Robin: Since I'm still right now, as, as we're recording this, I'm still producing the Robin won't shut up episode as I'm calling it. It needed to happen. That was a good episode, but it was the, again, it's just me. Blah, blah, blah, ring about seven, which is over now. I said in that episode, you're running the show here. Oh, blank template. Yeah. I'm going to say the tires page, Brian. Awesome idea. Thank you for bringing that to light. I'm happy to be coding it. It's going great and way to go on that. I did just get my Conti motions, the Continental Conti motions. Yeah, yeah. Just arrived. I'm still waiting for the front first impression of the rear wheel still in the Saran wrap jacketing. They arrived. By way of the campground hosts here who are so kind as to bring our packages to our door, set them on the picnic table out there where it's set in the morning sun into the early afternoon. I brought the rear tire in and was just like, well, let's see what we got here. And the tread itself feels like soft marshmallow rolled in charcoal powder. I'm not. That optimistic that these are going to last more than a couple grand, maybe 2, 500 miles, maybe 3, 000 miles.

Brian: They should stick. Okay. And it's worth, it's worth a

Robin: try just to see, you know, I imagine if they go on easier, then that's great. I mean, like if, if I'm spending twice the time mounting the tires, but screaming at the tire changing machine, less, all right, so be it. Cause my, my wheels are easy to get off. That's no big deal. Uh huh. However, I do say that for the price, I don't predict the longevity is going to be insane. I don't think it's going to be much at all. Actually. I think it's going to be a very short lived tire. The siping is just like the Dunlop road smart threes, except that I think that they just put in the little tweak to get around their patent. Any tire you get in the packaging where you push on, it's like, that's spongy. I know the grip's going to be insanely good. But I predict that the last, like a couple trips, I may have to change tires between now and the Wisco tour, if it goes the way I imagine. All right. That's it. The show is yours. Brian, what do you want to do?

Brian: Before the Wisco tour, I'm getting, you know, I'm going to, I'm thinking about that and I'm like, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to need to change them before that because I wouldn't want to be that guy. Who's looking for a tire in rural Wisconsin and, uh, all that. So I think I'm going to go for the, uh, unless you call me up in a few weeks or whenever you get them mounted and say, these Connie motions are the best things to slice bread. I, I'm just going to order up a set of the mutants and, uh, and, and enjoy that and see what those are like.

Robin: I realized we haven't told people about this page. If you go to TRO. bike, you Mouse over or on your phones, click on the navigation, select DigiTools, and then scroll down or click on Road Rubber Rankings. You click on it, and we're basically, we're all just kind of hanging out keeping track of some tires. And you can sort them by name or by price.

Brian: Lots of coding going on there, Robin. This basically arose because every time I buy tires, I have, I have to go through a list. I have to come up with a list and then I like share it with people. And I do the same thing for my KLR tires, which dual sport tires are just a whole nother. You've got like this fourth dimension, like, you know, how dirty is the tread? Is it like a knobby or is it a road tread, blah, blah, blah. So we've got this list of sport touring tires and the sizes that fit our bikes, 180, 55, 17 rear. This is just something we're doing anyway between us. So we're like, let's publish this and see what happens. If anybody cares, I hope they do.

Robin: The way I've configured the API, we can access it. Tell me if you would like me to add a new tab, but we can expand on this to dual sport, ADB, anything we want, really, as time goes on, the next thing I want to add to it is images. I want to show the image of the tire.

Brian: You know, that's starting to sound like actual work. So I don't know. I'm, I'm half fried from a weird day. Anyway. How could you describe your weird day if it were a motorcycle ride? Oh, let's go up this gravel road. Oh, let's go up this, uh, this road here. Oh, let's go down this highway. It was extremely varied. Uh, so I can't say I had a boring day, but I can say I had a day of, of, Oh, let's figure out this rock garden while I'm on my sport bike. Uh, and I'll just stand on my tiptoes and, and somehow I got to the other end of it. I have no flippin idea today. I went up baby head Hill on, on, on a touring bike and somehow lived. Sounds like the life

Robin: of a professional motorcyclist.

Brian: That's that that's sort of, well, it would be if it actually wasn't just an analogy. I'll say you, you kind of touched on earlier. It's like, people will be like, this tire is hard to Mount. This tire is really easy to Mount that kind of thing. And they'll, they'll sort them out by that. And I'm like, does that really matter?

Robin: I think it depends on who you are and what painstaking mistakes you definitely defer to before every tire change. I can tell you right now that our friend, Neil has made a great joke. Every time I mentioned my frustration, sometimes depending on the tire, even with a no mar, my no mar should be no comma mar. And he said, I'll show you no more. My ass, you're going to mar all right. I'm going to make it happen. You know, on my last tire change, I used the, uh, Laminar, whatever it is to get underneath the tire, to bring it up over the rim, to remove it. And it broke off in half. Nice. It's a simple concept. Get it under the rubber, turn it. Now you've got a tooth on the rubber, bring it up and walk it around. Well, with the road smart threes, what that became was get hooked and then break the equipment. Fortunately, the equipment comes with two of them. So I had another one. There's that point in time when you're doing anything that has always been frustrating for you. And you think this time I'll get it. And then you sit there and you're going, I think there's a certain psychosis. You're just sitting there going. Yeah. I

Brian: don't got it. I don't got it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing with, uh, with the Nomar or the Ravaconda or any of them, there's still a learning curve and it's still pretty damn steep. You know, you saw me put on a road smart three with three tiny little tire irons and over in the grass by witness, almost no effort. Yeah. So that, you know, it can be done, but it took a very long time and a lot of tires to, you know, to get comfortable with that.

Robin: Well, to your credit, that's kind of a thing that people don't learn easily. I certainly don't. It's not the process. It's the approach to the process. This is a thing that the world could use more of, is any kind of calming training, where like, you know all those Disney videos with Goofy in it, where they're reading the instructions on how to build like an Ikea chair aloud, and Goofy's going through the motions, there's some kind of misunderstanding, and it all falls apart on him, right? There's a lot of people in this world like that, whereas, you look at a thing, and if there's a hiccup, Your view of that hiccup is oftentimes, Oh, I didn't expect that to be there. We're going to have to figure that out. Yeah. Go through the motions to try and figure it out. And then, Oh, look, we've resolved the matter. That's easier for some, it's easier for the greats. And I consider you one of the greats.

Brian: Gosh, thanks for that little stroke. Oh, it'll be edited out. No, fuck off. It won't be edited. Yeah, edit that out. And while we're talking about tires, it's like one of those, it's one of those religious topics with motorcycles. So we know might as well, there's a lot of rich material there. Yeah. People will focus like they'll buy tires based on whether they're easy to mount or not. And I don't really just buy what's best, you know, just figure it out. Uh, the second thing people do is they want to, and you'll see this all the time. I just saw it today and it reminded me they'll buy tires based on whether they think that they'll follow lines in the road too much or not.

Robin: When there's a graded pavement kind of thing.

Brian: Yeah. Like when there's, when you're going over a bridge grading or whether you're, you're on those, uh, those lines in the road for what are the, they're like the rain lines, different slabs or something, you're riding along the street and people get really, really extremely horribly spooked by that little wiggle or motion or the tire or the bike wants to follow it. And they lose their minds. I'm like, they blame the tires and like, okay, these tires are forever off my list, no matter how well they work. Otherwise, I don't know. I, I just don't see the point. I don't think that's important, you know, and I've never really noticed all that much difference. You know,

Robin: it gets into the loud pipes, save lives, nonsense with if loud pipes save lives. Imagine all the good you could do if you learned to ride. .

Brian: Pointed. Pointed, but also true. You know, it's one of those things it's like, you know, it's, it's, it's not, uh, it's not the tire, you know, it's, it's more of, you know, you have to be, you know, the, the surface is going to do things back to your bike and you just have to get used to it. It's not a Ford pickup and, you know, and it's, and it's just not an important attribute. And I don't think there's really all that very much variation. People just get spooked by one thing or the other. And, you know, it's like a horse sees a blue handkerchief and, and, and gets scared and that's all there is. Yeah. And the third thing that really, especially with dual sport tires, I really do not understand while we're talking about it is people will complain that tires are loud. Who cares? Who's who can even hear this? I'm wearing earplugs. I'm wearing a helmet. I'm going 50, 60, 80, a hundred miles an hour. Who the hell cares? It's like, Oh, my tires are not vanilla flavored. I'm really upset by this. Or they smell like tangerines.

Robin: I don't know what's wrong. Gets back into these ContiMotions, which I'm excited to test because I know that I'm going to put them on and they're going to be grippy as all.

Brian: But they're going to evaporate, you know it. They're going to be gone.

Robin: I can already tell. If you can physically press on the siping and see an imprint from your finger, you're going to have a great day of riding.

Brian: There's not a lot of silica in that. Yeah.

Robin: So then how do we invert the, how do we make this a positive? How do we have a positive episode?

Brian: Yeah. Buy tires, put them on, wear them out, repeat, you know, that, that have fun. Uh, nobody, nobody rides for free. Um, and there's something I said, I don't know, two or three or six episodes ago, like one way to save money is to buy the expensive tires, buy the expensive tires, buy the expensive chain because they're going to last longer and you're going to have to screw around with them less. In this case, you're kind of taking a gamble. These might be great. They might last 8, 000 miles and they stick like glue. I don't know. For the

Robin: money and the effort, I'll give it a shot. I want to find the next budget tire that meets the I feel like the industry, it's not that they're oppressing the buyers more. Just, we had this amazing heyday with the previous pricing on the road. Smart threes. It was just dumb. I remember I sent a, or repeat visitor on this podcast, Jason Araheim. He happened to be at Rob's performance here in Wisconsin. And I said, Oh, you are, can you give me some tires? Uh, he was like, yeah, well, what do you, what do you want? And I was like. See if they got the Dunlop road, smart threes, one 20 over one 80 and one 20. And he, he looked at the price. I just immediately heard him say under his breath teaser. These are cheap as hell. Yeah. And I was like, yes, yes. And he got him for some crazy price for me. Repeat, repeat, repeat. And then that is now gone.

Brian: Yeah, that's gone.

Robin: I don't know what they were doing that allowed them to do it. And now it's not the thing. So now it's like crack. I, I have to know where the next tire for the budget is. Where's that? I need to find it and then I'll carry on.

Brian: Yeah, you could get them from, I think I went through three or maybe I'm on the fourth set of these and they were 240 bucks for a set and now they're 381 as the best price I've been able to find. And it's like,

Robin: why? I can't do that. I just, I can't until we have sponsorship.

Brian: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Michelin, you, you send us, you send us some tires to abuse and we will, we will sell them to people. They

Robin: can't even hear us up on that shelf. They just hear this, they're way up there on the, they've got their,

Brian: yeah,

Robin: I will say that, uh, Hey, NGK or Napa, anybody

Brian: hook us up. Like the road smart fork has been out for a while and, but they're 26 percent more expensive, but they're claiming a 20 percent increase in tread wear and a little bit better. If you, I don't know, like I said, I'm going to, I'm probably going to try the mutant next, which is right now is a 401, which is a little more than a road smart three, but they look cool. And I just want to try them out for science.

Robin: Yeah. I want you to hate on them and let me know really hate on the tire. Just rally it.

Brian: Beat on them. Yeah.

Robin: Yeah. Exact miles.

Brian: Yeah. And supposedly they, you know, supposedly they, they'll work okay. Like they give you some grip and off pavement. That's kind of a thing I do to people. So is drag them off pavement into sand traps and things like that. That that's, yes, there's a story I could tell you, but anyway,

Robin: do you have two trip computers? Reset one of them for this set of tires. I had my mileage for this year on my trip too, and it somehow got flustered. Somebody messed with it. Maybe it was me, but the point is I'm going to reset trip two for this set of tires. And if I make 2000 miles, I'll start to be impressed. If I don't make 3000 miles, I will be underwhelmed and move on to the next spend.

Brian: We'll see what happens. Um, but yeah, I'm gonna, I'm going to throw the mutants on before the trip to Wisconsin, uh, in early August. I'm gonna load these up and have a peek at them. They're going to get some abuse up there. And then I will. Do what I do with them and see what happens. Yes,

Robin: sir. We get into tires a lot. You know, we do it to death, but it's such an easy topic to really get into. Cause it's just like every time you twist the throttle and take off, you feel that grip on the pavement. You want to know that from the ground up, we've made the right selection or made the right change. So it comes up a lot.

Brian: Well, and, and if somebody is new to motorcycling, they do not understand yet the pain because. Motorcycle tires last maybe five to 8, 000 miles, if you're lucky, uh, maybe more if you're depending, but you know, which is about a 10th of what car tires last. So a set of motorcycle tires costs around half of what a set of car tires costs, but they last maybe a 10th as long. And it's just ain't fair. If you ride a lot, you know, my wife has always, this has happened more than once. Hey, didn't you just order motorcycle tires last week? Why? Yes, yes, I did. That was for a different bike, but. That happens a lot. What are we doing next, Brian? All right. Do we have any actual real listener questions? Not this week. No, but we've been obscure and the season's hot to trot. So yeah, we've been doing more writing than recording, to be honest.

Robin: If you would like us to field your questions, just reach out to podcast at TRO dot bike or visit email dot TRO dot bike in web browser, which will take you to our contact page.

Brian: You will get an answer of some sort. If we pick your question out of the Thousands we get every decade. Here's a question that relates to recent experience. Hard earned experience. So let's chew on this a little bit. It is a real question that I have had and I've had to tackle. I've got a really real cool route going through the hills and the mountains, but there's a small segment of easy gravel in the middle. How do I keep my buddies from freaking out over this? Is this okay? Is this rude? What do you do?

Robin: Let's look at what happened with the last day of sevens. Did anybody actually freak out? Uh, not until

Brian: afterwards.

Robin: Okay, so a thing happened to me and it happened to me and was inflicted by me onto me. The only person that was at fault for the fact that my bike ended up on its side is me.

Brian: I think it was spinning in circles too, right?

Robin: Yeah, it was clock ticking. Totally clock ticking on its

Brian: side. Sorry. I missed that

Robin: for those who don't know the story. So I'm, that means that I'm following Brian, not we are following Brian. Brian is leading me. I am electing to follow him. Nobody is going to pass me. It's, it's a business, right? So if I decide to follow Brian into the road closed area, that is, I don't know. I want to say it was like 50 or 60 yards of fairly well packed noise. That's my decision. And I'm electing to do that and assuming that my customer base is going to do the same. And they did. However, they're not going to pass me. And as I'm about halfway into this, it's getting softer and softer. I'm standing up, the bike kind of goes sideways on me and I'm like, okay, no problem, fine, I know what I'm doing, but I don't know that they do. So while my bike is straddling a five to six inch line of sand, my, my front tires on one side of it, my back tires on the other, and the bike's kind of sliding over it and like, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right. But are, are they going to be able to do this? The one mistake I made was to sit my butt down and check in the mirror. And immediately there were no second, it was zero seconds flat. Boom, right onto its side. No delay. Just sit down and ground as I step off of it. The bike's like, and just like a clock driving itself in circles. And I'm like, I follow it and walk over and hit the power button, lift up the sidestand, pick up the bike. I know I'm fine. The bike is hopefully fine. And I'm just like, well, I need a target. Brian's going to be my target. So here I'm like, Brian, why did you take us down this road?

Brian: No, no, you were, you were extremely polite immediately. And I was like, oh, sorry about all that. Uh, you all right, man?

Robin: I guess even if you do know your audience, even if your audience has some experience riding over lengthy amounts of hard packed gravel, a little bit of loose sand, no matter what you do, there's always the chance that it's going to get away from them too. That's riding. The individual has to elect whether or not they want to follow you. If they want to debate you before the ride as to whether or not that should happen. I wouldn't have, I would have been like, yeah, we'll be all right. And we were, for the most part, it was not a thing. If they want to debate you before the ride, can we please not do that? Then it's up to you to decide whether or not you want to tell them, Hey, go do your own damn thing, or I'll figure it out.

Brian: We'll figure something else

Robin: out. Yeah. I think trying to convince them that they should do it isn't, isn't the In your best interest ever. Like, no, you should totally do this. You should totally do that. That's bad news. But to say like either piss off and go ride your own thing, then I'm doing this is one thing, which I told you in Indiana, I did, I was like, Hey man, I'm going to go now, or if I say, you know what, um, I'll just tie it to this then, and we'll just take 15 minutes to get around it in a straightaway and enjoy the scenery. Excellent. What do you got to say about it? Bring it your turn. Ride the horse.

Brian: Like that situation was, we really didn't know what was there. Eh, it just looks like some gravel took off through it. Not a big deal. And then, okay, where'd everybody go? So I did not get to witness the tick tocking clock thing. I'm really kind of sorry. I'd miss that. But anyway, and everybody else was fine. I don't think anybody was mad. I don't know. There's a different situation like where, and, and I'm thinking of specifically if you, I don't know if anybody out there will know what I'm talking about, but. If you take Highway 32 out of Newport, Tennessee, and you go south towards the state line with North Carolina, it gets super duper, ridiculously bonkers, pants on head, stupid, twisty, and then at the state line, it turns to gravel, and you have 6 mile of very hard packed, solid gravel that's going downhill, and then you can turn left and get on pavement and get on the interstate and carry on. So last time I was down there, I basically said, Hey, we can do this really fun paved road. And at the top at the state line turns a gravel for 0. 6 a mile. And also the second thing was I had an alternate planned if like, if it were raining or if it had just rained, this probably would have been fine in the wet. But yeah, and everybody's like, yeah, that's cool. No problem. And cause there are also people I've ridden with a lot and we somehow end up on dirt roads a lot. That's just how I roll. But yeah, sometimes people will be like, absolutely, you know, they see the gravel, they will not do it. And that's fine too, you know, and as long as you know it's coming, then you can kind of plan an alternate and have that in your pocket. Okay, you go that way, you go that way, way here, we'll be there, that kind of thing. If you know it's there, it's usually not really very necessary. But in this case, it was, it was like, you could really experience a very interesting road. And it was about the only way to get there.

Robin: This starts to get into the training thing. Honestly, back to the matter is, is that I haven't had any new training in a minute. I would really like to get some new training. Cause I, I find myself discussing it a lot, making a point of it to other people a lot. There are those things that I'm comfortable doing and just head first. Yes. I know how to do this. There are also things that I'll be definitely willing to do that I'm less assertive about, because if you're assertive, you're going to cause trouble. Loose surface conditions. That's just not how you handle that. You have to simultaneously maintain a null center of gravity on the bike, while also responding to its little hints when you're anything in a loose surface. Well,

Brian: or not responding.

Robin: Yeah. The antithesis of response, right? Your response is to be. Relaxed and let things happen. But you can say that all you want and then end up in a situation where you're like, Oh, I really don't like this, which just points to the horse's mouth needs to get back into the training spectrum. I will admit that it's time. I need to find a new environment to learn something different. I tend to try to do that every year, if not every couple of years. And I think at this point, it's probably been three years. I need a new perspective. And that's always good for writing. Even if you're returning to a perspective that you have already assimilated or spent time getting to know in the past, things start to degrade. So you come back to it, you relearn it. It could be as simple as the Fisher Price advanced course. That is the MSF ARC or the Insano course that is the California Superbike is screaming at me right now. I would love to go hang out and get into some of that.

Brian: Just not there yet. I really transformed things with a, uh, with a, uh, uh, adventure writing. I hate the word adventure, but the, the off road writing course a while back. Yeah, well, it was 20, it was 2021. That's the last time I did any advanced training. I'd done a ton of off road riding and stuff, but just really transform things and going back to my situation, you know, where I'm talking about that specific road, the guys that were with me had, I spent a lot of miles on KLRs on, on loose surfaces with those guys. And they were, I knew they would be fine. The thing to remember, even on a bike with a street tires, you have less traction. You just less traction is still some traction. You know, you can still get things done. It's still a motorcycle. It's still mostly. Works the same way.

Robin: Attraction half full cup, half full kind of thing. It's just a matter of perspective.

Brian: And again, you know, and on the, whatever day that was the fifth or fourth day of the, of the sevens tour, there was. You know, uh, some sort of accidental gravel going on twisty thing and everybody managed it and, and I, I really would have enjoyed seeing, uh, Norm on that gigantic starship of a BMW going across that he actually showed up. Uh, his bike was actually dirty. It probably, that's probably made him more upset than anything. One

Robin: of the best days on the seventh tours is West Virginia. I talked about this a while ago too. There's a certain twisty section where it's just, it's hectic as all get out. And coming up through one corner, the pavement is for the most part exquisite. And that just happened to be one silt section in one corner, sort of a chalky transparent sheen of who knows what, how it got there off of some water runoff or whatever. I was leaning pretty hard through a blind and I arrived at that and I simply saw what did not look like the rest of the road. And when my front tire was just before it. Neutralized the throttle created a coasting effect. The bike went across it and there was a huge dance , a foot and a half to two feet of this hasn't happened on this road at all for 30 miles. Sort of did it catch me off guard? Sure. And did I think to myself, I didn't like that, eh, it's a tad. But same as the traction, it's how much of that tad that I let into my psyche, I just carried on, kept on going, found the next spot, made sure everybody came through. They all did. Moving right along. Keep flying the plane. Make it weird. What else? We got in the sandbox here because we're, this isn't part of the outline. We're deep in the sandbox right now. Just pulling random noise. Pick a straw outta this hat and just . We could do tra

Brian: Ron's tech takedown without Travis in this segment. We we're calling it tra Ron's tech takedown. Even though tra Tron isn't uh, here at the moment, but in his honor, I mean, he is alive and everything. He's just not here. Shout out to two

Robin: Face MCM mouth Travis Lesin. This is his segment.

Brian: Let's talk about some of the electronics that are popping up on new bikes and are the things we need are the things there's one thing I've noticed like a new BMW is especially they have like a cradle that's for a specific GPS for that specific bike from that specific manufacturer and so forth. I cannot say I'm a fan of making things that specific. You know, I keep, maybe it's because I'm poor and I keep bikes a long time. You know, I know people, uh, Robin, who do the same thing, put a ton of miles on them and stuff like that. You know, one of my most beloved bikes is 41 years old, 41 years from now that BMW with a, with a GPS cradle or a built in GPS is just going to be useless. You know, I don't get that.

Robin: I'm currently writing an article about this exact topic to an extent. The case for base is the title of the article. Nice. Honestly, all of these things that are elected add ons to these bikes can be bought third party without the need for dedicated absolutes that are specific to that. You're making model and not just that you're making model, but that particular generation of that you're making model because they fixed the thing and it's all adapters. Like, no, no, that's, that's gotta go. I'm over it. There is no bike that is prospect for sport touring, meaning it is a sporty machine, meaning pavement that could be converted over to a touring status that I can't smile about and slowly upgrade by getting it aftermarket luggage, if not soft luggage, if not a dry bag, some kits, some electric, some heated grips, some heated over grips, which you can get for 30 bucks. So the article is going to talk about that. Excellent. Kelly Howard also wrote a great article about this. So if you go to the site and look up diabolic technologic or read that article, he gets pretty deep into it. Some of it's good. All right. ABS, fantastic. DTC. I mean, I guess so.

Brian: Yeah, we talked about a lot of that. There is a bit of technology that I think could actually be a good idea and, uh, that's related to this. Maybe it's on other bikes and maybe you can fill me in here, but on the Royal Enfield, uh, Himalayan 450. You have like a round dial in front of you. That's the speedometer, but the thing is actually a screen and you have different screens and the motorcycle can show you how fast you're going and all this stuff. Here's the cool part. You can actually connect a screen via Bluetooth to your phone, but you can have it set up so the speedo is showing, but it's actually showing you the map of your GPS for your phone on this dial in front of you on the motorcycle. I think that's actually a good use of technology. I know Bluetooth. Like 10 years from now, you may not be able to connect to it anymore, but I think that's really interesting and it leverages, you know, the device you have with you anyway, and you can just cast it to this screen and use that. And if you don't do that, then it's just a motorcycle and it's a screen showing you your, your usual crap. So I like that.

Robin: The hardest truth in tech is if I need to replace that, if that tech is destroyed, it's And I need to replace it because there's tons of bike remaining. Then will the bike be so upset at me for the original tech not being there that it will not operate properly. That is the wrong design logic. Now I have heard engineers. I hope to eventually get maybe one of the Suzuki guys on here. Won't be able to say their name and I won't ask them to. We'll keep it under

Brian: wraps. We can even disguise their voice. We're running through the voice processor. Yeah, I, my name ,

Robin: I got, I got the Chick Seder still very into that bike. I like it very much. Super lightweight, great feel, simple mechanic layout, easy plastics, no big deal in any direction until you look at the hud. Yeah, so the HUD is a box of light. Imagine the seventies. If you're that old or imagine sitting in a 70s car or anything like that, any 80s car, maybe even an early 90s car, you need to touch a button. You don't have to look at it. You can reach with your eyes closed. You know, which button you're looking for. It feels like a certain shape. This it's a certain number of that feeling. You know, that's going to be that station looking for boop. You click it. You get that station on the radio. All right, cool. Cool. Now switch that over to a screen. You must physically look at that screen, find the thing, and then it's going to respond to your request to, I don't know what, anything that involves you. Riding in ride. That's dangerous. There's no feel involved. And that's one thing that I think is haphazard. We don't need that.

Brian: Yeah. There are some touch screens on motorcycles, but most of them are, but they have these really like BMW has these God awful weird buttons and controls on the handlebar. I've got the wonder wheel. Yeah. Yeah.

Robin: It changes you, Brian. It changes you, man. Good stuff. But what my rant about the Suzuki thing was that I was like, all right, so cool. I'm interested in getting this bike. Perhaps. Uh, I mean, I'm not in the market yet. Cause that's just not where we're at. However, let me know. I just need to know how am I, uh, how am I resetting that wrench icon when I work on my bike, cause it'll never see a dealership. How do I reset the wrench icon? The answer was,

Brian: you can't,

Robin: you take it to the dealership. No, I don't. So I need the answer to my question. It's not going to the dealership. How do I do it at home? Go ahead and let me know. I need, I need the answer to that. I need the information now, please hurry up and answer the question. And the question is, well, and you know where that's going.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: The person that I spoke to did not like that comment or question or confrontation because they're hiding.

Brian: Right. Yeah, and the thing is, that's not a technology thing at all. That's a business decision. They want you to subscribe to a motorcycle and keep paying them the rest of your life.

Robin: Strangely enough, not true. This freaks me out to say it. I believed exactly what you just said. Okay. This is a mind boggling truth that has only hit me this season. The issue is proprietary firmware stops us from breaking rules with emissions. It's one of the things that we cannot access and change. We can, of course, we have to be willing to risk it. We have to be willing to. Tamper with our hardware, which is allowable somewhere. There's like a state to state border of mindsets where we're allowed to hack in through third party systems, but the companies that manufacture the bikes will not advocate them. And if we mess it up, we're S O L

Brian: you're on your own.

Robin: Yeah, that's it. The reason that they are doing this more and more is not necessarily to protect us from ourselves. It's to. Enforce the protocols that were put in place to make sure the bikes are up to government spec, whatever, something like that. Now, I will admit that my response is only 50 percent true. The other 50 percent is, well, if we're going to do that, let's go ahead and screw their wallet and force them to come in and pay 50 bucks for the 15 minutes of the hour that they paid for it to get this thing reset. That is a trashcan discussion right there.

Brian: Yeah, there's no emissions based reason to force people into a dealer to reset an oil change light. That's a man. There are a lot of systems that you do need to lock people out of or their own safety for emissions. Although that's oftentimes used as an excuse to keep things proprietary regarding your future revenue stream, you know, that resetting the light solutions will appear, you know, like for BMW solutions appeared as soon as they started doing that. You know, you can reset your own lights and everything, but, and that's a whole nother rant, like I'm not, I, I, I'm never, I would never take my bike to a dealer because I do better work. I take the time, not that I'm smarter, although I probably am. It's, it's more that I care. It's my ass on the line.

Robin: I will say it depends on the mechanic. There are people like us who've said, you know what, screw this. I'm going to go through the training and I'm going to become a mechanic so I can protect people from bad mechanics. You know, like shout out to MotorWorks Chicago. They seem to be the good guys. They are the good guys. Yeah. I know one of his mechanics from Chive and moto Chicago vintage motorcyclists. When I explained to him what I was trying to learn about a particular bike, he held a stare on me, he was listening to my words. He was there to socialize and hang out. This is a professional mechanic. And he responded with. Patience. He responded like an adult. Well, you need to think through this logically. Here's that step. Here's this component. Here's this spin. And you need to look for this situation at this point in the way those pieces go together. And it was inspiring to hear a guy who takes a paycheck to do things, right. He's worth your time. That's somebody who needs to be on the podcast. If I can get them, Johnny chef is fielded enough of my questions that I'm not sure he's, he's responding to them anymore.

Brian: We'll look forward to it, to another one. Yeah. And that's one thing that touches on something we talked about with Jasmine when we had her on the podcast, however, whenever the hell that was. You can find those people. You know, like I kind of, I kind of casually dismissed dealerships and, and sorry about that, but you can actually find the people, the people that know what they're doing will gravitate to where there's a population center, where there is enough business to support them. And so like Jasmine is, lives in New York city. There are places there, there's enough of population around to support a good mechanic that knows what they're doing and a good shop that, that does things. Right. She basically has the professionals handle everything and it works out, works out. Great. You know, if you're in rural Wisconsin and you come in on something, that's not like a, you know, not an ATV covered in cow manure, they may know what they're doing. They may not, I don't know. There's just not enough business in, in motorcycle work to make it work other than a population center. So yeah, around Chicago, there are some great shops in and around Chicago, New York city, California. Well, I I'm tired of talking about California, everybody, you know, that that's kind of part of what's going on there.

Robin: I like. The base model premise so that I can keep track of the things that I've put on my machine with confidence and understanding of those bits.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: The BMW has been a lesson in be careful what you turn. And another one of the best lessons I ever learned was through some of our GS resources, Suzuki vintage rallies. One great line I remember hearing from a Mr. Conradi was. Every time I turn a screw, I process internally, what is happening and what is turning and what is being affected by every twist of the screwdriver. Some of these bikes that are getting into software, remember most of the hosts that have ever made this podcast happen is, or was a technology professional. And even we are. A little bit mowed down by the technology we have to tackle to maintain these new modern bikes. I don't mind it so long as they give us a full access and having to donate to a forum a model specific forum So that they can all buy one machine and destroy it on accident trying to figure out with voltameters which Connections to hop to put it in dealer mode so you can turn the wrench icon off It's a little bit annoying, but you know what, doesn't change the fact that I love riding motorcycles and we can moan about it all we like doesn't change the fact that it's just getting it off of our chests so that we can get back to what we're doing in this case, tires and, you know, detailing brute

Brian: force efforts. Way to land that airplane, Robin.

Robin: I think we've got a tidy episode and I think that we should get either a guest or seven guests.

Brian: Yeah, see if you can herd those cats together.