Robin: Joe Godin tried to tell me that this is a regular thing, that this is a known phrase among the truck drivers.

Brian: What is it?

Robin: In the middle of nowhere, Illinois, every Christmas when Maggie and I would travel to her parents down in Mount Vernon, I had a CB in my car and about two hours into the trip, you'd hear all the typical trucker banter, but then off in the distance, there was a scratchy signal of, it would disappear and it would come back every 10 or 15 minutes. So about four hours into the trip, it starts to get clearer, but it's still muddy. It's a, I got my hat on, I got my little red panties on and I'm ready for bed. It just gets clearer and clearer and clearer. And then the truckers are responding to this. You hear the oncoming truckers and the same destination. You would just hear the random, what the hell? Or well, good for you. Now, if you could just turn your radio off, that kind of thing, until you get to the locals who are like, no, he's had that thing on every year for the past 20 years at the holiday season. I got my hat on, I got my little red panties on and I'm ready for bed. I posed this to Joe Godin because I thought that's a great punchline. He was like, yeah, that's a, that's not uncommon to hear that exact phrase in the middle of nowhere. What kind of cult do these people belong to?

Brian: How are you, Brian? I'm excellent. You know, considering the temperature and the conditions outside, you know, I'm, I'm holding up. What's he looking at now? I think it's right about 30 degrees right now. Not raining at the moment. It rained some yesterday, I think. I got so hard up for something to do that I actually changed the rear tire on my KLR last night. 30 degrees out, so it's like 32 in my garage. I kept the new tire in the house, but what I should have done is take the wheel off, bring the whole thing in the day before, and then go out in the garage and change the tire because it was all, it was all just an epic struggle. Cold rubber? Cold rubber and a very aggressive knobby tire with an enormously strong chassis.

Robin: I'm not even going to pretend like I'm not impressed. That's got to be rough. I mean, I imagine the Ravaconda would do it. It just wasn't that laborious on a cool day. At 30 degrees? I do not know.

Brian: Yeah. And plus, so I use heavy-duty tubes on my KLR, so there's that factor. So you got to make sure you don't pinch the tube or anything like that. Yeah. And just the factor, the new tire I put on has got just a really heavy, heavy sidewall compared to the old one. I saw it last episode. Looked vicious. Yeah. Very meaty. So I did the rear tire last night and took some ibuprofen, went to bed. I'll do the, I'll do the front some other, you know, no rush, obviously. I kind of really have to save and pass and ration out my projects over the winter. You know, none of the bikes need anything. So I have to really ration them out when I'm really going nuts and they need something motorcycly to do, then I'll do that.

Robin: We have an article on TRO.Bike about that. Go find yourself a junk moped. It's like a scale model of a motorcycle, a junk moped and just pull it apart. Don't even worry about whether or not you're going to get it back together, but at least pull it apart and see if you can learn a thing or two about a motor. It's a good tinker toys, man.

Brian: Yeah. Of course, everybody wants, you know, $3,000 for their beat the hell Zongshan 49 CC, you know, need a boozer scooter.

Robin: This Zuma has white walls on it. It's worth five grand.

Brian: Oh yeah. Hell, if you've got, yeah, if you've got a Yamaha or a Honda scooter, you've got a gold mine on your hands is what you got right there.

Robin: I think what I saw was a ruckus. I've always wanted a ruckus and I saw one with white wall tires and it was all discoed out. It had a 171 CC engine on it. You know what that means? It means they bored it out. Somebody was fooling around, but they were asking like four or five grand for it. I'm like, that is no low ballers. I know what I got last week was a pleasure with Jordan and I believe he's going to make another appearance. Only we're going to get right into the details of incredibly rare and bizarre and interesting vintage motorcycles and whether or not they could even be tourable since we're a sport touring podcast of sorts. Absolutely. Looking forward to that. He's going to have a new mic, better audio. It's going to be a lot of fun. We are approaching him about possibly taking over for our today in motorcycle history segment, which will add to the culture and understanding of this podcast as a whole. We'll see. We'll see if we can convince him real quick, opening banter, corrections, website updates, nothing really in the website updates thing. Cause honestly I'm working my rear R soft, not my front arse, but my rear arse off on motorcycle training.us. This website, all it says right now is coming soon because I'm logged in and I can see everything and nobody else can, but motorcycle training.us. Now some of you may have listened to many of these episodes or this is your first who knows, but you might want to know that I am currently badged as an MSF instructor, which all that means is I'm plausibly good enough for rock and roll, seemingly able to pose as an adult supervisor of some kind on a motorcycle range. But the website I'm building isn't going to be specific to the MSF. It's going to be open to all motorcycle training. So hopefully the MSF total control lock and lean pro rider, California super bike, Yamaha champions, all of these outlets that will allow people to learn the basics and become better. Hopefully the point where they're willing to spread the knowledge that they've learned over the course of becoming instructors. That's coming soon or by soon, I mean, as soon as I can make it work. Nice. I do want to congratulate, big shout out to tenured Radio TRO podcast host, Tim Clark, whose photos just got featured in the most recent AMA magazine for his coverage of the Bucky. He took some beautiful pictures of the Wisconsin Bucky. I think it's the 15th. It says the Bucky 15 on the article, but whatever. The Bucky is a really difficult, challenging, lots of single track dual sport rally event. Oh, okay. Okay. And you get people that are going to try it out for the first time who are then run over by people who are like, get out of my way. Kind of vibe. It's, it's intense, man. Lots of intense stuff going on there. Tim covered it and has covered it before. He's the guy that knows it well enough that he could not ride everybody. So you can get to get a picture of him and did, and it got featured in the recent American Motorcycle Association magazine. Congratulations, Tim. Nice work. You earned it. Keep on doing what you're doing. Look forward, not back. I got a tire question for you, Brian. Well, two, actually. First one is when you're putting on a new tire and I know that I do this. So when you're putting on a new tire and every now and then you hear, you're the bead tear a little bit.

Brian: Do you do what I do and not give a shit? Sometimes you hear a little sound as the rubber moves around and that's not tearing a bead. I've never torn a bead. I've seen torn beads. I've seen it happen. You need like to sprout four hands to keep everything where it's supposed to be. Unless you have a rabiconda, not sponsored. I've seen people bend the beads like it's a wire inside and if you really just haul it all wrong, you can kink the wires inside the rubber there. I would have never imagined.

Robin: It looks like there's a sorbethane lip. That's something that I do know for a fact that I have stretched and malformed once or thrice by five.

Brian: You can damage or tear the rubber, but inside the rubber is like a ring of several steel wires that form the bead. I've seen people damage those and kink those and then you could still get the tire on sort of, but you're never going to get the bead seated on a tubeless. If it's a dual sport tire, with tubes or whatever, they'll just run it anyway. Who cares? But yeah, on a tubeless tire, if you damage the bead, you're never going to get it to seal. Very good. So don't do that, please. Little noises really aren't a big concern. They do mean you should probably step back and rethink. Yes. Sometimes you'll hear a little creak or something, but I don't think it's a big deal. It's never, never been a thing. Interesting question.

Robin: I've done it before, so I figured why not just bounce that off of the Zoom screen here and see what you had to say on the matter. Here's another one for you. I've heard this rumor before, but no matter what bike you get new, whatever tires are on that bike, even if they're Michelin R6s or Dunlop RoadSmart 3s or Pirelli Angel GTs, they're not necessarily the actual tire representing that model. Is the stock tire that's on the bike actually that make and model of tire or is it a lesser got the branding on it, but it's a showroom pile of nonsense that doesn't actually last as long as what is typical to that brand and model?

Brian: It's really murky and it varies, but it is pretty clear in a lot of cases that the tire you get on a brand new bike does seem to be a lot, somewhat worse in some way. Like it, like it might stick really well, but it's not going to last very long, that kind of thing. Or it may just be something that's really super cheap. It is also common, like for example, the BMW GS is, you know, the big dual sport-ish office building size bikes. Those and some other bikes actually come with a special edition tire, like a G version or something like that. That's made with some extra belts. It's a little heavier duty. In some cases, like I think with the Yamaha Super Tenera, a 1200cc mega dual sport, very big, very heavy, very powerful. Yamaha shipped them with a special version of the Bridgestone tires that came with, and you could actually buy that special version if you were like, this bike is the best ever and I'm, you know, it's never going to get any better. So BMW, Yamaha and Suzuki, a few others have done that with, in different models, whether there's something different about it, but it's also not secret and it's not that they're just cheaping out and yeah, but yeah, once in a while, absolutely it is a thing. Sometimes it's a different model number on the tire. Sometimes it's the same, but it is true that people have found a visibly inferior tire on their bike or it's gone in a couple thousand miles. Crated showroom shoes. Yeah. And then they replace them and the next ones last twice as long, even though you're riding the bike even harder, you know, it's, it's, that has happened. I don't know how common it is nowadays. This coming year is just going to be really action-packed and I'm just looking forward to it all. I cannot wait to get started. Me too. Going to end the year, like just extremely poor piles of dead tires everywhere, six digits on the odometer.

Robin: Yeah. It's going to take a deep breath to start next year because this year has been a big one. It's a huge decrescendo into 25, sit, zen out and start thinking about anything but the throttle long enough to remember that it's a damn fine time throwing a leg over the bike. We have two listener questions. Let's see if we can limit this to five minutes. Bang them out. Cause they're easy ones. Yeah. Easy. Eduardo asks for my older bike at 99. Are there any websites or motorcycle salvage places you recommend for finding parts? If I need them in the future, it doesn't matter what bike he has. The answer is always going to be the same. I probably said this before. There is a forum for not just every bike's year and make, there is a bike forum for every bike's year, make, and model. So the 1982 Yamaha Seica 400, there is a forum dedicated to that bike alone. Whatever the bike is that we're talking about, it doesn't matter. Get the exact year, make, and model. There's a forum that is made for it. And there are tons of people contributing to that forum.

Brian: Yep. It's a great place to start. I have a degree of old man sadness that a 99 is now a vintage bike. 30 years is the mark. 25 usually. But I disagree depending on your state or your Vinmoto status, you can get a vintage plate in Indiana at 25 years. I believe. Oh, wow. All that aside, another thing I will mention is to, uh, eBay is still out there, believe it or not, and, uh, pay attention to which sellers on eBay tend to have stuff for your bike. You'll find that you keep going back to them. There are a lot of people out there in the world who have gone around and bought out inventory from, from dealerships that don't want it anymore. New old stock. Yeah. New old stock stuff. I've bought a lot of stuff from a couple of specific places for my vintage Suzuki.

Robin: Another good one is to, uh, basically mark part numbers in your searches. So you can do saved searches that will notify you put in exact part numbers, because some people will use the part number in the title or in the settings of it, and you'll receive notification when bang zoom the passenger seat for our 1200 RS 200 bucks, because the person doesn't know what to do with it. And it's not for any of their bikes. So boom, buy it up. You know, that's a good thing to do. So you enter the part number that you need. You click save and be notified. You're all set.

Brian: Yeah. We're very specialized items like vintage motorcycle parts. eBay has worked out well, very small audience and a very, very specific thing. It's still working great. I use it all the time.

Robin: Well, for this next one, John asks at six, one and 280 pounds, what size bike should I look at? Lots of bikes. You go to a dealership, sit on a ton of bikes. I've said it before. I'll say it again, go get on a lot of bikes and enjoy understanding the ergos decipher what it is you like. We prefer the idea of getting something that is vaguely within the standard posture profile and just see what works for you.

Brian: I would make a couple of specific recommendations. Look at like a Vstrom 650, basically the tall rounders. This is what Robin came. I don't know where he got that name, but tall rounders, we'll fight about that if you want to fight, no, a Vstrom 650 would be perfect or Vstrom 1000 or the new 1050, you know, whatever you can afford, there's millions of them out there, they're accessorized to the hilt. If you buy a used one, uh, they're cheap and they're, they have, they're very comfortable and they're, they're actually very good bike for larger rider. Such as myself.

Robin: You can get weird with it too. I mean, I know in the past, Brian has mentioned that it's better to get a starter bike that does not have forward controls, but one of our equal riders and another tenured podcast host, Travitron, Travis Burleson, his first bike, he's 6'1", 6'2", but his first bike was a Rebel 250, forward controls, little itty bitty thing. He rode it all the way up to the UP.

Brian: Travis is also skinny and younger than us. Truth. He's not 280 pounds. That's for sure. He's flexible. He's a sprite. Yeah, he's not this guy. The other one I have, and the ergonomics are amazing is the, uh, tracer. Again, it's another one of those tall rounder type bikes. Those tend to have a fairly relaxed riding position and they have a lot of room. So somewhere in that universe would be great. Yamaha Super Tenera, KLR 650s, a very roomy bike. Yeah. Look in my garage.

Robin: Yeah. You're just, you're going to have the laundry list of your personal flock.

Brian: Yeah. Here's my crap. You know, that's what's what worked for me. Good advice. So we'll call this Sponsor Love, the Twisted Road destination station. Visit, uh, sponsor twisted.tro.bike, uh, to get hooked up with a discount on your first ride from Twisted Road. And today, uh, we just picked out of the hat, uh, Yeehaw Central, Nashville, Tennessee. Yeehaw. So Nashville's, it kind of sits in a bowl in an area with a lot of hills and it's a really pretty area. And it's kind of out on the edge of the Appalachians. You're about three hours from Townsend, which is right on the border of the Smoky Mountains National Park, surrounded by a lot of really cool little roads. It's in striking distance of a lot of great rides, a lot of great scenery. And it's also really easy to get to Nashville. There's a lot of direct flights that pop into the airport there. There's all that downtown Yeehaw country music, bar crawling, crapola, whatever. If that's your thing, go do it. That's fine. If you want to cruise up and down the bar strip, uh, that's, that's a different kind of thrill. Different animal, different hang. No shade, maybe a little shade.

Robin: That's the kind of city where once you get into the riding, you can take the known rides and have a great time. And you could also find out about the unknown rides that ride underneath the known rides and have an absolutely unknown good time. Wow. I got to follow some people on the incredible unknown underneath the known rides. And damn, the Townsend, that whole anything in Tennessee, there's a lot going on there.

Brian: So right now we found that there's 24 bikes on offer and on twisted.tiro.bike. How many 24 we picked out three that seem pretty interesting just to talk about here. Sport touring on a budget. We're all about sport touring. We're all about budget. We're poor as hell. There's an absolute madman renting out a 1996 BMW R 1100 RT. Ooh, you got your hard bags. You got your top case. Base price is only 68 bucks a day. It looks better than it sounds. Comfy, capacious, plenty of character and just enough tech. This has got lots of space for you and your stuff. It still has ABS. It's a BMW. It was kind of a pioneer of that. And it's got the tele lever front end, which is a, I hear handles pretty well.

Robin: So it does feel planted. I've ridden this year make model and it is the kind of bike where when you throw a leg over, it feels like you're getting into a bike versus onto a bike.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: However, compared to the modern RT, this has surprisingly less bulk upfront.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: You still got a lot of windscreen. You got a lot of dash and a lot of Tupperware, but it's a handler and it feels a little bit more sleek than what they've done with it since. It's a good bike and simple is better.

Brian: It's a grunter. It's not a, not a screamer. Air cooled. It's a good choice and plenty of room for passenger too. So if you, you know, someone with you that you like. So the next one, we're going to call this the top shelf. Okay. 1600. Yeah. If you really want to go posh, you really want to luxury it a little bit. Uh, there's a, a, uh, 2013 BMW K 1600. It's got all the bells, all the whistles. It's got missiles. It's got heated everything. It'll snuggle your buns in your passenger and it'll take in all your stuff. It's got that 160 horsepower, uh, in line six. So you should get where you're going. A hundred bucks a day. Base cost is a pretty reasonable.

Robin: So you can spend more on high-end hotels, which you have to, because it's a BMW K 16.

Brian: Yeah. You can't roll up a motel six on a K 16.

Robin: Come on, it won't, it won't enter the lot. It'll stop. It's been programmed to not do that.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: But the next one, it's got my name written all over it.

Brian: Yeah. Are you fuzzy enough to get under this? We're calling this hairy and scary. This is a 2019 Ducati Panigale V4. First off, who's got the guts to put that up for rental? This guy, that's who I want to meet this guy. Yeah. What I had here is if you want to get your heart rate up and blow out the old adrenal glands, this is a 2019 Ducati Panigale. The base cost is, is only 320 bucks a day. So, uh, not bad. And yes, sign me up, sign me up.

Robin: I look at a bike like this and it's for me, I look at this bike and it's about getting on the machine and being like calm right from the start. Zen.

Brian: I am a mountain Lake. Yes. Yeah. Crazy. And, and the question I had was, you know, there's no luggage space whatsoever. You know, like if you have a hanky yet to put it in your pocket, I'm wondering if they'll let you on an airplane in, in leathers, carry on your helmet, put your gloves in the helmet and bring a credit card and just go get sweaty on this thing.

Robin: That's our destination station, Nashville, Tennessee, twisted.tro.bike. Sign up for Twisted Road, get yourself a discount. Take this thing out for a spin. That's the idea.

Brian: Two wheeled pilot, Brian, let me explain. So I'm not a pilot. Make sure you know that I am not a pilot. I can't take you for an airplane ride, but I am a big fan of aviation and, you know, it's kind of recreationally follow aviation in general and kind of like we saw in the, you know, documentaries, uh, Top Gun, amazing documentary. So factual, all completely realistic. There's a lot of overlap. A lot of people like both airplanes and motorcycles. So I've found a lot of things that flying and riding have in common. And I think there's a lot we can learn from the aviation safety concepts, things that people who fly airplanes need to do and need to, you know, that there's shortcuts to staying safe and keeping everyone safe. So what I came up with today is I'm going to talk about three mental errors that happen in aviation and how those relate to motorcycles and things we can think about to stay, to keep ourselves safer and have a better, have more fun. So in, when you're flying airplanes, there's a thing called flight into IMC. And what that means is you take off under VFR, visual flight rules, where you can see what you're doing, avoid other airplanes, steer the airplane, go where you want, do what you want.

Robin: Yeah. You're driving a winged car, do, do, do, do down the road you go.

Brian: And IMC means instrument meteorological conditions. So it means basically you're in a cloud or you're in some sort of fog or rain or whatever, where you can't see the ground or you can't even see outside. And so you have to depend on your instruments to stay, to keep your airplane level and get where you're going. Private pilots, you know, the people you see buzzing around in Cessnas are flying under VFR getting, uh, and, and being licensed for IMC for flight into these conditions requires instrument training and getting your instrument ratings is really, is, is one of the more difficult parts of a pilot's journey. So it's basically an extra set of skills that you have to have in order to safely fly into weather and, and legally you can't legally fly into weather if you're a VFR pilot. Wow. Okay. And unfortunately, very common cause of accidents is someone will take off VFR and they will accidentally get into, or deliberately, you know, they're just pushing things, they'll get into IMC, they'll get into instrument conditions where they can't see out and then they get disoriented. Even if you're flying level, if you can't see out your body and your brain are going to try to convince you that all kinds of weird stuff is happening, it's a little bit like getting dizzy. You know, you're going to be disoriented. You're not going to know where you are. Where is up? Part of instrument training is learning to trust your instruments, ignoring your body's attack and staying straight and level, things like that. Obviously, you know, you don't have to have an instrument rating to ride a motorcycle into instrument conditions. Yeah, here we go. But the point is, here's the point, and I do have one. It basically means exceeding your skillset is something that can be avoided. Yes. For example, one thing I've seen personally is people who show up in North Carolina, Tennessee mountains, straight from Florida, they had no way to acquire the skills they don't know for mountain roads. Yeah. So it becomes experimentation. You can be a new writer coming from Florida and you can go to the tail of the dragon and you can ride it safely. It's just a road.

Robin: Absolutely.

Brian: It's understanding your limitations and knowing that those are not necessarily the limitations others have. You also see people show up on a dual sport ride on a dual sport bike, but without that very different skillset. And that may be a closer analog. It's not about being fast or whatever. It's, you know, there's, there's things you need to do on dirt to survive that are very different and very counterintuitive to a street rider. And, you know, and of course there's, there's literal flight and IMC. Like if you're going over the chair, Hall of Skyway, for example, you're, you're going to gain a lot of elevation. And if you're not familiar with mountains and mountain riding, you're going to end up in some pretty nasty weather sometimes. It happens. And what do you do about it?

Robin: Two terms to contend with. One is foresight. So a lot of riders that we are the most sarcastic and critical about are riders who have zero foresight. They arrive at a problem, a problem that they've made for themselves, and then they deal with it. And they do that on three Pete over and over and over. That's how they ride. I don't know how that happened is a big explanation for the need to buy a new bike after destroying that one, basically arriving at the conundrum, then calculating an ass hair of remaining cat's lives to get around that situation. This is a severe lack of foresight. Part of being in the present on a motorcycle requires that you have foresight and that you have experience. Let's just say that experience is what's behind you and foresight is the ability to process what's ahead of you so that you can remain in the moment that much more safely. The only thing you can do with that foresight is determine how am I going to deal with this? The more foresight you can put into play, the larger the cushion is for you to make your decision. We talked about, we only ride the road. We can see, we cut that out of the cake and determine how are we going to go about sticking a fork in it? There is the turn. How am I going to address this one? Okay. I got through that one, but that means I should have already processed the one after that. So you're always looking ahead and the experience that's behind you is what allows you to fuel your decision-making process, don't just get on and go and arrive in that cloud of quite frankly, stupidity, you need to bring something to that argument and find your way through it without having to sweat or be tense.

Brian: There's an aviation concept. That's pretty much exactly that. The term is staying ahead of their plane. Nice. Everybody starts out in a Cessna 172. And the biggest jump when you get into turboprops and jets is you have to understand how much further you have to plan and think ahead to stay ahead of the plane, if you're in a busy airspace, struggling to keep up with the instructions from the tower, with all the other traffic, nighttime, struggling to deal with all that, then you're going to arrive at the turn and end up blowing it and end up in the weeds.

Robin: Okay. I get the point. Look, Ben, I got somewhere to be now though. I get what you're trying to say. I understand what you're doing, but I'm getting tired of this company. I got someplace I gotta go. I gotta get, I gotta get someplace, man. So can we just wrap it up?

Brian: There's some place I gotta get.

Robin: Come on, let's go, let's go, let's go. We're going to get someplace.

Brian: So what Robin has is a dose of get there-itis. In the airplane world, this means basically taking off and doing dumb shit you shouldn't do because you got to get somewhere. I got a meeting. I got to get there. You know, my wife's waiting. My dog's hungry. I gotta, I gotta, gotta, gotta. That all too often has led people to take off in broken airplanes. Has led people to do dumb stuff in route. Do I need both wheels on my bike? I can probably unicycle this thing. It's led people to ignore problems that come up. In the motorcycle world, taking off with a broken motorcycle, I guess that happens too. I think most often the thing that gets ignored is the person, the endurance and the mental acuity. They're so focused on, I need to do this. I need to get here today. I'm going to lose my deposit, blah, blah, blah. They'll keep riding, even though they really need to stop and eat something, drink something non-alcoholic, drink some water. You need to stop and address this problem with your butt hurting. You need to deal with the distraction. You need to put on layers. You need to remove layers. If you need to do something in order to remain in control of the craft, you need to stop and do it. You need to stop dealing with, get their itis. There's dumb decisions people make just because of pressure. And so you have to separate that. What's something I can just put up with like, okay, I'm going to put up with a sore butt and I'm going to stay on it and I'm going to get there. And then there are times you're like, you know, I cannot continue. I got no sleep last night because Robin was yapping all night in the next room. Something like that. I was, yeah. That's something to be aware of. Get their itis. It affects pilots. It also affects motorcyclists.

Robin: I mean, you can sometimes tell if you know yourself as a rider, you can look at how many miles you have and understand how much time that's going to take you specifically, if it's just something outlandish, maybe you got to take a break someplace else or make the beeline direct route happen, whatever you got to do.

Brian: Even the last time we were together and rode somewhere, I basically shortcutted some of the route just because it was going to get dark sooner. Needed to get back. So it's easy. Last one, crew resource management, they call it our cockpit resource management, depending on how they do that. The idea here is you've got a captain, you've got a first officer. Captain is the boss. She or he is responsible for what happens. The first officer is a pilot is just as qualified as the captain. And so they need to also be responsible for managing the plane, managing the systems and so forth, what has led to a lot of horrific accidents is when the captain is making a mistake and the first officer is too afraid to speak up. So you have two things happening here. The captain is not using the resources he has in there with her. You've got a fully trained pilot sitting right next to you. Yep. Use that resource. And the second thing is the captain has created an environment or the first officer is afraid, or there's a cultural, whatever, or they don't like each other. They're not talking to each other. They're not using all the resources and mistakes happen. Things have happened. There's a whole process and a lot of training that professional pilots go through on CRM, crew resource management, and addressing those problems, what people need to say, orders to give phrases, to use things like that in the motorcycle world, you see this on group rides, people can really get deep into just some horrible group think you start hearing phrases like, Oh, I need to catch up, I can't keep up. Oh, I almost lost it on a corner back there. You see people getting angry. There's a lot of this. I covered in my article on tr dot bike, uh, it was called the 10 commands, the sport touring ride leader. You see a lot of things that come about because of group think. And I've seen groups of riders do incredibly stupid things just because they want to keep the group together and put on a nice neat parade downtown. I don't know why. Yeah, that's no fun. Who wants to do that?

Robin: I spoke up in a previous episode about how I've seen riders nod and smile with endearing eyes about this is a great philosophy that you've taken on for our safety, and then they've proceeded to launch their bike to the moon right behind me. I've started realizing that I have to let anybody know that if they don't actually lock onto that format, wow, they really, really suck. You have to plug into that and stick to it. It's you and your bike. And that's all that you should be focused on along with leaving enough space between you and anybody else around you. So the bikes don't touch.

Brian: Yeah. This responsibility mostly sits on the people following. I think you can set all the expectations you want as somebody leading a ride and you can kind of gently push people towards it, but yeah, a lot of it is building a culture.

Robin: Oh, it is. Can you get good enough that you could watch them and know when they're about to fail the prerequisites to that whole thing, when are they starting to be like, Oh, I could do it. When do you stop and be like, Hey, guess what? I can tell what's about to happen here. You suck. Stop. Stop doing that.

Brian: You're yeah. You need to calm down.

Robin: There's a lot of it. Show me that you're a badass slower than that. Yeah. I'm going to go my speed. That's not for anybody to judge, but for me to watch you at your speed and seeing the manic behavior that is for me to judge, yeah, the group thing can get really bad out of hand really quick.

Brian: And again, there's an article that covers all this on TRO.bike, 10 commandments, sport touring leader. Actually, there's 11. There's 11. That's right. The 11th. Spinal tab, baby. You get an 11th. What do we got next? Lugs lugging luggage. We've got bikes with hard bags on them and top case. That's all pretty standard. We'll skip that. To me, that's the best ever. Yeah. Hard bags, hard case secure stuff stays where it was put and so forth. Yep. What are some of the other aspects of luggage or pieces of luggage or even techniques that we might talk about? Some of those tips and tricks for carrying stuff.

Robin: Well, man, if I'm about to throw my leg over the bike, that's when you want to ask me this question, because from the time that I'm wearing, let's call them civilian clothes. So I'm sitting in front of my computer being Joe non-rider and then it's, Oh, I'm in the weather's good today. I'm going to go for a ride. That is the immediate point where I know I can be on that bike in about 10 minutes, which by a lot of people's standards is you're going to find that's pretty quick. 10 minutes. I am out of my regular clothes in my riding armor and am ready to swing a leg over. But it's those moments when you realize the process, throw on the armored pants, don't put on the jacket yet. Throw on the boots, get the pants around them, get the jacket on, grab the helmet. My gloves and my neckerchief are in the helmet. Make sure that I've got my comm plugged into it. I walk out to the bike, but then a lot of things start to happen where I'm placing cables into pockets and items that I use in specifically strategic locations. Then there's what gets packed on the bike. Well, I'm only taking this much stuff. So let's keep it in the top case. Or I'm taking the whole array. Do I balance things? Cause I do have a scale. There have been times when I will weigh my luggage to get it balanced.

Brian: I did it once and it didn't make a lot of difference. Yeah. I was like, okay, this is silly. Yeah. I do try to kind of, even at outside decide one thing I discovered in Arkansas that was a little odd to me was I have all the stuff that stays on the bike. 24, seven, three 65 is in the top case. Yep. Me too. It's not light. No. I have a lot of tools because the bike goes silent and everybody looks at me, you know, yeah, I keep it towards the front of the top case. So I tried putting that stuff in the tight and the side cases. And it was very weird. It changed the way the bike handled in a way I didn't like, because I think pressing down on the bike, but it, but centered is important. Yeah. And if you have that extra mass out there, when you're going side to side, it's a little different. So, you know, if I was going to give any general advice, I'd say just experiment with stuff and think about the torque it takes to roll the bike onto its side.

Robin: Look at tight rope rockers. They're up there with the bar. And if they have to adjust, that's a lot of ballast to change. So you want to keep everything forward and tight as close to the engine as possible in a manner of speaking.

Brian: Yeah. And centered as important too, I think. Yes. Yes. Centered can be real important. I don't like tank bags and I'm just a tank bags. No, I don't like, no. I don't know why they don't look cool. Bikes are supposed to look cool and they don't look cool with the locking ring around the fuel filler. Like I might get one of those, but I'm just like, I don't like it. They're easy to steal. They're easy to get in. They're not, they're very few that are even remotely waterproof. And even then they leak. Uh, I just don't see the point of tank bags. So you and I agree on this. We're not going to fight about this.

Robin: I mean, they kind of get in the way of my profile when I'm writing too.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Down and out to the right, down and out to the left. It's like all of a sudden my chest is on a bag.

Brian: Yeah. Like a tiny bag is all that would really work. And he, and what's the point backpacks on a sport bike? No, no.

Robin: That's what one of our customers did for an entire trip seven store. And I get the feeling they, it was painful, regretted it. Although they are extremely tough, extremely tough person. Good on them.

Brian: Yeah. Extremely tough. Bad-ass beyond belief, but yeah. Backpacks they're hot. They're in the way they're, uh, and again, it really goofs with your, with your center of gravity a little bit it's in line and it's attached to you, but yeah, you do feel that extra and center of gravity. That kind of stuff being predictable is pretty important. I lost a lot of weight really fast a few years ago and it was really bizarre. It's spring. I start writing in and the first hard ride after losing, I think at that point I had lost 60 pounds was really, really weird. It wasn't predictable. I didn't know what the hell was going on. Everything felt different. My suspension, I actually sold one of my bikes. And one of the major reasons was the suspension was set up for me when I was 315 pounds. And okay. Do I spend the money to, to respring and revalve everything?

Robin: Or do I get something else? Do I start over and I was kind of a new modern bike with ABS and now you're riding the bad.

Brian: Yeah. And I was like, well, like, yeah. I wanted this anyway. Backpacks. I it's a solution. I don't like it. And I've got like for my other bikes, I have soft bags. They're not as good as hard bags, but a good set of water, waterproof soft bags are good.

Robin: Waterproof soft bags or thermoformed. I love thermoformed soft bags. They look great. They maintain their profile. And again, I'm all about looking cool and all that dumb shit, but just a piece of luggage that stays rigid, even if it's a Nerf ball, I'm happy about that. Now you've got body work in here, protecting your body work. I'm for that.

Brian: The crash bars and things like that, or was, and things like putting a protective film on the paint, for example, on some bikes, like if you have to put soft bags on a bike, putting like that clear film over can help make sure you don't scuff it up too much. But yeah, having racks, keeping things away from the exhaust.

Robin: I remember for Maggie's bike, we taped off the rear cowling so that I could spray some bed liner on it and then peel the tape out and it had a nice pattern to it. It looked good and it was durable as it needed to be. And that helped a lot. And then when you wrote it in your pockets, the thing about pockets in here is what triggered me with the whole, like my process to get to the bike. Because there's a moment where things are being checked and put into specific pockets. They have to be there for particular reasons.

Brian: So you've got a mental checklist, like a pilot might.

Robin: Yeah. And you'll see me go through it 40 times before I step over. Like, okay, zip, zip, down, down, up, up, creased, tucked. That's set. Good. Throw a leg over up. Do I have the glove on right? Nope. Take it off. Check this. It happens every time, but still, I know it well enough to know boom, boom, boom, we're riding and I'm out. The duffel dance, you call it.

Brian: Yeah. Usually you're not waiting on Robin. Let's go. All right. Let's go. Let's go. I'm ready. The last one about luggage was doing a flying ride. I did a flying ride last year. Yeah, man. I had a backpack as a carry on. I had a big duffel. As it deliberately happened, I found a bike to rent with luggage and I was able to get everything into luggage, but it's just the old fashioned, you know, tie a duffel bag to the rear seat. Rock straps are a great way to, uh, and proven to be a pretty reliable way to do that. Duffel bags can be pretty floppy. So this is something to be very careful about, especially if it's a bike that you're not familiar with.

Robin: I wrote an article about a dry bag that I'm a huge fan of. I've got two of them. One's a 60, one's a 40. Can't speak highly enough about them. But if you go to tiara bike and look up the dry bag duffel deal, basically you can compress that bag down to a solid log of your next few days of existence, and then use rock straps to the back of the bike and be pretty golden for the duration of an entire tour. I wish I could do like, if I was going to do a naked bike, that's all I would have. Just that, that's all I would need. All right. Remote luggage.

Brian: I can't, me no talk today. Good talkage. Good talkage.

Robin: You can feel the beginning of winter affecting us. You know, remember who we were in the spring and summer season this year and how spent we are into the dark oblivion of winter, and now we're just like, yeah, we have to make words, we must make words about the non-active riding.

Brian: We got this. We got this. All right. Remote logistics. And what do I mean by that?

Robin: I'm guessing that you mean stuff happens. And when stuff happens on the road, sometimes you need stuff. Where do you get stuff? Is that what you meant, Brian?

Brian: That's exactly what I meant. Very well phrased. Wow. Yeah. We'll touch on these things rapidly. And you know, one of the things when Maggie and I were talking a few episodes ago was, and you and I have talked about is dealing with problems, you know, on the road, how do you get into the right mindset where you, but one of the practical matters is, you know, where do you find the stuff you need to fix the problems that come up? You know, sometimes knowing some of this stuff has really kind of saved the day. For example, I knew that O'Reilly auto had motorcycle batteries from a very good brand called Deca. They sell them under a different name. And in a remote town in the wilds of Missouri, once I told Robin, you're going to go get a battery because I'm tired of this in my defense.

Robin: It wasn't something that I had done yet. It was something that somebody else had done too often and Brian wasn't going to tolerate it from zero. We were at point zero. I was going to bust out the jump pack and get the bike primed up and running. And as I was going after it, Brian said, we're not doing that because of somebody else, not me. I do get it.

Brian: Those little details, stuff like that. So things like, um, something may or may not have happened at some tour in the distant past where somebody needed a tire in the middle of the tour. Hmm. Yes. Why? Yes. Yes. People who ride a vintage bikes and, uh, yeah, you guys killed off two tires in that trip. You know, if you're riding a sport bike with common size tires, dealerships often have them in stock, they're going to cost you a lot, sometimes they don't. It's really variable what they care, what they actually carry cycle gear. They're not everywhere. They're only in like really big cities, but sometimes they carry. And that varies a lot too. Some locations stock a bunch of tires and mount them and everything. And some of them don't have anything here. They have very little, it's just something you have to call around. And there are a couple of, uh, suppliers that have warehouses. If you have some idea of where the warehouses are, a lot of times you can pick up something in person or just use a phone, a friend, you know, Hey, you got a tire that'll fit this bike somewhere that's, you know, they'll make it a little longer. And we'll leave that alone.

Robin: If you have obscure tire sizes and they say yes, get them and be happy.

Brian: Yeah. Quickly auto parts stores. This is kind of obvious. They're going to have fuses, wire, and a lot of them stock. A lot of, uh, motorcycle batteries, you know, sometimes a problem doesn't show itself until, until later on. From what I hear, auto parts stores have stuff for cleaning bikes, polish stuff, but I don't know anything about that. So quick detail, if you'd like to do that. Walmart has, uh, especially rural Walmarts in rural towns, uh, city Walmarts won't have this, but rural Walmarts, uh, serve a lot of people who have ATVs and stuff, and they will have DuPont chain saver, which is an excellent chain lube it's favorite. It's all I use. And they also have a DuPont, uh, polish. If you, if you like polishing stuff, it's fighting time.

Robin: Oh, so here's what I've heard about the DuPont chain stuff through people who took your advice on this stuff is that it's almost like a graphite seasoning. It just kind of ends up everywhere. It doesn't like to stick. It's good. This is one of those topics that it's like, what kind of oil do you use? It's a holy war. Yeah. Yeah. It's not that every product is good. It's that I think I can narrow it down to my favorite three and I have yet to try your DuPont stuff. I can definitely say that. And you'll argue against this. I bet you a lot of people will say I'm crazy. I love PJ one. It's a snotty tacky goo gelatinizes on the chain. So you spray it on the chain. You know, the chain is, it's got a cycle going. So you spin the chain in one direction. You spray that entire chain down with PJ one, then roll the chain to 50%. It's turned space, walk away for five minutes, come back and turn it back to the original spot and then leave it there. And you will come back eventually to jello gelatin all over your chain. Basically captures dust that would otherwise reach the rings. What you've got, take your word for it. I'll try it sometime, but I understand that it does not create the jacketing effect. Well, answer the call, Mr. Ringer, fight is on.

Brian: It is there. I will direct you to my sparkling KLR 650 chain. This stuff puts on a thin layer of wax that you can't see. You can feel it, but dust does not stick to it and it keeps water off. It really does. You need to make a video, sir. The point is with, yeah, I do. Yeah. With chains, just do something, pay attention to them sometimes with something somehow. And that's the most important thing. That's 90% of it. Just pay attention.

Robin: Well, that's your next article. Your next article is the chain. Holy wars, chain, lube, holy wars. You're on it's yours.

Brian: You need a church of chain. The other big pro tip for Walmart is if you, if you're in an area, that's got really cool stuff to see. Go to Walmart and buy your souvenir t-shirts. Uh, don't buy them in the souvenir shots. So go to the, go to the local Walmart. The other thing I'll talk about is a farm stores. Again, all the good roads are out where the people ain't. So where the people ain't is where the rural King, uh, TSC and other egg center. Yeah. Farm fleet farm stores are going to have a lot of stuff for people who like to need to fix things in a hurry. Modular solutions that work. Yeah. Love it. Sometimes metric fasteners, trailer tires, tools, steel, towed boots, horse feed. They're very useful places. Home stores like a home Depot Menards Lowe's are not really that useful. They can be, they can be out there, whatever, in a pinch. Yeah. The thing that really annoys me is they don't have very many metric fasteners. Unless you go to ACE and that's twice the price. Yeah. If you're on the road, you need a metric fastener. You're probably going to have better look at the ACE or do it best hardware than you are at a home store. You're going to pay more, but you know, get on the road again.

Robin: And the better thing about the ag centers and farm and fleet and tractor supplies, great truth to this is that you can get the individual components and build the park. When you go to auto parts stores, if you're not looking for a sealed battery or something specific, that is a, a non modular thing, everything that they're going to have at an auto parts store that will fix your small problem, those solutions are going to come with a lot of ingredients packaged together for a higher price. If you need a pet cock or any kind of inline valve to turn the fuel on and off just in a pinch. It's going to be part of some packaged components that includes the gasket and the ring and the tool and the this and the that most auto parts stores for anything that is obscure or mechanical is going to come with extra bits that you don't need for a higher price. Whereas if you go to an egg center, they're like, Oh, you need a valve. That valve is this, it has a release on it and you can use it to do your fuel, whatever, you know, cool. Problem solved.

Brian: And if you go into a lot of auto parts stores, uh, like for example, uh, spark plugs, I need a, uh, I need a such and so spark plug. Uh, what's it for? Never. You mind your head over that. That's my problem.

Robin: These are the dimensions it's in the name. Here are the, here are the things I need da this, that empty.

Brian: Many times. I've got, we don't sell no motorcycle parts, you know, you do. You just don't know it. Yeah. Uh, or spark plugs, uh, headlight bulbs. I stopped in like a little nap in a little tiny town in Kentucky. I needed an H four bulb. It's a nine zero zero three. H four H seven. They're on lots of cars. Yep. And this guy behind the counter was terrified that I would buy this car bulb and go out and try to put it on my motorcycle and we don't sell no motorcycle parts here. Yours was an H four. It's a KLR. It was an, it was an H four, just a standard bulb. It's that one on the counter behind you. And it was like, sell me that bulb and I will disappear out the store and you will never see me again. I promise you. I live 400 miles from here. No, no, you're just, that ain't a motorcycle bulb. I'm not going to sell it to you. Unreal. It went on and on. I did not, I did not buy a bulb from this man. Wow. Next town was a bigger and had an auto zone. So anyway, stupid story. Overnight delivery. Sometimes that's an option and affordable. It's expensive as hell. Uh, yeah, it's, it's plenty affordable, but sometimes it's worth thinking about. I, I knew a guy who arrived without his exhaust fell off, like off. Damn open header. He shows up in North Carolina. Like most of the exhaust fell off. I think he still had part of the headers off anyway, showed up in North Carolina. Ordered an entire exhaust from Dennis Kirk paid for next day delivery. And the things show, you know, like next morning, like, I don't know what it costs, but it was a lot, but he's like, I'm on vacation, I'm going to ride. I'm in Disneyland. I'm going to ride the rides. They'll let's go. Yeah. Next day, UPS truck shows up next day air. He puts on the exhaust and he's, he's riding that afternoon. Bikes moving order early in the day and know where the warehouses are. Like, like here at Indy, I usually get stuff from Rocky mountain ATV and motorcycle the next day because they have a warehouse in Kentucky. Oh, nice. Yeah. So learn that stuff as you go. And then also like, especially if I'm going on a trip on a vintage bike, I'll put some parts out on my work bench where I could theoretically tell my wife. Yes. Find the round thing with the wires sticking out of it. Yeah. And the purple, whatever.

Robin: We have a rescue system in our house. So we have an entire rescue system, which is I'm going to need the ramp. I'm going to need the chalk. I'm going to need the bag of straps. Now that's a pickup rescue meeting. Like we're local. Bring the truck, bring the rescue system. Mags knows exactly what that is. And if it's just a tire, just bring me the tire on the Ravaconda and we're done. And it's all.

Brian: I ended up underwater and it's a long story and it's interesting, but anyway, the, I had to borrow a phone and to call my wife and fortunately she was home for once and to come with the trailer. She showed up and we had, there were no straps at all.

Robin: Duct tape.

Brian: Yeah. So I had to, I don't know what, I don't know what it, I think I found, yeah, I found a couple of like sleeping bag straps and just, I kind of improvised some sort of horrible hillbilly thing to get us to the nearest Walmart.

Robin: Well, I've seen chalks where you can roll the bike up, click it into the truck and you're going down the road.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: It doesn't even require the straps, but not all chalks are made the same. You know, you drop the coin for that kind of thing. Yes. This is a rolling chalk and you're done. You put a pin in and you're going, but you're talking about like a scene where it's like, I've seen bikes flopping to the left and dipping down, dipping down. Like rope ain't going to cut it.

Brian: Yeah. So I jammed the tire in a corner, put it on its kickstand, improvised some crap with whatever, you know, I found some loose change. I just pieces of wire. We got to the nearest Walmart and it was all good. Oh, anyway, uh, the next one, what I had on here was the Brazilian river, Amazon. Yeah. One thing I can say is if you need something in a hurry, Amazon delivery times are very, very, very approximate, especially in rural areas. Like I live in Indianapolis, major city. I could probably throw a rock a couple of times and, and, and get the Amazon terminal around here. So generally stuff arise when it's supposed to out where Robin is. It can get pretty iffy.

Robin: It's not that bad because we have a prime account and I'm not trying to plug prime, but when you sign up for the prime account, your delivery dates are pretty spot on. Two day delivery tends to be. No, even with prime, not for me, even with prime, they miss it.

Brian: I mean, I don't know what experience you're having. You've been lucky.

Robin: Maybe if you were more polite over the phone, Brian, I'm a kind person. Phone? The treatment matches the behavior. Phone.

Brian: Yeah. Like on prime, there's stuff you can get later that same day around here. It's happened. It's crazy. And then sometimes they're like, oh yeah, we'll ship that in three days. Or just pay attention to that kind of thing. Oh, you actually wanted that thing? Oh, the last one I had on here is a dealerships. Stealerships. Stealerships. If they're open, their hours are always limited. Dealerships will, a lot of times, uh, if, if somebody is on the road, they'll make it a priority, you know, if they can take care of whatever, unless you're riding a, like a Harley dealerships do not carry any parts don't expect anything other than maybe oil filters, they can get it. I can get that for it might be a week. I can order that for you are the six most useless terms. Whoops. Wrong one. Well, we'll have to try again. Yeah. It's one solution out of many possible ones. And it's often not much of a solution unless you need something common. Like I just need a bottle of oil or pork oil, or I need a tire. Same for like cycle gear. They're here. There's not a lot of them, but they're around, you know, and what they carry is pretty variable.

Robin: It's an option to look at if it's around you, that last one with the dealerships and cycle gear, that's a situation where you need to walk in and decide what problem you have before you go looking for the parts. You need to fix the problem you had to invent because they're not going to have the solution, but they will have something that you're like, oh yeah, I needed to get to that. Anyhow, this has been a big, beautiful, badass Brian Bonanza of badassery. You feel good. I feel good. Concluding thoughts on all the things we've discussed today.

Brian: Get on your motorcycle and ride it somewhere, please. Will do.

Robin: Get us out of here.