Robin: All right, what is this you're talking about, about the the damn wrench icon? Regarding our previous discussion about that damn wrench icon, the AMA joined a coalition in support of right-to-repair legislation. Anchored around what we talked about in a previous episode is that firmware doesn't come with right-to-repair. It's not a physical entity, it's software on a bike. And from what I can tell, let's see, it's this letter, well this is borderline hollow. There's not a lot in this, but I think they're starting to amp up their angst about, I don't need to pay somebody $75 for the five minutes it takes to plug in the jog dial and make it go away. And I think the AMA is stepping into that arena, hopefully. I really hope that's the case. This brings me to Alpine Stars. All right. After the Indiana incident, my right foot peg punctured the left side of my right boot. I had also noticed before that incident that my left boot at the toe was getting a hole in the fabric because sometimes I shift with the upper arch of my foot, and sometimes I shift with my toes. And because there is no leather over the toes, it began to puncture. We sent them an email, we sent them photos, we went through the motions, and it comes down to this. Alpine Stars basically told us to pound sand. They basically said, yeah, that's wear and tear. Anyhow, you can buy the same boots through thiscompany.com or net enter balls. And to which I was like, well, I mean, okay, cool. Now I know that, but I mean, I'll be looking at TCX again, or I'll look at those. I didn't hate them. I liked those boots quite a bit, but I was just like, okay. It can be a little heavy handed. These big companies aren't as big as we all think for one, but they're big enough that, you know, they didn't get that big by just like throwing out the product to anybody who has an issue. There are companies that are upstarts that have managed to get, I have this tire inflator that twice now I've approached them. They're here in the States, ma and pa places where they have set themselves up with a buffer. And twice I've called them and said, hey, I accidentally broke the charger, which is a separate component for the battery to this thing. Can I please buy a new charger? And their response is, we'll just send you a new one. When they send me a new one, they send me the whole unit, Brian. They sent me the entire, the whole thing. And so then I can actually re-register that product with the warranty. And I do so that, you know, I tell them, I'm just trying to be honest here. I just need the job. I'll pay you some money. You shouldn't do this. And then brand new units. I'm just like, here you go, buddy. Just take my old one. And I've got, you know, two battery chargers or two batteries, which is kind of nice. Let them use the plug version. So it's funny to me that some of these mom pop places will just be as good to you as they can be. But you complain to the big dogs and yeah, there's a reason they got to where they are. I don't need to be stealing from them. Just saying once would have been nice. Just once. Next up. Sometimes I just fall into a coding mindset and can't stop. The gears start turning, the steam roller starts rolling. I can't stop anything, but the head vein starts popping.

Brian: Oh, yeah.

Robin: I've been cleaning up some site navigation with the old Excitobico. No trademark at all. Completely independent icon. You're going to see it if you look at the website on your phone. Right. There's lots of bettering of the mobile site happening. I've struggled with this for years with integration of desktop features onto the mobile site without doing with what a lot of big advertising conglomerates will do, you know, without becoming a pop-a-lup-a-lips. You know what I mean? Pop-ups. I really don't like mobile sites that bombard you with pop-ups, coupons. How can we help you on chat? Nonsense. It's like, get out of my way.

Brian: That's no good. Yeah.

Robin: I'm trying to give you my money. Please let me do so. They just keep on advertising at you when you're trying to type. So I've been working really hard on making it so that you can access all the cool things that the desktop site has, which are actually in there. It's just, you couldn't get to them. And now there are little things that will let you do that that aren't in your way. The answer landed smooth right in front of me with two or three non-invasive links by the mobile nav, hamburger menu, and the excitable, excited, not excite bike icon, face right. So who doesn't want to click that? Come on. So if you go to the site, you look top by the hamburger menu, you'll see the vid update. And then to the right, you'll see subscribe and subscribe. Let's you subscribe to our podcast and our newsletter. And the vid update is just me saying like, Hey, we added a feature like the road rubber rankings, I think is the current one. And then a good old, not excited by go in the bottom right-hand corner there. We'll show you the feature ads that normally appear on the desktop version, such as the next tour, how your weather's looking wherever you are and the latest podcast episode, you know, by fixing one bug, you create 30 bugs, right? Here are the ones that are definitely in front of me next one. People, when the thing says by GPX and the people at the website just say, I don't know, click it. I don't know. Spend the money. I bought the map. You didn't buy a map. You bought a thing that can be a map. You bought a thing that can be a navigation track. You bought coordinates and they are extremely useful, but you have to know how to use them. You did not buy a downloadable print sheet, color page, fold out map of, you know what I mean? People will buy these things and then be like, I don't understand what I got. And it's like, well, that's because you didn't read. And there's literally what is a GPX next to it. And you click that and understand. So I'm going to make it. So when you click, the first thing you see is know what you're buying description. Are you sure? Carry on to wind all this down, to get into the good stuff with Brian, who's going to take control. The login page is giving me hell right now. Like, I guess if you try to register for the site, I actually don't know if it's the registration process by itself. It won't let you finalize your registration or change your password. That's going to be hard. I've got work ahead of me on this. This is going to be a little rough, so I'll work on it.

Brian: Making the site better. Let me tell you what I was doing today and why I was a little late to our recording. Brian, what were you doing today? And why were you a little late to our recording? So basically a friend of mine messaged me and says, Hey, there's a GS 850 on Facebook marketplace. So I, I looked, it wasn't an 83, like mine, but it's an 82 with a lot of cross compatibility. Like pretty much everything is compatible with my bike. Nice. So same generation overall. Yeah. So I, I thought about it and thought about it. And today I loaded up a trailer, a couple hundred bucks, yanked this thing out of a shed. The skinny hillbilly was just, you know, going on and on and on about he could pay his probation officer or something in his pit bulls, but medicine or anyway, I didn't, you know, whatever. Yeah. Here you go, dude. Let me out of here. It's one of those things, you know, I've had this bike. Yeah. I think I've had this bike longer than I've been married. I've had it a very long time. It's a 41 year old bike. Yeah, man. I basically a whole bike full of spare parts is it came with a nice seat. The carburetors are all there. The airbox is there, all that stuff. So just wanted to brag a little bit, you know, and, and that's kind of the reality. Like you're not really into the vintage thing.

Robin: I am. I just don't have the capacity or space for it.

Brian: Right. I took the seat and side covers off the hall at home, but yeah, I mean, look at, you know, there's fork oil everywhere. The tires are absolutely there. 20 year old. The brakes are all discolored because the brakes locked up. That's why the guy got rid of it. But look, it's got a tank. It's got, yeah.

Robin: That's gorgeous. Really? I mean, it's intact. Are you looking to exhaust is all there? Yeah.

Brian: What's that bring it back or are you looking to use it as parts? Well, that's the other thing is it doesn't have a title. Like nobody knows where the title is. So I'm like, Oh, this is parts. So yeah, this is just, this is a bunch of parts. I'm going to strip it down and keep what I might use and, you know, maybe sell some things or whatever.

Robin: But so you took the bag of bits to the extreme, got yourself a really nice parts bike. And that is a really nice parts bike.

Brian: Nice and crusty, lots of dust. Guy had a pit bull. It was a friendly pit bull. Oh yeah. Good dog. He was getting in the way, you know, and there's mine, which is mine's a 10 footer. Like if you're 10 feet away, it's like, yeah, this looks pretty shiny and good. And then you get close and like, wow, this is, this has got like 140 some thousand miles on it. And 125,000 of that has been my abuse. That's what I was doing today. And it took me a little longer to get back than I anticipated. That's why I was late, but you know, it's worthy. It was a, it was a, it was a good cause. It was a Holy mission. Kept this thing out of the junkyard.

Robin: What's more important, the podcast or the reason we do the podcast? I think that what you did was that's right. Holy support this purchase. Well done, sir. Wait, wait, wait. I'm looking at your stickers here. You keep all your tire stickers?

Brian: Yeah. So I, um, the other thing I did this morning was, uh, I got the new Pirelli's, uh, loaded up for the track day. The stack was getting about a two inches tall, but anyway, this is, I missing a couple from the beginning of when I bought the bike. So before the Avon sticker, there were a couple of sets of road smarts or at least one set. And you'll notice that the Avons were on there for less than a thousand miles because the front was out around from the beginning. And basically what I found out was that the Avons I got were like the last week the factory in England was open. Oh yeah. Basically Avon sold out to, there's, there's one giant company that I, that I think owns like Pirelli, Metzler and a bunch of other brands. I should have researched this, but anyway, uh, they got bought out by the giant company that's making all the motorcycle tires now. So they moved production. So they shut down production in England and they're starting up Avon production again in France of all places. So anyway, those tires were, were terrible, just defective, but there's really nothing much I could do about it because they stopped making them. So 3,000 miles on a set of Dunlops. And then I went from like 36,000 to 42,000 on a set. I actually wore those out and then I put on a set of mutants and then I had to change those out after only about 2,500 miles.

Robin: Wait, the tires you just rode on?

Brian: Yeah. The mutants were the ones I put on before the trip to Wisconsin. And we'll get to that, right? We'll get to that. How many miles? Less than 2,500, about 2,400 miles. They're not worn out, but they are pretty worn. So they're not good for the track day? The mutants, no. Okay. Which we'll also get to. We'll show up, if I showed up at the track day on those, they would, they would say no. I just spooned on these Pirellis today. Haven't had a chance to ride them. So we'll see how that goes. I don't know where this guy on Amazon is getting them. I don't know that they are, seem a hundred percent legit.

Robin: And they are the bestseller right now. So go with that. I mean, I got my next set. I'm putting it on Maggie's bike. I'm taking Maggie's bike to the racetrack, Black Hawk Farms this year to hang out with you and Burleson and Neil and other friends that I know there. And I'm excited to put them on her bike. I will say that I've, so I think I'm at 1,300 miles now and I've still got plenty of tread left and I'm glad that I'm taking Maggie's bike so I can keep the test going with my bike and see what exactly is happening with tire longevity.

Brian: I think you said if you can, if you get 3,000 miles out of them for the price, you're going to consider that a winner. Yeah. And they work superbly. They work well. So we'll see. This is just a side note, but this was a beautiful Saturday morning. I, I had some parts I ordered. I went to pick them up and I am the only motorcycle in the parking lot of a giant power sports dealer. Right. What the hell people decided to turn around and take pictures. There's a three gixators in a row too they had. Oh yeah. They just had a MSRP on them. They didn't have any markups or they had two blue ones and a yellow one. You know what? So I've been thinking about this.

Robin: If I were going to get one right now, I think I need to go with the blue and I'll tell you why I like the blue. I love the yellow, but the yellow won't like my track record with ticketing. I need a conservative color, a modest color, a responsible adult on a motorcycle color, not a lightning bolt. Look at me. Look at me. Flash of bad-ass yellow. I need something that kind of keeping it classy Cleveland. You know what I'm saying?

Brian: Yeah. I just liked the blue a lot better to be honest. But yeah, they're identical. All the prices were the same. This dealership wasn't marking them up or anything like that. You can put those photos in the podcast. I'll provide those. Yeah. The holy mission today was going and getting that part spike. So I'm kind of pretty excited by that. I waffled back and forth, you know, and I could have screwed the guy a little more, you know, and gotten a little more money off, but I was like, eh. You got it for what? 200 bucks? Is that what you paid? 300 bucks. He was asking 400. Yeah. He's asking 400. I got it for 300. I could have gotten him to 250, I'm sure, but whatever.

Robin: You done good. Nothing. We've talked about it. Nothing's been more helpful to my efforts on maintaining my bike than one purchase of a bag of every bolt that goes to an RS. One purchase and all these nuts and bolts are just like, oh, and they fit other things. If I need them to, I'm going to add something. This one's longer, blah, blah, blah. It's great. You have a parts bike. You got the whole damn thing. Well done.

Brian: Much of that's just going to be a winter project. Winter's coming. I'm going to get bored. Need something to do.

Robin: Preemptive work, and it'll keep the mind working for when we're recording over the colder months.

Brian: So you want to talk about track day stuff, or you want to talk about, do a little Wisco Disco recap?

Robin: Let's do it in order. Yeah, we just did. Let's do past, and then we'll do present, and then we'll do, you know, future.

Brian: We just did present, so we'll do past. Okay.

Robin: Disco, talk to me. I remember it. All in all, this was a very fresh run of it. I remember the first sevens, the very first seven-day tour, riding it counterclockwise. The roads were pretty good, but they were just conjoining to get to the good stuff that everybody had talked about that I'd never seen before. There wasn't a lot. You know, we did our best to find some stuff, but it was a whole different thing, and that's going to happen with any first go of the tour. With a little bit more experience running these kinds of things, and you and I working together on it, getting a good or even great first go was not hard to do. I felt it was a great ride.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: That hotel, maybe not so much, but it's what was available.

Brian: It did the job. Yeah, the hotel was a hotel. It wasn't like the old inn. It wasn't an experience. It was just a place to sleep, and it was fine. It did it. It was fine, and it was cheap. Right. That also is important. I wouldn't rule it out.

Robin: It's a fallback. It's a fallback, and I should put that in the notes that this is a valid fallback. I do tend to prefer the Red Barn Lodge in Spring Green. I think that's a beautiful hotel. It's comfortable. It's quiet. It's clean. It's near a really quaint town full of bougie kind of eats.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: It works out. It's got a pool. It's got a hot tub. There's a restaurant and bar on site too, if I remember. It's just good. As a default, that's probably what I'll call, but at this point, when I called up, they were like, we have no availability, and then we drove by there, and there was nobody there, which sounds to me like somebody's having a personal holiday of that's a day that I don't do things, and that's fine. I totally get it.

Brian: More power to them. Yeah. It's the difference when we're talking about the 777 tour. Yeah. Norm was the hotel reviewer. He really enjoyed something that was an experience.

Robin: And that was great.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: That was real nice, and that was great, and I had a good ride. Yeah. He's the best. He is the best.

Brian: Got the greatest attitude.

Robin: If he just said those three things for the whole episode, I would just listen to it the whole time. Had a good ride. Yeah, that was nice. It was great.

Brian: Norm didn't get the experience of the last hotel, which I think even Norm would have had a problem. Would have been like, yeah, this wasn't quite as nice. That last one. Yeah. The hotel was fine. There was a craze in the 70s in Wisconsin and Minnesota for hotels with themes. You have the Fenmore Hills has all these themed rooms, and this hotel has that White House theme. You've got like a little Capitol Rotunda, and all the rooms are named for states, and they've got like one of the rooms is this Hall of Presidents, and it's got the portraits of all the presidents in it. I mean, it's hilarious. This is like a Red Roof Inn, or it's a Ramada. Not a Red Roof, it's a Ramada.

Robin: You got to look up the Don Q Inn.

Brian: Yeah, and the Don Q Inn is another one.

Robin: Ultimate epitome of the theme hotels, the Don Q Inn, which has an airplane out.

Brian: The airplane is an airplane out front, and they've got all these themed rooms that have nothing to do with airplanes. It's just like, here's the cave room. Here's the castle room. We had a place to flop at night, and that's all I cared about. It was fine. Yeah, the writing itself was, it was Wisconsin, which is really interesting. It's always interesting, always unique. The thing about it is, it's just there aren't any lulls. There was a lull, I think, once of maybe 20 miles, and then we turned, I think it was 159.

Robin: That would have been day two, and dodging the cross between Wisconsin into Minnesota, and just enjoying the scenery, and following that directly up to where we pick up the Maduro Cut and such things. I mean, there's a bunch of roads north of there that are really nice, truly worth it, and they give you a second run at the Maduro Cut. It works out.

Brian: Yeah, the second, and yeah, the third day, we were back at the Maduro Cut again, and that was, I was very happy with the routes. Little to no overlap. In a very real way, it is hard to go wrong in Wisconsin. You can end up on a road that is road-ish. Yeah.

Robin: I learned this, that- Some of that may have happened. When a farm dies, if a local entity, agricultural environment ceases to be, somebody loses the land, or sells the land, or buys the farm, as they say, that sometimes, if that's the only thing in the area, they will raise the road, and that's it. They raise the road to a gravel road once more, and then they leave it as it stands. I learned this the fun way at 70, well, at least the speed limit, hanging out with Travis, scouting the rides, when all of a sudden we came around a corner, full barrel, and there we were in deep pool gravel. You know, just bolting through, just relax, stand up, okay, slow down, slow down, okay, let's jot this off the route and double back, and we did.

Brian: Yeah, there was a lot of that primitive- I mean, I love the primitive stuff. A lot of people don't. Some people do, but there was a lot of that good mix. Like if you go even further north, you kind of get an interesting and a little bit of a different feel. It's really hard to describe, isn't it? One thing I learned on the Helix was that my strategy of just a line on the map really doesn't work well, even if I have arrows. You know, like you guys have the directions, you're using right with GPS, and you're using- The turn right, turn left, and so forth, because this route crossed itself many, many times.

Robin: It's called a Helix for a reason.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: So the Helix crosses itself, let's see, one, two, three, four, five times.

Brian: Oh, more than that, yeah.

Robin: Again, no repetition. There's no repeat. There's just crossroads. But the Helix, it's from, bluntly speaking, Soldiers Grove-ish, then down below the river, all the way to- Pfeffernuss, yeah.

Brian: Anyway, go on.

Robin: Pfeffernuss. So it goes there and back in a 300-mile jaunt that never- it touches itself at the center points, at the crossroads, and that's it. So yeah, it's really good. GPX files are numerically ordered. So the next waypoint will not get confused by an adjacent waypoint. And the software we use doesn't try to correct itself and then basically implode trying to figure out which waypoint is next on the mix.

Brian: We've talked about this before, but I, you know, a large percentage of time when I'm riding with somebody, I'm leading the ride, and that's fine. I love it. I enjoy it. But it's also a lot of fun to just follow some dude. That day there, I was completely lost. I had no idea where I was until we got there. And it was fun. You know, that was a different kind of fun. Nice. Just follow that dude. Yeah, that's all. That's it. And, you know, a lot of people, that's kind of their default. And for me, it was fun to just kind of take it off the hook a little bit, focus on all this, and it was great. We had really no safety incidents, anything like that. Had a spot of legal bother on day two. Just affected one person. Wasn't serious, serious, but yeah, well, just like I went, oh, well, we're just out for a little, very slow strolling jaunt. We'll go wait over here.

Robin: We don't know that person, but for some reason, we're going to stay here and take a break for a long time. Strangely enough, the exact amount of time it takes for him to arrive where we are. How about that?

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. I can say that the only time I have gotten a ticket on a motorcycle, it was not, it was, it was not this year, but the only time I've actually gotten a ticket on a motorcycle rather than getting a warning was in Wisconsin. Yeah. And we were telling stories, you know, everybody has their cop story. That realization that Wisconsin seems to have a little more of a vigorous enforcement policy than, than other states might. Just something to be aware of.

Robin: I'm not sure they particularly care about outside travelers spending their money in their state. No, they're not all about the charity of that. They're more just about like, are you an opportunity for my community to have more money? Let's pull you over.

Brian: Yeah. You know, in Wisconsin, tourists aren't their thing. The roads don't exist for us. The roads are there for the milk trucks. If you're not a milk truck, you're just an intruder. We'll, we'll take your money and, and, and go. So looking forward to Kentucky. Yeah. Kentucky. Yeah. New Mexico. There's a lot of great places I've ridden, but yeah, that's, that's the only time I've, I've gotten pulled over many times and got warnings, you know, cause I'm not doing, I'm paying attention, not doing anything too egregious, wearing the gear, licensed, insured, sober. I'm like the 1% of people they pull over motorcycles. And so generally they kind of released me back into the wild, nothing to rely on. Just don't get pulled over in the first place. It's like any place else, the roads, the roads weren't made for motorcycling.

Robin: They're made to get, you know, farm materials from point A to point B, but they are great for motorcycling. It's really not bad at all. And if you know the right ones, well, we know the right ones. So tiara, the bike mouse over events, click on group tours. We will probably run Wisco disco again next year, three days. It's a Thursday through Saturday venture show up on a Wednesday night, go home on a Sunday morning. It's going to be good. Listener question. Listener question. All right.

Brian: Lay it on me.

Robin: A listener local to my recent rally hang where ADV riders scouted street routes. So I'd come hang out and ride with them on my RS. They ask what a standard T clocks have warned me to what happened with my shaft drive on the way home. Okay. I got stranded two hours between the rally and my house. And I was on the side of the expressway for five hours because my insurance that claims they'll have roadside assistance for me failed for the second time to do this. Other people calling around for towers said, yeah, it'll be two hours though. So Tim Clark, everybody knows Tim tenured emeritus podcast host for radio TRO, who will be back now and then that guy drove two hours to get me two hours to drop me off, spent the night in the cabin at our campground, then drove four hours back to where he was to get his gear and drove four hours home. That guy, thank you. Tim Clark, our one and only Tom Burns was like, man, you have karma points. Like you do not even understand. I was like, yeah, I guess so. I think I just used them all up though. Yeah. Rebuild the cache. Would a T clocks fixed my situation? No, no. What would it would have fixed my situation would have been not buying knockoff Chinese parts for my BMW. So I bought a shaft. I thought it was a used and well refurbished shaft. It arrived at Brian's place and said, China, this was suspect. And lo and behold, when I did open it up and put the old shaft back in, which is in fine shape, thank you, Brian, for inspecting it. That was kind of you. But when I opened everything up, all I found was just needle bearings all over the place and magnetic sludge from them being molten. And that's the end of that. So the answer is no, a T clocks would not have fixed this better purchase judgment. Would it, Hey, track day. It's going to be your first Brian.

Brian: Much to the surprise of many, I've never done a track day. I've been accused of it, of being a track monkey, but I've no, I've never done a track day. We can probably go back to the recordings and find it. But I made a promise. I made a promise. I would do a track day this year and I'm fulfilling that promise. And you, sir, are good for your word. Word is bond. We talked to, it was a Jason Herrheim. It was Mr. Jason Herrheim of riding solutions.com. I think that's who recommended a, you know, a Motovid track day. That was me. What I wanted to avoid was the kind of track day where it's just a bunch of yahoos that want to go race each other without having to pay the extra insurance for going for putting on a race. There's a track day like that. That's a lot closer to me. And I'm not okay with that. Not going to do that. Not going to do it. It wouldn't be prudent. So yeah, this looks like a good one. It's the Blackhawk farms. It's a smaller track. I've heard good things. You know, several of my friends, you included, have been to Blackhawk farms. And it's one of those things I've been half terrified of for a long time. I don't know why I will proceed with alacrity on the street just fine, but you know, in a controlled environment for something about that was wigging me out. But anyway, I'm in, I'm doing it. I want to give a good shout out to the people at MotorcycleGear.com. Used to be called New Enough. Yeah, I remember. I've bought gear from those guys for literally 20, 25 years. They've been, as long as they've been in existence, they've been wonderful. And so I emailed them and said, look, I'm a dude that's large and you know, here's how large. I need some leather pajamas. You know, I'm doing this track day. The rental people don't seem to have anything above an extra large. What you got? And they actually came back with the perfect solution. Oh, right here, right this way. We have some Joe Rocket suits that are on clearance. Nice. Because Joe Rocket doesn't make suits anymore. Yeah. We have some Joe Rocket suits that are on clearance and they're available in a range of sizes that are even more monstrous than you. It was amazing. I'm like, I asked the question and I get the perfect answer back. That's an excellent response. One of the things Motorcycle Gear does, they try on everything. They have like these fit dummies. They try everything on and they actually get out a tape measure and they check the sizing chart on everything they sell. Good. And they offer you the advice on how things fit. If you have a little bit of a belly, then you may want to do this. You know, they give you all that information that the manufacturers do not. Anyway, they came back with just the right answer. I got out a tape measure. I measured stuff. I did a little weeping. Anyway, and then I made a plunge, ordered a suit, showed up at my office and like nobody else was around at the office, I just stripped down, put it on, worked great. It fits the way it's supposed to. They're not comfortable. It's not like pajamas, you know, like you can just lounge around and sleep in it, but it fits the way it's supposed to. All the armor lands where it's supposed to. I can zip it up. I can move. I can ride in it. So yeah, I'm very, again, motorcyclegear.com. They are amazing. Not a sponsor. And you now own leathers.

Robin: I mean, you have leathers.

Brian: I have leathers. This is pretty cool. I have leathers that fit my walrusness.

Robin: I can tell you right now that when we go to Blackhawk Farms, it's a smaller track. Strangely, I think they do race like five wide there in small cars or four wide, like some obscene number for the track, but it's like skilled racers at a race track in cars. But it's a shorter track, not as much real estate in terms of pavement. And it really will definitely give you a chance to get that repeat memory going. But I don't think you'll ever lose any. You know, there are other tracks. You'll get to see them as well in the future. And now you've got the kit to do it. And I think that's great. I think that's great. Great track for a first go, for sure. I think.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. I also got some track boots, some Forma boots. Yeah. They're not like the $600 Alpine Stars, but they're, because my touring boots are just sort of squishy. So I wanted to get something that actually had the correct armoring and so forth. And you know, and of course I've got the helmet and gloves and all that stuff. So yeah, I feel a lot better. I've got the leather jammies all sorted out. And yeah, the Motovit track days are a little, from what I understand, it's fewer people. It's a little more focused on education. It's extremely focused on safety.

Robin: Yeah. In Novice, you will have an opportunity, regular opportunities. Actually, the first three sessions at least will be forcibly important opportunities for you to go to the classroom, sit down, look at the person who is giving you some prompts and information to use before each session. There will be certain sessions where you have the opportunity to try some things. There are definitely going to be some moments where they're going to show you about tight and right, which is enormously, ask me how I know, extremely important to know about tight and right upon track entry, because once you're on the track, it's your track. Once you're in the turn, it's your turn. And if you're entering the track, you need to not just merge. You need to go onto the track and wait for a while, get up to speed, judge what's going on, that kind of stuff. These little tidbits of information are all important and will be force fed to you in the best way for the first three or four sessions between each session. So definitely anybody who's going to attend for this, I'm not pointing this at you. I'm letting you know, and anybody who's listening know that as a novice entry-level track day attendee, you better be ready to take on some new information because it's not just going in there and, you know, rooting, tooting, motorcycle shooting.

Brian: Yeah, and that's exactly what I wanted. I realize I'm an experienced and skilled street rider and I know precisely, Dick, I'm going in with that beginner mind. Good. That's, you're a better man than me. Do what the nice people tell you.

Robin: As a first-timer, I'm here to let everybody know what I understand. Better than me. Good man. Well, that's going to be fun.

Brian: That's going to be fun. We'll report back on everything.

Robin: It's been a while. So I keep on jumping back and forth to the list that you and I and Travis and anybody who's willing to help out is maintaining. And one of the things I keep arriving at is, oh shit, that's right. I know how expensive fuel is at the racetrack by watching somebody else go through those motions. That was entertaining. I will have a large fuel canister that I'm bringing with me. I'm going to try to bring every tool I have. I'm bringing the entire set of Milwaukee packouts, which if you get a tear out a bike and look at Milwaukee packouts, you'll see an article that'll inform you is the great benefits of this amazing product. Anyhow, little things, little things.

Brian: Little things. Yeah. And I believe we're planning on camping. The weather, long range weather looks good. Are you going to camp with us? Yeah. You're going to come up there the night before? Absolutely.

Robin: Fantastic. So are you bringing your own tent or because I know Travis has like a four room tent.

Brian: I got my tent in the living room there. I was making sure that it still exists. Do you have a cot, anything to be smushier? Air mattress. I got, yeah. So I'm going to, I'm going to come and camp. And I've got tools. I've got two of those easy pop-up type of deals for the bikes.

Robin: Oh, thank you so much, Brian, for having two of that. That rocks. I think Travis is going to try to find an extra one as well.

Brian: Like they're on sale. Walmart really cheap. So I bought one and I already had one. The Motovit people have been wonderful so far because I've had some dumb questions. I was asking like, do you have any leathers like they're kind of in walrus sizes? A Revit XL is not, not even close. So they were very kind. He pointed me to the right people and he was like, oh yeah, yeah. And then there became this whole group effort and they put me in contact with a guy who's, my size or bigger, I don't know. But he's got, oh yeah, I've got this, you know, I've got, I've got like three suits in this size. And he was like, you can borrow them. I'm like, that is like, the guy has never met me.

Robin: That would be Gary.

Brian: Yeah. That would be Gary. Maybe I, maybe I really smell bad or something, but he's like, sure, you know, here, you can, you can borrow these, you know, figuring out, I mean, that was, that was really, really good. It's a great community.

Robin: Gary is the kind of person that is a testament to those same karma points.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: I don't know what I ever did for that guy, but he is uniquely entertaining, wonderful company. We should have him on an episode at some point if we can. We should. And just all around helpful. He's just a kind person.

Brian: A lot of kind, helpful people. One of the dumb questions I asked was if your bike has a center stand, do you need to remove it? Because they, they make a big deal and I don't quite understand it, but they make a big deal out of either safety tying or wiring your kickstand up. And maybe you can explain why Robin, but I wasn't sure about the center stand in there. And so I asked, I was like, Hey, I'm, you know, blah, blah, blah. No, I was never done this before. Do I need to take my center stand off? Because that's a real pain in the ass. And they said, no, no problem. Leave it on.

Robin: I can speculate based on the minimal experience I have with the track days I've done. And the two or three times I've had the honor and pleasure of being a control rider. These have been rare calls for me. They were like prideful moments in my life. And as they are brags, it's like, I don't know that I'm exactly the right person to ask. What I can tell you is that you're trying to keep as many moving parts that aren't required for the actual riding process to be as suppressed from doing so as possible. So when you zip tie in multiple, if you can zip tie your side stand in place, it's less likely that a sensor breaks while you're riding and it manages to unload itself into a standing position or drag the ground or the springs break off or the center stand does the same thing. You know, these are moving parts that aren't actively useful while you're in motion. So let's make sure they're not actively hurting you or somebody else by happenstance.

Brian: This happens in dual sport riding actually quite often. If you go into like a big bump or a G out or something like that, the side stand, I'm sorry, there's not a kickstand is there? We don't kick things on motorcycles. The side stand can move and actually shut the engine off. That's not good. And dual sport riding, you know, when you're in something that rough where the side stand bounces and shuts it off and you know, in dual sport riding, that's not uncommon. And it's also somewhat of a delicate moment where you shut off power in the middle of you're trying to, you know, to get a clean run across a big rock and it can go very badly. And there may be something similar for the track, you know, all finesse is just completely gone.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: Yeah. They were like, oh yeah, we'll, we'll have, we'll have ties for that. Blah, blah, blah.

Robin: One thing you might become adapted to is chatter in the wheels. So once you really get going and you've done the track so many times, you'll start to get less antsy or nervous about when you're taking a corner and you feel in both wheels, a lot of banter and blather coming from the rubber against the pavement, skipping along because you're just cornering hard. And I guess, yeah, that could be enough to shake things loose and make things happen that you just do not want to have happen.

Brian: Yeah. Like I said, beginner mind, happy to happy to plunk around and do what the nice people tell me to. Learn what the nice people have to tell me.

Robin: Again, better man than I. Segment three here. Clearly. Do you think that new parts back you just got, is it going to pass inspection for the track day? You said you were bringing that one, right? Like will it be running in time by the end of this week? That's going to be a no dog. Does duct tape qualify as a fork seal?

Brian: Yeah. I think the tires on that thing are literally 30 years old.

Robin: So you got here hauling home, old junk, and I'm super amped that you did get yourself that bad-ass parts bike as amped as I am that you're going to be at your first track day coming up. So you're going to go camping. This is great. I've got a truck. I'm going to try to get a trailer. I'm going to have tools galore. And so will you, you know, I got four bins that click into place in my bed.

Brian: There's no reason for me not to bring that weird German shit for that German bike and Gunna and the tire changer. Once in a while, you may run into some weird German thing you need. Yep.

Robin: I'm also the understanding that we do not have to use engine ice for a novice or orange. Right. Which is kind of nice.

Brian: Yeah. That's kind of an extra pain in the butt. I didn't want to deal with. And I need to tape up my headlight and my taillight and probably just remove my turn signals. I think I know the front ones are easy. The back ones, I don't know. I have a box like nobody likes to stock turn signals on that bike on the FJ09. And I have a box of like eight stock turn signals that got taken off of because people just hate them because they're big. And I'm like, I like them because they're big and they're orange and people see them. I'll definitely remove the front ones. I may not remove the rear ones. I'm not sure. Whatever. If it's easy, I will. But yeah, take all the luggage off and all that stuff. And I'll bring track stands, all that good stuff.

Robin: Well, here, we'll read the list and then you can conclude the episode right after. All right. For the van trailer loadout, we've got tools, spare bike stuff, clutch and throttle cables, air compressor, pile up canopy, times two, cooler with lots of ice and water, snacks and such. Know where your towel is. Chairs, fan, extension cord, inverter, battery fan, and batteries, track stands, spare gear, hat, extra mojo, camping crap, food, and cooking crap, which I can't wait to see your recipe.

Brian: We'll have to coordinate. Are we going to cook dinner? Are we going to go somewhere or whatever? I got the family truckster, so nice. We could all load in and head to Beloit.

Robin: They're really known for their... right. Okay. Anyhow, you feel like we got an episode? I feel like we got an episode.