylan: Which track is that again? It's National Corvette Museum track. Okay. So it's right by, remember where the sinkhole developed in the Corvette Museum all those years ago? It was National New.

Brian: Yeah.

Dylan: The huge sinkhole and the Corvettes held that. So that's where it is. Bowling Green, Kentucky. And we started going there. I forget what year it is. It's at least five years. But would you believe it? A couple of years ago, a tornado came through and tore up one of their buildings.

Robin: Yes. I believe it. I would believe that. Yeah.

Dylan: It was a magnet for natural disasters, but they've got that all fixed now. So it's good. Which is nice. It'll be upgraded.

Robin: You've been cornered by a couple of Midwesterners. So we tend to like, you know, that's our kite flying weather is when the tornadoes start showing up.

Brian: Okay. Yeah. The end. Yeah. And just for a little extra spice there, you might get a sinkhole in turn four. And it might be a balrog down there. I don't know. But yeah, that was really interesting. Oh, I had a point. I forgot what it was. But anyway, the point was, so, uh, you know, I also do a lot of dual sport writing. So I've like the Tom Asher adventure writing academy, you know, like he, he does an academy in Indiana. Why? I don't know. But so I saddle up a KLR, got down there and it's just amazing. The, you called it cross training where you, you learn different disciplines on different bikes and so forth. Right. And, and it's just amazing. It's been amazing to me, how much, how much you learn and how much better you get from learning to ride in dirt, uh, you know, as a street rider. And I still have all those street habits. You know, I'm, I'm just picking pebbles on the beach here of, of dirt riding, but what I could learn from dual sporting was amazing and just really informed so much of what I do on pavement.

Dylan: I was talking to someone else, uh, just the other day about, uh, this concept where people say, do what works for you. We were talking about technique and that type of thing. And I say, you know, that's really middle of the road, vanilla, mealy mouth, ambiguous crap. Uh, because what you find with almost any riders, they're going to have their, their strengths and weaknesses. So what works for them is the thing that fits in between all of their strengths and weaknesses and the way that seems to be most pleasing or comfortable for them. What you get is if you have someone cross train meeting, let's say they are only street and they get on a dirt bike, they might have a skill that's rather deficient that must be built up when they're riding that dirt bike. It forces them to develop that skill. So then when they return to the road bike, now they're better.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: So there are cases where that deficiency is called DTC. Yeah. The traction control does not like, uh, crappy hill climbs and sudden gravel and things like that. Right.

Robin: Dylan, I'm assuming Brian, these are from Brian's notes here, but I'm assuming you do, you do get dirty. You ride some dirt. Yeah.

Dylan: I, yeah, I haven't really ridden dirt a whole lot. I mean, I go out and coach with SoCal Supermoto from time to time. Oh, cool. The owner there, Brian and I are friendly colleagues. I'll go out there and work with him. And then, okay, the Supermoto track has a few berms and a couple jumps, that type of thing. I did a lot more dirt riding when I was a kid and now I don't do it as much. I'm in the dirt a lot because I like riding a gravel bicycle and a mountain bike.

Robin: Oh, nice.

Dylan: Yeah. So I do that quite a bit. And there's plenty of trails here in Southern California. I hit the dirt in that respect. I won't pass up an opportunity. I want to do a dirt ride down in Baja and I found one. So I just need to figure out the best time of the year and all that type of thing. But that's something I would really love to do.

Robin: Very cool. What is your role at CSS?

Dylan: So basically, the power has been being transitioned over to me from my dad for the last 15 years. Fitting. The slowest transition of power ever. I'm kind of the emcee of the day and I do a lot of the classroom briefings. And if I'm not busy, then I'm just roaming around, checking up on staff. How are things going? Do you need anything? Checking with the students, seeing how everything's going. You know, the way, let's say a restaurant manager, you know, they'll just cruise around and make sure everything's dialed in. But I do spend most of my time actually training students on the school days. And the behind the scenes management decisions. We've got other really good staff in place that handle their own areas. So really, it just becomes more of a coordination thing rather than having to bark orders at people. We've got people that don't require orders. They just, they know what they need to do and they just get it done, which makes it a lot easier to just sort of face forward and look at projects or neat things to improve the quality of the training or the student experience.

Robin: Yeah. Nice. Enough familiarity with what you're doing, where the peripherals are, they're able to see naturally what could use some fine tuning.

Brian: Yeah, I was going to say, I imagine you don't have anybody who's just there because it's a paycheck. I would suspect you have a lot of really passionate people. That makes it easier, I'm sure.

Dylan: Yeah, it's adventure. It's centered around motorcycles. So if you love motorcycles, you do that. We've had some staff that started working for us straight out of high school and they were in a support role. They traveled all over the country with us. You really became part of the team and part of the family and both worked with us for many years until they decided to go off and do something else, which is natural. But yeah, most of them are into motorcycles. And yeah, if you want to get rich, definitely don't get in the motorcycle training business. Yeah. Get into commercial real estate or...

Robin: I don't know why I keep denying it. I keep telling myself, this is gonna be a great idea. People are going to travel and motorcycling is the next big thing. I got gold here.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Are you ready for a harsh question? Sure. This one for me is a lot of fun just to ask because I've been hoping to ask somebody in your position. I have heard from instructors of any given curriculum who have never attended a track day, let alone been on any kind of a sport bike. Basically, let's just say that I've heard some cruiser-centric voices in my medium talk about, I have yet to find any real use for track-based learning takeaways in any kind of street riding.

Brian: You did?

Robin: I'll be honest with you. I know it's there, but I've been unable to answer the question. I don't know if the way that they made this statement hit me in a way where I was just dumbfounded by the fact that they can't see that any knowledge is of benefit in some way, depending on the situation. Is there anything you can say to that to just help me find my voice on this matter?

Dylan: Dylan Code. Why would track training be beneficial for someone who rides on the street purely?

Robin: Okay. There's a fine line about the whole tightrope walk of, I learned how to do this at the track, now I do it on the street. We all know that that can be bad news if you're in the wrong headspace.

Dylan: There's a few simple reasons. One of those is if you ask anyone who rides on the street, you say, hey, while you're riding, what percentage of your attention is on potential threats and what percentage is on your technique? And most will report that the lion's share of their attention is on potential threats, cars coming the other way, road surface hazards, things like that. Now, on the track, we can pretty much flip that. Let's say someone, when they're riding on the street, especially in an urban environment, maybe 90% is on threats and maybe 10% on their technique, if that. But on the track, you can get 90% of your attention on technique and maybe 10% for other stuff. So essentially, the learning experience is super saturated. And we know from cognitive science that humans can only put their attention on one thing at a time. They're great at switching between things very quickly. But if their attention is not constantly toggling onto these variables, they are then able to put their attention on their technique, their riding. And that's really what we're providing. So we have a strip of asphalt that's wider than your average lane. We know that all tracks, they clean off the track, they sweep them off in the morning so we don't have gravel or debris. You don't have any law enforcement issues. You don't have a lot of, you know, you don't have things very close to the edge of the track that you could run into in most cases. So really, what you have is a very distraction-free environment. Now, the track also offers a repetition, whereas if you're riding on the road, you go through a corner and you kind of blow it, you know, on some long down road. You go through a corner, you go, ah, I blew that. Sometimes you're like, ah, I want another go at that, right? Well, if you want to do that on the road, you have to make two U-turns, right? And on twisties, making U-turns is sketchy business, right? You got to make two U-turns to try and, you know, just to have another shot at it again. And if you're with a group of riders, then it's completely impractical. So what it does allow you to do is take a turn and repeat it until you can get to some level of mastery that you're capable of at least. And what ends up happening is a rider will kind of create a bit of a, what we call a database of corners. And then they're coming up to some other corner on some other road and it has a similar shape or appearance. They'll at least go, okay, well, I don't know what this corner is doing exactly, but I've got a pretty decent idea. It's going to look something like, it's going to be something like that, that other corner. And I have a plan for that. So you have a loose template that you can apply. Is that going to work on all instances? Obviously not. But I think you, me, and everyone else has come up to a corner and went, huh, that's like the corner back by my mom's house. And you've got some familiarity. And that's really what you get from a track is you, you can keep on doing it until you get it right.

Robin: I love that answer.

Dylan: Absolutely.

Robin: It completely flips the coin, gives you a shot to practice repeat muscle memory in different ways that you're going to be seeing on the street. Anyhow, in street riding, you're going to have threats that you might not see at the track. Like you said, they clean it up. Whereas processing those threats as part of street riding, better to have practiced in a repeat environment than to try to turn around at all when you could just say, you know what? There's going to be another corner like it coming up at some point. Let's just keep going and enjoy the ride.

Dylan: Obviously, when you're riding the street, you've got your street smart survival package of things to do, which is not really going to happen on the track. But I know that they have some training programs that are very specifically for riding on the street. And we don't pretend to do that because it's just entirely impractical.

Brian: But I think both are both are very, very beneficial. Nice. Yeah. It's very, very focused training on operating the machine. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the track, you know, oh, it's a track. You're just going to go out and go fast. And it's not, you didn't say anything about speed. You didn't say anything about lean angle.

Dylan: Oh, no, I didn't say anything about that. Yeah. For example, when I was on that ride in Thailand, a lot of twisties. That's, it's known for twisties, some of the best roads around. And of course, I'm going to be using the track based concepts with regard to getting a line, use of the brake, use of the throttle, all these types of things. Of course, adapted to an uncertain environment, you have to leave yourself a certain extra level of safety buffer, things like that. But I employ the track skills quite often. All of them, no, but most of it. Yes.

Brian: Yeah. So the important question is, so do you have to dodge any elephants? Very important question.

Dylan: We saw elephants. We hung out with some elephants. Oh, nice. Which is really cool. And we went to this place. Our group was the only group there. So it wasn't full of a bunch of like slack jawed, pasty, you know, knuckle dragging.

Robin: Everything's different here.

Dylan: Mouth breathing tourists. And there, I think there were about five elephants. And they all just seemed really happy. And then they let them out of their pen, which they just do temporarily while they're gathering us together. And they walked down to this little river and then we washed them off. And they promptly threw mud on themselves after that, because I guess they liked fresh mud. But it was great. But they did have, I did see two people riding elephants when we were on the road. But they're off the side. But we did have lots of dogs and cows. There were cows on the road.

Brian: Oh, well, it's like Kentucky then. Okay. Yeah.

Dylan: And what I heard, it was interesting. I was talking to a guy from Thailand and he says, you're going to see a lot of dogs. What dogs will mainly do is they'll go across the road partially, realize you're coming. They'll turn around and go back where they came from. That's what they tend to do, right? Most of them don't go out in the traffic at all. But he said, but if it's a cow, they don't have reverse. If a cow's going in a certain direction, it's going to keep on going. So if you have a cow and you're kind of wondering which way do I aim, you're going to aim for their tail because they don't go backwards. They're not going to walk backwards. I guess that falls into the street smarts of Thailand and just understanding what the local animals tend to do.

Robin: Hey man, I'm just here to pick up what kind of a niche course business I could start. And you finally inspired it. I'm going to do, you know, motorcycle cow tipping 101.

Brian: I've had to dodge cows before on a dual sport rides. You know, in some places you have to, like you can go through, but you have to open the gate and then shut it behind you. And then there's cows in there. And they'll get out of your way. They're just, they're just not going to get in a hurry. But yeah, I didn't, I never realized that part about cows don't really go backwards, but it's true. They'll change direction, but it's not going to be, you know, we do schools in India.

Dylan: And of course in India, if there's a cow, the cow just does whatever it wants. If it sits down in the middle of the road, then everyone just goes around it. Right. If it breezes across the road, everyone stops. But the schools in India were interesting because we had pigs. We had cobras. Okay. Every year there's cobras at the track in India. Yeah. So do you know what it costs to hire unskilled labor in India? Not much. It's about a dollar a day.

Robin: I was going to say, I didn't know which way to go with that. Yeah. Either it's an exotic lavish price or it's next to nothing. And they're going to eat for a week on it.

Dylan: We had these locals and they'd be squatting down in the tall grass out, you know, near the track, but way out of the impact zone. And they would bring their food and they would cook it there. And they would hang out all day and they'd have a big long switch. And they'd use that to chase the pigs away, the wild pigs away. So they didn't run across the track.

Robin: So they're just working their gig.

Dylan: Yeah. They're working their gig. And then in the morning they sweep the track, but they don't have a track sweeper. They had a team of women, Indian women in full saris, colorful saris with handmade brooms where they take the reeds and then stick, and then they wrap them. Yeah. It's fronds. Yeah. And they kind of, they do the side to side motion and they literally hand swept the track every morning.

Robin: That's gotta be a beautiful sight.

Dylan: Yeah. So it's, I guess about 20 females and they're costing a dollar a day. So it's $20, $20 a sweeping truck.

Brian: Wow. So no point in buying a machine to do it, huh?

Robin: Yeah, I guess.

Dylan: No need for a frigging Zamboni. We did have wildlife, quite a bit of wildlife. And there were other animals there too, but I was going down the back straight at that track and I had a Kingfisher fly in front of me. It's got this beautiful blue color, sort of metallic, and it flew right in front of me, but I was not used to that blue metallic fluttering and it startled me amazingly. That was just a bird. Of course I missed it, but it was kind of cool to see a Kingfisher. Kingfisher beer, it's an Indian beer, you know.

Robin: Yeah, yeah. It's not a small bird either. I mean, that's a fairly scalable bird.

Dylan: It seemed that way. I mean, it scared me. I didn't really notice much other than colors, but the animals in Thailand were fine, and it was quite nice to see them.

Robin: Yeah, I imagine. That's a beautiful, exotic white glove experience all day. That would have been amazing.

Brian: Yeah. What kind of bikes were you on in Thailand? Just curious.

Dylan: We had the CB500X. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. Yep. Yeah, it looked like a mini adventure bike. Is that an adventure bike?

Robin: That's a versatile bike. A previous podcast host, Tim Clark. Hi, shout out to Tim. He made a freaking book of that bike. He did amazing things on it. It's just really versatile.

Dylan: When I found out that the rental agency also had the Africa Twins, I was like, oh, I would have rather had that one. Just because when you're at altitude, and I was two up, so you wanted that little extra. You were two up on a 500? Yeah, my girlfriend on the back.

Robin: Yep. I forgot. Sorry. Well, the Africa Twins steps in weird. I do remember hearing that. That's a big kick drum of a front wheel.

Dylan: Yeah, I haven't ridden it, but I figured I'd like to try it. That's kind of what it was made for, so. Yeah. Sounds cool.

Robin: This is difficult because Brian's got this mountainous amount of stuff here.

Dylan: Yeah, let's go.

Brian: If you want to do a speed round, we can. I'm fine. I'll bring up something I was curious about, and I think you have a really interesting perspective on it, because basically those BMW, what are they? The S1000RR, I think is what you. Yeah. So those things are just dripping with technology and so forth, and so that's something I like to ask is, what is your favorite motorcycle technology, and what do you think might be next, or what would you like to see? I would like to see self-healing tires, maybe.

Dylan: I don't know, but they already exist, kind of. My favorite technology, I mean, for the streets, it's just going to be ABS, for sure.

Brian: Yeah.

Dylan: For the track, it's going to be traction control, and I could argue both sides, depending on who's paying me, kind of thing, you know, the lawyer, well, my prosecution or defense, I could say, all these aids are going to make a soft rider with less broken bones, we know, but also having the aids assists a rider to understand where the limit is, because let's just say you've got a rider who's competent enough to get a really strong drive coming off of a corner, and they can dial that throttle in and use most of the power, the traction control is going to activate. So what they're actually going to be able to do is get a tactile feel of what a bike is like when it is right at the limit of traction. Similarly with ABS, if someone doesn't know where the limit is, that's everyone's complaint when they're new riders, how do I know the tire's going to hold? How hard can I brake? How hard can I accelerate? But if they grab a handful of brake and they activate the ABS, there's your answer. And the ABS is going to be very close to 100%, not quite. But now that person has a tactile feel as it understands what that bike is capable of, at least with the conditions that are present when he's using it. So then let's just say the ABS wasn't there, then they have a feeling that they're targeting. Yeah. They have a feeling, they know how hard they have to squeeze the lever before it starts to pulse. They know what the G-forces acting on their body are going to feel like. It gives them that familiarity with getting so close to the end.

Brian: That's not bad. Yeah, I like that perspective. I guess for obvious reasons, you see everything as a training opportunity. I hadn't really thought about that. And I'm into vintage bikes and my KLR is obviously a vintage bike. It's just new. But yeah, I finally upgraded into a modern bike because I specifically wanted ABS. Yeah. You have to train yourself to use ABS too, because it's really startling the first time it activates. Yeah. It tends to startle people and they let go. So they kind of have to work up to it and know it's coming. I have found like the traction control is, how do people know that their traction control is activating? On a lot of bikes, it's really super subtle. So unless you see the light out of the corner of your eye. Yeah, it's the light.

Dylan: Yeah. Here's the thing that most people don't understand about traction control. It's more of a predictive rather than a reactive system. Meaning this, you've got the ECU and it's got parameters. And they have a thing called requested throttle and granted throttle. Requested is what the rider is doing. Granted is what the throttle body is actually doing. And what you'll find is that a rider will do something with their right wrist and the motorcycle will go, okay, but not exactly. It won't, it'll smooth it out for the rider, but not in a really, really invasive way. But a lot of what people think is traction control is really just the bike saying, no, we're not going to do that. I see what you're asking for. We're not going to do that. And then you've got the true traction control. And that's when you're going around a corner and let's say you run across a strip of water or something like that. Suddenly the rear wheel RPM, the rear wheel RPM is going to spike. And I don't know what the rate is that it monitors. It's probably at least a thousand Hertz, if not 10,000 Hertz, where it's going to monitor the rear wheel versus the front wheel speed. And then it's going to cut throttle or ignition or both to regain. And there are values that they're going for. You probably don't know this, but traction control is set to activate at 15% spin, meaning the rear wheel's turning 15% faster than the front. You want it actually churning slightly. The best drive is somewhere between five and 15%, that slight grinding, not spinning one-to-one with the front tire. So as soon as it goes over that 15%, then it jumps in and dials back the motor torque by through either ignition or fuel.

Robin: There's probably going to be some interesting brand comparisons in that state too, because I mean, so like the Can-Am stuff, I used to lead their three-wheel demo rides and that is a fiercely aggressive traction control. If it doesn't like what's happening, if the spin is different, there's a massive decrease in power immediately.

Dylan: Yeah, that's really disappointing. I mean, I've seen it, but you see that with cars, you know, the car, you put your foot in and it starts to accelerate and the thing just completely falls on its face. It's just depressing. It is. The race bikes have a lot less invasive traction control. And then of course, like with the double R, you've got different modes and then 15 micro adjustments within each mode.

Robin: Yeah, that's the question I wanted to ask you is when you were mentioning the 15% and when it does activate, do you feel like it dials back down to the 15% maximum and kind of keeps it there?

Dylan: You don't really feel it. I mean, yes, you can in some instances, but it's pretty darn, darn good.

Robin: Well, Mr. Code, you sure do all the R motors. I tell you what, those R motors, they're totally different. I feel like I'm on a different shelf. I'm way down on the bottom there where you guys have those beautiful S1000s.

Dylan: Yeah, but I like all bikes. I had three KLRs, by the way, because you brought up the KLR.

Brian: Everybody should.

Dylan: But I had the KLR 600. Oh God, that puts it back a bit. Yeah, I had a KLR 600, the very first one. It was a little tiny, like you couldn't even call it a three-quarter fair. It was like a one-eighth thing. And then I had two other KLR 650s. So I had a KLR 600 and two KLR 650s. That's wild. That's kind of like the VW Beetle of adventure bikes, right?

Brian: Yeah, it's just everywhere. You know, if you break down, someone else on a KLR is going to be there along shortly on a gravel road, you know. And I remember like in the adventure training class, again, I just jump on anything I can find in the Midwest. So anyway, I'm looking really hard at that Kentucky class. One of the exercises was we're going down a dirt road and get going about 35 miles an hour and grab a handful of front brake. And I mean, there were guys in the class who didn't realize that you, yes, you have to use your front brake off-road. Like, what have you been doing all this time? He's like, yeah, grab a big handful. And, you know, and he's kind of this real casual describing this thing. It was so funny. But what you want to do is get it, you know, you don't want to lock it up, but you want it to slow down enough where it piles up some gravel in front of your tire and it helps you slow down. And describing all this to people and their eyes are this big. Yeah. And the big thing, the whole theme of the day was you have to, if you're going to do something and especially if it's kind of really out there, like some off-road stuff, you just have to commit and do it. Because if you don't, if you're not a hundred percent, like I'm going to grab a handful of clutch and throttle, and I'm going to go up this, then you're going to die. You know, you're going to fall off. But, uh, yeah, we, we practice until we got it, you know, we were piling up gravel and, and yeah, it does help slow you down. And, uh, no ABS whatsoever.

Dylan: It gives you a good sense. But of course, as soon as the surface changes, then the dynamics are all different again. But especially off-road, the first thing I'll do is, you know, pull the clutch in and tap the rear brake to see how quickly it lets go. And then tap the front brake really quickly to see if it instantly slides or if it bites a little bit before it slides. But since I'm applying it and then letting it go so rapidly, if anything bad happens, it's, it's then it's over.

Brian: Sometimes I'll, sometimes I'll test that way. The testing is an important part of it.

Robin: I think we're doing better than I thought, because that blends directly into our first segment. If you guys want to do a couple of segments and a listener question, what do you guys think?

Brian: Sure, sure. I feel good, Robin.

Robin: That's, that's the only reason we're here, Brian. So we do a segment called two-headed coin, the flip side of anything. In this one, Brian's got eek, a thing, an eek moment. The old sphinctometer is pegged. You know, what do we do? What's our answer? The quick answer. And then slow. And what's the long elaborate answer? And in this case, it's all about gravel and a corner. Are we talking about street?

Brian: Street. Duh. Yeah. Gravel and a corner is a good thing in some environments. We're on a gravel road. Is that normal? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Street, gravel and a corner. It's, well, it's pretty much every corner in the twisty parts of Indiana or where the hills are. I had to learn to deal with it. Dylan, you're, you're, you're the guest of honor. Should we, should we let Dylan go first? What, just a couple of words. What's the thing to do? And then explain that. And the shortest answer is you get the bike picked up.

Dylan: And so drop your body further into the corner so that you can get the bike more vertical. I totally heard that a different way.

Robin: I totally heard that first. After the bike goes down, you got to pick it back up.

Dylan: Oh, right. Yeah, right.

Robin: Completely wrong.

Dylan: No, no. Hang off, hang off more so that the bike can be more vertical. And that way, if it does slip, it's slipping from a vertical, a more vertical attitude or orientation rather. Then, then when it's leaned over, because if it's, if you got a fair amount of lean, that same slip would result in the bike essentially tipping over far more readily. Nice.

Robin: I love that you're saying what I wasn't thinking, but actually do.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Oh, there's the hazard, right? The bike, hang off. Great answer. Okay. My short answer on the quick is relax.

Brian: Relax.

Robin: First answer.

Brian: Meditate.

Robin: Yeah. You know, get a massage. Okay. Brian, you're up.

Brian: So your short answer is relax. Don't freeze. Basically. My short answer is very different. I love this. We've got three different answers. Put your tires in the tracks where the cars have been through. That's the short answer. Oh, I see. So the gravel's there, but there's less gravel. Yeah. Typical gravel. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Go for the safest spot. Yeah. Not always an option, but optimize your route. I guess it'd be another way to put that. The long version of that is what I've learned. Like if you're going to ride anywhere in Indiana, you just have to get really good at this. The skill you have to have for that is being able to precisely place your tires. Yeah. And a lot of people don't quite have that, or they haven't thought about that. They're like, okay, as long as I, as long as I get to the ice cream shop, I'm fine. Like you have to be able to literally hit a dime in the road. And also not stare at it. You know, don't stare down at the corner. Don't stare down at the gravel. Don't let your eyes get real big and target fixated. Yeah. Know where it is. Know where your tires are and be looking, you know, where you need to look. But yeah, optimize your path is kind of where I went with it. So if we do all three.

Robin: Yeah, that's what I was thinking. The long answer, if you combine all three of us into one is take a deep breath and relax, ride the bike, change your body posture and put the bike where there is the most traction remaining.

Dylan: We didn't mention whether or not there was enough time to go to the break. So if you can go to the break, of course, if someone goes to the front brake, let's say, and the problem is, is that we tend to lose our motor control when we're under these moments of stress. Yeah. Sometimes that's going to do good. But I like dragging the rear brake, especially on public roads, because the bike doesn't stand on its nose as much and it's still fine with its line. I think that's a good small adjuster of speed. And at least you're getting the front wheel through, you know.

Robin: I like it.

Dylan: Because if you're on the, if you're on the front brake, that that's going to add a little bit more of what's, it's basically going to be a longitudinal point of resistance. You know, you're.

Robin: Yeah, you're capturing all the inertia of the bike behind it.

Dylan: Yeah.

Robin: Well, I'm glad we've now changed the world with our massive problem-solving skills on that one.

Brian: Yep.

Robin: This next one, a little bit of a rant, but I'll keep this concise. We did get a listener question from a regular questioner, Kevin Butler, who's asked one or two in the past. Kevin Butler found an ad. He says, what are your thoughts on this listing for someone wanting a Tracer 9 GT with other priorities? He wanted a Tracer 9 GT and he found an R 1200 RS, a bike I just happened to own. And he was like, well, I, you know, maybe I should go this route for his next sports touring bike as sorts. He found an R 1200 RS and wanted a Tracer 9 GT, but has other, you know, things that are priorities in his world. So this thing's on the cheap. It's affordable. I think he found it for seven grand. If you want, I can link you to the actual listing, Dylan, if you're interested.

Dylan: I'm looking at the Tracer online.

Robin: Yeah, that looks like a really comfy bike. It is. Brian has the Tracer, but so he found this R 1200 RS for seven grand, which I think is significantly less. My response goes completely sideways on this, which is at first glance, I'll confidently suggest that the bike is probably worth that price, seven to eight grand. It's got 67,000 miles on it. No matter how smooth it runs, those are high miles. Get all the mechanical records you can. I've capitalized some of these for emphasis, but you know, the computer diagnostic, the coolant, air filter, brakes, they have what's called engine start suppression. I don't know if your S 1000s have that, but do the engine start suppression, the fork oil, the oil filter, the lights and signals, side and center stand motion, spark plugs, steering head bearings. And then the all capital ones are the rear bevel gear oil, the splines, which there were some recalls on the tire tread and pressure and the valve clearances, which I'm actually about to do my final valve clearance. I will not check the valves again after a hundred thousand miles. I'm done. They've never been out of spec.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Why am I still doing this?

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: The bike he found, it shows the, it shows the premium package. So where's the top case? I don't see, I see the plate for it, but there's no top case that GPS unit. Isn't a match. And I'm, I'm reading words. I'm not looking at pictures. Maybe they updated the GPS module that year, but which model it is. I don't recognize it. And does it work with the wonder wheel as it's called? I can't tell if the clutch lever is bent. Did the bike ever go down itemize every original part and insist they include them for the price that you ask. And yes, it is appropriate. The pricing that is, but all in all, is it worth the price? I say, yes. Would I buy it? No. If I did buy it, would I be happy about it? Absolutely. I would be very happy if I decided I was going to buy that bike, but I wouldn't do it. If it were me, I would buy the new Suzuki GSX-8R.

Brian: You, you've got a thing for that bike.

Dylan: You know, of course, now we're just getting into economics, personal economics, which makes it really hard to, to give anyone. I personally, it doesn't take me more than five minutes. In some cases, just one minute, get on a bike, get it up to speed, make a few turns and you fall in love with it or you don't. It's, it's one of those things where it's the false economy. If you're spending $7,000 on something that you're going to be like, eh, or you spend more on something that you really, you know, before you go to bed, you just open up the garage door and just peek inside and go, you know, I love that thing.

Robin: That's mine.

Dylan: Yeah. Will it really make you feel great? Is it every time you see it and ride it? If really it's all about the, the dough, of course, a bike like that is going to be, it's going to be great to have the, the BMW looking at the tracer. I think if, if money wasn't an object, I'd probably opt for that over a used one. But I mean, if I had a, you know, if I was given a choice between those two, I could come up with a third that was similar. I really find the, uh, the 1250 GS pretty irresistible. I put a fair amount of miles on those things and I just, it's great for everything except for like real urban, urban stop and go in traffic type stuff. I just love that thing. And since they came out with a new generation, finding a used one at a good price is probably pretty easy.

Robin: Yeah. If you're talking the 1200 versus the 1250, did they do a new generation of the 1250?

Dylan: There's a 1300 now.

Robin: Oh, that's right. That's new in the air. Undiscussed bike at this point. Really?

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Very cool.

Brian: Yeah. One thing I'll point out is that these two bikes, they kind of have similar emissions, but they're extremely different experiences. I actually own an FJ09, which is the, it's before it turned into the tracer and got some other upgrades, but I've ridden tracers actually. It's not that much different, but yeah, the, the, the Yamaha triple engine is like, I am in love with that engine. It's a wonderful engine is incredibly different than a BMW boxer twin. And as you pointed out, Dylan, it's whatever blows your dress up. You know, if this bike is what blows your dress up and it's hard to tell from pictures on a screen and so forth, even just sitting on it in the, in the dealership and go, you know, that.

Dylan: It can be something really stupid. Remember, and as you watched Breaking Bad, he got a really nice, the lawyer got a really nice car, but he hated it because his favorite, favorite coffee cup didn't fit. Sometimes there are things about a motorcycle that have these little conveniences that for some reason mean the world to you. That's something that can't be overlooked. Maybe it's got a little storage compartment for, or it's got, it's got a power lead for your phone or, you know, you name it. There are these other things that, like I said, even though they, they seem quite minor in the grand scheme of things, it just something that really seems to resonate with the, with the, the user.

Robin: If you look at the bike and you look at your wife and you think, how can I be there for two great lovers? You've probably picked the right bike.

Brian: Well, and also, you know, one shaft drive one's chain drive. And yeah, whenever I sell a bike, it seems to have new tires, but whenever I buy a bike, it needs tires just every damn time. The one thing they didn't do. Law of the universe. I don't know why.

Robin: Well, let's raise the curtain and return to something we haven't done in forever. And I'm actually, I'm really glad that Dylan Cote himself is here for this. This is a regular segment on our show. That's been pretty popular. We're going to move on to Brian's tiny, tasty tool tips.

Brian: Do the thing, Robin.

Robin: I have to sing the jingle.

Brian: You have to do the thing. One or two per episode. Okay. So let's talk nuts and bolts about nuts and bolts. This is, it's like so misunderstood, you know, about motorcycles. But just some of the basics is kind of people need to learn what the standard threads and pitches are on your machines. Like if you're replacing fasteners, you're taking stuff apart. You hear the tink, tink, dammit. You know, you need to be able to replace those. So I think it's important if you're going to be working on your own bikes to understand. Like Japanese or Asian bikes are going to have a certain set of standards when you get, you know, 10 millimeter and above. European bikes are going to have another standard. Yeah, the torques. There are bikes that use the inch standard, I hear. It's still in my garage. I'm almost done with it. And just some basic stuff. Learn how to measure fasteners. Look this stuff up online. Get a thread gauge and stuff like that. Don't go into grandpa's coffee can and just cram in whatever seems to fit. You know, that's how you end up with like lawnmower parts on your Suzuki. Right. Which I've seen. There's more than two tips here. But anyway. We can do one or two. Okay. So what I will say, there's several different places to get fasteners. McMaster car, Bolt Depot, Bellmetric, Bolt Motorcycle Hardware.

Robin: Fastenel. Yeah. I hear they actually exist. Never been into one. Not sure they're real.

Brian: It may be. But one of the things I'll just point out is a lot of times it's worth it to just go to the fiches and order the right stuff from the manufacturer. It's actually not all that expensive most of the time and you get the right stuff. Yeah. Like one of the things when I buy a bike, I'll go give it a look over. And a lot of those little fairing fasteners, you know, like if it has a fairing, all those little dammits and fairing stuff and the little rubber bits and the push pins and especially like on BMWs, they have those little Torx. BMWs and Triumphs have those Torx head stuff. Just buy new ones and start fresh because they're always chowdered up if someone else has been working on it. Ask me how I know. For 50, 50, 80 bucks, you're going to get a bike that is much fresher to work on and looks nicer. That's my rant on tool tips.

Robin: Okay. So I know that we're keeping a better guest than we deserve here right now for a little bit long. So we'll do this next bit really quick. This is time for anecdotal chitchat. Brian, are you still doing pretty good? I am. Dylan, are you doing all right?

Brian: Yes.

Robin: Okay. Last segment. We're moving on to segment three here. That was our anecdotal chitchat. And this is the two-wheeled pilot, which is a topic that points to some of the stuff we're talking about, about gravel. And this is, wow, we got the right guy here for the conversation. Have at it.

Brian: Yeah. I think Dylan's going to have some, the idea here is I'm not a pilot or anything like that, but there's a lot of concepts in aviation and aviation safety that apply to motorcycles. And I'm sure Dylan's thought about this before as well. And I started making a list and it got really super long. So I'm just going to pull up a few here. But one of the things I've noticed is that motorcyclists, like if something goes wrong, you know, whether that's somebody goes dirt sampling or whatever. If something goes wrong, motorcyclists will talk about it and pick it apart and figure it out and figure out what went wrong. Like my wife thinks that's really morbid, but to us, it feels more like, no, we need to learn from this so we can prevent that. You know, is that something you've seen Dylan? Like where, yeah, you, if something goes wrong, I need to learn from it. And so I don't have to fear it going forward.

Dylan: Oh yeah. I mean, if you want to captivate somebody, just show them if they crash and you've got video of it, they'll watch that video over and over and over and over again. Well, of course, I'm sure the Instagram or social media videos of people crashing, those are the things that always get the likes or the views. I think a big part of it is someone's trying to go, all right, what happened to him? What was wrong and what could I do to avoid that?

Brian: Yeah, that's true. You do take video people. So that, oh, the last time I had an accident, I had a street accident. I hit a deer, you know, you have a one hundredth of a second to respond and nothing you do, broke a leg, so forth. I was going to set up a GoPro later in the day. There are times I'm like, man, I wish I had a GoPro. That would have been really cool. And then there's other times I'm like, I'm glad I didn't have the GoPro running because I don't want to relive that. Yeah, right.

Robin: I have a question for the authority in the house then. Is this a crash? So if I exit the carousel at Road America with my control rider vest on by decision because I have no more room on the track and I've got too much G-force working against me and decide to stand the bike up, ride it through the grass, keep it on two wheels and stop next to the next to the corner judge booth, have I crashed?

Dylan: Did the handlebar touch the ground?

Robin: No, it did not.

Dylan: You just ran off.

Robin: Okay, cool. I just want to make sure I heard that clearly so that I can, you know, pass it to the powers that be.

Brian: Well, Dylan Coe told me it was fine.

Dylan: Yeah, it wasn't a crash. The handlebar didn't touch the ground. But the number of people that crash, quote unquote, is very high. Where they run off, this thing's going two or three mile per hour, or perhaps it's stopped or just about stopped and they dab or something and maybe it's uneven and then the bike tips over.

Robin: The equilibrium thing.

Dylan: That's pretty common. Yeah.

Robin: Your entire gravity is just not, it's way over. It's on somebody else's bike. Your gravity is no longer with you. It's going to do. Yeah, that's a horrible sensation.

Dylan: The vestibular system on humans is not really well suited for vibration or being shaken.

Robin: Okay, vestibular. Okay, look, go ahead, sorry.

Dylan: You know, the inner ear, right? Yeah. The inner ear. And so apparently it wasn't really, you know, evolved for being shaken or vibrate. So you have someone that goes off road and is really get shaken about what's going to end up happening is the, you know, the signals to the brain from the vestibular system are going to be pretty haywire. And that's going to cause a certain amount of disorientation. Whereas it's not really going to match what the person's seeing. And then when you have the vestibular system and the visuals and not meshing, then the brain will disregard the vestibular and just go with the eyes, which is good. But that takes a little while. That's what astronauts have to deal with. They go into outer space, all the fluid in their vestibular system is just floating around. And, you know, which way is up? Is there really an up in this universe, right? That's, you know, it takes some, some of them quite a bit of time to acclimate to that. And that's when the brain has to basically say anything coming from the vestibular system right now, just completely ignore it. But it's not going to happen quickly when you run off track and you're getting bounced around. So it can cause a certain amount of disorientation just from that side of things, not to mention all the other panic that's being triggered, et cetera.

Robin: All the stuff, still the bank spike, still the bank spike, still the bank spike.

Brian: Yeah, right.

Robin: So that's what I was thinking the whole time.

Brian: It's interesting you mentioned the astronauts because that's something pilots who are doing IFR training. So they're training for instrument flight where you can't see outside the airplane, you're in a cloud. And so all you have to do is you have to train your vestibular system to shut down and trust your eyes and your instruments. Oh, yeah. Your body will start to, oh, we're going upside down. We're going upside down. Your body starts to freak out without those visual references.

Dylan: They'll look at the meatball and the meatball says something totally different from what they think. Surfers, when they wipe out, sometimes they're swimming down rather than up.

Brian: That's a California thing, Robin.

Robin: Yeah, no, we're Midwesterns, but it makes perfect sense.

Brian: That was brilliant. Another thing from aviation that I think really works in training of any type is kind of the blameless and shameless mindset. It's more like we need to figure out what's wrong and how to prevent it and what to do about it. We don't need to figure out who to blame and who to point the finger at. Agreed.

Dylan: Anyone who's had to investigate an aviation mishap, one of the first sort of rules is it's never just one thing. There's always a combination of factors. And there's another thing that my dad says, if you find yourself in trouble, let's say it's a crash or a situation you really don't like. The true error happened typically one to three seconds prior. If someone's running wide in a corner, they're not going to go, I'm running wide in the corner. What was I doing one to three seconds ago? And what flaw might there have been? No, they're not going to do that. And that's often where riders, they get their attention stuck at the point of impact or the point of, oh, no, rather than one to three seconds prior. That's something that can cause riders to really scratch their head. It's funny, though. I get a lot of people that will bring videos of their crashes at a track day or something like that. They come to us to do level one, but they went so far as to bring their laptop because they're completely bewildered why they crashed. They've got no clue and it's haunting them. Because let's be honest, three crashes and you don't know what happens. It's a bike for sale. That's it. I'm out of there. I'm not going to do that. But the most common thing I see is guys sneaking in more lean angle while they're rolling throttle on. And it doesn't have to be very much. They're increasing the lateral load and the longitudinal load at the same time. And so that tire is being pulled in two different corrections effectively. And it's very easy to lose traction. And when it wants to intentionally lose traction, like kick the rear end out, they increase throttle and increase lean concurrently. And that will get the rear wheel sliding. But if you don't want it to do that, then you have to make sure you don't. And that's what we see, the causation. But someone can watch, they can watch themselves on video over and over and over and over and over again and miss that. I said, no, look at the horizon. You're on the throttle. Everything looks fine. See how the horizon starts to tilt a little bit more and then the low side. And they go, ah, man, I can't believe that.

Brian: Of course, that's not everybody, but the percentage is pretty high. I never thought of people doing it. They're haunted by something and they show up at level one. There's something I need to fix. There's something I don't know. They're in a state of infinite replay. Yeah, infinite replay.

Dylan: And let's be honest, let's paint a picture. A guy used to ride dirt bikes when he was a kid. He went through life. He got married, had kids. They grew up, got divorced, midlife crisis, buys a Ducati, gets the suit, everything all matching, goes around. He's up in the canyons of the country roads and he's online. He's online. He's online. And then suddenly the bike runs wide one corner. He has no idea why. And then the next corner is fine. Next corner is fine. And then he seems like he's wrestling. The bike just won't go exactly where he want it. He knows that there's other guys that will go through the corner faster. Let's say guys in his group. So now he's really bewildered. But these guys are going to legit, they're going to be afraid of their motorcycle. And there they are going to bed. They peek in the garage and they look at that bike and they kind of sigh because they really think it's beautiful. But at the same time, it's this, that fun that they know is there is just inaccessible or it's accessible, but they know that out of the, just out of the shadows, this demon can pop up at them and they have no clue why they ran wide. And there's a lot of reasons to run wide, for a rider to run wide at the corner. And that's where good training can neutralize these mysteries and return the rider to just having fun and enjoying the ride, not being afraid of their motorcycle. I couldn't say anything better than that.

Robin: I love having guests on this show that are completely out of my league in this world. Like, it's just great to hear these things said the way they need to be said.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: That is really well put. It's like, there's a framework to what will get them the smiles they're after when they're riding and the bolts, the whole framework is just missing some bolts and the purpose of the purchase isn't quite logical or it hasn't been validated yet by learning what they need to be doing to be on that machine to begin with. I cannot thank you enough for that. Real quick here. It's time for us to wind it down. We've been doing this for a while and dang, these things are hard to produce, but I want to know what more can you tell us about things you're looking forward to for 2024 over at California Superbike School and tell the world what you want them to hear. And we'll, we'll start to pass it down.

Dylan: This is our 44th year. So congrats. What we're just trying to do is follow. We've got our successful programs that we have on the sort of business side or curriculum side, and really it comes down to just continuing with that and then coming up with incremental innovations. That's where we were just looking for little innovations along the way, but we don't want to completely reinvent ourselves at this stage because we've landed at a place that's pretty good. Definitely, if anyone wanted to find fault with our school, I could find far more fault than them. I'm the least satisfied person, but with all that being said, the program is, is excellent and we've made a lot of good riders. And something I mentioned to in another interview, it's not uncommon for someone to say, this is the best day of the year for me, or this was the best day of my life and have them repeat it like, no, actually the best day of my entire life was today. The best day. I'm qualified better than any of this, anything else better than graduating high school or whatever, you know, the milestones, which is really cool to, to provide. And that's what we're always trying to, trying to do. The school is here and we're just continuing what we do and trying to refine things further. For anyone who's thinking about getting training, it's obviously something that at some point in your life you're going to want to do. The most common complaint I hear is that people said I should have come here 20 years ago. I should have done this a lot earlier. Don't skip that.

Robin: Yeah. I'm going to interrupt you here. The website is superbikeschool.com.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Go check it out and see what Dylan Code is operating and what he's running there and get yourself signed up, myself included, at some eventual point, it's going to happen. In fact, we're heading to Cal, well, we're heading to California probably next year. Okay. Just everybody hear this loud and proud, superbikeschool.com. If you're not doing anything right now, go there on your phone, check it out.

Dylan: Training is a great thing to do. It's something that if you're, if you're serious about riding motorcycle, it's, it's something that, that I would include in there as your aspirations. Sometimes people come up to me and they ask me, I'll be at a social function and they'll say, Hey, what do you do for a living? Say, Oh, I train people how to ride motorcycles, but ones that already know how to ride, but we do it on tracks. Oh, and then everyone has a story about a motorcycle, whether it's how they were on the back of one once or had a friend who got hurt on whatever. Everyone's got a story. Those of them that, that will say, you know, I always wanted to do, I was thinking it'd be nice to, to get my license. I tell them, I say, look, unless you can really devote yourself to this craft, if you want to call it, don't bother. Just you gotta want it. Just do something else. Yeah. Do something else. And again, the thing that I keep on saying is, is we give junkies clean needles. I'm not out there trying to hook people on motorcycles. I'm not saying, Hey, everyone buy a motorcycle, discover motorcycling. That's not my job. That's the motorcycle industry council's job. My job is to give junkies clean, clean needles. If they've made that personal decision to explore riding motorcycles, which is very rewarding, we know it's also very dangerous. We know that too. But you know, you got to do something while you're alive. Right. And if someone wants to do that, yes, we will do everything we can to make that person safer and more confident. And that's what the school is all about.

Robin: Dylan Code, I want to thank you for making the time to join us for this podcast. It just keeps getting more and more interesting to hear all these different voices. And, and, and like I said, it's a tall reach to reach up to the shelf where you're sitting as far as I'm concerned and have you say yes to this. So, and also more importantly, the real reason we're out here, thanks for letting me borrow that photo. Okay, great. Appreciate you. Thanks again, man. Thanks a lot. All right. You're welcome.