Robin: In this episode, we have three great segments. One of them, newish, we're revisiting the destination proclamation and talking about Joshua Tree, California. Another previous segment from years past, which we have retitled and have refreshed moments in motorcycle history with the one and only from a previous episode, Jordan Liebman and brand spanking new to the show, we want to welcome from gearchick.com, Joanne Don, who's going to take us for a ride to the armory, all about attire kit, things that make writing better. Let's get right to it. Opening banter, corrections, website updates. First off, Joanne, welcome to the show.

Joanne: Hi, it's great to be back.

Robin: Thank you for having me. It's great to have you back. Hi, Brian.

Brian: Yeah. Hi, Robin. Yeah. Screw you and your warm weather.

Robin: It warmed up. It's 28 degrees here. It's snowing. Oh, you poor babies. Jacketed in snow right now. Greetings from New Mexico, by the way, listeners back in truth or consequences, ready for the New Mexico motorcycle tour. Got a really nice big site here. Got a shed set up to operate as my garage, our garage ready and waiting for the average highs at about mid fifties. It's going to be hard, Brian. I know that. Stay strong. How are y'all doing? What's good.

Joanne: I guess I'm warm because it's only 28 today, 30. I think we got some low 30s. So it's, I guess that's considered warm.

Robin: That must be the mountain overall mountain weather. It's just like everything in the mountain time zone is like kind of cold, not as bad as Brian.

Joanne: I'm only at 6,000 feet. So the poor souls who are up at seven, eight, nine, 10,000, they're suffering really bad. But we're down in Denver. It's pretty isolated. And you know, Brian, where are you again?

Brian: Indianapolis elevation 12. We had about eight to 10 inches of snow where I am, like in a really narrow band. So there's like this sausage across Indiana of snow and we're right there.

Robin: That's pretty brutal. Screw these particular people right here. Yeah. Right.

Brian: Yeah. They like my creative use of sausage across in anyway. Uh, it's supposed to snow some more tomorrow. It's been like 20 degrees today. Huge amounts of snow and ice outside. That is what it is.

Joanne: Yeah. I feel lucky. Pretty toasty. We got sun and everything.

Robin: I was going to say you said 28, right? 28 degrees ish, give or take.

Joanne: This morning it was like 15 at like nine o'clock. And then by the time I left the house at 1030, it bumped up to like 30. And then, uh, after I had lunch, I had brunch, the streets melted. Just like that. Cause the sun is fierce here. And that's one of the things I love about living in Denver, even though it's 25 degrees, the sun is here. And so it's not like being stuck in the Midwest. Sorry, Brian. Or being stuck where the snow lives with you for days on end.

Robin: I mean, Colorado where you can go skiing in the summer. Basically.

Joanne: Yeah.

Brian: We have low real estate costs here, I guess.

Robin: Anyway, we got a Walmart. Website corrections. I overheard some discussion on a previous episode between Mr. Brian Ringer and Ms. Magadine about heated gear. Correction. Yes, they do make six volt wireless heated gear. You can buy heated gear that is wire-free as an SAE free as in non 12 volt. It doesn't last all that long. You got to recharge it on the reg, but I don't know. That's a challenge that I've discussed with Joanne for this new segment. We'll be discussing in the future here about finding cordless heated gear that allows you to recharge a component battery and swap it. Well, we're not talking about that now. That's another episode, quick website update. It seems that two or three of our older episodes, they were recorded and exported with 48 Hertz instead of 44.1 Hertz, which is a tech. Yeah, it's a bad mistake. Cause then what happens is it can't be compiled on the server. And what you get is, Hey everybody, here's an intro with a bunch of advertising. And then there's like 40 minutes of nothing. Well, that's a problem. I look, yeah. I noticed that somebody listened to, I was like, Oh wow. Somebody's listening to some old material. I forget what that episode's about. I went and hit play and it was just like, okay, I guess it's a meditation on bad production. That's been fixed. It was two episodes from 2015. Also episodes four and five from 2017.

Brian: There you go. So Brian, this is really random, but I spotted on a ADV rider. It's a huge site, huge worldwide collection of motorcyclists. The there's a chicken poo special is a, is for sale up in way in upstate New York, $2,000 for a 2005 FJR 1300. Uh, except it is literally covered in chicken poop and I don't know. I just found this entertaining. I think it would make someone a great winter project. Some other person besides myself, they should go up to upstate New York, go to ADV rider, get a trailer, go to upstate New York, wipe the chicken poop off and get yourself a nice bike by spring, I love it.

Robin: What? No joke. That thing is jacketed. Oh, come on. So if you go to TRO dot bike, hit the search icon and look up, is that the muck off article?

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: M U C space O F F muck off two words. You're going to find an article about a simple to access spray motorcycle wash system, whatever you want to call it. Why did they take the pictures and not just do the wash? That's rough.

Brian: He just wants, he just wants to get rid of it. And then it says here, you're rationing projects. How's that going? I've stretched out like a tire change and, and rear brake pads. I think I'm up to about five weeks. Um, you got it. You know, I'm really trying to pace myself because that's all I need to do this winter. Yeah. That's all I need to do. I don't have any projects.

Robin: You get towards the end of it. You're going to go out there and you're going to turn a wrench, like a quarter turn and be like, okay, I'll turn it again tomorrow. Like come out tomorrow, better wash up.

Brian: Yeah. Like I've had winters where I've had, you know, like a lot of stuff to do and a big project and this winter, everything's running great, you know, none of the bikes need anything drastic. So I'm, I'm rationing it out. So like I, you know, I ordered the brake pads and then I waited for the brake pads and then I went and got them. Like I ordered them to cycle gear. So I stretched that out cause I had to go get them. And then I brought them back here and then I put them next to the bike on the stand. Yeah. Anyway, slow down. Does anybody else do this?

Robin: Am I crazy? No, I'm putting all mine off.

Joanne: I was catching up on the chicken poo special. I, it took me a minute.

Brian: Captures the mind, doesn't it?

Joanne: It's such a great bike though. And to give it that name, I mean, an FJR 1300, it's a classic, but let's be honest. This is an old man bike and the kids these days, they just can't appreciate the value of classic FJR, which I don't blame them. It's big and heavy. It's lumpy. It doesn't have any traction control. It doesn't have any like brakes. I get it. But it is a lovely bike and muck off is a great project. I use that on my bikes. It works really well.

Brian: Nice. I don't know. You might have to throw a match and walk away with that seat. Everything else will clean off, but man, the poop on that seat.

Robin: What if he bought it new and then he just paid thousands of dollars to make that the paint job? There you go.

Joanne: You have strange ideas, my friend.

Robin: I do.

Joanne: He just better off like finding a seat on eBay.

Robin: Yeah.

Joanne: There's probably, or someone to recover it. I have a friend who does that in California. I mean.

Brian: Or go to Walmart and get a bath mat and use it as a seat pad, which that's what I did in New Mexico. Yeah.

Joanne: Or years ago I bought an Alaskan sheepskin pad from Alaska. Yeah. And I had it on my SV and that thing was a lifesaver.

Robin: Yeah. That's a thing.

Joanne: It's a thing. It's ugly as sin, but oh my God, it makes a 400 mile ride feel reasonable.

Robin: We have a mutual friend, Brian and I, for the Suzuki resources stuff. And there's one of them that actually does that. They swear by it.

Joanne: Yeah.

Robin: You reminded me. I forgot about that.

Joanne: They're actually made in Alaska. There's a little store up there and they make them for you. And that's why I ordered mine years ago. And it was amazing. I was blown away by how well it worked. Like really? A sheepskin seat?

Robin: Yeah. They do the same thing. There's an underwear version of it too. I forget what it, I don't know if it's sheepskin though. No, I'm serious. I'm not joking. It's like a, uh. Can you go pick out your sheep? Anyway.

Joanne: Pass on that one. But the seat cover, I'm going to vote for that.

Robin: In more commercial seriousness for these openings. Oh yeah. Uh, Neil Peart's Ghost Rider GS 1100. That's the air cooled GS. Yeah. Right.

Joanne: It's sad.

Robin: I think his birthday was just recently.

Joanne: Yeah.

Robin: So Neil Peart's Ghost Rider GS 1100 is up for auction. So the air cooled version of the bike, it is available for all to look at. And consider the purchase of, uh, makes me kind of want to read the book again. I feel like I, as a musician, drummer, personal connection to that. A lot of worriness in that book, but that is to be expected from the lyricist that he was. Yeah. If you haven't read Ghost Rider, feel free to check that out. And then, uh, I had to look up the exact definition. I am way underprepared by comparison to what my dreams were for this episode. Insolvency is when a person or company is unable to pay their debts when they are due. It can also be defined as having more liabilities than assets. And at this moment, some version of the KTM company is in a state of insolvency. Now there's an article about this in Business Insider. I believe it was, it goes into detail about just how many subsidiary companies there are for KTM that while they are represented by the KTM brand, they are in no way affiliated with the insolvency issue. So they are not subject to whatever this turns into. KTM as an overhead, I believe, I don't know if it's just the motorcycles or whatever. They are, uh, in a state of insolvency. I hope that works out right now. The market is what the market is and KTM is going to have to deal with it, how KTM is going to have to deal.

Brian: There's some really good in-depth articles on KTM's situation. If you go to atomicmoto.com, atomic-moto.com, uh, and go to the blog, the owner is kind of familiar with finance and familiar with, and has some really, has like a series of three articles that really dig into what's going on. And I mean, no one really knows why the hell KTM bought a bicycle brand, you know, and some of the stuff they're doing doesn't make any sense.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: Interesting. Yeah. They'll, they'll come out of it. There's, you know, motorcycles are still going to be there. Parts are still going to be there. Uh, but yeah, it's going to be a weird, weird time for, for people who like orange motorcycles.

Robin: There may be some business engineering involved where it's like, if we're not expanding, we're not winning. On to listener questions. If you'd like us to field your questions, email podcast at TRO.bike. As Brian would say, we may not give you the answer, but we will give you an answer. Zesty asks, is $3,000 for a 2015 Yamaha R3 a good deal? Yes. Depending?

Brian: Seems okay from here.

Joanne: Um, what's the condition?

Brian: Yeah. If it's in good shape and it hasn't been thrown down the, the thing with an R3, it's a beginner bike, so it's going to end up on the ground.

Joanne: Maybe.

Brian: So it hasn't been yard sale too much. Yeah.

Joanne: The 3000 is a reasonable expectation for a beginner modern motorcycle, especially a sport bike, a modern sport bike. But I'd want to know salvage title. Is it a tab? You know, what, what's the deal with it? Someone doesn't want it. You know, maybe they have 500, I don't know, a thousand miles on it, and they're just, they never rode it.

Robin: Counterpoint. All of us here are seasoned, experienced motorcyclists. So how many times do all of us say like, you know what I'd kind of like to do is I'd like to have a 300 CC sport bike just because we want to have something goofy to mess around.

Joanne: I have a dual sport that's a 250. So I went through this trying to find something for less than $4,000. Impossible because it's either a 1982 XT225 with five speed carbs, you know, and the stuff that I can't maintain or take care of, I had to throw down over $4,000 for a used 2019 with six speed, six, you know, six gears and fuel injection. Is that supply and demand? Absolutely. Because everybody wants small dual sports and there really aren't that many. And if when they go use everybody's stashes them up because new ones are, that is a 52, $5,400 MSRP before tax title license motorcycle. It hurt me and deepened my soul to spend $4,000 on a 250 when I know this is ridiculous, but in 2003, I, we bought our brand new off the floor Ninja 250 for like 31 out the door. Yeah. And so it hurts me to spend $5,000 on the 250 with one single cylinder, no heated, nothing, no traction control, nothing.

Robin: Yeah.

Joanne: 3K I think is really good. If it's just in regular shape, good maintenance, you just need new tires or something. Absolutely.

Brian: Yeah. I find it nearly impossible to buy a motorcycle that doesn't need tires, chains, sprockets. It's just expect that. 3K sounds reasonable-ish. If it's in good shape and just set aside, make sure you have budget for tires, which are a little cheaper on that than they are in a lot of sport bikes.

Joanne: If they haven't even done all that. Cause I've definitely seen ads where like new brakes, new tires, new oil change, fresh, you know. You've seen ads like that where people like already get it ready to go for somebody and that's.

Brian: Yeah. That's me when I sell a bike. And then when I buy a bike, it's just shag tires. Anyway, it's a thing. I don't know. It just happens.

Joanne: I got new tires on my XT2 cause it had MSF tires. It had smooth, less knobby MSF tires.

Brian: Rectanguloid.

Joanne: I know. So I had to buy a proper 50-50s.

Brian: They've been beat around the parking lot too long, huh?

Joanne: Yeah. Yeah. It has a dented exhaust. I don't care.

Robin: Bald on only the left side.

Joanne: Cause they actually maintained it very well. They did oil, they did everything else and I just needed tires.

Robin: Sometime ago, I got deep into this with the buyer perspective and I came up with my own formula that just seemed to make too much sense, not to dig into. And it's all about a systematic approach to really figuring out what's going to be reasonable based on the condition of the bike or the cost. It comes down to a 10 step thing that I'm going to read out here about. The first thing you do is you filter the short list of viable used motorcycle options. Then consider the DIY wrenching or taking the bike to a dealership. How are they going to maintain it? Three research OEM parts availability. Weight against what's out there in the aftermarket. Are you going to be able to buy what's necessary? Should anything begin to fail? Four note, any recalls and maintenance issues by way of Google and forums. I know there are bikes out there that would just spontaneously combust. This is the hard one. First I'll average eBay's pricing for such a bike. I'll average Craig's list pricing for such a bike. I'll average cycle traders pricing for such a bike. Now that's three averages. Then I'll average those averages. So those three averages divided by three, then you look at the Holy grail of all information, according to, I don't even know who, which would be KBB or not a values. You then add those in the averages, the averages and the averages. Divide that by three. You've now landed smack dab on what is a figuratively realistic price of what you might want to pay for that bike. Now knock a thousand bucks off, you know what I mean? Or add another thousand dollars on depending on the person who's selling it. Now it's time to call the seller. That's when you call and you take a look at the bike and decide for yourself. Is this really the direction I want to go? Look over it, discuss the title, check out the maintenance records, the upkeep, inspect the bike yourself and decide if this is the right buy for you. Uh, do a T clocks, take a test ride. How's she feel? Any strange noises and assuming all is good. Drop the dime, seal the deal and buy the beast. I think it's a good bike.

Joanne: I'll throw in there too, that something you have to consider is the supply and demand where you live. So living in Colorado, an XT250 is very high in demand and hard to find, and it's expensive. But if I searched out and I remember looking like a few states away, I was like, shoot, maybe I could just go find something in Iowa or Idaho or something. And there was stuff like out in Kansas, but by the time I factor in driving out there to go get it, I might as well just spend a little more money and buy it here, you know, to save, you know, to take eight hours or a day or two out, it wasn't worth saving a few hundred bucks. For me, I was able to afford, all right, maybe 500 bucks or so than what I could have saved because I don't have to drive out there for a day to get it. But in places like San Francisco, when I was living there, man, there were certain bikes there that had very high value that had pitiful value outside of San Francisco because they're not as popular.

Robin: We're actually going to get to some of that California style. That's really good. I like that you brought that up because we just posted an article about something involved, like if your bike is not selling, what can you do? Next question. Fraggins asks, when turning on the road, I do just fine. I just look where I want to go and I end up there. Should there be any further thought put into turning? It feels almost too simple and that scares me. I'm aware of counter-steering. I'm just wondering if I should be making more of a conscious effort into controlling the bike.

Joanne: When you get to a point where you have become proficient. I like the word. Proficiency. You know, you're not an expert, but you're not super novice. You're very proficient. So you're consistent and you're not crashing, but you're not the fastest necessarily, and you're not the slowest. It becomes a less conscious effort. That's when you know you're doing well. So for this reader, that means you're doing great because you're not having to think too much about it. However, there's also the other side of, are you paying attention to stuff like check out the gravel that's on the apex, right where you need to drop in and turn. Are you scanning for that or where you're going to exit? Hey, there's a pothole. Are you figuring out how to exit that corner? Those kinds of things. Is that what this person is thinking about? Or are they just thinking about the physical action of turning, like he's saying, and counter-steering?

Robin: I can't even speak to it. I think that the question is sort of open. I mean, I'm at the point now where it's like the people I want to ride with. I don't care what anybody thinks is the appropriate technique for taking the corner. I care that they made the corner, that they survived the effort and that they are smiling after the fact. That's all I want to know.

Joanne: And they're not ready you off the road at sea time.

Brian: I would say like anything else, there are levels beyond levels, beyond levels, beyond levels to any skill. So he or she has gotten to gotten comfortable with the skills that they have and they learned. But it is true. There is much more beyond that. Kind of like Robin referred to, and Joanne also referred to, there's a lot more planning. You can get your eyes up beyond that corner. You can be planning two or three corners ahead. There's a lot more you can be doing and thinking about. I would suggest, if I may make a suggestion, do some reading. Read Twists of the Wrist, read Proficient Motorcycling, Lee Park's book, Total Control Riding. Also go to Google and look up some riding training that's coming up in your area or within reach. There's always more to learn.

Joanne: I think the context is huge here because is this person talking about, oh, I'm going to work or I'm on a pleasure ride, or are they talking about the track day, or are they talking about, you know, what kind of riding they're doing, and I'd also want to know how much experience they have, you know, how they just started.

Robin: The instant they were phrasing the question, I was just imagining that they were taking a hard right turn in an intersection in a small city, you know, and what goes into that didn't seem like there was any nerve wracking feeling until after they had already made the turn, which I found kind of fascinating. Those are our questions for this round. Let's move on to some segments. I'm pretty amped about this. Segment one, Destination Proclamation, brought to you by Twisted Road. For a discount at Twisted Road, visit twisted.tro.bike. Mags and I are going to be going to Joshua Tree for fall of 25. We're going to go enjoy the national park. It's sort of a fall destination on our way to the winter in Nevada, basically near Las Vegas of all places. I found a racetrack there, but the point is we'll be in Joshua Tree for a good long minute. So that's our fall plan, right? No sooner than we brought this up, one of the riders from one of our tours reached out, he was like, hey man, you got to come check out some of these California mountain pass roads. I was like, well, that's been the plan the whole time. That's what we're doing. Then I was like, hey, how close are you to Joshua Tree? And he sent me an image of a map and all I saw was squiggly lines that landed smack dab right where we were going to be staying. I'm just getting more and more excited about the concept of this. I do have some concerns about seasonal closures, because if I remember researching those roads before, they shut down in the winter. So once you hit fall, they're already starting to get snow and it's time for them to no longer be accessible. So I've got to look at what's east. We're going to look at the map for a second here, and then we'll talk about some bikes that are available in the area. I, all I got to say is that Joshua Tree National Park, the roads directly outside of it, that's mostly just expressway, flatlands, nothing particularly loud enough to bait me towards it, but in the time that we get there, while we're set up for the duration, I definitely want to ride 243, everything out of mountain center. You got Thomas Mountain to Mountain Center, 243, 74. If I keep going west, Route 79, Route 76.

Joanne: I want to make a recommendation. Have you heard of passionate.com?

Robin: Passionate.com?

Joanne: P-A-S-H-N-I-T. Tim is the founder of that and he's ran that website for years and he has put together an incredibly thorough, detailed routes, recommendations, photos of California.

Robin: Look at that. The list is right there on the main page, right out the gates.

Joanne: Yeah. He's really the authority and he'll break down for you. Like, what's this road like? How, you know, here are the turns. Here's where you shouldn't go. It's worth your money. I don't know how much it is now, but years ago it was like $20 a year. It's worth every penny if you ride in California to invest in his website, cause he's like your guide and he's ridden a lot and I saw that man ride up a dirt road on a high-resilience.

Robin: I don't doubt it. Hayabusa is an amazing bike. I mean, you can tour it. You can do all kinds of stuff on it. People don't know.

Joanne: And apparently you can go up a windy dirt road on the side of Lake Tahoe up it. And when I saw him do that, I was like, can I, I guess I can do that. Cause I was on my SV at the time and I just wasn't sure, like, am I going to be able to do this?

Brian: Is this allowed?

Joanne: I know, exactly. And I, I saw him go up there and I said, well, I guess I can. Cause he just went up there. So I went up there. Um, but he is really good resource. If you really want to get some info about it.

Robin: Say no more. I already bookmarked it. Passionate.com. P A S H N I T.com. Tell them gear chick sent you.

Joanne: Yeah. Tim's great.

Robin: So that's the destination. And now I have a source of fun to good roads. Then one of the questions becomes like, in terms of hang time, what's to do in Joshua tree? Oh yeah. I'm looking at a quick list. Things to do Joshua tree national park. It looks like Reddit's got me covered. That should be great. Like where to bury the bodies. Thanks. Reddit. Yeah.

Joanne: I want to know what bikes you're riding. I want to see this bike list. Talk about these bikes. So you're going to rent a bike.

Robin: Yeah. Okay. So if we talk about the availability of the machines in the area, uh, I love that you have to double click every single one of them. I'm going to open every one of these up before I talk about it.

Joanne: And this is a straight street trip, right? Just paved roads.

Robin: Yeah. Never afraid to discuss dirt, but by default we're on the Here's what I found. You got a hundred miles to Joshua tree. You fly in, you get on the bike, you ride to Joshua tree. There you are. Of course. Yeah. They have a Beamer RT 1250.

Joanne: Is this list for both of you to pick a bike or these are the bikes that you are picking for you?

Robin: I'm picking these for me. It's my segment, Joanne.

Joanne: Okay. So, sorry, sorry, sorry. Are you at the point where more than 10 degrees makes you uncomfortable or are you still in the point where you can do 45 degrees forward and you're fine?

Robin: So that's the right question.

Joanne: Cause I'm not.

Robin: You're talking about you are more comfortable with a standard profile posture, if not a modern standard.

Joanne: Five degrees at most. Yes. I can't do super sports anymore. I can only do nakeds and I can only do tours these days.

Robin: No race replicas. Got it.

Joanne: I can't, I want to.

Robin: The triumph Daytona.

Joanne: I can't. I don't have the abs for it. I don't have the back strength for it.

Robin: The core.

Joanne: I don't. I wish I did. And I don't, if I did, I absolutely would take that hell.

Robin: Yes. I swear. I'm just tearing myself to bits every time I get on one of those bikes and I subconsciously just say, suffer and enjoy it.

Joanne: That worked when we were 30, you know this Robin, but as we start climbing.

Robin: Everything about me says, try to pretend like you're 20 years younger than you are.

Joanne: Look, you know, your body. And if you're prepared to suffer more power to you. But me, I am not prepared to suffer. Cause I remember I suffered really bad one year. I, I rode from San Francisco to Hawthorne, Nevada and don't, it's not a destination you want to write to it. It was, it was a, it was a friend thing. It was just a, it's a whole friend group thing that we did. And it wasn't the ride. It was just the hanging out together. Right. I did 400 miles in one day and we went the long way. And my friend Kurt bless him. He's like a road God and he knows all the roads. So he mapped out this really amazing ride so that we would go through the Sierras and hit all the twisties. And what were your ergos? I was on an SV650S.

Robin: Okay.

Joanne: So that's a, yeah, it's a pretty forward position for me because I have a very short torso. So I'm leaning forward on many bikes, which many adult people taller than me would not be leaning. And, um, up until that point, I'd only ever ridden like 200 miles in a day. He busted me for like 400 and it was so much riding. I felt sick when I got there.

Robin: That's yeah. I stopped at about 250, maybe 300. Brian knows I've got my own threshold and then I'll just tell, I'll give everybody, I'll get rid of the bird and I'll just disappear if you can do 200 miles on a more power to you, man. Well, that's the thing about it. So here's what I found for my segment is so the destination is Joshua tree. The bikes that I found on twisted road, twisted.tiro.bike. I mean, I saw the RT 1250. If I wanted to flip things, I noticed that there was a KTM Duke 390. And I always thought I've always kind of wanted to take a pocket bike on like a micro tour, right?

Brian: Nice and pointy.

Robin: Little Swiss army kind of vibe just to go and do a little pointy bike. Yeah. Fun things quickly and kind of a cute manner. Yeah. I don't know how to really phrase that. Right. So that's available. It has nothing on it. So all of the mass amounts of things that you could find on this RT 1250, it came with a kitchen sink. You get none of that on the Duke because you decided to prove to yourself. I don't know. And I got a little bit of a tingle when I observed what is a factory Tuono. And there's a big difference. True. Between the default Tuono and the factory Tuono. Fair. Yeah. This bike, when you were asking me the questions before, yeah, they do definitely speak to my riding sensibilities, meaning I want to get out there and cause trouble. That's the kind of ride that I'm not uncomfortable on. But the one that I found, if you click on that link, it's got the default paint job, the loud look at me officer paint job, right? So then the sensation, that tingling, it got a lot louder with another of the same, but the next factory Tuono, which is kind of a rare bird and all of a sudden found two of them on twisted road. This one is completely blacked out and has risers. Ooh, it looks very nothing to see here, officer. You know what I mean? Also the rider looks completely comfortable and is a little bit more upright and has all that power with a more distinguished paint job. Then came the full tripod, if I may. Like then I was fully excited because I saw that there is a zero SR slash S available. 500 pounds. I'll restate that having ridden one at full blast for 1.5 hours is still the most fun I've personally ever had on two wheels. That bike is stupid, torquey, stupid quick and ridiculously good at handling with nothing but twist and go. It's just dumb how fun that is. This is California. California supports electric vehicles. There must be a bajillion charge stations to make my regular riding simple in its execution. So I feel like I could really.

Joanne: Are you prepared to take on that next level of work to do the homework, to see where these stations are, to make sure you have access to them? You need to plan ahead for that.

Robin: In California, yes. Great. In California, I'll do it. In California, I'll give it a go.

Joanne: Nice.

Robin: I don't think I would do it in Arkansas. Electric's the devil. Are you going to have to carry luggage? Soft bags. I will duct tape my BMW luggage to the bike.

Brian: All the EV charging stations are sort of on the West side of Joshua tree national park.

Joanne: Sorry to bust the fun, but there's your limitation right there. Mr. Dean is which bike isn't able to carry the luggage you need to carry. Cause you do not want, you cannot put ugly ass saddlebags on that.

Robin: There's nowhere for you to put like leather tasseled Harley bags. Like that's a limitation. Put them on backwards. No.

Brian: So what you do is you go to, you go to a UPS store. Say, send this crap to my trailer.

Joanne: No, it's a legit look. If you're going to be sport touring, luggage is a very real problem. I went through it on all my sport bikes and that's a tough one.

Robin: The twisted throttle, thermoformed luggage, you know, the ones, no, the twisted throttle, soft bags with the thermoformed clip on luggage. It's great looking luggage. It's still soft. It can be taken apart and taken away after the fact.

Joanne: Well, I'd like to know more about that.

Robin: Maggie Dean's. 2016 Triumph Street Triple R has all those attachments set onto it. So they, they maintain their form because they're sort of like a Nerf ball vibe going on.

Joanne: Oh, interesting.

Robin: Now the pressure's on. It's time for segment two, the armory, which is brought to you by gear chick.com who we happen to have right here to make this work, the gear chick.

Joanne: My tips for finding some casual like clothing that is protective enough for riding your actual motorcycle and things to con to consider. And then I'll throw it out a few favorites as if I were going to dress one of you, because there's so many options of gear out there and I can't possibly make options that I can't throw out recommendations that would work for every one of your audience members. Right. So I'm just going to throw out an example of how I would dress Robin or dress Brian.

Robin: It's good. Cause neither one of us dress ourselves.

Brian: Yeah. It's right.

Joanne: You're both married, right? Yeah. Got it.

Brian: Zero fashion. Hey, what's on sale? Okay. That's what I'll wear.

Joanne: Right. No, I'm, I'm a wife. I get this. Although mine's pretty independent. He actually does a really good job. So first of all, things to know before you go looking for some really stylish, casual clothing, you have to already have in front of your mind, a couple of thoughts. One, I'm going to compromise. If you don't go into this going, well, I'm going to put my climb touring suit or my fancy Revit adventure suit or my Alpine star leathers. Okay. I'm not looking for that. I'm specifically looking to compromise and find a style, more stylish outfit for riding that I'm doing differently than when I'm wearing those clothes. Right. So you're looking at your awesome leathers, your sport leathers. That's not the writing we're doing. So we're going to compromise because we are going to take our, I don't know. What's your day? What's your daily ride, Brian? Every day. What do you typically jump on the most?

Brian: Oh, a Yamaha FJ09 because it's got the bags, go to the grocery store, go to the hardware store, go to work.

Joanne: If you're on FJ09 and you're thinking, I want this outfit for when I'm not going out on the weekend and I'm not doing Canyon, I want something for the week. You're specifically looking to compromise. So that means you're not going to be wearing track boots. You're not necessarily going to be wearing leather pants and you're going to do a lighter weight jean, maybe a lighter weight boot because the compromise for you is the safety. When you compare your weekend riding gear, not compromise in complete safety, but from the ultra amazing level of protection that your two-piece touring and highway and weekend suit offer you. You're compromising from that. So you're going, okay, I'm going to step down because the riding I'm doing, going to the grocery store is not the same as me going out to the canyons and carving them hard. An example of that outfit might be some Revit lumbar riding jeans. I'll start kind of at your, I should probably start lower, like at your feet. Um, there's a really nice casual boot I like called the TCX Hero 2 because they have a second version now, but you might be able to find the old versions on sale.

Robin: That's actually on a tro.bike article about, uh, you know, casual footwear.

Joanne: Okay. I didn't even know that.

Robin: No, this is a good thing.

Joanne: This is a good example. And what's really important is you also want to look for boots like these are, that are CE certified. So for all motorcycle gear, I recommend looking at things that have CE certification, also because you're trying to filter out casual brands that are making motorcycle specific product. We know that when you go out in the world and buy clothes, everything is called moto. You go to the mall, there's a moto leather jacket and it's a thousand dollars. Well, guess what? It has nothing to do with you and pavement and speed and impact and abrasion.

Robin: Yeah.

Joanne: So that's the first thing is whatever casual wear you're looking at. You must look at the safety elements of if it's CE certified, then you already have assurance that this company is developing and making this product for the purposes of abrasion impact. Those are the two things that set aside the casual mall moto styled clothing and work clothing. A lot of people sub military boots and work wear, but there are many things that those lack that you need on your motorcycle. So CE certification is a great way for any person to go, okay, I'm in the right place and I'm not confusing it with style focused lifestyle clothing. So if you hit the ground and your feet are trapped in your motorcycle and the ground, you know that somebody in a lab somewhere in Europe has actually taken that boot or shoe, placed it between a vice and tested how much pressure that can take sideways like that. It's called transverse rigidity. So it tells you my foot is not going to be immediately crushed beneath the pavement and my bike because I'm wearing Vans because I'm wearing Converse because I'm wearing Nikes.

Brian: Question. So also you're going to ask a question about your crash flip-flops, right?

Robin: Yeah. Well, BMW branded. What was the term used for the crush?

Joanne: Transverse rigidity is here's my slipper. I can do this. You can't do that in a true CE certified boot.

Robin: Brian's got the boot. There you go. There's an example. I was also going to bring up the, the rebound from that action. Those are not casual. Any action that involves an article being compressed or flexed, the rebound is just important as well, because there's a reason we don't let people wear steel-toed boots.

Joanne: Shock absorption, right. Is important also, right. But depending on the application, what Brian just showed was an adventure boot, and that's like way over on the other side of the room. We're on this side of the room where we're really looking at again, what's the compromise we can make. And the hero boot does it in a really great way is it still gives you some ankle support and protection and the transverse rigidity. It's also reinforced at the heels and toes so that if the weight of something like a four-door pump motorcycle is on your foot, it's like an immediately crush your foot, you could probably pull your foot out of it and be fine and get up because you're going 30, 40 miles an hour to the grocery store, to dinner, to get ice cream. You're not impacting the way that you might in an adventure bike or on the track or doing canyons. That's why I really love those. And they go all the way down to a Euro 36, which for the ladies is a six and a half ish. All the way to a men's like 13. So broad range unisex.

Brian: The heroes are more kind of a work boot style just to help people picture it.

Joanne: Yep. Stitch soles, but they're casual. You, you throw riding jeans over them like a Revit Lombard. They're rock and roll. Yeah. They're very neutral. They appeal to a lot of people. I used to sell a lot of these boots because they look great and everybody loves them and they're really comfortable to walk in because they act because TCX, all they do is make boots and footwear. They're very good at footwear.

Robin: Yep.

Joanne: So matching that is a riding jean and the same principles apply. I would highly recommend looking for CE certified riding jeans and with jeans, it's always classified in letters and, and, uh, jackets and a double a and triple a more a's the better is the way to remember it. So more a's is three a's is track level. That's a track suit is triple a track leathers. Okay.

Robin: You can't walk in that very well.

Joanne: Once it's unzipped, you can't. And if you're wearing kangaroo, you can totally walk in it. You can sleep in it, but riding jean, you're going to go a to triple a and same thing riding jeans developed by brands like Revit, Dainese, Speedy, Pando, they have to comply with CE certification and with riding jeans, you're going to find the same thing. There is slide rating and abrasion and impact testing and seam strength. And these are all the things you have to have in your riding jeans. How many of us have scraped our knees wearing jeans, just walking down the street, right? Your regular jeans just tear right open, just tripping on the sidewalk.

Robin: We're talking Kevlar and there's also the matter of, I'm a big fan of CE level two at the very minimum.

Joanne: Okay. Well, there's two things there that you threw at me that I have to give context. One is Kevlar and Kevlar remember is never used as a material for construction. No one's ever going to sell you a Kevlar pant. This Kevlar is reinforcement, but also Kevlar is not the end-all be-all because it's not 1985 anymore.

Robin: Says you, I'm going to a break dance competition.

Joanne: Well, I can guarantee you that you're not going to want to wear Kevlar because it's not breathable. You can't wash it. It degrades in UVA, UVB exposure. You, if you dry it, you're also degrading the material. It doesn't breathe. It's not light. It's actually really uncomfortable. So then what are they slapping into these jeans that they're claiming are Kevlar? Some brands do use DuPont Kevlar, but not everybody. And the best brands in the world don't. A lot of them don't because they're R&Ding their own materialization that performs better than Kevlar for the purposes of motorcycles. Kevlar was not designed for motorcycling. And we know that motorcycling is an active thing. It's like hiking. You're going to sweat. If you're out riding, you're going to sweat. Breathability and abrasion performance is really important. So all the big brands you know of have spent thousands of dollars and hours to come up with materials that work better. So when you look at the CE certified products, you're going to find that the big hitters are using their own proprietary materials and in some cases, other companies and textiles like Cordura. They make a denim product and they make it for more than just a motorcycle application, but military, right? A lot of military have Cordura uniforms and, you know, and pants and jackets, right? Cause it's a durable.

Robin: Is this where the term denier comes from?

Joanne: No. Denier implies weight, density of the denim and the material.

Robin: Is that technically a unit of measure?

Joanne: Basically, a higher denier measurement on say a textile jacket, it's a heavier weight fabric and therefore could be more abrasion resistant, but Cordura is just a brand, you know, DuPont Cordura and Cordura developed. So the point is, is that you can find many materials, many technologies now in motorcycling apparel. So don't be afraid of casual jeans. Just do the homework and ask the questions. And if they don't have C certification, straight up, ask them, are these designed for motorcycle impact? How will they protect me in a crash? And if the answer isn't, well, there's abrasion impact and seam strength, then you move on and you find a real jean that offer you those three things. So I threw out the Revit lumbar because it's a very popular Levi 501 style cut.

Robin: Looks like it's got a lot of different styles to it too, different versions.

Joanne: Uh, there's colors. So the Revit lumbar jean has like three different denim. There's a black, there's a dark blue, there's a light blue and many brands offer colors, right? But the cut is similar to a Levi 501. Almost everybody can wear a Levi 501. That's a really great example of a riding jean that offers the style you want a very high level of protection with abrasion, impact, and armor. And those are the three things on your checklist. Going up the body to jackets, a couple over shirts that are really nice. Brian, I'd probably recommend for you is the REAX Affair Mount 2. So R-E-A-X it's a Revzilla product.

Brian: Oh, I see.

Joanne: And it's just a nice clean black over shirt and it has like a regular fit to it. I think it would probably fit you really well. Good protection built, it has armor pockets built in. And that's the key here with casual clothes. It should have just as many pockets for armor as all of your technical leather and textile product. And if it doesn't move on, because again, it's not 1999 anymore.

Robin: How can you say that about Prince?

Joanne: He wasn't riding motorcycles, was he? Well, I guess he did briefly, but he wasn't wearing anything. Um, but you know, when I started selling gear back in 2006, the idea of a riding jean was laughable. We were like, what? Who is going to ride in a jean? Are you crazy? Because back then, conceptually, all we really had for reference was a literal jean, a Levi, and we all know they're useless, absolutely useless to crash in. So it was laughable. Like, are you insane? But then, uh, slowly brands started to introduce jeans and leggings, you know, and these things that you could engineer high protective value from. That's why now it's such a great time to be riding because there are choices that we never had. All we were stuck with was Kevlar. All we were stuck with was heavy textile suits. And now we have these amazing products, but they're not all the same. So I'd like that Fairmount. It's an easy over shirt and it's a, let's go to dinner. Let's go on a date. Back protector, elbows, shoulders. Now for you, Brian, I'd recommend an Esmont, Revit Esmont, E-S-M-O-N-T. And it's, the fit is a little bit more relaxed, has a little more room in the body and the shoulders. So it's not quite as fitted as the Fairmount and it's beautiful. It's not cotton either. There is not a ounce of cotton in that outer fabric. It looks like wool, but it isn't. It's this really cool Cordura fabric. That's highly abrasion resistant and it's got elbow, shoulder, back protector. The other thing is it's rated AA. So you could go on the freeway with that and that'll give you as much abrasion resistance as a AA leather.

Robin: You can test that by just strapping yourself to the bumper of a car and have them drag you down the street.

Joanne: Well, that's, I mean, let's be honest though, that's not how you crash. And that's the other thing people forget that crashing on a motorcycle is not like crashing in other vehicles.

Robin: Oh, please go on. It's not fun.

Joanne: No, no. Just different things happen to us. We have different impact areas that are higher risk. We experienced, you know, sliding in different ways. Well, first you have to land. We land, we bounce.

Brian: Yeah. Stick to landing. Yeah. And then we slide.

Joanne: And sometimes we don't even slide. I mean, look on the freeway, you don't slide. You just impact. There is no slide. And that's the scariest thing. Sliding is a great thing, but we don't have that luxury. So when I see these sliding tests, I'm like, that's great. But we don't crash that way. You know, on the freeway, we don't, we don't have the room.

Robin: The distance from the seat to the ground did not change whether you were sitting still or in motion. You're going to start by falling at least that far.

Joanne: Right. But it does at least show that the material isn't just going to obliterate like your normal flannel shirt would. That'll just melt and completely separate. So both of those shirts are great because they have all the armor complement and they're all, you know, invisible. And the cool thing, I don't know about the Reacts, but the Revit has a zipper. Oh, I think the Reacts does too. Hiding behind the buttons. Yeah. Because buttons are not strong enough.

Brian: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Joanne: That would be not, that would not give you, the Reacts has got to have, I'm pretty sure it has a zipper. If you impact it on your chest with just buttons, they'll just.

Brian: Yeah. They just fly apart. There's a video, but I'm not going to play it right this second.

Joanne: That's a killer outfit right there. Overshirt. Now the biggest compromise you lose is temperature.

Robin: Yeah.

Joanne: If it's 90 degrees outside, 90% humidity, no, this is misery. So going on a date, not feasible in my mind. And those are the times I would say, no, I'm going to drive. I got air conditioning. That's where you do have to compromise again. Gear can do a lot, but there's not fully vented jeans. You know, it's like, then we're kind of taking it to a different point. There are mesh riding shirts though.

Brian: And this is kind of like, if you want to be stealth, like you don't want people to know your road there. That was the challenge. Yeah. It was a challenge. Totally. Carrying a mesh jacket would harsh the mellow there. So yeah.

Joanne: It would absolutely. And these, this kind of outfit, the whole point is to deliver a styled casual outfit that is invisible. Right. That no one can tell that it's protective. I think it's not so much that you don't want people to know that you rode a motorcycle, but you don't want to necessarily stand out in a group of people.

Robin: I don't want to scream motorcycle. Yeah.

Joanne: And I think the attention part for a lot of people is I don't want a lot of attention, you know, I don't want people looking at me and staring at me.

Robin: I really appreciate how absolutely perfect and eloquently you just landed that entire thing. I want you to know that you have my word that I will very carefully and meticulously edit that in a way that will dial it down to our sloppy and crappy hosting level that Brian and I are used to, so that blends in with the two of us a little better.

Brian: So you're making us look bad. Is that what you're saying? You're making us look bad.

Robin: Sorry.

Brian: Sorry. Sorry. How professional that was. That was great. Yes.

Robin: Everything I hoped it would be, you answered my challenge. I wanted to get on a casual 500 seat. Like if I wanted to get on a little bike, have the wife jump on back, ride like a couple blocks down the road for tacos, do some karaoke and then ride home again, looking cool, feeling cool. Having my Fonzie night and you provide the attire for that. That's what this was all about. That's the armory. Similar banter at higher revs can be heard of this nature via the Gear Chick podcast or directly through gearchick.com. Visit gearchick.com and dig in. Thanks, Joanne. Thank you. Also you can set a bar way too high. Sorry. On to segment three. If you don't know it, a previous episode or two ago, we got to sit down with a gentleman who sold me my very first motorcycle, Jordan Liebman. He was wording some things here and there over the course of the episode, but you got to understand that guy is an interesting cat and so I am slowly, very carefully trying to do the same thing that we've successfully tried to do here with Joanne to reel him in. I want to make him a regular thing for motorcycle history. Cause he's got a vast amount of knowledge in that brain of his. So we've got a new segment moments in motorcycle history. I got the chance to sit down with Jordan and talk to him and just sort of govern the conversation, keep him on track, see what he wanted to talk about. And we got to discuss a man named Otto, a French motor, the DD on motor, one of the first engines you could order all the way back in 1876, it was the first engine you could stuff onto a bicycle. And one man took that engine and decided he wanted to cross the entire United States when there were no roads. Let's have a listen to what Jordan has to say. I'm just going to start fading him in and let him ramble and I'll fade them out and let them keep on rambling. It's that good. Here we go.

Jordan: Let's talk about the very beginning of motorcycling in America and by America, we actually are talking about the entire world because it was around in the 1870s, about 1876, that the four stroke and the two stroke engines were within a year or so of each other were invented. Okay. So most of us ride four strokes, but in the early days they were really experimenting. I call this the Devonian era of motorcycling because I think about like trilobites, you know, these little roly poly bugs that they have fossils of all the time and they look like the pill bugs you could find still these days. So I think they're, they're actually related. You know, if you follow evolution, there's so many different animals that end up looking like crabs that aren't actually crabs. I mean, it just keeps happening because it's a good, it's a good shape. But besides the point in the early, early days, we're talking about shortly after internal combustion was invented, everybody glommed onto it. Try to find something similar. You can compare it to maybe like when in America, everybody used to drink PBR and all of a sudden everybody's drinking IPAs. I mean, I'm not saying it's for everybody, but that was a big deal. Maybe when radio became big, when radio became big, they're broadcasting from Chicago and from Nashville and wherever else, and everybody wanted to hear it. They didn't have TVs yet. Anybody that could sell a radio sold out. So these high school and college kids says, let's build one. So you can go, you can buy crystals. You can do this from that. And everybody's building radios. 70% of the radios at that time were homemade. So this is kind of like a parallel to that, right? Back in the old days, late 1890s, first decade of the 20th century, people were just amazed by all the new technology. They had world's fairs. They had Edison with his light bulb that wasn't even that old yet. This is a post-industrial revolution. So the foundation is there. We have steam locomotives. We have steam engines. We have the cotton gin. We have all these gadgets that are going to make our lives easier. And everybody's excited about it. There's people flying balloons around the world. They got people writing stories about submarines that, you know, find monsters under the ocean and going to outer space and film. People are still developing, no pun intended, the ways to use cameras, right? So we have the daguerreotype and all these other things going on. And Kodak is a new company. So you could actually buy a camera and take it with you someplace. And so the big cities will get some of that technology first. And it doesn't always happen in your neighborhood. A lot of that stuff happened in Europe, in Germany, in the Czech Republic, in the UK, in France, in Belgium, where they developed the four-stroke engine and the two-stroke engine. So the four-stroke engine was, I believe in 1876 called the Otto engine because the guy's name was Otto. Here's the thing. You may be able to buy one from somebody who sells one. So the first big one was a company called D.D. I think they were from France. D.E.D. I.O.N. Two capital D's. You could buy their engine. And it's a very simple four-stroke single cylinder engine with a atmospheric inlet valve. Meaning it's not really a valve. It's just sucking. And it makes about a horsepower or a horsepower and a half. That's not a lot. I mean, you're riding a bike that makes a hundred and X horsepower, right? 150 horsepower. This is an interesting point. At the time, there were more horses than cars and there were more horses than motorcycles by a massive margin. As a matter of fact, you know, they didn't have yet either roads. And I mean, you know, you can get from place to place in town. Just look up the historical pictures of the neighborhood that you live in today. You're going to find missions. You're going to find Spanish stuff. You're going to find whatever. Native American things. You're not going to find roads. And before all that, what came through? The railroads. The railroads came through America first. So we have this grassroots movement of all these people. I'm going to say mainly guys at this time, because it was that kind of world it was in. And I'm going to add to that mainly guys with some money, because the guy who was digging ditches didn't have money to buy an engine and put it on a bicycle frame and call it a motorcycle or a motorcycle. You know, these are, these are people that, you know, are kind of tuned in to what's going on in the world and that they want to be part of it. And so you could buy and say the very early 1900s companies like Harley-Davidson and Indian and the Harley brothers, there's three Harley brothers, I believe, get into the motorcycle business early on. And so about 1903 for them, I think I'm not positive. And I think Indian beat them by a year or two. I could be wrong. I may be right. I may be wrong. I may be full of shit, but it will speak my mind. That's the landscape at this point. Somebody has a motorcycle, which is really at this time, bicycling is a big deal. They're no longer riding these bony shakers with the enormous front wheel and that dinky little rear wheel. As a matter of fact, they didn't even have padded saddles yet. Think about that. They were probably stamped steel or something, wooden, maybe even wooden at the time, you know, probably covered in a skin of leather or whatever, no pun invented again. But they didn't even have padded seats. There's a date for when padded seats were invented. There were patents for these things, right? As a matter of fact, some of the earliest motorcycles had a wicker chair for a seat. Okay. And they haven't even figured out where to put the engine yet. You think it ought to be somewhere between your knees and below your bottom, right? Some, somewhere down there, maybe in front of you. They didn't do that yet. They were putting it behind the rider's seat. They're putting it in the wheels. There was even one where their rear wheel drive was not taken off of the crank. It was taken off of a camshaft. Think about that. I mean, they were figuring things out and this is why it's called the Devonian era. There are animals popping up left and right, and maybe they were like a flash. And literally you can go through the history and see that companies lasted a year, two years. They lasted three years. If you made it past 10 years, you were some kind of legend. It just didn't happen. And the other side of that is that if you weren't making your own engines and the company that was making the engines somehow wasn't able to get you engines where they went out of business, then you're out of business, right? I mean, that's the way it was back then. The smart money was money was to make your own engine. 90% of these engines were coming from Europe. And I already mentioned the countries they were coming from. And if you were going to get one in America, it's got to come over on a ship, right? It's got to come over on a ship. You're going to pay for that. And in America, you could get a lump, a lump of steel. And the instructions are pretty basic. You can get the blueprints, somehow pay for the blueprints or something and mill things and, and, and line bore things and make your own engine. They weren't that complicated. Like I said, they had an atmospheric inlet valve and the exhaust valve. Well, this is a whole other thing. What are pistons made out of? These days, it's going to be aluminum, an aluminum alloy, and it's going to be tempered to a certain hardness. And they're not, they're not round technically because they round once, once they're at temperature and moving. But anyways, back in the old days, they were steel, iron, or bronze. So we basically have three designs really that, that are the most popular. You have your single cylinder with an atmospheric inlet, then you have inlet over exhaust, the F head, basically. And they did that because the inlet's pulling in cold air and the exhaust valve is always overheated. So they think if you've got cold air rushing past the inlet valve, it's going to do something to cool off the exhaust valve. Now, the very first motorcycle that they say is the, uh, Hildebrand and Wolfmuller. You've seen the pictures. It's a wooden motorcycle. Maximum horsepower was at 240 RPM. At 240 RPM, your, I bet your starter turns your engine at 240 RPM. This is how things were back then. And when somebody wanted to go faster, they put a bigger engine in it. And they've been doing, they did that up until probably the mid eighties to early nineties in America. The DD-ON was one of the most popular engines that you could buy or a manufacturer of motorcycles was buying to install in their motorcycles. A lot of companies didn't make their own. Some did make their own. If the company that you were buying from went out of business or couldn't ship or the ship that it went on sank, then you're out of business. And literally you saw companies that lasted three years. So the companies that survived and made their own engine had a leg up, especially in America.

Robin: That was Jordan. Jordan, welcome to the show. It's time to round this thing up. What are some things we want to talk about next episode?

Brian: Something to think about for next time. I'm calling it childish bliss and kind of what got you hooked as a kid? What got you hooked on two wheels? Fonzie. That's the next topic? That's going to be next week. Just something to think about for next time. There's eight millimeter film of me. That's been long lost. A little tiny me on a little tiny electric mini bike doing laps in the basement. I was obsessed. That was it. And there's more to tell kind of fun to delve into. What are your stories? What was your journey before you even got a driver's license?

Robin: I like this a lot. I've already got a challenge, another challenge for gear chick here, if you're open to it, are you ready for this? Absolutely. Throw down the gauntlet. I'm not going to say what it is so that people can't look it up. I'm going to tell her that the plan is she'll, she'll know right after this episode, but I have one outfit, but on the cheap, it's not made by the greatest brand and it is exactly what I need is exactly what I want. And I will not compromise. We may have our first argument fight flat out, right out the gates in the first episode, the next episode, it's a particular outfit. It has everything I want. And I need to find a replacement for it. That does not cut any corners on my tolerance for what I want.

Joanne: I feel you that I'm very particular about gear now that I've had so much and use so much. I have in my closet that are 15 years old because I love them so much. They're in great shape. They're still safe to wear. And I never going to give them up because I have a lot of products. So I wear a lot of different things, but I have favorites that I've had forever that I just won't give up even though there's substitutes today, you know? And that's great. I can't wait. I'll give a stab.

Brian: I think every time that I like a piece of gear, word goes out and they say, Oh, well, we got to stop making it or we got to sew more pockets and crap on it. Or we got to, we got to put a big Honda logo across the butt.

Robin: This is going to be the challenge. So you're speaking for the whole industry about it. When you answer my call, how do they know?

Brian: How do they know that I like something? Oh, this guy likes it. Get rid of it.

Joanne: No.

Brian: Are we all ready to get out of here? Let's make like a fetus and head out.