Brian: It's been a long time since I've seen your face. It's been, it's been literally hours.

Robin: It was a long drive home. Like that was not a short drive. So something's up in Indianapolis. I'm in Nashville, Indiana right now, riding the beautiful roads, hanging out with Brian, doing this thing. But whatever happened, I got rerouted. And what was an hour long drive was an hour and a half. And I actually had to record the route using ride with GPS because I was like, this is too good. I started like trail braking in the truck. Big ass King Ranch F-350 Super Duty Lariat, hooking into corners, chopping through, you know, getting out people's way. I was fitting into spaces that truck should not be fitting into. Point is, thank you for your assistance today.

Brian: Yeah, we changed fuel filters on Robin's diesel truck, a minor job. But if you're just sitting in a grass field with your RV there, there's just things you need in a garage. It actually went really well, really fast. And then we were done with that. The label I put on our outline was Diesel Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. And I'm kind of proud of that. Diesel Deeds. And we were going to do a little bit of work shopping on my bike, but it really doesn't need anything. I've got like 30,000 miles on the chains and sprockets and they're still just fine. Examine everything carefully this weekend and all look good. So I'm going to keep going. See how far it can go. EK Chains, JT Sprockets, not sponsored. That sounds safe.

Robin: Totally. We're going to see how far the chain can last.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Well, you shaft guys. Tell you what we do. I do that with leaf springs on RV. And let's see how far these leaf springs will go. Still she blows. Yeah. And once they're gone, I'm like, wow, now I know I'm missing teeth too. They're in my dashboard.

Brian: And also one thing I wanted to mention is this weekend is going to be the end of October is going to be about the last ride for a while because deer season's coming up in Indiana. 11 years ago, I collected my third broken leg by hitting a deer on November 9th, which I found out later that day was the actual height of the rut. That is when deer are the most active and the most stupid. And I had no idea. Never hunted deer. Yeah. So pretty much late October. I stay out of the countryside for several weeks. It's a touch of PTSD and it's a touch of risk management too.

Robin: That's smart. And I, so this ride on Sunday that we're thinking about going for, let's not go for it. We're just going to go on a nice, you know, mildly pink mist descending, not red.

Brian: Yeah. And plus the roads are full of leaf peepers right now in Indiana.

Robin: So, oh, look at the foliage. Oh, that tree's yellow. That tree's red. Look, Harbert. There's a great Jim Gaffigan a bit about this. Thank you for helping with the fuel filter. That was, that helped a lot. My leaf springs, I broke a leaf spring on the rear right axle of our rolling home. We are full-time RVers and shattered the rear section of a leaf spring, final right axle. That problem is not quite remedied. The warranty covered only one of them. They all need to be replaced. I can't believe this. Like they're all, they all need to happen. And they warranty was like, no, here's the leaf spring. But that doesn't include the bolts to fasten it on. Okay. The bolts are fine. And no, they're not. The bolts are destroyed. Turns out all these parts are pretty cheap. They're quite affordable. I'm going to save 55 bucks for a leaf spring. That's not bad. So we're going to buy one more for the road, just in case. Plus the bolt pack. Shout out to RV repair and fellow sport bike freak Kevin Smith for saving the day. Be it cut into multiple visits to our location or not. Kevin Smith and Sons near Bloomington, Indiana.

Brian: With that, our special guest, Jon Barthel. I have three facts here on my sheet about Jon. Big bike, big miles, and he rides around in tiny circles sometimes. And so let's find out and we'll get to this a little later. We're going to recap the Kentucky ride. Jon's no stranger to the ways of the iron butt, the steel butt or whatever you call that. What do you ride, Jon? How do you ride? What's your deal?

Jon: I've always considered myself a mixture of an adventure bike or off-road guy mixed with sport touring guy. So right now I've got a 2016 BMW R 1200 RT. And then I've also got a 2014 WR 250 R in the garage for when I want to get a little muddy.

Brian: Yes. No chance of getting confused into what bike you're riding, obviously.

Jon: Yeah. One of them is a little bit different from the other. The RT, you let the clutch out all the way out about 15 miles an hour in first gear. The WR, it's about two and a half because it's got a giant wood sprocket on the back of it.

Brian: Okay. Do you live pretty close to some trails and woods and so forth? Or do you have to trailer it around?

Jon: It's about five minutes. Nice. Riding down the road. It's very easy. In New Hampshire here, we've got a system called class six roads, which are ancient roads oftentimes from the revolutionary war, civil war era that are no longer used, no longer maintained. And they're essentially often like Jeep trails. Some of them are like Honda Civic or Subaru compatible, but the vast majority are significantly more exciting than that double track. And you can have an absolute blast riding them. They're open to any vehicle that is road legal. In Vermont, they have a very similar concept. It's called a class four road over there. When I get involved with some of the dirt events over there, like dirt days, tour tech dirt days, we ride essentially exclusively those. It's a blast.

Brian: That's really interesting because yeah, you've seen my garage. There's a KLR 650 in it because in Indiana, I got 20 minutes of interstate and then state highways, back roads. And then finally you'll get on a gravel road. It's still technically a road. It's about an hour. Yeah. You're a good hour to get to anything gnarly. Yeah.

Robin: I've got the good stuff right next to me, but if I'm going to go hang out with Brian, I'm like, it's only an hour. But if I think I'm going to go for a ride every day and I want it to be a good ride, you're traveling an hour first before each ride starts. And that can be kind of tough.

Brian: We didn't do this, but for my house, you can be off the highway in 20 minutes and then it gets better and better. So yeah, if you're going to be dual sporting around here, you're talking about gravel roads and some of them get really primitive and really gnarly, but nothing like you can get into in Vermont, New Hampshire and West Virginia.

Jon: Some of the stuff we're talking about is full on rock garden. You know, you're, you're going through mud ruts. The other day I was riding a road called Misery Road, which is aptly named.

Brian: Nice.

Jon: It's beautiful. And, uh, I had ridden it before. My buddy was like, we had just been coaching class for the, uh, the day. And we went for a ride after, after we got done with class and I take him down this road and I was like, Hey man, I've run these trails before, but only like once. So I'm not really exactly a hundred percent sure on difficulties of everything. I've been there. I've done it before, but I'm riding a WR250 and he's on a Tenere 700, which is a more of a handful off road. And so we go through this one road. It's like, yeah, it's the last one of the day, you know, we'll wrap up. We're a little tired.

Brian: Famous last words.

Jon: Yeah. We go through this one. And when I rode through there, I hadn't ridden through in the wheel rut from the giant mud Jeep that went through there. So I just, I'm going, I'm going through it. Right. And it's fine. You know, water splash, a little bit rocky, a little bit muddy, no big deal. And then the front end just goes, starts just dropping down. And so I just up the revs that I, you know, get into my clutch a little bit. And yeah, don't, don't stall. Don't stall on me now, baby. Through we went in the water was pretty much up most of the way at my boot. Yeah. That's five minutes from my house.

Brian: Nice.

Jon: So it's, it's very easy to ride dirt around here. In fact, we don't have quite as many really great, consistent twisty roads like you guys do out in Southern Indiana. But if you want some spice, that's where the spice is.

Robin: You're not far from West Virginia though.

Jon: Well, yeah, you're a day.

Brian: Yeah. Depends on your value of far.

Jon: No West Virginia. That's not bad.

Brian: There's good on and off road in there. Preach. It's Kentucky to the third power.

Jon: I think the difference is that in your living situation where it takes a while to get to gravel, a KLR is a great tool for that because you've got the bigger displacement it's highway compatible and stuff. My two 50 with the wood sprocket, it is screaming at 65 miles an hour. That engine is not happy with me at 65, right? Whereas in your world, that's a necessity. On the other hand, you can get to the off-road and the WR is a toy.

Brian: I've ridden with people off-road on WRs and I'm on my KLR and they're always like, dude, I can't believe you did that on that. Well, it's either that or just live here and die here. You know, got to get out of here.

Jon: Coming from riding on a T7, the WR is just so much easier.

Robin: Either way. Welcome to the show. Jon Barthel. Yeah.

Brian: We'll recap the Kentucky crawl, but yeah, just basically you had a really interesting take like you're, you do a lot of big miles, uh, iron butts near iron butts and stuff like that. And one of the things you, you mentioned when we were talking about all this is like, that's just what you have to do to go places because you live in this extreme corner of the country. Yeah. You're not really an iron butt enthusiast. You just do it because you have to.

Robin: Yeah. In order to get to the place where the things are happening, you have to be an iron butt rider. It's pretty hardcore, man.

Jon: It's the nature of the beast, right? Like when I was first getting into riding anywhere exciting, I was riding up and down the Eastern seaboard, you know, doing North Carolina a little bit, did a couple of trips down there. And eventually I said to myself, you know what, I'm kind of tired of riding over here and it was snowy and it was a late night in like January. And I'm just sitting there thinking about next season. And I said to myself, I wonder how long it would take me to get over to the good stuff on the other coast. Like how long did it take me to get to Glacier? I had this moment where I said, oh, wait a minute. It's only 2,500 miles to Glacier. So I can do that in three days. And so I went and did. Iron butts riding kind of shrinks down the country and it allows you to spend time riding the parts of the country that you want to ride. The iron butt is just the tool to get there. There's only, I've only done one fun iron butt. Most of them. I'm, I don't really enjoy that much. It's like, oh, cool. It's an achievement. But yeah, my bun burner gold was fun.

Brian: What's the, uh, bun burner goals at 1,500 miles or I forget what that is.

Jon: Yeah, that's 1,524. So I went from Concord, New Hampshire to Brandon, South Dakota in just under 24 hours.

Brian: And you're like, crap, I got to get back.

Jon: Yeah. Well, that did happen. So that was last year's trip to, uh, part of last year's trip to Colorado to see Robin. So what I did was I rode out through the Black Hills over 14A through the Bighorns, camped in between Beartooth Pass and Chief Joseph Pass, which are just two of my favorite places to ride in the whole country. I think they're right up there, hung out there, hung on Yellowstone for a day or two. And then I dropped down to Colorado and spent a couple of days slinging a Harley around with Robin.

Robin: That was a good time.

Jon: It was a blast. And then coming back, of course, I'd broken my phone out there. So I couldn't leave on the day that I wanted to. I had to push back a little bit. So I had to do a Saddlesore 2,000 on the way home, which is, uh, technically the minimum is 2,000 in 48 hours, but it's 2,200 miles home. So I did that in a weekend. It had to be done.

Brian: Had to be done. There's no way around it. To save the children, I had to do it. Yeah, and I also had to near rides around in tiny circles in parking lots sometimes. Tell us just a little bit about that pursuit. Here we go.

Jon: Oh, I mean, Jesus. I mean, so I'm an MSF guy, right?

Robin: That's how I know Robin. No, you don't say. Another one.

Jon: Yeah, I know. We multiply. And the thing about when you have access to cones is the natural tendency is to see if you can do a smaller circle and set up a course that's more fun. And so I got a little bit into rodeo riding, which is a blast, and it's a great way to improve your skills.

Brian: Oh, okay.

Jon: That's all. It's fun.

Brian: I didn't remember what it was called. Rodeo riding. I've heard of Gymkhana, which is similar-ish. It's more of a Japanese thing, I think, isn't it?

Jon: Gymkhana is a little bit more open. So with that, you're using chin over wrist more in a parking lot environment. With the police stuff, it's even tighter. And so because of that, the speeds are a little bit lower and you end up heavy counterbalance.

Robin: The two styles are basically divided into one is point, shoot, and attack. That'd be the Gymkhana. And then the standard American rodeo stuff is a lot more address and assess. The thing of maneuvers can be a lot tighter in the normal American cowboy ritual. But the Gymkhana stuff is no joke. I think that those are two performance-grade entities that should look at one another with absolute awe. High five across the line. Nice.

Jon: The rodeo guys all show up to the local Baudouin Gymkhana course in Concord.

Robin: It's something to see.

Brian: Next segment I wanted to move into is I wanted to talk about the Kentucky Crawl. I don't know why I called it that, but it just stuck. Anyway, usually I throw together a few friends, throw together a ride, and we have a nice ride in eastern Kentucky late in the year. And this year was absolutely epic and awesome.

Robin: When is none of your business.

Brian: When, how, and where is none of your business.

Robin: Yeah, that belongs to us. This is invite only.

Brian: We've got bouncers.

Robin: Yes.

Brian: And I'm counting this as four epic days of some really excellent riding. Five if we want to count Wednesday. So basically Wednesday started with Jon rolled out of bed while everybody else was still sleeping and headed to Indiana.

Jon: At 3 AM when it's about 40 degrees out and I've got 950 some odd miles to ride that day. I mostly actually listened to y'all talking. I was listening to podcasts for the first part of the ride.

Brian: Nice. We're just honored. You came to my house in Indiana and then we all went down there on Thursday. Wednesday was interesting. So while you were doing that, Robin came to my house. And like we often do before really big trips, we perform major maintenance on Robin's motorcycle.

Robin: Always the day before. The night before. Yeah.

Brian: Yeah. No options.

Robin: Rebuild the motor.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Whole new engine.

Brian: Take it all apart, put it back together.

Robin: Reassemble it as a different model by the same brand.

Brian: For some reason, that's a thing we just feel like we need to do a little too often. The idea was let's just do a simple fork oil change and it kind of turned into, oh, we need to take these completely apart because the level's been wrong for 100,000 miles. A long time.

Robin: No, the level's been wrong for 40,000 miles.

Brian: 40,000. Okay. Well, that's better than that.

Robin: What happened was the first many times that I did a fork oil change, I would dump, measure how much had exited the forks and pour that exact amount back in. I never wrote down what those figures were on average. So then I'm like, I'm sure it's written down there. It must be this. So I use what's in the book for like 40,000 miles. I'm putting in the standard volume amount. There's not enough of an air gap and I'm just like, wow, this is great. They feel so rigid.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Eventually I'm like, wow, they must be worn out because these feel like shit. And then you were like, well, here's why. They're not suspending.

Brian: I had the right tools for upside down forks. We did the thing. We took the stuff off. We slurped out. We, you know, anyway. Nevermind the fact that we spilled the fluid four different times and, but we finally got it in there.

Robin: That was the best part. We were doing everything right. We're both okay with a wrench.

Brian: We were finally doing everything right. Yes. We're going along just great. Oops. But between the two of us fumbled it a bit. It was a thing. The deed got done. Finally. We only had to go to YouTube about six times and find this friendly old man with a video. Jon shows up or what's left of Jon shows up.

Jon: I was pretty beat. It was a long day.

Brian: We go to dinner and this poor defenseless hamburger, this cheeseburger appears and this P and then it was not, it didn't land on the table. I didn't even see anything happen. Like normally you see like the Anaconda jaw come open or something. Um, I heard a whooshing sound and then there was not a hamburger there. I was weird. And yeah, I needed to eat. I was a little woozy. He's a little out of it. Thursday we, we get up. Not so bright, not so early. Anyway, probably say we get up and we hit the road and so forth. The idea on Thursday was to kind of fast forward through Indiana, get into Kentucky and, and get into the good stuff. That was what we did. Went through Madison, Indiana and resorted roads on the way to our destination in Georgetown. So we got there. We got to Georgetown about two o'clock. I don't know if there's a lot to say about all that. It was a great ride. The weather all four days was absolutely perfectly amazing. We could not have had better weather. And you know, Jon was sick of interstates, but we did have to use a little bit in Indiana.

Robin: And then what was it like an hour and a half?

Jon: Yeah, it wasn't bad at all. And it was beautiful weather. Like I had been riding the previous day in the forties. Most of the day, the weather in Indiana is so much nicer than we had in New Hampshire.

Brian: We got through it and so forth. We got to the hotel, met up with some people there. I put together like an 80 mile route for the afternoon, starting from Georgetown, going kind of North. The way I put it was kind of an anvil to the face. Wake up, get your shit together. You're going to, we're going to do some serious writing. Very twisty, very tight. Lots of fun to 27, for example, in Northern Kentucky, Northeastern Kentucky is one of my favorite roads. About half of it's collapsed. So you're going around the corner and the inside of the downhill side is starting to make its way away from the road. So that's interesting. We wrote that in two directions, right? Yeah. At least two or three times, actually.

Robin: That explains a lot because my side stand extension puck, the thing that fastens to it is ground down. It's shiny.

Brian: Yeah. My peg feelers are beat to hell. My center stand is beat to hell on both sides because you're going around these and you can kind of, and there's always like a little G out in the middle of it. So that's, that was interesting. But yeah, Thursday was a lot of fun. Little bonus ride is always good. Friday, the plan was to kind of go mostly South into the Red River Gorge area. Which we did. Which we did. The reason for that was on the weekends, it just gets all packed up. I mean, everybody in Kentucky goes there to go hiking and so forth. We were kind of wondering beforehand if there would be an impact from the hurricane, the flooding and so forth. Yeah. Everybody was like, Oh, look at the roads. Look at the, look at the trees, Herbert. We didn't really see any effects from a leftover flooding, anything like that. Everybody looked like they were doing fine. That area is kind of like, to me, it was a lot of hills. It was a lot of what they call hollers or what we would call valleys in other parts of the country. Them dare. Them dare hollers. Yeah. Yeah. If you look on tro.bike, there's an article on hillbilly triangle that kind of. Not the same roads, but goes through the same area. Some of the same roads. It's really, really amazing stuff. One of the things I did with the route I changed from the last time I was in the area was we just grunted out 30 miles of interstate to get to a starting point. Or we could jump right into the good roads. That saved an hour, at least on each end of farting around and, you know, waiting for garbage trucks and stuff like that. Absolutely. Cause there's kind of an area to get through where it's all flat and there's not much happening. So that was a lot of fun. And it's prettier. Yeah. Very pretty. You know, some goat roads, some roads that actually had a little width to them. A few roads that actually had lines on them, which was kind of cool. Mayo and mustard, as you would say. Mayo and mustard. That's why you're on a good road. Jon, tell us about the bathroom in the Mexican restaurant at lunch. Absolutely epic.

Jon: Put it this way. I feel like we didn't actually do bathroom breaks properly because we needed to have a nighting ceremony first. Oh yes. This pooper was up on a throne. There should have been a coronation.

Brian: It was.

Jon: I have never felt so empowered sitting on a throne. There were multiple steps.

Robin: How high off the ground would you say that was? It was like three big stairs.

Jon: Yeah. Yeah. There were multiple steps.

Robin: And then just an open plank with a shitter.

Jon: Yeah.

Brian: Yeah. It was awesome.

Robin: It was regal. Small town, Kentucky, Mexican restaurant. Perfect.

Brian: It was very good. And I'm trying to remember. We should really give a shout out to that restaurant. McKee, Kentucky. And it's the El Dorado Mexican restaurant. Very good food. Very good service. Incredible men's room. You really need to go check that out.

Robin: Go for the men's room. Stay for the food. Then use the men's room.

Brian: And in Saturday, we basically went northeast of Georgetown. Again, there's a TRO article on that. It's basically just called the Northeast Kentucky Motorcycle Ride. It kind of talks about the same area.

Robin: That one's written by you. The previous one was written by the president of the MSTA, Patrick Moguvero, who's a solid person to know if you're into sport touring, which, by the way, I built their website, the national site. Nice. Plug. Plug.

Jon: I liked Saturday better.

Brian: Yeah. Saturday was more like on ridgetops is kind of the big difference, I thought. Why'd you like it?

Jon: I don't like go roads as much. I'm piloting a big barge of a motorcycle, right? It's not a cute little, you know, little R 1200 RS. It's an RT and the T stands.

Robin: The listeners can't see Brian's face right now, but he's made this face many times for the mass numbers of people that have said, Brian, please, the fuck, please. Let's do some smooth. And he'll smile with that big smile. Be like, oh yeah. Darn it. You don't like it either. Brian's looking for his people.

Brian: Oh, you want roads with painless lines on them. Okay. I get it.

Jon: Go roads are fun. Actually, the go road that we ran at the very end of the day on Saturday was fun. I think it was because fully warmed up, been riding all weekend, really feeling very, very, very confident about bike placement and everything. And I think maybe it's just the fact that I'd been riding in that area now for a while, kind of knew what to expect with that area. And, you know, the common risks, the common hazards to look for. Yeah. I loved the consistent hairpins that we had, but big, wide open hairpins like we had on Saturday. That was a lot of fun. What was that road that we ran twice?

Robin: 22 probably.

Jon: 22. Yeah. That was a gas. 22 is a blast. There was a reason that I saw guys in track suits turning off of it.

Robin: Absolutely. The trick to these goat roads, though, I will mention surface conditions are the yay or nay for a quality goat road. If you've got a tight suspension on a lower set sport bike versus a Brian's got like more of a tall around or sport tour, how they're going to respond to the surface conditions in my mind is a huge contributing factor to whether or not that goat road is worth riding. Because if you're done with that goat road and you have to check whether or not you you're missing any fairing parts and you never crashed, well, that's probably not the greatest road to take people down. However, there are many roads during the trip sevens tour where your rear tire is still recovering from the right-hander while your front tire is starting the left-hander and it goes on for a good hour. There's an hour-long road in West Virginia that the pavement is meticulous. We don't miss it. It's always on the map. Every time we run sevens, it's a good 40 or 60 or 500, I don't know how many miles it is, but it's amazing. And it is constant, constant turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn. I love that.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: But the surface conditions have to be good enough to warrant it.

Jon: I like roads with good surface conditions. And then there's like a sketchy area on the small roads surface condition scale. And then below that, you've got the, oh, there are boulders in which case I'm very interested, but give me a different motorcycle to do it.

Brian: The six foot wide bike. Yeah. It's not quite right.

Jon: Oh, come on. It's not six foot wide. She just likes tacos. What can I say?

Brian: The big wiggy lights.

Robin: I love Friday. I loved Saturday. I was just in good company.

Brian: Yeah. That was a lot of fun. The blue tractor with this guy, absolutely fighting to keep that thing on the road and an actual, I think it was like a municipal truck following it. So this was like an actual taxpayer funded vehicle that was steered with rope. You know, like the wheels were falling off steering with rope. I don't know what the hell is going on. I was, I was afraid to pass this thing. I'm like, well, God, what if it, you know, what if it veers to the left suddenly?

Jon: I think he'd lost the keel and was trying to steer it with the sails or something. Like it was pretty bad.

Robin: Yeah. When I pulled up next to him during the pass, I took a slow look at what was going on.

Brian: What the hell is that thing?

Robin: The driver of this government funded, whatever it does, looked the part of the person who should be driving this three wheeled semi tractor of sorts. I think the municipal driver, he had to have had like a sifter of whiskey next to him. Just like, okay, here we go down the road.

Brian: Yeah. He was sweating and fighting. I mean, it was, it was a, he had a rough time. Oh, I meant the guy behind him. Oh yeah. That, that too. Not to rub it in or anything, Jon, but, uh, Robin and I had just a beautiful, epic, lovely ride back. We were actually able to enjoy, uh, Indiana on the way back. We didn't just fast forward Indiana. And so we had a lovely ride back to the river, a absolutely sublime ride through Indiana, all the way up to Nashville, dropped off Robin. And then I headed home. So how was your Sunday, uh, Jon?

Jon: My Sunday ride was pretty great, Brian. It started nice and early. I sucked the marrow out of that day, right? I started, I think I was kickstand up at about 3 AM because I woke up a little earlier than I wanted to, and I didn't see a point in going back to sleep. And it was beautiful. It was like 60 degrees and I rode and I had looked at the weather forecast and the entirety of I-90, which is what I would normally take, was just a massive green and red on the radar. And that didn't seem like a great idea.

Robin: Just a bunch of mushroom cloud icons on the map, just mushroom clouds everywhere. Skulls, yeah.

Jon: Yeah. It was in the mid forties and I didn't really feel like riding across the entirety of New Hampshire, Vermont, and also New York, and maybe some of Pennsylvania and Ohio in the rains. So I decided to take I-80 across Pennsylvania and then hook up across Connecticut, across Massachusetts into Vermont, and then over to New Hampshire. And that actually worked out really nice. I-80 is known for deer. Like I definitely saw some carcasses, but the colors were just going in Pennsylvania. I had a lot of rain. I think I was pretty much always getting misted on at the very least. There were very few periods of any sunshine to speak of.

Robin: Air conditioned.

Jon: Yeah. It was like a thousand and two miles. It wasn't, I didn't bother to record it. It wasn't any big deal.

Robin: You've done that.

Jon: Yeah, I've got, by the time you've done some more exciting Iron Bud Association rides, there stops being as much of an impetus to record a Saddlesore 1000 unless you're going for one of their like mile leader programs. I had a blast riding across parts of Pennsylvania. I got rained on a bunch. And at the very end of the day, it was in the low forties, upper thirties and dumping on me all the way across Connecticut and Vermont and New Hampshire. So that was the last like 200 miles sucked. But I got home in time to, I think I got home by about seven 30 or eight o'clock and picked up my little guy, proceeded to get sick for a couple of days with him. It was great.

Robin: Oh, nice. Exhaustion and family sickness.

Jon: Yeah.

Robin: Lovely.

Jon: It's not like a nice welcome home gift from your five-year-old.

Robin: Well, before we jump into segment two, I have a listener question. Oh, okay.

Jon: It's about grip puppies. You see, I just recently bought my first set of grip puppies at the recommendation of a certain R1200RS rider, and I rode to work with them for the first time today. Okay. I crammed them on as tight into the bar as I could. Initially, I gave the throttle, the, the old twist and release to make sure there was, it wasn't sticking or anything. But by the time I got to work, I did have a sticky throttle that I briefly had to deal with and it's from the edge of the grip puppies being slightly long. And so what I'm wondering about is, do I need to just shove it all the way on again and then just glue around the end or should I cut it?

Brian: I have an answer. I have an answer. Okay. What I think is going on with the grip puppies is that the supply of grip puppies is super variable. It runs around. When we were looking at this the other day, the only grip puppies I could find in the United States were the larger size for cruisers. So they're longer and they're bigger around. Seriously? Yeah. They're an inch longer and they're bigger around for the regular crowd with bigger grips and all that stuff. So that's probably part of what is going on. If the regular size grip puppies aren't available, which they often are not, there's a brand called Grabon that makes the same damn thing. And I think they're actually cheaper as well. The Grabons are, the normal size is five inches for a 7-8 bar, you know, however big the grip is. So those are five inches long. Those would be the correct size. I think that's what's going, that probably is what's going on here. I would try to cut off the excess if you can manage to do it smoothly without making it look all hashed up. Get a really sharp utility knife. See if you can get the ones that are the right length.

Robin: We're going to need a link to the one you talked about there. I will listen to that during post-production so that I may order them as well. Because every time I get them, I end up having to cut. And when I end up cutting, I remove them and I cut them down. Then they become ovated. And as a result, the cut goes wrong. And then they go back on, they look bad.

Brian: What's on my bike right now are the Grabons. Like I went through my purchase history, same thing, foam grip covers.

Jon: $14.29. Yeah.

Brian: So you can get them on Amazon or you can get them on Dennis Kirk, you know, all the usual suspects.

Jon: I'm looking through my, my Amazon history and the ones I have are the original Grip Puppy Comfort grips. It's not the Big Paw.

Brian: Then that should be the standard. Some of them still say on the package, something about cruisers or something like that.

Jon: Yeah. It does say cruisers.

Brian: So those are a little longer and a little wider.

Jon: But it says for seven eighths inch bars. Oh, okay. What I was thinking about doing was I didn't glue them.

Brian: Yeah. I never do.

Jon: I went on the RT forum and I said, initially, I'm not going to glue them. And then I can always glue them later, but I just want to see how this works. And what most people were doing was they were just installing them with soapy water. You glue a little soapy water on them and slid them on. And if you hit them with the heel of your hand, that actually causes enough of an air bubble to slide them on.

Brian: Oh, nice. Yep.

Jon: I didn't have ready access to a thin needle air compressor to help slide them on and they went on great. They've been, they're plenty comfortable. I can certainly ride with them. I ran the heated grips on the way to work this morning. They were great. But it's just that I'd like to have just a little bit less on the right-hand grip so that I don't have to deal with potential for a sticky throttle. I think the reason that it happened was I just come off an off-ramp where I used a lot of body positioning.

Brian: If you have an air compressor, you can kind of inflate it and kind of reconfigure its shape a little bit. But yeah, I think you may need to cut a little bit off.

Robin: Same thing with grip puppies, not just inflatable dolls.

Brian: Robin, making it weird, making it weird.

Robin: If you would like us to field your questions, you can email podcast at tro.bike or visit our contact page by typing email.tro.bike into your web browser.

Brian: On to segment two. This segment is a short revival of Brian's Tiny Tasty Tool Tips. One or two per episode. Thanks for not making it weird. Yeah. I always have a multi-tool with me. They're bad at everything, but they're okay for a lot of things.

Robin: I mean, sometimes I've used mine by default. I don't know what you're talking about.

Brian: The one I carry on my bikes usually is like a leather and wave. Very standard and so forth. I really would like multi-tool makers to stop putting crap in their multi-tools that nobody needs. I want pliers. I need handles that don't shred my hands. I need something that can cut wire. I would love to have something that can flush cut zip ties. I don't know how you do that in a multi-tool, but somebody out there has got to figure out.

Robin: Well, the Leatherman on the pliers has a cutter at the center of the pliers.

Brian: Right. So you got to get it in there. And basically, if you're dealing with the cutting off a zip tie, you just have to grab it and yank it off there with your teeth and get brutal with it.

Robin: No, no, no, no, no, no. The Leatherman Wave has the pliers of which you speak. And at the center jaw of those pliers is a cutter. Yeah. That is a flat cutter that will cut the zip tie. Okay.

Jon: Yeah, I've got one where it's got replaceable jaws on the inside.

Brian: Yeah, that's the higher end model. That's nice. A little pair of scissors that actually work would be nice. Tools that lock. One thing I've really gotten a lot of use from when doing some really hardcore field repairs is a file. Like you can actually file metal into shape, you know, file your broken levers to so you don't stab you, that kind of thing. A lot of them will have a nail file, but not an actual metal file. So again, Leatherman Wave. Yeah, that's the one I've got. A knife blade that's not like I don't need a giant pigstick or knife blade. I just need like, you know, and maybe a serrated. I think that one's got a combo blade in it. There's waves and then there's waves. Does that have? Yeah, that has two blades. There's no reason. There's no need for two blades. I may have a different model.

Robin: One of them cuts branches. This one, you should be very happy to hear this. This one has deer blood on it.

Brian: Nice. Did you like track the deer down and stomp them?

Robin: I don't remember why it has deer blood on it, but I never go to that state anymore. And I think the cops are still looking for me.

Brian: The red mist ascended and you woke up with deer blood. OK, got it.

Jon: Here's what happened. He was mid turn. He's trail breaking in. The deer comes out. He take, he draws, stabs it a couple of times and then continues around.

Robin: Jon pretty much nailed it. I was like, you will not get Brian.

Brian: Yeah. Actually, the Leatherman I have is the wingman. OK. In case anybody really gives a crap. Well, OK. Yes, that's cool. So things that are not useful. I've never met a multitool screwdriver that's any good. I don't know if you guys have. I have one. It's not on that Leatherman. It is. Is it a bit driver or a screwdriver? Yeah, it's got the bit driver on there.

Robin: Yeah, that that's OK. They've got a bit driver extension and a bit set. And the bit set is full of portions of torques, portions of Phillips, portions of flathead. It's got like the segmented bits.

Jon: Are they portions that are useful?

Robin: They have been for me.

Jon: For an R1200RS?

Robin: Yeah, I've used them on my bike before. Yes. Brian always wants to have a fight. So I'm stepping in as I see fit.

Brian: I don't know if you have this version of the wave, but a lot of them will have like a wood saw. You know, that's debatable. Like if you're spending a lot of time off road where you might need to make a shelter, you know, out of sticks or something like that, or you might need to cut deer bone to make a splint.

Robin: You're talking about this?

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Yes, I have the wood saw.

Brian: What the hell's the point of that? To cut branches. It's a camper's knife. Yeah, and there's like a gut hook. You know, the can opener and so forth. I guess those may be useful in some situations.

Robin: But I also have scissors. My scissors work. I've got good scissors on these.

Brian: Leatherman does have good scissors. SOG makes good scissors. I had an SOG tool and some Leatherman tools include this too. They have behind the pliers, there's a little area where you can actually crimp electrical connectors. You can actually do a respectable job of that. So like if you look at the little, you know, behind your blades. Yeah.

Robin: That's pretty sexy. I like that. I don't have that. No, I want that.

Brian: The one I carry is a simpler one called the Wingman. The Wave is really super popular. I think that's the one that's got those replaceable blades. They make several models like that.

Robin: Wait, wait, wait. The Wave is super popular, right? You said that? Yes. You're welcome, Leatherman. We wrote an article the instant they came out. Like, boom, you want this? Get it, buy it, buy it, buy it.

Brian: Yeah. The one thing the Wave has is a little tiny poker screwdriver. You could use that for a terminal tool if you needed to deal with some electrical stuff.

Robin: Yeah. It's also kind of like the first thing you lose. Yeah. It's detachable and tiny, but it comes with the bit set as well. The bit set actually comes with everything I mentioned before, plus some jewelry items. So like a jewelry driver.

Brian: Yeah, well, like glasses might be something you need to do. So yeah, I'd like to, you know, wire strippers. You can strip wire using the tools you have here. And sometimes they have a notch in the wire cutter. But something a little better for stripping.

Robin: The bottle opener isn't a bottle opener. It's like a bottle cap cut into her and then render it unremovable.

Brian: Yeah, or the can opener. You know, if I'm that damn hungry. Yeah, I don't know if I've been that hungry. I'll eat the can.

Jon: I've forgotten the exact name of it. So I'm looking on their website right at the Leatherman site right now. It's the one where it doesn't fold and butterfly like your traditional Leatherman does.

Brian: Oh, OK.

Jon: Yeah, the pliers slides out.

Brian: Oh, cool. Well, that's a Gerber design. Their drop handle. Yeah.

Jon: Yeah, I'd have to remember exactly which model it is. I can go find it if you want me to. But I can give you an actual answer. It's been perfectly fine. It's just something I keep on the bike pretty much all the time. But I don't use it a lot for actually working on the bike. Like the bike has its own. Each bike has its own bike specific tool kit. Yeah, that's built for that bike and is primarily used every time I work on that bike so that.

Robin: Are you serious right now? You're using that diagonal messed up wrench set that's under the seat?

Jon: No, no, no, no, no, no. I have my own kit that I built for the bike and then I keep on the bike.

Robin: Oh, see, that's what you're saying. Yeah, see, that's what most of us do. We build our tools around the bike.

Jon: What you do is you go out and you figure out the tools that you need, you do the maintenance that you need to do, and then you set those tools aside and they become part of your everyday carry on the bike. You can now know that, hey, I can take the wheel off. I can adjust this. I can take the fairings off. I can do whatever. Over time, you end up building up a kit that covers you for the basic necessities of motorcycle life.

Robin: And surprisingly, everybody else a lot of the time. Because we think to do so. That's been a regular conversation between Brian and I, which is a hand. He's like, there've been other people in our riding collective. And Brian just walks up to me and he doesn't say anything. And I hand him my tool roll and it kind of drapes into his hand. He's like, the bag. And he walks away, you know, it's just, I don't know what you're going to do.

Jon: It's a little different bike to bike. Come on.

Robin: It is.

Jon: I mean, you know, your BMW axle stuff is completely different from what I had in my T7, for instance. Tools to remove a wheel are useful to have.

Brian: There's a company that's actually starting trying to make multi-tools where you can just pick which tools you want to put in there and switch them out. Yes. And that would be dead sexy. That's genius. Please. I'd love to see that. I don't know how far along they are, but it's expensive. That way you could customize exactly what you feel needs to be in there. Like Jon said, it's kind of the tool of last resort. If everything else in your tool world doesn't work, then grab this and try to carve a stick. I don't know.

Jon: The last time I remember seeing a multi-tool being used to fix a motorcycle was to hotwire a side stand safety switch on a bike that had gotten gummed up off-road.

Brian: It'll do it. Or pull crap out of a tire, you know, whatever punctured your tire. The pliers come into play. That's about it. Let's dive into what I'm calling risk mismanagement. The art, the science, and the idiocy of the sketchy pass. Yes. I would like everybody listening to understand that this is a theoretical conversation about things that may or may not have happened, a work of fiction that happened in a world and a galaxy far away and a time long ago. Stand by for legal. Now we're legally clear. Totally clear. I'll just go ahead and own this because, you know, passing that tanker truck on that six foot wide road was probably not the best decision I've ever made.

Robin: Neither one of us remember yours. I may remember it. We only remember our own. So let's just have a therapy session. Hi, I'm Robin and I made a sketchy pass.

Brian: Yeah. We know better. We do it anyway sometimes.

Robin: And everybody here did something that day. Let's get it out and feel better about ourselves for having done so. This is a safe space.

Brian: Jon's got that look on his face like, I don't know what you're talking about.

Jon: I think that I'm typically a little bit less confident in making sketchy passes. It's not something that I do on a regular basis. And so I tend to be looking for a more wide open spot and, you know, so on and so forth. If I'm trying to get past someone.

Brian: There was a sketchy pass that I would do again any day of the week. Like when we were turning on the 22 and there was a slow car, we knew they were going to be slow and we just, just nailed it. But there was plenty of sightline there. You know, there was absolutely no, the way I put it was, I know I have the physics. I know I have the skills. I also know it's a bad idea, but I did it anyway. And there were others, you know, where you're passing two, you can see everything you need to see. You know, you've got the speed, the space and so forth, but I need to be better than that and not really do that kind of stuff. Even on a twisty road where you can actually see, but you only do it when you see the entire surface that you're going to need.

Robin: That's my story to tell.

Brian: You have the cognizance of the velocity. So it's such that you can, you got the rhythm. Yeah. You know exactly where you're going to be. You know, exactly. We're going to go diving into blind stuff like that. Yeah. That is extraordinarily stupid, but yeah. Pulling off something that, you know, you're going to be fine. You know, you can see it. It sure does look bad to the guy. That's the problem there.

Robin: I think I made a pass in Kentucky where it kind of went the way you just said. We had a left-hander and a right-hander and beyond the right-hander. I could even see that. I could see the left-hander. I could see the right-hander and I saw the road going up a hill because everything was moving uphill. I could process the pavement ahead of me well into the future, right? So I was judging these two probably necks in their big old pickups of which I own a big old pickup. So, and they were ahead of us and I thought, okay, they're really not letting us play through. So they go around a left-hander right before they were making that turn into the left. I looked to the right-hander. I looked up the hill. There was nothing there. And by my judgment, I had exactly enough space to make my pass and use techniques that if they did not work, then I'm completely fucked. In that moment, my decision could have been to wait, probably should have been to wait. That rare moment. I don't do that often. I just don't. But in this specific instance, I decided I gotta see this road. I gotta enjoy this. I need to get around these guys. It was a fix, man. TRO, your sport touring motorbike fix, is literally at the top left of the site. Get it in my veins. Before this truck made its lefty, I hooked and passed it on the inside via the oncoming lane, then had to outrun the truck ahead of it so that I could then, for the first time in the entire event, trail brake into the corner and hook back into my lane before that truck caught up to me. I succeeded in doing so. There was no margin for error. That is a sketchy pass. Risk mismanaged.

Brian: Don't leave me hanging here. You might have heard. Yeah, I admit it. No, I, yeah, same. Passing the tanker truck, the physics were all there. The margin for error was smaller than it should have been. So what do you do about it? Just not do that crap anymore? That's hard, man.

Robin: Oh, man.

Brian: Do we enter a 12-step program now? What?

Jon: One of the videos that we show on night one of the classroom at Harley talks about how much risk are you willing to accept? You make your own decision about how much risk you're willing to accept. Go over the speed limit. You're adding risk, maybe perfectly in control, maybe perfectly fine, right? But you got less reaction time, so on and so forth, right? That continues as you potentially add more risk factors. You see an opening that you decide you want to go for, you are accepting a higher level of risk, and if that's something that you are willing to do personally, that's something that you're willing to do personally.

Robin: Still, I'm the only person who got deep and dirty into my story of what happened. Well, there's, yeah.

Jon: I had one. I don't think it was quite as egregious, but I had one moment where we were pulling him down onto this little go-road. It's this narrow little road. I'm the first guy in the line, and there's this big, long 18-wheeler. I was amazed the guy was trying to take the thing down this little road.

Robin: Had to have been a mistake, yeah.

Jon: One of the things I was thinking about is, is this guy about to stop and say, oh, wait a minute. I've made a terrible mistake, and I need to figure out where I'm going now. So I pop out a little bit just to kind of see what's going on. He's crawling along. He's got to be doing, you know, first or second gear in the semi. Like, he's not going fast at all. And so I poke my nose out. I see his brake lights come on, and so for a moment, I'm like, I'm trying to decide if I can, if I'm supposed to go around him or if he wants me to go around him or what. And what I did was I hesitated. I popped out. I came back in. I popped back out again. That was the sketchiness part of it, because I didn't have as good a sight line as I should have. What I was thinking in my head was, he sees that there are like four or five bikes behind him, and he wants to let us past, which is a common trucker thing to do. So I was trying to figure out what was going on in that situation. That was probably the sketchiest one that I had.

Robin: It was completely innocent, because you were ready to dive back where you needed to be. But watching you linger on this back country road with an 18-wheeler on it was something for me to be like, uh-huh, uh-huh.

Jon: I mean, where I'm from in the Northeast, people drive slowly, and most of the roads are, I don't do a lot of passing outside of a very specific straight line passing zone in my neck of the woods. So I'm naturally very skittish about it. It's not something I do much.

Brian: One thing also you kind of mentioned there is, you want to try to not put yourself in a place where you have no options. For example, a double pass passing two vehicles looks a lot sketchier than it is, because you always do have that option of tucking in between them. There's a cradle. It's two passes in one. And so oftentimes, not every time, you'll have the option of tucking in.

Jon: And this does not sound great, but wait, give it a moment, all right? I commute down I-293 every day. It's not scenic.

Robin: That does not sound great.

Jon: It's not great. It is just a highway cruise. But there is exit six, there's an on-ramp, and then immediately, almost as if you continued the arc of that on-ramp, there's an off-ramp. And I have to take that off-ramp. And people inevitably end up bunched up in a line there because no one knows how to time it, and they always end up stopped down at the end of the ramp. And so I'm coming through there today, getting around an 18-wheeler so that I have line of sight to the traffic that stopped on the ramp, because I want them to have a chance to see me, right? I throw on my signal, but I'm in the left lane throwing on my signal, and some of them didn't pick up on it. Two cars pull out. So they're coming out, and it's a long 180-degree off-ramp. It's actually a really fun corner. Oh, nice. I pop myself right in between the two cars. I trail brake the off-ramp, and life is good. That is a very similar type of situation where you end up tucking in between two vehicles, and it's not the greatest thing in the world, but sometimes it's necessary.

Robin: Surprisingly enough, given how much activity we had and the great roads we rode in Kentucky as the three of us together, absolute blast. But I got to laugh at the fact that one of the funnest corners we took was the entrance to the expressway when we started our day.

Jon: That was a blast, especially because I was right behind you.

Robin: We're just all hauling ass onto the expressway, just a nice big hook, and this is how this is going to go. And the rest of the weekend was like, holy shit.

Jon: If there is one time that I wish I had had my 360 camera attached to the bike and running, Robin, it's that, because then I could have gotten the shot forward because I was right behind you. And we're both going around the thing using plenty of body positioning. That would have been a really cool shot.

Robin: Perfect surface conditions with a complete line of sight. But what's really important about this conversation is, Brian, what were the exact details and circumstances with which you passed this tanker truck?

Brian: Um, this is a safe space. It's kind of like Jon described, we're behind a semi, we're about to turn off, so I wait. I'm leading, I'm first in line. Then this fricking tanker truck starts going down the same road and why, I don't know, what the hell could be down there. And it wasn't a mistake. He was like, he had a destination in mind. We were kind of on a road that was kind of hanging on the lip of a big bowl. So it was a big curve, but you could see for quite a long way and there weren't any driveways, mailboxes, things like that. Like I said, I did consider all the physics and all that stuff. There was no mustard, no mayo, no lines on this road. The typical perfectly smooth Kentucky road. One of the things we talked about in the past and I put in one of my articles is the number of mailboxes, you know, things like that. You know, think about your environment, uh, that kind of thing and passing polite. So anyway, I, I passed the truck and to my shock, Robin chose not to pass the truck right at that moment. I'm like, oh, okay. That's too sketchy for Robin.

Robin: What? I was like, I don't know if Brian's going to hover next to that car and leave me with no opportunity to get around. Just lean on the worst case scenario. Okay. Let's just decide that Brian is the instance here. I know you're going to be able to do it. I know you're going to be fine. I don't know that I'm going to be fine.

Brian: Yeah. Until, until I'm out of the way, that's part of it. The article was velocity philosophy. There's a little section on passing. One of those things that was an operation, the principle be irresistible and be gone. Like if you're going to pass, get it done. Don't screw around when it's time to shoot. Shoot. Don't talk. When it's time to pass, get it done with what we call full hatred. You know, on a motorcycle, you can do that. You're small, you're agile, you're fast. You can do that kind of thing. Use good judgment and try not to use up your traction circle in your line of sight. Don't do this to home kids. If that's what you're thinking. And again, this is all very hypothetical. You know, it's about a trip we were planning to Mars on our moon buggies. Yeah.

Robin: Let's bring it down with some of these questions right here. You got two great questions. So when it comes to those perhaps less than perfect passing opportunities that we've gone ahead and taken advantage of, why the hell do we do this? And should we try to be better? Why? Depends on a number of things. How much information have I processed? How clearly annoying are the people that are in front of me? Are they doing this on purpose? Are they being just dicks? Have they been aware of us long enough that they could have made opportunities for us to pass, but they then decide to just speed up in the opportune passing zone? I'll kind of count. If I'm following a couple of vehicles and I'll look at their opportunities to be cool, I'll count to five and then I'll think, okay, now I know that.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: That's when it's time that I know that I can outmaneuver them and I'll look for the opportunity to do so. Should I try to be better? That is me trying to be better. Stop being dicks. It's okay if you're just ignorant of us, but if you're purposely like, you're gonna pass me. Yeah. That's when I become less better. It's not road rage. They're an obstacle and I'm trying to get by.

Jon: If you want to have people give you the courtesy of an open road ahead on a more regular basis, one thing I really recommend are giant yellow auxiliary headlights.

Brian: Little wiggly weird things. Yeah. Those are freaking annoying. Get around me.

Jon: On my RT, I've got Denali D4s and they're run through a CanSmart system that allows you to program the lights in a lot of interesting ways, including if I triple click my high beam switch, my flash to pass, it'll actually strobe them for a second. And they're also programmed so that on a regular basis, even when I run it around on low beam and they're only at 10% brightness, which is still brighter than the freaking sun. They, they fade in and out a little bit for additional visibility, right? The instant you put auxiliary lights like that on your bike, A, you feel a lot more seen when you're just riding around in general, but also you'll notice that people are a little more likely to just pull over and let you go by them if you show up behind them. I just saw something I noticed. I think it's because they're more likely to see you in general, which is of course valuable.

Brian: Yeah. Interesting. Very nice. Very nice. Yeah. Just a factor I'll mention is that if you have a larger awareness of the route and what's going on, you know, a lot of times, oh, well, we're going to, we're going to turn in a mile or we're going to turn a half a mile. This, you know, this isn't, there are times you can figure out when it's worth it. There are also times when I was beyond amused to see Robin make a pass and then the car just turn before you're even out of sight. That happened at least three times. And it was extremely amusing. Like that can always happen on those little tiny twisty roads. Generally, people are not going all the way through. They're not there to enjoy the road or they're tolerated and get somewhere once in a while. Yeah. You get some idiot on a garbage truck that takes a scenic route. I don't know why, but most of the time farm roads, people are getting to the next farm, but a lot of times you can just kind of relax and they'll be gone soon anyway on their own.

Jon: The other thing to be aware of anytime you're making a pass, of course, intersecting roads, right? If you're cruising by them in the left lane and they decide they need to make a left, for instance, that would be a, have some negative consequences, shall we say.

Robin: Did anybody do that? No. You're speaking to an audience of seasoned hooligans.

Brian: Yeah. Mailboxes, driveways, cornfield entrances. You're not wrong.

Jon: Earlier on, we were talking about factors, you know, open sight lines and all this sort of stuff. And that's something that I think we should, that is worth adding to that list.

Brian: That's one thing. Like when you talk about Highway 22 in Kentucky, it's on a ridge top. So you often have incredible sight lines. Sometimes you don't, but it's also less densely populated than a lot of places we were. That's one of the things that makes that road really interesting is there's not a lot of population in parts of it. So the mailbox frequency is lower. Your chances of annoying somebody are a lot lower. And the chances of somebody suddenly deciding, oh, I need to be in my driveway over here. That makes it, that's one of the things.

Robin: The chances of somebody are a lot lower.

Brian: Somebody at all, yeah.

Robin: Which is kind of nice. But as for the remote nature of it, I will say that that's when we bring in, TRO.Bike would recommend that you buy the Spot Trace. You flip up a switch, press a button, and a helicopter will arrive. It will be a $30,000 helicopter ride, but it'll be a fantastic helicopter ride to your remaining existence on this round ball of mud.

Brian: You'll be bankrupt, but you might be alive. In years past, people in Kentucky have often moved over for us. This year, that didn't happen very much at all. Is that kind of going away or do we just catch them in a bad mood?

Robin: Maybe it's an election year thing.

Brian: Everybody's mad. Yeah. Everybody's tense. You're the enemy. I'm winning. Yeah.

Jon: I mean, as you guys know, no one here was riding a real motorcycle.

Brian: Burger Brother, when are you going to get a real bike?

Jon: We were godless commies.

Brian: Hey, you guys riding that Euro Trash.

Jon: As a Harley Davidson coach. I got to take some exception there. Come on, man. I've got about 60,000 miles on Harleys. I've ridden across the country twice on a Harley. They're a comfortable couch.

Robin: I mean, in the curves, I never see them.

Jon: Oh, you used to see me all the time. You'd typically be riding past me, but you would see me for a moment. There is a limit to what you can do with things like body positioning and you start dragging things and so on. You definitely have to, they force you to be a little bit more cautious. I know some guys that have lifted Harleys with fully built motors and all of this entertaining stuff. And you know, hey, they have a blast on them.

Brian: They. Nice.

Jon: Typically a pretty comfortable bike. If you want to build yourself a hot rod and build something that's all custom and all that. Cool. That's what your idea of good time is. I love my RT, but if you want a bike to put a passenger on the back of, they're comfy.

Robin: This beef is not straying in that direction. It's more like, why do you need to go so fast? Why do you need to get out? Why do you need me to get out of your way? I need you to get out of my way because I want to go faster than you. Well, that's too fast then. I don't know you. Therefore, you don't have a say in this conversation. I'm going to go now.

Jon: Oh yeah. You get down to any of the good roads, right?

Robin: The mind says what does it? I'm not walking into their living room and being like, you should be faster. It'll never happen.

Jon: If we're talking about roads like the tail and stuff like that, where you tend to have a string of motorcycles behind the one guy who's got his cruiser out for the one time this season. Right.

Brian: Yeah.

Jon: Here's my beef with those roads, right?

Brian: Yes.

Jon: You can go inside, you can buy your patches, right? And I don't own any patches, but they're available. And there's also some stickers.

Robin: Good start.

Jon: And so you walk in there and some of the patches say something like, I survived the tail of the dragon or I survived moonshiner 28.

Robin: Aren't they adorable?

Jon: My problem with that inherently is the idea that the road is so incredibly dangerous that you can't ride it. Anyone can ride the tail of the dragon in first gear, idling along. It takes no effort.

Robin: Yes.

Jon: I could put students from a basic MSF class in first year riding down the tail of the dragon.

Robin: They'll make it.

Jon: The curves that we do at our peanut exercise are tighter.

Robin: Yep. And the thing about the dragon that is so dangerous, it involves adding two more ingredients, stupidity and ignorance. Yes. People who don't want to learn nothing gooder, definitely buy the bike and they buy that patch. I hear you. It's always the rider. It's never the bike. But I so rarely meet the rider from that side of the coin that doesn't represent what we just got on about. With that, Brian, how are you feeling, man?

Brian: Jon, thanks for being here. Great to recap it. Good to see you. Sorry we had such a great ride home on Sunday and you didn't. But we're honored that you made the trip and honored that you came on the podcast and shared some wisdom with us. Thanks for being here, man.

Jon: Well, I appreciate you both. And it was a great time. I love riding out there. And I just want to say just in general, I've ridden about four iron butts this season. If you count the 950 mile ride.

Brian: We'll count it. Yeah.

Jon: I've gone through darn near a set of tires to see you two. And at some point that means that you guys got to come out to Northeast.

Robin: Brian, don't worry, man. We can edit this entire segment out. It'll totally be deleted. In fact, I'll flip the words. He'll be like, I love riding only to you guys with long distances. Yeah. And it's what I do. Never come to where I am.

Brian: Nobody needs to come East.

Robin: Get us out of here, Brian.