Robin: In this episode, converting a bike for ST use, budget-friendly kit resources, George Wyman's epic travels.

Brian: That's all. Okay. Damn.

Robin: Oh boy. We've already said hello because we always do the pre-roll, but.

Brian: Yeah. It's hello, Robin. I hear you have some news. I've got news. I hear you have something very interesting. You just did.

Robin: So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got a new bike. I got a jigsaw, Suzuki GSXR. We're going to get to that. But we're behind by a couple episodes. So I've got some production work to do for sure.

Brian: How are you doing? Good. I've been indulging in some suspension upgrades for my KLR. Got the, uh, got the Cogent shock. Oh yeah. And I need to change the spring over to a heavier spring that I have, uh, that was on my old shock. Anyway, I got really frustrated and just ordered the damn tool. I'm like, this is stupid. You know, I'm going to kill myself. There's going to be a spring through halfway through my brain. So, uh, anyway, I could smell sound. Yeah. I just ordered a damn tool and got it done. Um, so I've taken a bike for a ride with the springing. The shock came with, it did make a big difference in damping. Uh, the original KLR shock I had on there with a stronger spring was like, it was rideable, but it was getting super bouncy. You know, sag was right where it was supposed to be and everything, but it, it was getting super bouncy. There wasn't much damping left.

Robin: So your timing is hilarious. Cause we have a question from the wild that we're going to touch base on that. Excellent.

Brian: So I've had some motorcycle related stuff to do, but it's 24 degrees and it's been kind of been that way for a while. So it's been a few days since I've gotten out.

Robin: Good to know. Glad to got new kits. Something to make you grin about, you know, new things on the motorcycle that always makes you happy. My goodness. Am I going to rant about that today among other things real quick? I got a shout out to Seth leader, such a good guy of the last time we spoke. I think that the plan was, Hey, Maggie's triumph sold. That's awesome. We're going to get her a new bike. So we're scouring for new model, current generation SV six fifties, which is basically the Gladius without all the bad makeup. Yeah. And we got amazing assistance by way of a friend of Seth's. So I got to also shout out to John, the GM over at power sports East in Delaware, extremely kind, gave me an excellent price, completely helped out. It became a battle. Of course he knew that was going to happen. He was like, you know, you're going to have to ship it and all this stuff, but here, I'm giving you a price that you have something to fight with. So down here, mostly in Arizona, it's strange. Like New Mexico is barren to some extent of the most standardized like UJM dealerships. They're not interested in duking it out. So I started calling around Arizona. That's where I got to thank Kelly's Kawasaki, which is basically in Phoenix, proper suburb of Phoenix, whatever. But Kelly's Kawasaki, it started with Kristen, who is lovely and completely answered the call for mags. Great opportunity there to buy a new model SV. And then somewhere along the way there, Maggie decided, I love you. It's your turn though, to buy a new bike. But I try to be a good spouse. I'm fighting to make sure she understands that we can do this. She can have another bike. It can be the next thing we do. And she just really felt like it was a time to let go of the triumph and we will gracefully skate into whatever opportunity finds us. She loves the idea of the SV. I'm excited about that. Cool. But she told me to run with it. So this brings me to Greg at Kelly's Kawasaki, who I called after the fact and like started a new deal with a different rep, he also had the bike. I wanted a blue 2025 Suzuki GSX-8R, the Gixator. The yellow is just a little much, right? I love the yellow. I don't like tickets. That's what I meant. Yeah. It's a little bit too. Hey, look at me. Aren't I going fast?

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: I need something that's like blue.

Brian: And the blue is just dead sexy. Yeah. I like it. Yeah. It's nice.

Robin: So Greg really hooked it up. Thank you, Greg, for all the help, which was a lot of back and forth, a lot of me setting limits and him finding ways to appease those limits and giving me warnings to make sure, Hey, if you don't do this, you're going to need to do that just to make sure things line up. Big help. Which brings me to Kirsten who got me through the financial process. I put all the money we had down minus a grand and chopped the bill down by half. She got me set up a financing, which despite me having gleaming credit, there's also a matter of maybe not enough credit, you know, because everything's paid, like our trucks paid off, everything's paid down. I only have a little bit here and there. So the rate, I'm not going to even talk about the rate, but it's motorsports. And those rates are always awful, man. They do not let up. If your scores in the 900 range are like, cool, we'll give you a 75% APR. You know, it's just, it's rough. All my ducks were in a row. Then we loaded the bike up into the truck. I don't remember the name of the porter, the guy who used to do all the bike hauling for him. But this dude, that was almost worth the financing by itself. There's a guy that works there who I was all like, okay, I like to do four straps. The chalk is strapped into the truck properly and the bike goes in and then you strap this side, that side, and you strap the back too, and you got to do four straps to make sure strap, strap, strap, straps, the straps, this guy goes, no, here, let me show you. And I mean, I've been doing this a long time, but he's been doing this for real for a long time. He's a professional. Yeah. So with the cinch straps, which everybody's like, you use those cinch straps, you gotta not use the cinch straps, they come loose. They always come undone. I'm like, you just cause you're not doing them right on this day, picking up this bike, he showed me how to use them properly, get the bike into the front chalk, crease the suspension down about like 33 to 55% of the suspension travel. Don't blow out your freaking fork seals, but just get it compressed enough that you feel some boing. And then what he does is it's cinched. He then takes the cinch strap, wraps it around its own connection, and then ties a single wrap knot at the cinch connector, and then wraps that around itself one more time. That causes the knot to tighten up against the force of it. And then its own weight pulling on that makes it so the knot cannot fit through, it cannot come undone. Two straps all the way home. Now that doesn't change the fact that the tailgate almost came off the back of my truck, because I didn't know that when you lift it halfway up, that's the method by which you can lift one side off and pull the other side out. Oh yeah. I thought all the drivers behind me were just being super, super considerate. Anyhow, the new bike is home. Thanks to these amazing people. That's me in a nutshell.

Brian: And it looks like they're in Mesa, Arizona.

Robin: Yeah. Which is near Phoenix proper, right? Yeah. Yeah. Also shout out to West Geo's. I got to hang out with amazing musician out of Chicago. Who's now in Phoenix making it, doing his thing, kicking its ass. If you haven't checked out West John, check out West John band. So those are my shout outs. Um, I'm not going to rant too hard about this. I'm going to get it out of my system. This is the last of these opening.

Brian: Rant equals on. Yeah.

Robin: I mean, yeah, I see the opening and closing HTML tags for rant here. Why is it? Does Harley Davidson just not learn anything about anything but them? Then when they see something, they have no understanding of, they look at it and they say, I heard a word someplace else, and I've never seen that before. I'll just conjoin those two things and call it that. That's one of dem dare. That's dem dare this. Oh, that's one of dem dare that because they don't do it. Therefore, anything they see that they don't recognize is dem dare. What did they do, man? The new H they're billing it as a sport tour. Okay. Capital nothing about this bike. We're about to discuss his sport touring. They took the Pan America. They took the bags off and there are zero sport bike ingredients. So this was never a sport bike to begin with. And they've removed the luggage. Now I know there are listeners out there that have read our article about what does it really mean to be sport touring? And I give them the 50%, 50% thing. It's 50% bike, 50% mindset. And people love the mindset thing. Cause I can get on pretty much any bike. And if they ride it well enough, okay, they're sport touring. But honestly, the base of it is a sport bike with luggage, modern standard to fully tuck position. So if you look at the VFR or the sprint ST from yesteryear, or you take any of today's modern standards, I qualify your FJ 09 because I just think it's a beautiful bike, but the point is there are certain ingredients that you have to just, you got to feel like they're there, which means I'm going into that article. I'm gonna change it to 49, 51, 51% bike, 49% mindset. Okay. Harley took the bags off of their Pan America. So I know the people out there that agree with the 49% part. Well, yeah, but I mean, it's the mindset that is false. It should have at least a few sport bike related features, anything to give it a sleek aerodynamic pavement specific track day feel of sorts. This bike looks like they half smelted random hardware store shelving components, slapped a couple of 17 inch rims on it and said, I don't know. Maybe this here's one of them, their sport touring jalopies. Again, they removed the bags. So no, it's also not touring, offering a touring machine without the touring equipment. The industry has the worst read on what their audience already made sense of just adding confusion to an otherwise bad-ass opportunity. Like they don't quite understand what the concept of a sport touring machine is visually. And they don't bother looking at motorcycle history. So they just invent the term at random and splash it onto like a scrambler or like a chopper trike. It's just whatever they decide. It is a niche.

Brian: And what's weird about this one is a, it was a 17 rear 19 front, because it was sort of a quote adventure tour. Yeah, a pretty decent adventure bike from what I understand. Pretty good from what I hear. A lot of interesting features. Like they did a lot of really good engineering. Like the thing where it'll kind of hunker down when you come to a stop. Yeah. Self-lowering. That system is really interesting. And there's a lot of neat stuff about it. Great engine and so forth or whatever. But yeah, they went to a 17 inch front and, and then they, and it doesn't look right at all. It's, it's very odd how this, yeah, it's very odd how this, this looks. Um, and yeah, they took the bags off. So maybe you're just supposed to go to Jeevy and buy your own bags and, and, and go there. I don't know. What could they have done differently? Oh man, don't come to me with a problem without a solution.

Robin: Observe what is happening on other actual dedicated ST bikes all the way to the mid nineties. Heck late eighties, early to mid nineties, well into the two thousands. Watch what has been done with those bikes in the past to keep them not only touring friendly, but sleek aerodynamic, give it sex appeal. On this bike, the exhaust is almost as long as the wheelbase. They didn't change it.

Brian: They, they kept a lot of the, they kept all the height of the adventure bike. So it looks that that looks a little bit wrong. Like for example, some, some really good looking integrated bags would have gone a long way. Yes. Color matched integrated bags. Yeah.

Robin: Your bags are a little bit, they're a little square and they're top loading. Top loading is fine, but they need to have a sleek aerodynamic feel. It should feel sport. You know, look at a sport bike and sort of match those.

Brian: Yeah. And the adventure model, like they, the, their top of the line model has these gigantic aluminum rectangular bags that you, you know, the stolen from the BMW guys, and that's not right. That's not it either. You're not going to Tierra del Fuego and one day or anything like, I don't know what these guys think they're doing. Yeah. Lowered a little bit, do something with the rear with, you know, like some integrated bags on the rear. Like what was it?

Robin: The Suzuki GSX F you're referring to the Suzuki GSX dash S 1000 GT plus.

Brian: Thank you. That had the bags integrated. Uh, it looked good with or without them.

Robin: I never liked those headlights, but by comparison, yeah. The BMW R 1200 RS. There you go.

Brian: Yeah, exactly. That had integrated bags or has, and, uh, they could have put in a little more effort. That's the thing of it. Changed the front wheel and that was it.

Robin: Harley Davidson, in my perspective is our brand to both defend and our puppy to kick, you know what I'm saying? I would love to see them branch out on the knowledge scale and do smart things involving the metric system offer the rest of us who aren't going to drink their bacterial Kool-Aid and hop on bikes that don't do what we want. I really want Harley Davidson to succeed. I believe in them as an American product, but I'm always repeatedly disappointed by them claiming that no, we got the answer. You want to come to this? No, make something I want. And I promise you, if you price it to compete with UJM, you've got my business. But if you redesign or rebadge all of the same tech as a UJM and say, well, it's American, so, you know, it's worth the extra 10 grand, again, I want you to succeed. So as much as I'm kicking you to the ground, get with the program, price it accordingly, and you'll have my business. Otherwise, buh-bye. I never said hello.

Brian: This engine is fantastic. Take that engine, put it in a properly sporty chassis, and it's going to be great. And the same goes for, and the same goes for Indian. That Scout engine is an absolute beauty. It's an absolutely wonderful engine. And so far they have refused to put it, that beautiful, wonderful engine into anything but a feet forward, smash bugs with your metatarsals cruiser. Yeah. When they put that in, when they put that into a standard style bike or a sporty bike or a sport tour, people are going to really respond to that. I think. Give me a fixed headlight.

Robin: Give me a bikini fairing. Ooh, go big. Give me a full fairing. Give me some clip-ons and price it competitively because you ain't that good yet. You don't just enter the market and say, well, we are triumphant at what? Losing money? Good on you. Good luck. Rant over. That was a lot of negative. Now let's get positive and have some real fun here. Questions from the wild. Brian found a great question. If you would like us to field your questions, email podcast at T R O dot bike. My voice has been going on and on. Why don't you take a turn?

Brian: I heard this question a while back. I've heard this a few times and I think it's worth exploring a little bit. And so you always hear the phrase riding around a problem in a bike. Yeah. Blah, blah, blah. The rebound damping is off, but I was able to ride around it and have a good time anyway. So, you know, and, and I've talked about riding around suspension problems, things like that. And to a degree you can ride around using the phrase, um, other issues with the bike, you know, uh, carburation or fuel injection issues, you know, all kinds of other problems you can, you can work around and you can keep going, keep moving and so forth, uh, safely and so forth. And, and I've had people at, so you talked about riding around this. Uh, how do you do that? That's a good question. Yeah. Yeah.

Robin: For example, there are lots of ingredients to the question. So you can take that question in a lot of different ways. You know, there's like the version where you are letting the suspension do what it does and you are letting the bike dance and you're just ignoring it because you know, you've got control. And as Brian says, keep flying the plane. Right.

Brian: Yeah. And there, there are a lot of phases to that too. And this is not like, for example, one of the things a new rider should not do is buy a defective old bike because you don't know what is right and what is wrong. We talked about that before you should buy something that works. And that's, that's, that's, that's simple. If you're an experienced dishwriter and you get on something that works, that doesn't quite work. Right. Stage one is figuring out what in the hell is wrong. If you get on a bike and you're riding it around, you're like, why won't this thing go around corners or what is, why does it feel mushy? You know, you have to, you have to be able to identify something about what's going on.

Robin: Well, they got to know what mushy means too, because sometimes they'll be like, I don't know.

Brian: That could mean anything. Yeah.

Robin: Is this fun? Am I having a good time? I guess I am. Somebody told me I am. It's like, they don't know what you're feeling on that bike. And you apparently might not, you know, the writer might not.

Brian: Yeah. Like if you're having trouble getting around corners or it feels notchy or, you know, these are all, you kind of have to really refine that down. Um, and I'll give an example. A lot of bikes come to the U S, um, Suzuki did this a lot. And, uh, Triumph I know did this a lot on the earlier bikes with really, really, really soft fork springs. That will give you all kinds of problems. You know, you can have problems breaking, you can have problems. You know, to feel twitchy, you'll feel weird going around corners. You know, when you're coming to a stop at a stoplight, you'll, it'll feel really weird. Uh, you might even bang on the, you might even hit the bump stops. You know, if you go over a big bump or something, when you're accelerating, the bike will feel a lot better. And then when you're breaking the bike or you're just going along level, the bike will feel really nervous and weird. And these are all things that come from fork springs are too soft. So being able to identify those things is kind of step one, uh, identifying problems with the shock or with the forks. Like, uh, if you have, like, if you don't have enough, uh, rebound damping, it'll feel like it's trying to throw you off the seat. You go over a bump and boom, boom, feel all of it. If you don't have enough compression damping, you know, you'll be bottoming out and you'll, you'll feel like if you go over a bump, your butt's on the tire. You know? Yeah. These are just a few examples, you know, that kind of thing.

Robin: And then riding around it, the other version of that question could also mean your input at the controls. There's one version of you tolerating, and there's one version of you anticipating. I think those are both sides of the question in some versions. Like you're either dealing with the, Oh, this, that bump's going to, I already see it, boom, Oh yeah, then you got to just like, let the bike find its way back to normal. I mean, so the recovery of it, how good are you at that? Well, I mean, it could, it's a way to fine tune your skills is to have to recover from bed, you know what I mean? But before that, I mean, or if you get better, then there's still the matter of what are you doing at the controls to compensate that compensation is an act of riding around the suspension to some degree.

Brian: Yeah. That's the step two and three is compensating when, when things aren't right or whatever, then in the stage beyond that, where you want to be, if you're going to have to live with this bike for a little while. Where you want to be is being able to anticipate what's going on and, and ride it in such a way that you're not going to encounter those limits. And sometimes that's just very simple. Slow the hell down. Yeah. If you're coming up on a bump or a speed bump, you know, get your butt off the seat, take the shock with your, with your legs, rather than making the bike absorb it all for you. It's cliche, but with any of these suspension issues, it's really, really important to be extremely smooth. Like the smoother you can be in your throttle inputs, your braking. Uh, if you have soft fork springs, which is really common, really avoid extreme braking, be very gentle with your braking. I w I don't know if I would say bias to the rear a little more, but be aware that if you grab a handful of brake, you're going to bottom out and it's going to, you know, you're going to get chattering, but you can still have a good time in a twisties, you know, like for example, soft fork springs, enter your corners, slow and power out of them. So you're in the, in the good range on the fork and you can have smoothly at that, a nice gentle role. Smoothly go gently on the grease mud. Yes.

Robin: Smoothly with vengeance. I don't know how you use that.

Brian: Like, uh, like my V-Strom, for example, I had a 2002 V-Strom was the first year of that bike. The V-Strom 1000 had really crappy fuel injection. So choppy when fuel injection is kind of crude, it always shows itself like way down at the bottom. You know, when you're first entering the throttle, you know, when you're, when you're at like 1% throttle, 2%, 3%, that's yeah. And then suddenly you're getting 50%, you know, and the first VFR that had VTEC yo, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Robin: And the valve timing would change. The eggs would shift over to a different notch. And people would be like leaned over in a corner and it would just go, and then all of a sudden the bike is squirrelly as hell and they're leaned over, taking a hairpin, different power in different places, it's not a good feeling.

Brian: And like on the V-Strom, you know, I was, I was able to compensate, you know, learn how to compensate over time. And it was, um, yeah, a lot of it was like, I would start, I would be preloading the throttle and I would actually end up, I would actually end up using the clutch. On corner exits where you really want to really smoothly, like a very thin slice of cheese, you know, start to get into the, start to get into the cheddar, you know, the clutch became an ingredient. Yeah. So I, I, I'd actually use a little bit of clutch slip to, to smooth that transition out from off throttle to on throttle.

Robin: That's harmless. You know, it's a wet clutch and you can kind of grind on it a bit more rough it up.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. And, and stuff like I would kind of preload the throttle a little bit. There's a lot of little tricks that I figured out over time. That's even hard to explain, uh, for just getting around that because he, with a power command or whatever, there's just no getting around it. It was a big L twin with giant throttle bodies. You could put a puppy in, you know, and, and it was just going to be, you know, and the fuel injection was early, early days and it was just not going to be smooth, but, uh, you could still be smooth on it, uh, with a little bit of work.

Robin: This starts to get into music a bit. I remember hanging out at CCM where I went to school and we were all just kind of hanging out in the rehearsal room and there was a beater of a guitar in there. And the guitar professor who rolled in to say hi to everybody, just, you know, Hey, how's everybody going? Yeah. How's everybody doing? Sits down to chat with us because that's the kind of relationship we have with the professors there. Hang out, learn, experience other musicians who are far, far greater than us while we're still younglings, you know? And he sees the guitar and he picks it up and it gets into whatever instrument you're playing. It doesn't really matter what you're playing. It's how you play it. So your injection thing, you compensated, you adjust it to the instrument. This guy picks up this crap-tastic guitar and just does things with it that made no sense to any of us. Just what just have, just nails it, sets it back down, lights it on fire and walks out the room. Like that's a doctorate of music right there. You know what I mean? Like, holy shit, that comes into play here. It's sort of like, if you know the instrument, how it's going to respond, you know, what's going to happen. Well, within the boundaries of what music that instrument can make, you stay within those boundaries. You can do some pretty bad-ass shit. But then again, I remember with like our good friend, Dave or Davide as his technical, during the Trip 7's tour, he had just gotten a brand new Triumph 765 Street Triple, the third gen Street Triple. And he was like, man, the suspension, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can't do half of what that can do. He's a total control instructor, once was track day instructor guy, whatever. And I just said, well, I know the formula for your suspension. And we tuned it to that formula down the middle. And all of a sudden, oh, that's how it's supposed to feel. Oh, look what I can do now. So if you're mastering your techniques on a shit situation, when you arrive at a normal, well-earned, well-tuned bike, you're going to feel like Superman every time. So does that cover it? Yeah, we could go on and on, but why? The timing's really good because I think that now that my bankroll is gone, a new suspension definitely has to be on the shopping list for the distant future. Cause right now with the new bike, I'm on the Suzuki suspension, whatever, you know, it's fine, it'll probably remain fine for 15,000 miles, but at some point I'm going to want to adjust shit more easily. And boy, did I buy some stuff? I'm going to bust our shopping list. So segment one, I know that last time we talked about how we wanted to get into atmospheric re-entry, as I call it. Basically, if you ever left motorcycling and then you wanted to come back and what that experience is like for some, and I think we will discuss that next episode when it's Brian's turn to run the show. Absolutely. I like it. We were going to do that, but instead I'm going to talk about how you can turn a $10,000 bike into a $13,000 sport touring bike in less than seven days. It's a testament to middle-class problems. Sponsored by Twisted Road. You too can make your machine a sport touring bike with luggage. Proof, my 1982 Yamaha Seiko. I had no idea what I was talking about. Didn't know anything about anything. And I just really want, it was what I could do. It was what I could afford. It was what I could buy. It was my first bike. Well, not my first, you know, I turned it into the closest thing to a sport bike I could make it. Anybody can do this. Well, Brian will often ask, did you ride today? And this time, no, because last night, remember, okay. So I had the Bandit 1200 GSF 1200 S, which I converted over to a big beastly pig of a sport touring bike. I loved that machine. Anything that can be done to a Bandit, I did. And then I bought the R1200RS, a true to form BMW dedicated sport touring motorcycle, meant for the purpose of what our website does, Tierra de Bike. Then I was in the mood to do something affordably cool and sport bike-ish. And I saw the Jixator, man. And it was just love at first sight. I didn't need to test ride it. I just wanted it right out the gates. Like, look at that. I know Suzuki. I know that this bike's going to be nasty and it's got nothing on it that says ST until I get to it. It's a fully fared sport bike with modern standard ergonomics. Inside of a week, I spent all of my excess on getting the components for this. Last night, all these bits with a total mental breakdown at one point arrived and I tried to do as much as I could. First things first, that rear fender is longer than the bike. It is ridiculous. You would walk in the door and the bike would be in another room, but you'd bump into that freaking tail section. So it's got a tail tidy on it now. I've also found the perfect Ram ball mount. It goes into the down tube of your bike. Okay. It is not the compression rubber that is offered by Ram themselves. They make one that's like a cone and you cut it, fit it. And no, there's one out there that is much like a wall anchor. So it's an expanding metal that's got teeth on it. Three striated O-rings. Screw this in. The rubber O-rings compress against the metal to stop movement bites in and just beautiful. So I definitely bought that. That's installed. So now I have a place for my navigation. Now, then I got the new windscreen. And this is where the emotional catastrophe took place. Oh, six bolts, pull the six bolts, pull out the windscreen. I said, pull out the wind, pull out the windscreen. And then you hear pop. Did I break anything? Oh crap. There's a bit, nothing broke, but the rubber compression screws had fallen into the fairing area. I had to one by one. Oh, okay. It was like playing operation. The windshield came out in ways that it should not have because the small end is not going to make it around the big end. So it popped through the plastics and I got extremely fricking lucky. Then I get all these videos on how to do this. I go to YouTube and this dude made an eight video dissertation, 45 seconds of each video on the steps to take to do this. So then I had to go to my YouTube channel, create the playlist, line up all the videos, get them in order. So I can watch the instructions. I had to pull the dash, unfasten the outside fairing, stretch it, pop the dashboard out, unhitch the wires that connect to the whole HUD before removing more plastics in there. Allen heads, torques, and push pin connectors, one of which fell deep into the fairing. We lost it. I had an extra one from the tail tidy. Maggie then found that in there while I was basically in the fetal position on the ground, renouncing all faith in anything.

Brian: Well, she's, she's got those little tiny lady fingers so she can find stuff like that. Yeah.

Robin: She actually found it on the fender. So windscreen got in, that was the next one. I installed the luggage supports that involved taking off the rear passenger pegs. Those are in now. One piece of those was broken on arrival. So I got to call them. So these luggage bars that click into place and hold my luggage in place. Okay. So the tail tidy spartans it up. The Ram ball has my navigation. The windscreen tedious as it was now for my height works and gets the air around me. Nice. The luggage supports. We're starting to get luggage going now, right? With the tail tidy, I definitely wanted to get a mud guard that went in pretty easy for the most part. I may have augured out one of the threadings, but whatever it's wood screws are supposed to fit pretty snug, right? Diagonally into an outlet.

Brian: So you get a lag bolt, a half inch or so. Yeah.

Robin: Now it's still the bank's bike. So then frame sliders, crash knobs, adhesive tank protectors are now in place. She's just becoming everything I want her to be. I went with the GV easy bag system, the big ones, the 48 liters. So I've got these huge soft bag, which I'm fine with. It's working out. Cool. I got the speedometer protector and then the little bits that you can just, you know, I had to replace all the stuff that the Beamer had proprietary. So you just buy them cheap in modular fashion. So I got this little mini hygrometer thermometer. It's like a little disc. You just pop it on the dash somewhere. And now I've got the ambient temperature. I got the Oxwin 12 volt motorcycle heated grip covers that I had for Maggie. You just wrap them around your grip and they Velcro to themselves and they work. They got three levels of heat. I got a go cruise throttle lock. So now I've got quote unquote cruise control of sorts. Kind of. I got the Fiat freeway blaster. I'm going to try to use both, which will require a relay, but whatever. It's cool. I also, we talked about this. I'm not on the loud pipe, save lives bandwagon, but I love a loud exhaust. So I'll probably try to go with a loud, I'll probably remove the silencer at some point. I certainly don't believe the deer whistles work. I bought deer whistles. You know, if I avoid a situation and I find a quarter on the ground, it's in my pocket, it's staying in that jacket for the remainder of the time I own that bike. I got the elect top 12 volt fuse block, which is like a really nice auxiliary power system. I also got spindles so that now I can lift it up on a track stand, both front and rear. I got a new track stand. So yeah, it's been.

Brian: Sounds like really rough on the old Visa there.

Robin: It beat the hell out of the wallet. I'm done. It's all just me gloating about right now. I've basically itemized the bike with strategy in mind. She's going to be a sport touring machine, like it or not. I'm super, super amped about it.

Brian: Emphasis on sport. Yeah. Nice. Can't wait to see it. You're going to have to wear out the stock tires real quick there.

Robin: And then, uh, I don't know what they put on them, but Dunlop sport max, something sport tech. Yeah.

Brian: Sport max, sport, cheap, something.

Robin: Yeah. I keep it at 4,500 RPMs is excruciating by the way. Oh God. I really want to let her rip 4,500 RPMs for about 150 more miles. Then I got to do an oil change and I'm ready to rock. Then I can go to 7,000 of 10, 7,000 is plenty for me. That's usually my normal, you know, I'm not usually going apeshit because it's a 10,000 RPM bike. So when you hit six or seven, it's like, yeah, that feels good. I'm, I'm going at a pace now.

Brian: It's good to know it's there. Cause when you, uh, you're mid corner, it's a giant sweeper. You don't want to have to upset it by shifting. And one nice thing is, yeah, it's not a can bus or anything like that. So you don't have to work around that. It does, however, have an immobilizer. Hopefully being Suzuki, it won't just die with no recourse in a few years.

Robin: Segment two, the armory brought to you by gearchick.com. Welcome Joanne Don. How you been?

Joanne: Not bad. I went to the AIM Expo last week. Oh, nice. Yeah. I did a little bit of networking, saw my friends, which was always great.

Robin: Elbow rubbing.

Joanne: Yeah. I saw some cool stuff. And, um, if you want to see actually a little video review of it, Dork in the Road, his name is Ben.

Brian: Yeah.

Joanne: He just uploaded his video. He has a nice little review of the expo.

Brian: Yeah. I actually saw his video. Oh, good. They used to have the AIM Expo. It actually ended up in Indianapolis a few times. Never got to go.

Joanne: Well, you're media.

Robin: Yeah. Say the word. I mean, I don't know how I got these guns, but you need a press pass. I'll drop one right in your lap. It's no big deal. Boom. Go wherever you want. Ask anybody anything you want.

Brian: Put a camera on a stick.

Joanne: I didn't document as well as I should have, but, um, yeah, it was nice. The weather was really nice. It was 65 every day. This expo had a lot of international attendees. Um, there were people from all over the world there. There were Italians there. There was actually a whole section with the Italian flag. So vendors from Italy, and then there were actually vendors from Southeast Asia, like Taiwan and China, and they had some really cool parts and accessories. And there was actually a whole section of Pakistan. So manufacturers from Pakistan. So there was actually a pretty broad representation there of people. I've only been to two of these. And one thing I noticed is they had a whole aisle of tech companies that have resources for dealerships. So say you own a Honda dealership, they have all kinds of different software and tech. You can use like AI. Lightspeed is there for, you know, for your, uh, you know, in-store POS. And yeah, it was actually pretty cool. If you're a dealer, I imagine there were a lot of resources there. So.

Robin: Glad to hear it. What are you feeling today?

Joanne: I believe I was tasked with affordability and budget. What are some things you can do when you're a very poor, broke student, say, but you have this little motorcycle or scooter and you need to gear up for it or whatever your situation is, what are some things you can do if your budget is bare minimum? The first thing is you still want to shop as if you have plenty of budget. In order to figure out what to get, you still are faced with the same problems as any of us who do have, you know, a higher budget and the ability to purchase, because you still are faced with the same issues. You have to find products that fit you and work for you. So before you do any shopping, make sure you know what brands to chase and styles to chase that are going to fit you correctly, because there are a lot of options for discounted gear out there and you can find some really good deals. But if you don't really know what you should look for, then that can make it overwhelming. So you should have a general sense of some brands that you want to look at and you should go try stuff on if you can. If you have a cycle gear or a dealership, again, you always want to shop as if you have an endless budget because your goal is what fits me, right? And what works for me, because once you know that, then you can go and shop within the brand. So let's say you fall in love with some beautiful Alpine Stars jacket, but you can't afford it. Well, then what you're going to go look for are older versions of it. So typically a lot of the products, at least all the major brands, Alpine Stars, Dainese, Revit, Klim, all your big brands release products at the fall and the spring, right? So like February-ish and, you know, for March and then September-ish for October, usually you're going to find a lot of items that are replaced. So the fourth version, say, of a Revit sand has gone away and now it's the sand five. Well, that means the four is on sale somewhere and that there's probably still sale items floating around the internet or in the stores.

Robin: We were doing that with tires, like with the Dunlop Road Smart 3s.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: We'd loved those tires. Then we're getting them for ridiculous prices forever.

Brian: The only reason I have a Klim mess jacket is because it's an older version of the induction.

Joanne: Anytime versions are replaced, there will always be a discontinuation. Now there's some exceptions, but those are few and far between. And typically you will see brands say, okay, the price is dropped on the old version three because the four is coming. That's why it's important for you to just try on everything and look at everything so that it helps you find what you need later. And you can ask the store, hey, this five sand five, I love it, but I can't afford it, is there a four available? Can you order me one? And then, you know, that's the size you need and then you'll get a really good deal. So look for the version discontinuations and listen, some of this stuff hangs out. Some stores are better than others at moving discontinued product. So you really want to ask these questions and some stores don't bring them in. It doesn't mean it's not available. Cause remember what you see physically in a store is only a representation of what that store decided to order. It is not a representation of what's truly available. So ask the questions and they should be able to look it up.

Robin: With your vast experience in kit gear, retail and resale, when it comes to the store's investment in the product that they actually get to look at, has the store already bought that? Yep. Okay. Gotcha.

Joanne: Very rarely do brands do consignment. Typically they're buying everything you see on the floor and they're waiting for you to come in and buy it. They can always order stuff too, because no store can afford to bring every item in a collection and every closeout style. They can't afford to do that. And it's just not a good business decision. So they're very particular about what to bring in, you know, that works for their customers. So you can always ask the question, Hey, does this brand have any closeout items that you don't have, but you could order for me? And the answer was probably be yes. So as long as you tried something on that's new and you have a general size, then you have a really good size to order and a very strong likelihood that it will fit you really well.

Robin: This is where my empathy gets activated because usually I think of anybody selling me anything and I'm like, what's the catch here? Where are you getting me? Where am I being gouged? But the truth is you want them to have meat on the bone. It's how they exist. So if you go through them and they help you get a price that you can afford, just like with the bike I just bought over at Kelly's Kawasaki in Mesa, Arizona, you want them to make their mint off of you. They deserve that. They made the whole thing happen. So this is good support of the industry back and forth.

Joanne: That's how you can get really good closeout prices on things. Look for discontinued products. Yeah, that's a great way to get some really good closeout prices in the stores. You know, if you're not lucky enough to live close to a big metro area or where there are stores, which is a common problem here in the States, there's a lot of areas where there are no stores to try on product. There's only stores to buy vehicles. When you shop online, you're going to want to look at your usual places for bargain priced items like eBay, Facebook Marketplace. That's where people are selling used gear all the time. But they're also selling new gear. And that goes for all kinds of things. You can buy brand new Nikes, you know, with tags in a box on eBay.

Robin: New old stock.

Joanne: Absolutely. So it's the same thing. You can find dealers across the U.S. who might be trying to offload product and they set up an eBay store to move maybe discontinued product that they can't have on the floor anymore. So you want to search eBay. But again, you want to have some sense of idea of what brands and styles to look for, just make sure they do accept returns. And usually the dealers that have eBay stores, they usually take returns. Worst case, you pay shipping back or something.

Robin: Or even if there's a reprocessing fee, it's still worth it.

Joanne: Again, you want to have a sense of what am I looking at? Facebook Marketplace is kind of a new Craigslist. What I search on there for all kinds of things, furniture, like regular clothes, accessories. Search your Facebook Marketplace. And another idea is search the Facebook Marketplace of a different metro. If you live in the middle of Missouri, then put in the zip code for Denver, L.A. See what comes up.

Robin: You're making me giggle a little bit with the Facebook Marketplaces and the new Craigslist because they've made Craigslist so bottom of the barrel weird.

Joanne: I know, it's sad.

Robin: You can find some really fucked up shit on Craigslist now that just, wow, that's what's left here.

Joanne: Still breathing, to be honest.

Robin: My space.

Joanne: Yeah. So Facebook Marketplace is such a goldmine. Find something, just message the person and be like, hey, I live in the middle of nowhere and there are no options. That's why I'm shopping in your zip code. I'm a real person. I'm interested. You know, just, you know, you're always wanting to be wary when you sell stuff online. So that might be strange if someone from Missouri is messaging someone in L.A. about something. But the other place is if you are on Facebook, there's a lot of groups there. A lot of motorcycle groups, a lot for women specifically. There's one group called a Women's Marketplace and that is a exchange. It's a group just for women's motorcycle gear. There are people who are global in there. So it is an international group, but you can find stuff domestically. So, so women post their gear in there all the time. I posted some stuff to sell in there before, but it's called a Women's Gear Marketplace. I believe that's on Facebook. But also, if you are in a group, a Facebook group, say you live in, you know, Denver. Well, there's a ton of motorcycle riding groups that have a Facebook group. You should look in there and see if they have, you know, if people are selling stuff in those groups. Check where you live, like the closest metro, and you will find a motorcycle group of some sort on Facebook. And I understand not wanting to use it. I get it. You don't have to, you make a profile, you make it completely private, put up maybe one real photo, put out some info in there, but you can use it just to shop. You know, you don't have to post stuff, so you can just use it to join these groups, you know, and you have to answer a few questions. But people always post, you know, used product in those motorcycle groups.

Brian: I'd also say a lot of times if you say, Hey, I'm a new rider, I'm looking for gear, this size, this whatever, sometimes it'll shake loose something because a lot of people have so much gear in the closet and I don't really get, don't really want to go through it. But if somebody needed my stuff, people will give it away.

Joanne: If you post that, Hey, I'm a poor college student. I really don't have a minimum budget. Does anyone have any gear they don't need anymore? And you'll get a lot of replies. Just make sure you say what sizes you're looking for in general.

Robin: Somebody out there wants you to be safe and they care as much as we do.

Joanne: And more people would rather give it to you, I think, than sell it to you. Especially if you do share that, Hey, I don't have anything and I need something. There are so many who rather just give it to you than try to make a buck off of you.

Robin: There's a great YouTube video of like a father and son in their garage and they're trying to make something stop wobbling. And the dad, he like lights up. He's like, I've got something. I've got what I need for this. There's this like this 30 second music playing. He runs through the house, climbs down the basement, finds these pockets, opens up. He finds this stupid chunk of two by four with a metal lash sticking out of it. It's all like, why did you keep this kind of thing? We all have it. We all have this thing that's still just sitting there. He's like, finally. And he runs upstairs. He puts it under the bench and it's a perfect fit. There was no other reason to have it. And people are like that with kids. Sometimes they have stuff that's just like, I forgot that I still have the remote control for my GoPro Hero 4. Somebody wants it like, holy crap. I kept that. Here you go. It's yours.

Joanne: Yeah, exactly. And so ask for help.

Robin: I remember we used to love new enough and all those places. Do you have any favorites?

Joanne: That's a good segue. So my, you know, the popular e-commerce websites like motorcyclegear.com and actually motorcyclegear.com it was new enough and then they sold it and change the name, but they actually have a lot of closeouts on their website.

Brian: They're honestly on my first stop and they have great customer service. Uh, I was looking for a track suit and I'm like, Hey, I'm somewhere between like walrus and elephant, you know, they actually came up with, yeah, here's this track suit, here's the size, you know, and I said, and, and it was great. It was on the website, but I never would have figured out that this one was the one that didn't have that Adonis cut, you know, you need for tiny, you know, you beautiful, beautiful man.

Joanne: So motorcyclegear.com is great because they do carry a lot of closeouts. RevZilla also has warehouse deals. So they have a warehouse section where it's basically, you know, something that somebody might've, maybe they bought this jacket and they went around the block in it once and they decided it's not for them, which by the way, you should never do, you always want to wear your gear inside the house first. Then they return it and you technically can't sell that as new because they wrote it one time around the block. Well, they usually will knock that price down 10, 20, 30%, depending on what it is. So that's a really good way. And not a lot of websites have warehouse sections. They have closeouts, but the warehouse section on RevZilla is specifically for things that cannot be sold as quote new. That's how you get a really good deal too. And then the last thing is if you know, if you have motorcycle friends, ask them. Hey, do you have any gear you don't want anymore? Do you have anything you don't need anymore? And the answer is probably yes. Especially ones who've been riding for a long time. They're going to have a lot. And if you need help figuring out what to look for, because you haven't shopped, you can send me an email, just send it to help at gearcheck.com. Yeah. And I can help you figure out what to shop for. I'm happy to even shop for you and look for some stuff.

Brian: You know, helping other people spend money is one of the greatest thrills of motorcycling.

Robin: That's so fun. Similar banter at higher revs can be heard via the Gear Chick podcast. Visit gearchick.com that's G-E-A-R-C-H-I-C.com. Dig in folks. Segment three, moments in motorcycle history with Jordan Liebman. I don't know if you've sat down and heard any of his previous stuff, but it's been a blast letting him just sort of ramble through and find his way through the rabbit holes. It's time to pick this up from where we left off. We're talking about George Wyman's coast to coast motorcycle ride in the early 1900s. We're talking about balsa wood toothpicks with a fire on it and wheels that half the time he's pushing through non roads, zero roads. I mean, this is an amazing tale. It's going to take a while. This one we're doing state to state because there's just too much to cover. You got to feel the struggle. Here we go.

Jordan: So this is across America. It says 3,800 miles on a bicycle with a motor on it, an engine on it. This is not publicized. He's going to get 500 bucks. And today's money, that's about $17,000, right? So this is kind of his impetus. Plus he gets to put the third feather in his cap that he's going to be the first guy to cross the United States. You've already done Australia. He's already done San Francisco to Reno and back. Once you get out of San Francisco, past Vallejo, there's no roads. He's literally riding up and down hills with rocks and maybe a sheep pasture or something like that to get to Vallejo. There's nothing. It's like the sound of music where he's running around in the backwards of nowhere. The bike he says is, he says it's capable of 25 miles per hour. That's what he says it's capable of. He goes, he goes about three miles and he ends up staying with his friends on a houseboat called the Ark, which actually was a very big boat. If you name your boat the Ark, it's not going to be a dinghy. And day two is Sunday. He's going from Vallejo to Sacramento. May 17th, 1903, there's about 13 miles uphill with headwinds. Why do we have headwinds going east from California? I don't know. I would assume they'd be tailwinds, but he says they're headwinds. And going uphill with headwinds, he's not able to go anywhere. The engine is just not up there. It's one and a half horsepower. From what I understand, it's 211 CCs. Why that number? I don't know. It's probably the size of the boring bar they use for the motor. But so he rips off what we're calling a muffler. Now I already said mufflers were invented later. This is not a real muffler. What this is, is a box on the end of the exhaust that may or may not have any baffling in it. But what its purpose is to warm up the gasoline in the gas tank, because it is a, what they call a wick carburetor. It is not a carburetor. It is a bowl of gasoline and their gasoline back then, they call it 30 octane. It was a completely different chemical. Like the nearest simulacra to the gasoline they had back then is brake cleaner. It's quintet, as I said, the nearest thing to the gasoline they had back then is something like brake cleaner. It has that volatility and it varied from place to place. It was not uniform, but you know, the, they had petroleum magnets already. There are people making money on oil. And so they've figured out ways to do things and they ship it. And sometimes they make it themselves and I don't know. So what it does is it heats a box of gasoline and the vapors from that can come down through another channel to the intake valve, which I've already told you is a atmospheric intake. So when the piston goes down, there's a spring, it sucks the valve open. That's your charge. Piston comes back up, exhaust valve is closed, bang, spit. That's how it works, right? It is just barely past the hit or miss engine at this point. It is also very haphazard too, because if you backfire in a system like that, you blow the whole fucking bike up, pardon my French. And I assume that kind of thing happened. But back then, like I said, they made people different. They made them stronger, made them tougher. And if you sat there and you're at a bike that blew up, you say, Hey, the bike blew up, give me a beer. That's how it goes, right? So here's the specs on the engine. We're saying at this point, until I hear back from the historian emeritus at the Barber museum, who I called today and didn't answer, but he's, he's got my email, that the engine is a 211 CC IOE F-type inlet over exhaust type engine. All right. With an atmospheric inlet, which is the valve on a spring that gets sucked open by the pistons downward movement. Muffler is nothing more than a box at the end of a pipe. So it's not really a muffler. It's not like the fishtail that Elvis would have had. It is a box on the end. So here he is riding towards Sacramento from Vallejo and he can't get uphill with this engine. So what does he do? He rips off the muffler. Now he can make the trip. It was holding him back that box that was heating the gasoline or whatever you want to call it was holding the, there was too much resistance and he rips off the muffler and now he can make the trip he's actually able to motor on. So it's safe. The carburetor was a WIC type, which is a surface type carburetor. Meaning it was just a box with fuel in it. Vapors are pulled into the cylinder by vacuum. The rear wheel drive is the, a long leather belt that is sewn together at the ends and pulls around a wooden rim that is mounted to the rear wheel called a rim band. Okay. Well, these are actually metal spokes on this guy's, uh, bicycle. I believe because he ends up replacing them umpteen times. The ignition from what I understand, and I've already, I've sent the question to Matt at Wheels for Time and this other guy, Brian over at Barber. On this trip, George talks about his crashes and there are too many for him to even list. He only lists the crashes that caused damage or near death. It's, it's an ongoing thing, a Sisyphean struggle to evoke the Greek mythology. It's just constantly rolling a rock uphill for this guy. And so he says in one point that it breaks his ammeter. For him to have an ammeter, that would mean there has to be a charging system. I don't think there's a charging system. I think he's got just like all the other DD on clones, an array of six volt dry cell batteries that are total loss ignition. So they're just depleting and they're arranged in, in, uh, in parallel, not in series, they're only storage to get tablets. I mean, that's it. Like your regular off the shelf at Walgreens, they got a paper outside there or a cardboard outside. And, uh, their batteries. I mean, they're, they're probably nickel. I'm waiting for answers from the experts that I've reached out to. With that, I'll pour myself another drink. A rim band. I had to ask what was a rim band. I had to really dig into this, but like I said, the rabbit hole expands out fractally and in many directions underground, the rim band is a second rim that is concentric to the outer rim of that holds the tire and the belt turns that just like on a Harley does now, Harley's have belt drive, right? This is a much bigger rim. It's probably got 28 inch rims on these bikes. So it's probably an 18 inch rim or a 20 inch rim. And that drives the engine turns and a leather belt turns that rim band. It's just what they came up with. And this turns out to be a problem later on. So where were we? Ammeter. I think he means voltmeter because a lot of words were used interchangeably through connotation. They were not steadfast. This is the definition of this. I think he means voltmeter. If you have an ammeter, that means it can go plus or minus, right? Meaning that at some point it goes plus means you're charging. So I don't know that he's ever charging. Now, at this time, there, there was a Magneto that you could buy and the company was Bosch and they were the company to have that made a Magneto. They made a big one and made a little one. And you could put this on there. This bike was trick. Maybe he had it. Maybe he didn't. I'm waiting to hear back. But at this point, I'm thinking the rate he's going through batteries, it's a voltmeter. No headlight. What was a headlight back then? Certainly wasn't electric. If you got a total loss electric system, it wasn't incandescent. It was acetylene. Okay. So they give you a can charge at six, 12 pounds of acetylene, a reflector and back, and it puts out a pretty decent fricking light. Could it blow you up? Yeah, it could. You crash good enough, but he didn't have a headlight. This dude's riding during the day. So front suspension is trailing link, which is trick because everything else this company made was rigid. So they went ahead and gave the guy some suspension ahead of their trip. He was able to absorb some of the, uh, the bouncing. The seat is sprung, but basically leather on steel. Starting is by pedaling or bump start, which we'll see later. The bike weighs between 80 and 90 pounds. They got kids running around now with these electric e-bikes. They weigh 80 or 90 pounds. If they literally have to just pedal them and not use the electric side, it'll give you an idea of what it's like to pedal this thing up and down hills, over railroad tracks, through the sand, the mud. Okay. Here's the throttle. The throttle consists of advancing and retarding the spark time. There is no opening and closing a carburetor. There's no mixture screw. There is no jetting. There is no emulsion tube, no butterflies. It is a bowl of gasoline. If you look at the picture of the Deon engine, there's a big circular part there, right? And behind that circular part is a flywheel. The flywheel does not, is inertia. It does not want to stop. Once you get it going, it's going to, it's going to pull you around to the next RPM. Starting might be something, but once you're going, it should, it should, as long as things are in tune, it should keep going. So the throttle consists of advancing and retarding the spark timing. If you know somebody who's ever timed a motorcycle, Norton or whatever, you can sit there with the timing plate and turn it forwards and backwards. And you hear the RPMs raising lower. That does get you more RPMs. Um, and it takes you in and out of different types of tune, but it doesn't come anywhere near what you and I used to. I like to see 1935, 1938 Harley Davidson in the 6,000, 7,000 RPM engine. That's doing things the way we understand it, right? This is nothing like this. Not even as good as your lawnmower, which does have a butterfly valve on it. The tires are pneumatic. The Schrader and the Presta valves that you would inflate your tires with were invented in the 1800s. He did travel with a basic pump. Those were readily available because people have been riding bicycles forever. That's the specs of the bike. I'm still waiting to hear back to find out whether the piston was bronze or aluminum, because this is the bronze age. Crawling out of the water onto land here. This is very early. There's a landscape. Like I said, things can change. For the first 13 miles, it's just hills and valleys. And it's wonderful because he's just outside of Sacramento. He's riding around and everything's okay. He's already ripped off his muffler. Then he gets into the area where they have sheep out on pasture and they've torn up pavement, which is not pavement. It's mud and his wheels get stuck. And he flies 10 feet over the bars and cracks his first of four cyclometers.

Brian: I'm almost a little sad that I didn't know Robin was, was buying this bike until, Hey, I'm on the way home with this bike. I'm like, you, you didn't give me the, you know, you didn't like, I didn't tell you, dude, you should totally buy that bike.

Robin: I remember that the instant I told you this first thing that happened was this link appears on my phone and it's an already populated shopping list that goes to tourandride.com and it's just a stack, you know, a couple grand worth of stuff. That he's like, here's what you need. Boom. And I did, I got it all. I got everything.

Joanne: Did you trade in the Triumph and then get that?

Robin: The Triumph? Oh boy. This is not a way to wind down this episode, but we're going to do it anyhow. Here's how we do this. Maggie found the perfect buyer. This gentleman and his wife showed up, sold the bike. Perfect deal. Pleasant person. Look forward to riding, knowing each other. Led the bike into the back of his truck. Uh, the bike is for his son. He's got the title. Everything's signed properly. He drives it home. Son is amped. I don't know if I can air this part, but then basically about a week and a half later, I got called by the cops only because this person who the person bought the bike for had not registered the bike and was involved in an accident. First question, any MSF instructor, you know it. Is everybody okay? Yeah. Is everybody okay, officer? Yes. They didn't have any place to point the bike to, to figure out what was going on. I was like, first off that bike was sold. I want nothing to do with this. Just so you know. And the officer was completely appeasing. He was like, yes or no, you were not involved at all. We just need a way to trace the history of the bike. So I gave him my old plate number and they figured it out. Cash in hand from the buyer. It was a done deal and it was going to go towards Maggie's next bike. And then she really wanted me to have a go. She wanted me to have my turn.

Joanne: Did these parents choose this bike for this kid? Or did he say, Hey, I want this bike. Can you go pick it up for me?

Robin: Kid is 30 plus years old.

Joanne: Why are they picking up a bike for him?

Robin: I don't know the backstory, but the gentleman who did pick it up was on the level.

Joanne: Look, there's nothing wrong with your parents picking up your motorcycle for you. That's actually a really nice thing that they did for him before he promptly broke it. I say that only because I firmly believe that as a motorcyclist, you should always be the one to choose your motorcycle.

Robin: Well, he did. He did. He didn't test ride it, but he sent them. He was like, I want it. I want this bike.

Joanne: That's awesome.

Brian: Okay. So they were, they were just logistics. Okay.

Robin: Proxies. Yeah. No, that's fantastic. Are you on a round light?

Joanne: It's a 12.

Robin: That's what we have.

Joanne: Yeah. Does it have the sport seat or does it have the standard R seat?

Robin: The one with the strap across it.

Joanne: Yeah. And it's like light grayish. It's like a washed out black.

Robin: Yeah.

Joanne: Yeah. That's the one I have. And I really want the stock. R seat is more of a saddle, so it's really comfortable for distance.

Robin: Is that something you might like to explore and talk about next time?

Joanne: Yes and no. I mean, I already know what I want, I guess for the armory.

Brian: I've got an idea on that that might relate to what we were talking about, Robin. Go on. Talk about atmospheric reentry and kind of, we're going to be talking about the topic of reentry riders. Been a while since you've been on a bike and you're coming back. What are some of the things that we can talk about there? And I think there's something to be said because I think what surprises people that have not, uh, worn a helmet or looked at gear recently is how incredible it's gotten in the last five, 10 years. Like if you haven't ridden a motorcycle in 10 years, the gear is just spaceship stuff. So that might be a neat topic. I don't know. Maybe you want to talk about something else.

Joanne: If you're going to be talking about reentry riding, like yeah. Riders coming back. Yeah. What's changed. What are some things that you haven't, that you may not have seen before that you didn't see 10, 20 years ago that you could see now?

Brian: Yeah. Stuff like D3O armor.

Joanne: Technology.

Brian: Sure. Some of the helmet technology, MIPS and stuff like that. So, yeah.

Robin: So Brian, we'll be talking about disco era riders coming back into play and Joanne will be talking about disco tech that you can now buy.

Brian: And underneath it all, we'll have a, we'll have a, like a subtle beat going, you know, I'll just do this a whole episode of Boots and Pants.

Joanne: I hope that you'll touch on, um, the education component of that.

Brian: Absolutely.

Joanne: You know, kind of the risks, you know, what, and some resources. Cause I actually have a couple of good resources for that.

Robin: I've already got a rant on that because there were a lot of people with my previous bike. A lot of the BMW GS riders like to move their GPS up to the windscreen. That's a bright light in your face while you're trying to pay attention to the road. It's like right here. Yeah.

Joanne: Yeah.

Robin: It's in your damn face. And they're like, it's better. It's like, that's a bad idea in my personal opinion.

Joanne: But does that depend on how tall you are? Cause for example, for me, that would be in my face, but for you, probably not.

Robin: I want my eyeline, horizon of my helmet.

Joanne: Yeah.

Robin: I don't even see my HUD, my dashboard. It's like, I see road and all I have to do is just a slight boom. And then I'm there. So there are a lot of people that are sticking it, gluing it together. It's like glued to their face. Like it's like wearing your phone.

Joanne: Maybe some people know how to pay attention better than others.

Robin: I understand that you're floating their side. I understand that you want to defend them, but the fact is wait till you hear my Harley rant in the beginning of this episode.

Brian: Oh man. Yeah.

Joanne: You should know as well as I, given how long we've been riding, that everybody gets to make their own choices, even when we disagree and even if they're not the best choices, as long as it's not physically harming me, we've all ridden combined, I don't know, 70 years of riding here between the three of us or something like that, you know, how judgmental motorcyclists are and I'm tired of it, we all are, even when we like each other, you know, when we're friends. I've tried my very best to understand people's choices. However, not great. Maybe give them a little different perspective. So they'll make a better one later, but I understand what you're saying, Roe.

Robin: I agree with your take completely. The time when I'm the most judgmental is when people who don't understand my lane try to enter it with incorrect information. And that's a lot of what the beginning of this episode, Harley did this recently. So I have a thing about it and we go off on them.

Joanne: I feel you.

Robin: I want to thank you guys for being here. Thank you, Jordan Lehman for this week's segment. I want to thank Twisted Road for having our back. Visit twisted.tro.bike today and get yourself a discount. What do you guys say? You guys ready to get out of here? Let's get out of here.

Joanne: Yeah, I need to eat.