Speaker 1: The theme for this episode, from the cuff and off the hip. Cuff the hip from the off. From the hip, off the cuff. There's just so much to do, there's so little time, there's tons of winter and no motivation to do any of it. We all sometimes have to improvise, right? Hell yeah. That's the theme for this round. Because this episode, this very podcast episode, I knew what I had to do, but I've been so absorbed in work that I've been unable to prepare for it at all. So we slapped all this together. Let's see how we do open admission, guilty until proven innocent. All right. How are you, Brian? I'm good.

Speaker 2: I'm clean. Yesterday, that was in question. Our water heater failed. That ate up a good half, three quarters of the day, so I'm still catching up. But got a new water heater, went to a Home Depot, dropped a very painful amount of money, took a victory shower, so it was great.

Speaker 1: So I was going to say, does this mean that there were no showers in the Ringer household for the past, let's say, two, maybe even three months?

Speaker 2: Just yesterday morning. There was a little bit of warmish water left, so I let Marge have that so she could go to work. So I basically did that and worked from home that day. And then about 2.30, 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I got it done. But yeah, you don't know what you got until it's gone, you know?

Speaker 1: Truth. Oh, man. Don't even say it. It happens to us all the time. So you said it has Bluetooth and nanobots and it can open garage doors all over America?

Speaker 2: Something like that. I don't know why you need it, but this water heater, and pretty much all of them you can buy now, have their Wi-Fi enabled and it's got electronic controls and all that stuff. So if I were someone dumb enough to go ahead and connect this to my network and put the app on my phone, I could connect to my water heater from wherever I happen to be. That's terrifying.

Speaker 1: Palm dial your water heater and start boiling a lobster.

Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I think they, you know, you and I manage websites, we know something about security. I have every confidence that Reem is going to definitely be very diligent about keeping their firmware updated and secure for the next... Well, the water heater has a warranty for 12 years. Brought to you by Linksys. Yeah. So I'm sure their security will be outstanding for that entire period of time. No. My garage door opener is the same way. It's Wi-Fi enabled. Hell no. No. No. Not doing that.

Speaker 1: How would you know if somebody was trying to pry... So does your water heater or garage door have any particular guest network setting I could borrow for a minute?

Speaker 2: I like my water at 140 degrees. No. They just need to sit there and do their job and shut up their appliances. Anyway, go on. Why, yes, we do have some update, Brian. Thanks for asking. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Motorcycle stuff. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1: So once again, we've been expanding the social media blasts onto our various accounts across the interwebs. Just to keep our presence active, I've been kind of fine-tuning it, getting it all pieced together for the better. So keep a lookout for older articles that are still worth reading and give you some Christmas ideas so we can collect Scamazon subliminal message money. While I kept checking all of our social media stuff, I saw a pristine... This thing was in better condition than mine when I bought it. A 2001 Suzuki Bandit GSF 1200S. Absolutely mint, and it's got the red frame paint job and all that. I was damn tempted, but there's no ABS, so no.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Just not gonna.

Speaker 2: I did have a chance to ride one a little while back. That's the neat thing. Anything from the 90s on up is going to be a pretty reasonable sport bike. Oh, yeah. It's such a deal then and even now. I think those are carbureted, is that correct?

Speaker 1: It's carbureted, yeah. Mine was, and the previous bike had identical motor. Came with the Paris valves. Travis isn't here to back me on this, but basically, I did everything to a Bandit that can be done to a Bandit. It was maxed out by my standards and pulled the Paris valves off so you could take the valve cover off more easily, it was a useless system. Anyhow, they kind of wasted space, sealed all that up. Hayabusa rear suspension, which on a Bandit is a really good suspension. It ain't great, but it's decent. But when I saw that bike, I just remembered everything I know about it and was just like, man, there is no tech that will cause a key to fail. Immediately, I was like, give me. That's kind of a throwback to the past two episodes with our Triumph Street Triple R second gen. Correction, the CB500T, my first bike that I ever owned. They did not make millions, plural of them. I've already edited that out of the previous episode. They made 60,000 of them and they sold well. They did not sell well in the States because of, well, they didn't ever really get much exposure here, I guess. What kind of Harley is that? Some of the claims were that it was underpowered. I disagree. If it was tuned right, I liked that bike quite a bit, which we're hoping to get Jordan Liebman on for next week, who is a fantastic and historically motivated talker of motorbike-age. It'll be a good time to see him if he can actually make it.

Speaker 2: Some motorbike-age talk-age would be good.

Speaker 1: We prepped talkage for breakfast. Now it's in the evening, so we're going to have a glass of talkery.

Speaker 2: Talkeration.

Speaker 1: Also, I'm making new music, man. It's good to make music. I'm working on a new electronic album.

Speaker 2: We'll see how that goes. Your beatboxing and saxophone?

Speaker 1: Yes. Is that bagpipes, maybe? I've commissioned random friends wherever I go to take on the human beatbox from Fat Boys. That's what my scene's all about. Part of my winter is to just make music and read and hopefully exercise at some point. We talked about that last time. I know the intimate details of your water heater.

Speaker 2: What can you tell me? A friend of mine is one of those people who keeps his finger on the pulse of Facebook marketplace, always looking for a deal on motorcycles and so forth. I think people are getting desperate for Christmas money, and we're starting to see some really interesting stuff pop up. The one he sent me this morning was a 2003 SV1000N, and the N stands for naked. Naked. So this is a 1000cc 90-degree L-twin. Wonderful engine. I had a V-Strom 1000 for a long time. Two thousand dollars. A song. And this thing looks good. Says it runs and rides good. Rode all season. No issues. Regular maintenance done. Fun bike need gone. 2000 OVO. This wasn't sold by a mutual friend, was it? No, it's on Facebook marketplace. It's still there.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: Are you thinking you might want to pull the trigger on something like that? I'm not going to pull the trigger on it, but it's very damn tempting. If someone needed like a track bike, wouldn't that just be the most incredibly giggly, big grunty V-twin that can also spin the 9500? I mean, that would be so much fun.

Speaker 1: It's a bit of an open canvas too. I mean, you can paint a very pretty picture in modding it. There's tons that can be done to it. A lot of swap out items that'll just fit right out the box from one bike to the other. It's got UJM characteristics.

Speaker 2: Yoshimura cans. Wow. So I don't think it's a full system, but it's got Yoshi cans on it.

Speaker 1: All right. So no two-to-one.

Speaker 2: It's still two-to-two. But good gravy. I mean, there's stuff like that popping up. You know, whenever Grisha sends me a link to a cool bike, my response is pretty standard unless it's a total idiot thing. But my response is always, dude, you should totally buy that bike. Once in a while, he does. I think he went through five bikes last year.

Speaker 1: But we say that if they're buying a crap bike too, because we just want to see how that goes.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's all vicarious nonsense. The SV engine actually uses shim under bucket. So the cams have to come out. Why did they do that? Get them on the phone right now. Yeah. The good part is once you do one valve check and get everything set to the clearances, they pretty much never move. On my Vstrom, everything was out of whack at 45,000 miles. I set the valve clearances and they did not move a bit for 100,000 miles. I just stopped worrying about it.

Speaker 1: I mean, it takes a lot to really knock things out of whack anyhow on a good, well-tuned, modern bike. But are you ready for listener questions? Lay it on me. This is gonna be very fast. I will answer for both of us. Brent says, Been trying to find a decent name for this bike ever since I finished building it, but I can't think of any that don't just sound corny as fuck. Help me name my bike. And I think I'm going to speak for the both of us when I say no.

Speaker 2: I've never named a bike. Me neither. Next segment. Like my wife will be like, which bike are you taking? I'm like, uh, the, the pretty red one, the old blue one, the weird dirt bike-y one, you know, but that's about as far as it goes. I think you could get away with naming a scooter. You have to name it after a Pokemon.

Speaker 1: We call ours Betty. And I guess I'll give some leeway that I, I suppose it's okay to name your bike. So long as it's done in the privacy of your own bathroom. And then it is never mentioned beyond those doors ever again from then on.

Speaker 2: It's a private matter.

Speaker 1: Go on. Onto our first segment. Destination proclamation. This round, I've decided that we're going to talk about Austin, Austin, Texas. Why Austin? Texas. Wouldn't you know it, it just so happens by some random coincidence that I'm right here, right next to Austin. Technically I'm in Kerrville, Texas, but I'm very close to Austin, just to the southwest of it. And I have to say, we've been here before. We came back. That should speak something to the kind of writing you get to do here. One of the things I really enjoy about visiting Texas, specifically Hill Country, you're never going to find me looking to go to Dallas or Houston, which I have friends there. You know, there's a lot of parts of Texas where it's like, oh yeah, more of that way and flat. But once you start to reach Austin, you start to dip your toes into Hill Country and the writing just gets better. So good that we were able to create a level three tour, meaning it's a lot of good curvy writing with a lot of open scenery and straights to take breaks at and plenty of civilization in the area, if you will. It's kind of that part of the state where all of a sudden, the food just tastes better. The people are a little bit more polite. You can create multiple 60-mile routes that are, for the most part, curvy from start to finish without them ever overlapping one another. They can be completely separate, isolated cloverleaf routes in 60 to 100 to 200 miles long without ever touching the same road. That's not really what people think of when they think of Texas. But when you get into places like Dripping Springs is really good. You have Cow Creek Road, Park Road 4, you have Park Road 7. Those three are all right there and they go aimlessly through the Hill Country and oftentimes arrive at either barbecue or pie. No problem there. Sometimes both. Highly recommended as a good pairing. Nice. So I really enjoyed Dripping. Kerrville, of course, is renowned for not only being a city. I mean, you've got a Harbor Freight, a Home Depot, Wally World. You've got lots of ma and pa businesses like Gibson's Hardware. Gibson's Hardware has obscure stuff that you can't get at the big box stores and they know what they're talking about. There's a human being there will actually help you. So you've got this beautiful city with Thai food and sushi and Indian and barbecue and all, you know, access to all the good stuff. Great lodging. Nice. That is right next to all the hairiest riding. It immediately becomes rural right out of town. Nice. Like, okay, I'm in the big city and then boom, it's just you and longhorns. And there are many, many longhorns. Some of them in open cattle country looking at you as you go by like limbo. I remember one point a long time ago, a good friend, shout out to Bob Oakes. Brian, you've met Bob. Yeah. Bob actually came to Texas for a visit. Put that big man on the Hawk GT. I rode my Beamer and he rode the Hawk GT and we rode Cow Creek Road. And I swear one of us almost did a limbo. The longhorn 20 feet across the road. Just insanity. Yeah, they get big. Now, if you go a little bit further, a little bit deeper into the rural, you won't lose your connection to Kerrville, to Austin, to San Antonio. And I suppose you're a little bit closer to the beach down in Houston, but that's neither here nor there. What you do end up with is all of the roads that nobody ever bothered to double check. Concan, Texas is where we stayed last year. And I have to say that was something special. We didn't have as much access to the McDonald's-ization of the world, but we did have everything we needed. Two wonderful restaurants. One is Gypsy Sally's. The other one is Leaky Drug. So Leaky Drug is a really nice sit-down candlelight kind of thing, but it's an old drugstore turned restaurant. Gypsy Sally's, I remember, is just a lot more just downright chill. It feels like you're on the farm in a well-established brick and mortar, Tasty Eats kind of deal. And I highly recommend that. But the writing in Concan, it gets you into some of the, wait, where am I writing? Nobody goes there for that. Keep it to yourself. We don't talk about it. But if you want to try something new, if you want to get away from it all, Concan, Texas. Nice. Last bit on this segment. I got to tell you, weekends are bad. Monday through Wednesdays are good. Do not get stuck behind the caravan of representation on cruisers riding in Texas on the weekend.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Any questions you have, Ryan? I do not have any questions. I've never been there. So maybe I need to get down there sometime. Sometime. Maybe we'll talk about that. Yeah, it's kind of an area a lot of people don't think of. Like, oh, this is going to be great. And the Hill Country people have heard of it, but they've heard of like two roads.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 2: But there's a lot more to it. Like the roads that get famous. You don't want to go there.

Speaker 1: But you do. They're great. They are fantastic. On a Monday.

Speaker 2: Just go like on Tuesday. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Tuesday, Wednesday. You put me on, let's call them the assisted twisters, a Monday through Wednesday. And I know that I've got it to myself. There's nobody. Nobody has any reason to be out there because good Americans are supposed to be working right about now. That takes us to segment two. We're bringing something back, people. This month in motorcycle history. Let's bring it on. This round is going to have a ton of Steve McQueen in it, but we're not talking about Steve McQueen. We're not even talking about that. This is the month in December that Warner Brothers released the movie Bullet with Steve McQueen in it in Sweden about two months after its debut in U.S. theaters. But this history moment is looking back at Bud Eakins, who I'm assuming, Brian, you'll probably be able to tell me a lot more about Bud than I could ever know. Here's what I know. He developed his motorcycling skills in the hills above his Hollywood home, which led to off-road racing in 1949. His achievements in the mid-1950s, he was the top motocross and desert racer in Southern California. He won the AMA District 37 Championship seven times. Then in 1952, the European Motocross Championship, he competed against the world's best motocross racers, finishing the season and ranking 15th in the world. That's a small margin of whoop-ass, given the numbers that are out there.

Speaker 2: This is back before California was paved, right? Right. I think they finished paving it recently. Hills, guns, and there's gold.

Speaker 1: Just prospectors. Most noteworthy victory, 1959 Big Bear Heron Hound desert race, overcoming a flat tire and a broken wheel to win the race 30 minutes ahead of the next best guy. At some point, he became kind of an influence in Hollywood. So he owned a Triumph motorcycle dealership in Sherman Oaks, California, and he taught off-road racing to actors like Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood. In his international racing success, particularly at the International Six Days Trial, he won gold in 1962 and was part of the 1964 U.S. ISDT team. What does ISDT stand for?

Speaker 2: International Six Days Trial. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's all right there. ISDT. These guys are no joke. It's six days of the gnarliest things that they can come up with in Europe.

Speaker 1: I assume they don't have to haul their shit. They've got a chase car or some noise.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not like you're remote and everything, but it's six days of the most technical off-road. It's a little bit like trials riding, where if you put a foot down, I believe you get penalized. Wow. There's all kinds of obstacles and you can't get off course. It's absolutely insane, and some of the stuff they were doing in the 50s and 60s, the tires and the equipment they had back then is pretty amazing. If anybody even makes an ISDT team, they are no joke.

Speaker 1: He was a bit of a pioneer in the sport of desert racing, setting the Tijuana to La Paz, Mexico record in 1962, and his participation in the early off-road racing events like the Mint 400 and the Stardust 711, of which I know nothing about. See, that just sounds... Somebody should email us all about the Mint 400 and the Stardust.

Speaker 2: The Mint 400 is famous because it was featured in Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That's the race? Yeah, that's the race that he was initially sent there to cover, but then it all, things transpired, and then they switched over to kind of invading the DA conference at a different hotel. The book makes no sense, but anyway... It does.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I love it. It's one of my favorites.

Speaker 2: But yeah, the Mint 400 is the race that they were supposedly sent there to cover. They rented a car and roamed around. You know, they couldn't see anything. They gave up. It's too dusty.

Speaker 1: After that, his work with fellow Off-Road Hall of Fame inductee Vic Hickey in building the Baja Boot Racer and his racing alongside Steve McQueen in the inaugural Baja 500 in 1969. He then went on to work with fellow Off-Road Hall of Fame inductee Vic Hickey in building the Baja Boot Racer and his racing alongside Steve McQueen in the inaugural Baja 500 in 1969. There's an interview on YouTube if you want to check it out.

Speaker 2: Go to YouTube and put in Bud Eakins. You can find quite a bit of material on him. One thing I don't remember is whether he... I think he might have somehow showed up on any Sunday.

Speaker 1: Did he?

Speaker 2: I'm not sure. He had to be an influence. You talking about Vic Hickey or Bud Eakins? Probably both. Steve McQueen was in there briefly. Have you seen on any Sunday, by the way? Several times. It's all about the motorcycle and a lot of the desert racing culture in Southern California. Malcolm Smith was featured pretty heavily in it. Young guy just kind of floating along, passing absolutely everybody on Catalina Island. A lot of the people who were around Hollywood in the 60s and so forth popped up on any Sunday. I don't know if Bud was in there or not, to be honest.

Speaker 1: Oh, they worked together on it, apparently. Bud Eakins is in there. Okay, cool. As for Vic Hickey...

Speaker 2: Steve McQueen helped fund On Any Sunday and he was in it all over the place there. Yeah. There's an article out there about how he couldn't say no. I would just tell people go Google Bud Eakins, Steve McQueen's involvement. On Any Sunday, it looks a little quaint, but it still really holds up. It's still really fun to watch.

Speaker 1: It's 70s, so the music is very 70s. There's a lot of...

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1: Brady Bunch ask, but I'll tell you what. You can watch the entire thing on YouTube. So the entire movie is available on YouTube to watch start to finish. Real quick here, let's take this random opportunity. Kelly Howard wrote a really nice piece on the Suzuki SV650. Talks a little about its history, its overall development, where it's at today. It's a nice piece. It's got a lot of good attention on Reddit, that's for sure. with 15,000 plus views and a 90% overall upvote rating. Visit tro.bike to give it a look. But in the meantime, Travis Burleson had a few thoughts on the matter. So we're going to hand the mic over to Travis for a little bit and talk about the SV650 and why it really is such a universal machine.

Speaker 3: For the writing session, this is Travis Burleson with another edition of Travis's titular 10 minute talks. Today, we're going to talk about the venerable Suzuki SV650. Quick overview. The SV first came out in 1999, and they've been four generations since then. The very first generation was 99 to 2002, carbureted model, and then 2003 to 2008, which is the most common iteration you'll see. The third generation from 2009 to 2013, the much maligned Gladius SFV650, which I think it's a bad rap. I think the styling is commensurate with other bikes at the time, and people just didn't like the update. But I think it is fitting of the time period if you look at bikes like the Kawasaki ER6N from that era, looks very similarly styled. So I see what they were going for. And you can always just put a new can and a new headlight on it. And then the current generation that came out in 2017 after a little production break, which continued the trellis frame from the Gladius, but brought back the simpler styling rod headlight. And it begs the question, what made this bike so popular? And I think it was just that nobody else was doing it. When this came out in the late 90s and the early 2000s, there wasn't much out there for a middleweight naked bike, a lightweight, fun, basic motorcycle. A bike that wasn't trying to be retro, wasn't trying to be a sport bike, was just a motorcycle. And that's what makes the SV such a versatile machine, how it can wear so many hats if you really try. On top of that, a race class was basically born out of this in the Super Twins. That was an affordable, high number production motorcycle that could be made to handle well on a racetrack, but didn't have the fire breathing nature of a 600cc inline four supersport, and also was a little more forgiving for the amateur or club racer, where you didn't have to keep it on the boil the whole time to get the power out. There was a comment regarding one of our articles recently that the SV couldn't be a touring bike, that a naked bike can't be a touring bike. And those long-time listeners of TRO will know that a person such as myself and the venerable Tim Clark have proven that wrong time and time again. Any bike's a touring bike if you take it on a tour, just as any bike's an adventure bike if you take it on an adventure, then the SV is no different. My current bike, the CB650R, though a little more refined and certainly more powerful with its inline four cylinder than the SV650, tours just fine. And what I did was just put a rear rack on it from eBay, and then got a big watertight duffel bag strapped it down to the pillion seat in the rear rack, threw everything in there, hit the road. Got my rain gear in case it rains. And that's all you need to do. If anything, it's simpler and less expensive and more versatile to take a bike like the SV650 and convert it into whatever you need at the time. So I can throw my duffel bag on the back and it's a touring bike. But since I only go on one, maybe two tours a year, I don't need to have full luggage on my bike all the time. And I don't need to have empty looking racks on the side of the bike when I'm not touring. And what I'm left with is a nice looking naked bike to commute and run around town and do day rides on the back roads with. If you wanted something a little more refined than that, there are plenty of aftermarket luggage options from the likes of Jeevy and Shad, et cetera, for bikes like the SV650, where you can put hard bags on that more or less look like factory luggage. You can throw a windscreen and hand guards and kit it out like a touring bike, if that's the style you're looking for. And with the large racing scene that this bike spawned, there's a ton of aftermarket availability to put a Gixxer front end on it, put a performance shock on it, put a tune on it, and make it a really high performance bike for a fraction of the cost of an off-the-shelf performance bike. Or find one that's been retired from racing that already has all that kit on it. Suzuki even did a pseudo-scrambler version from the factory. The Suzuki SV650X that had more of a cafe racer sort of look on it. Some of them I've been seeing with knobby tires. Again, since it is a middle-sized bike and has Suzuki parts on it, you can swap out V-Strom parts or put some knobby-ish tires on it, like you see people do with bikes like the Kawasaki Versys, and make it a cafe scrambler bike. Put a bikini fairing and clip-ons on it and make it a cafe racer. The key thing to the SV650's success is just that simple versatility. Again, it is an motorcycle without reaching back to the 70s and 60s when all motorcycles were just an motorcycle. It is the modern version of the do-it-all basic bike, and as such, can easily be modified to be what you want. And it comes with probably the most enduring part of the bike, the 650cc 90-degree V-twin motor. Now obviously, Ducati did that first, but Suzuki did it in an affordable and reliable package. And Ducati has since gone away from the trellis frame, and Suzuki has come back into the trellis frame, which I think is a key part of that bike's design as it sits now, that the trellis frame is an iconic look. The motor makes a good amount of power without being overpowered, which is part of its charm, making about 75 horsepower at peak and 47 pound-feet of torque. And that is really the sweet spot for street riding or light track day use. You can use all of that motor on an open road. If you start creeping up to the 100 horsepower mark, you have to be a little more judicious with your throttle application out on public roads or even on the racetrack if you're not on a straight. And if you aren't, that can get you in the trouble. And part of that is what makes this bike so fun is you can really use all of it. And its V-twin nature gives you low down grunt. So if you miss a shift or forget to shift or end up braking harder than expected into a corner and forget to downshift, you can still power out and continue to have fun and not feel like you're bogging the bike down. The motor, in true Suzuki fashion, is the heart of the bike. They tend to make a great motor and then use it forever. If you look at something like the 1000cc K motor from the Gixxer series, that is beloved and currently in use in the poorly named GSX-S 1000 GT+. But that motor just was a fantastic design when it was made decades ago, much like the SV650 motor. And the motor also found in the V-Strom, which is also a celebrated and long-lived model. And even though the new Pisterham Parallel Twin 800 has come out, I don't think we'll see the 650 V-twin motor go away anytime soon. And that's my 10-minute take on the much beloved SV650. One of the best basic motorcycles to be around in the last almost three decades. It has just enough power, it's lightweight, it's fun to ride, it doesn't matter which generation you're on, you get on it and you have a good time. And due to its basic nature, it's not only affordable and easy to work on, it's malleable. Make it a touring bike, make it a scrambler, make it a cafe racer, make it a track day bike. It can really do it all with some basic tools and some know-how, and that's why everyone loves it. For The Ride Obsession, this has been Travis Burleson.

Speaker 1: Thank you, Travis.

Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about random bike of the minute. If you're gonna pay money to ride somebody's bike, you might as well pick out something that you're not likely to have been on before. And one of the things that really caught my eye was a 2014 Moto Guzzi Grisso. I don't know if I'm even pronouncing the Italian correctly.

Speaker 1: Grisso, and what does the eight V and the S E mean?

Speaker 2: Well, you gotta wave your hands, it's Italian. Eight V is eight vowels, it's four vowels per cylinder. And an S E, I don't know. I'm already confused. So what you have here is a standard style bike with a V twin with the jugs poking out left and right. A transverse V twin. So imagine your BMW, Robin, and then you take your giant monster hands and then you bend the cylinders up by 45 degrees. And that's what it looks like. And they're shaft drive. And one of the hallmarks of Moto Guzzis is, and they've always done this, they've really paid a lot of attention to suspension and handling. It's a big bike, it's kind of heavy, and it's a big torquey V twin engine, but these things handle unbelievably well. They always have. And the Grisso is no exception. It's got nice upside down fork, radial Brembo brakes, looks like an absolute ball. I agree. It's weird, it's wonderful. I think it'd be just a hoot. It's almost a no brainer to fly into Austin, rent this bike and go right around the hill country. What was the place to go get ice cream? I don't know.

Speaker 1: Really, you want to get pie, you want to go to Blue Bonnet Cafe.

Speaker 2: Pie, that's right.

Speaker 1: Yeah, go get pie and barbecue, yeah. Absolutely. I got questions though. This bike, it looks like a muscle bike of sorts, and it's got a standard posture setup. It looks like it handles beautifully. Tons of lean angle clearance. It's a shafty, it's a right side shafty. And when you compare it visually against like the BMW, that transverse V motor, this is like the only thing they do. They do that. Cylinders poking out the top, that just fits the contours really nicely. I don't know that I've ever seen them do anything but that. Like this is our motor profile. These are the displacements we're releasing this year. And other than, oh, we heard about this injection thing, let's do injection. For the most part, nothing has changed about the forward motion of the company's decision-making process on what motor goes to what bike. My question for you goes into the tech specs about having four valves per side. I don't understand the need. Let me phrase this question because these are the kinds of questions I think are extremely fascinating to some, not all, but some. If you've got one intake and you've got one exhaust valve, why two? Help me out. What's going on there?

Speaker 2: Like anything in engineering, there are multiple reasons for doing things and not doing things and trade-offs. The big reason for moving the four valves per cylinder, and Yamaha even used five for a while, is velocity. You can keep the air moving in the cylinder. Velocity of the air, so it's a smaller opening, so the intake charge is moving faster. And that has benefits for power and has benefits for emissions as well. And the second thing is you can rev higher. So the early Moto Guzis, you know, in the 50s, 60s, 70s, had two valve heads. And a heavy valve, there's only so fast you can move that valve back and forth. So you have kind of a rev limit based on that, like when you're gonna get into valve float. If you move to four valves, each valve is smaller and they can move back and forth and they don't have to move as far. And so you can increase the RPM. Those two reasons are kind of the main reasons for moving to a four valve head. Obviously it's more expensive because you have more parts, but you're buying weird Italian bikes, you may not be that worried by that. So performance, a little bit of emissions, and being able to rev higher are the whole reason for moving to a four valve head.

Speaker 1: Yeah, you spoke volumes with a valve float thing, because that's something I've never thought about or would have even considered is the idea that once you hit red line, that's when the valves are like able to be doing too much of what they're not supposed to be while they're doing the thing they are.

Speaker 2: Yeah, the spring can't close the valve fast enough. I can't follow the cam lobe. I really wasn't joking too much about it being close to like it's got these big, mostly air cooled cylinder heads. I think the grease, it's got a cooler on the side. I think that's an oil cooler. I don't think it's water cooled. Can't tell for sure.

Speaker 1: Well, there's no hosing going into it that I can see. So I mean, it's just direct line to the oil. That makes sense. And it's got like a giant air intake on every side of it. Just like cool me down, put me back, repeat.

Speaker 2: One of the things I love about it is like, let's say you sign up for this Griso, or Griso, or I don't know how you say it. I'm not Italian. Griso. Yeah, Griso, we'll call it Griso.

Speaker 1: Well, we are American and it's available here. And we're grateful to them for doing this. So we'll just say it the way we say it, because we technically assume that they appreciate us appreciating them. So it's the 2014 Moto Guzzi Griso 8V-SE.

Speaker 2: So if you want to do a little research before you fly to Austin. Manor, Texas, technically. The website for these is called grisoghetto.com. That was just hilarious. I'm going there now. Brimbo brakes, big naked bike. I mean, this looks like a ton of fun. Beautiful. I don't know how many horsepower I have to look it up.

Speaker 1: Well, it is 1,064 CCs with a 32 inch seat height. If you're looking for this experience, you want to go to twisted.tro.bike and then look up a 2014 Moto Guzzi Griso 8V-SE in Manor, Texas, M-A-N-O-R. They're asking 80 bucks a day plus fees, of course.

Speaker 2: Bargain. You're going to want to bring some soft bags to throw over and or a backpack, but worth it. And also this one's got a, this one looks like it's got a can on it. So you'll be able to hear it sing. That's nice.

Speaker 1: Make a noise. Fuel system has got injection, multi-point sequential electronic injection, Magneti Marelli I8W5A phased alpha N system, two by 0.50 millimeter throttle bodies with Weber IWP 189 injectors, lambda probe. Those are just the things I already knew about.

Speaker 4: I know some of those words.

Speaker 1: I was just rattling those off real quick. Shaft drive, carton, final drive.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: It's a 489 pound bike. That's not too heavy. That's not by my standards heavy. 489 pounds is nothing.

Speaker 2: I like it. If you want to go do something you've never done before and just have an experience that will hurt, but you'll remember. Do you want to hear about that? You're about to do the Eddie Van Halen? Yeah. So there's an absolute madman who's got a, it's a 2018 Triumph Bonneville, and he's turned it into a hardtail bobber. Yes. With an Eddie Van Halen eruption era guitar tank. That might be actual electrical tape. You never know. Yeah. It's a tiny tank. I think, I hope that the seat is spring loaded. It's a hardtail with white wall tires. So if you're all about like, yeah, I want people to look. I want to have an experience. I want to remember this. I want to hobble back onto the plane after a couple of days. Yeah. I got to respect the audacity here a lot. It's a modern Triumph. It's 2018 Triumph. So it's going to be reliable. It's going to be fine.

Speaker 1: I do in fact, see a suspension under the seat. I see dog bones. I see a suspension.

Speaker 2: Yeah. There's like a little spring under this. I think there's a spring on the seat. Does it actually have? It's a monoshock. You think the rear tire has suspension?

Speaker 1: Well, I don't think British electrics can handle it if it didn't.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It might have a swing arm that's kind of hidden there. I don't know. Oh, it's got little tiny. I didn't even see that. It's got tiny little leather bags hanging on the rear swing arm. Oh, I just noticed that. Yeah. So yeah, this would be different and it's a bargain. It's a pretty cheap rental. So maybe worth looking at. Check it out. That's if you want to get into your wild side or whatever you call it. I don't know. I don't know if it'd be the hill country, but you got an urban bike.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Butte, Texas is a beautiful part of town too. That's north of Austin. Flying to Austin, look this bike up, take it for a spin. You might have a good day, but I wouldn't call it a curve carver per se. And with that, we'll call it good.

Speaker 2: Let's get out of here.