Robin: All right. Good night. Salmon bowl. I feel this is a good thing. I feel slow. I started thinking about it. I was like, you know, Maggie has a pattern. She'll make these, these dishes when it's like, you know, 15 minutes before it's time to record. And she listens to the episodes. So she must be like, you need to slow down.

Brian: You need to calm down like Taylor Swift. But yeah, so we've got like mellow nighttime jazz DJ Robin on hand today. All right. Yeah. That's great, man.

Robin: Snap your fingers.

Brian: So what are we talking about today, Robin? You tell me.

Robin: I'm in the, I'm following in the wake of your footsteps.

Brian: Yeah. There you go. So yeah, we're going to be talking about Joanne. I believe it was Joanne, was it, who had a great idea. Your first sport touring ride. Yes. Great topic. Great. Great thought. Yeah. You've been riding around for a while. You're, you know, you know, your way around the bike, you know how, you know, uh, you've been riding back and forth to work. You've been on day rides, you know, and now it's time for your first sleepover. So that's going to be kind of the big topic this time around. Also I don't know who it was, had the idea to talk about a coffee or coffee on the road. I'm just going to say you guys are going to be offended.

Robin: Well I have multiple answers because I want to make sure there's some contrast. I'm going to let you two answer first and I will answer, but I think it's a good, it's a good topic. I'm sorry. I really don't operate well without coffee in the morning.

Brian: Got to have your stimmies. And uh, yeah, I, I need coffee in the morning. It's, you know, monkey on my back. Hello. This is my monkey. I need one vice. Damn it. I have ways of feeding the monkey what he needs. And um, yeah, purists are going to be upset, but that's all right.

Robin: It's going to be some mushroom coffee stuff. Is that, is that the deal? Oh no, no. Coffee. Good man. Thank you.

Brian: Thank goodness. Mushroom. Yeah.

Robin: No, whatever.

Brian: Mushrooms don't make caffeine, do they?

Robin: No, they don't.

Brian: Opening banner. Corrections. Website updates. Robin, what's going on in your life besides a large whack of a salmon?

Robin: Yeah. The wife made that salmon bowl. So I'm just slowed down. We'll see. Kind of fun. Mine are quick so that you can have the stage, but basically update on the writer who bought Maggie's triumph. If you listen to a previous episode, we found the perfect buyer and they had an incident not long after having bought the bike. Turns out they were sideswiped by another vehicle, by a car. They are fully recovered. They weren't actually hurt all that bad to begin with. And the bike is not totaled, nor is it for sale. I actually reached out to the person who picked that bike up and said, well, there are some components I might like to get back, like the alu rack from SW Motec. They put a smile on my face after informing me that the bike is being brought back, fully repaired to its previous state. It's going to be all good.

Brian: Nice. Good to know. Yeah. They're not kittens, but you feel, you know, you want them to go to be in good homes, you know?

Robin: You want to see them put a smile on somebody else's face. Got to say thank you to Ron Lieback over at TwistedRoad.com for his article about the top five sport touring motorcycles, buyers and renters guide. You should look that up for sure. Excellent article. Nice. Mostly I'm pointing out that it caters to my sensibilities about what constitutes, you know.

Brian: Yeah. You said sensibility. I think you mean sensitivity.

Robin: Yes. What do you mean, man? What do you mean? I'm not touchy. Okay. Other than that, let's see. I had the pleasure of riding to Silver City and back as is easily accessible to me where I'm at. I now have the SW Motec Alley Rack on the bike, which means I have the adapter for the monolock series and Maggie's previous top case on there. In adding contents to that top case before the ride and then experimenting with the bike's capabilities in a long straight going from Truth or Consequences to Hillsboro, I discovered that the front end gets pretty dang light. The front end starts to really get floaty once you hit the, well, at least the speed limit. So I started hunting around to see if there are any downforce wings for it, because they do make them. In place of the mirrors, you can get downforce wings. You remove the mirrors, put them on, then you get bar ends or whatever, just to get some front end down. But at the same time, then I realized, well, I've got the suspension. The bike ships with the suspension on level four of however many clicks. I've got it on two now because it was just too much. So I think I'll click it up a step. Maybe that'll give it a little bit more anchoring and make it feel a little bit more planted. Like I said, going the speed limit like that has its effects, right?

Brian: Yeah. You might need to increase preload on the rear. I like it. Maybe we can do some measuration and scientificness when we're in the same place and we can look at how much squishitude you've got on your suspension. Yeah. Scientific. Yeah. Suspensionology. Yeah. Anyway.

Robin: Last thing I'll say, our podcast file server has a lengthy server-side script, a PHP script, which automatically compiles the episodes so that you get the opening sponsorship message, anything we're putting on, like group tours, things like that, you get to hear about that, as well as the intro music and such. I started thinking about this. I was like, this is really useful, and I'm sure some people out there who have podcasts of their own might benefit from it. So I'm perfecting that code and going to try and make it available to all of you listeners out there who run your own shows. So maybe it'll be of some help, especially on the grassroots level, when you want to have a person-to-person communication about sponsorships and things like that. They might provide you with an MP3 file and you don't have any way of attaching it. This will just do it for you. So that'll happen sooner than not. Yeah. More importantly, I'm trying to get it so it'll just pick the right opening music based on the hosts in the metadata. And that's how all this began, but whatever. Anyhow, I hope everybody out there listening is resting now really well. I hope you're nap. Brian, pick us all up, man. Let's talk caffeine.

Brian: All right. Yeah. Basically, we finally had the season opener ride, as we call it here in Indiana, where we go out for a nice long day ride for the first time. Middle of March. Actually, I had to take a day off work because the weekend was going to suck. So we just said, let's just bail. Glorious day. Did a lot. Took the KLRs. Did some dual sport riding.

Robin: Man, I wish I'd been there.

Brian: Oh, it was so much fun.

Robin: That would have been really good. I miss all of those people.

Brian: Well, yeah, you would have needed something more appropriate for gravel. They put a lot of fresh gravel out, so it was a little squirrely, but it's good practice. And what's funny is, we get back to my house, we're absolutely shagged, and I look down at the GPS and it was 185 miles. I mean, that's how it is every winter. Even though I ride fairly often throughout the winter here and there, those long days, you got to build up their butt muscles and stuff. And so I'll get there. And yeah, the Cogent shock I just slapped onto my KLR seems to be a very good thing.

Robin: Yeah, you wrote that out. Seems to be a good thing. Seems to be? That's got to be a sick suspension.

Brian: It's still a KLR, fundamentally. So there's a certain degree of crappitude that you just have. But within that pile of whatever, there's this diamond underneath it that, yeah, it does a great job. And basically, the harder you go off-road, off-pavement, the better this is, the better you're like, okay, yeah. Because just riding down the road, my old shock was getting really bouncy and that was annoying. But yeah, the harder you go off-road, the more the Cogent shock really starts to make a difference.

Robin: What's the goal? If you hit a bump or go over a bump, you want to feel the bike, absorb the impact or the lift, and then settle back to normal one time and one time only.

Brian: You want the effects of bumps to be just like done and over with. And the second thing you want is for the tire to remain in contact with the ground and maintain traction. If you're bouncing all over the place, you're not going to get propulsion, you're not going to get cornering.

Robin: Yeah. Also, the sine wave should be minimized. It should not be...

Brian: Yeah, you shouldn't have after effects when you run over stuff, because you're always, especially off-road, you're always running over everything. That's the whole point.

Robin: I have one click off for sure. Two. I need to go up to three for now, maybe four when the luggage is on.

Brian: So how many clicks are there total or do you have any? 47 and a half. Okay. Yeah. You don't know.

Robin: No, I think it's eight. I think they ship it on four. How's your sprungitude? Yeah.

Brian: What else? Shout out to the folks at RevZilla. I got a shock spring compressor. It was kind of something used. Somebody had thrown it back into the box or a piece is missing and stuff. Anyway, they took care of the problem and basically refunded a little bit of the money so that basically I just got a used item. It's still usable, so I'm keeping it. So yeah, I have a shock spring compressor if we ever need to do any other major service while you're in my garage. The day before a gigantic week-long ride.

Robin: As is tradition, I can tell you right now that if there are two people that can pull that off, it's you and I after we kick everybody else out of the garage. Don't do that, folks. This is not a thing you're supposed to do.

Brian: Don't try this at home.

Robin: The timing only worked out where Brian, get ready, get these things situated and I show up and it's like we're just surgeons with a couple of pre-med students hanging out that need to get out.

Brian: Yeah, fork oil everywhere. Yeah, anyway, we won't talk about it. Yeah, so anyway, so I've got all these Zillabucks, Zillacash at RevZilla that's piling up. So I got 57 bucks and, you know, so with that and some other things, so I need to figure out what I need to order. I haven't really. Whoopie cushion seat. Oh, do they have that? Yeah. I'll have to look.

Robin: The throttle off of those BMX bikes we used to have that would make the engine sound.

Brian: Yeah. There you go. I mean, I've got spare brake pads. I need, I don't, good problem to have working on logistics for New Mexico, figuring out where I'm going to, where I'm going to stay or I'm going to be at night when I'm not on a motorcycle.

Robin: This is going to be a really great time.

Brian: I think so.

Robin: I don't know what kind of riding I'm going to be feeling, but we'll both have the routes and we're going to have a good time.

Brian: Yeah. And I'm trying to figure out what, what kind of, you know, electricity availability the rental bike has. It's a, it's a 2017 Honda Africa twin and I'm like, I need to power my phone. I've got it like a thing. I can, I've got like a little claw that I can mount my phone on, but I need to figure out if it's got like a cigarette lighter or if I had to run something from the battery or some crap. I don't know. And can I indulge in a one minute rant? This won't even be a one minute rant. Be careful what you wish for. You know what happened to me? All right. Rant on. Rant on. I want to know how come every online space for motorcyclists, every place we gather online when we're not riding, why does it get flooded with ass hats who are posting these gruesome, grizzly, grody crash videos? Like, like you look on Reddit, it's like crash, crash, crash, crash. You know, I don't want to see that crap. I've got my own 3d credential vision movies that I'm trying to keep out of my head so I can go ride. I'm just saying, knock it off. All right. Nobody wants to see that crap.

Robin: Agreed. Rant equals closed. I will say in post commentary that people like that are not part of the culture, the overall culture.

Brian: I think so. Yeah. I think a lot of them don't even ride that are posting that junk.

Robin: Reaching out to let people know that when you sleep, motorcycles are sneaking around your house, trying to kill you because they are sentient things that you're not responsible for. It's up to us to be careful on these things. And sometimes it gets away from the best of us or the most responsible of us or whatever you want to say about it. The very same folks that would post something like that who do ride are the same people who don't get training. Good point. And when you mention any specifics of understanding that come from training, mid-conversation or mid-interruption, their ego and leadership steps in to say, well, what I like to do is, and that's really when I know that we're not going to ride together. What I came up with, like what I like to do, you know. No, I know this. I don't want to know you.

Brian: Had to lay her down.

Robin: Right. Well, Hey, there's a Joanne. Hello. It's just a matter of, um, the training gives you parameters to stay within because then you know what, you know, and you're aware that what's beyond that might not be something you want to mess with. So okay. Yeah.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: So your timing is hilariously perfect because we're okay.

Brian: We're going to do some listener questions, questions for a while, whatever it is. If you would like us to field your questions, email podcast at TRO.bike.bike.bike.bike.bike.bike. If we choose your question from the hundreds, thousands we get every day, uh, you will hear an answer of some sort eventually, whether it's the correct answer. We do not know. Questions from the wild today, uh, one, I don't know if Robin has any opinion or Joanne has any opinions on this. Uh, I do. Are LED replacement lights on older bikes a good idea? Like if you have a traditional halogen bulb and you get an LED replacement, is that a good idea?

Robin: Yes. Yes. I'm going to say yes. Same. It comes with some side effects. You know, if you get an older bike, low displacement, like a thumper with a low idle, you'll see your LED light strobing.

Brian: On some of them you can, yeah. How do you define old? Something that didn't come new with LED lights.

Joanne: That's my bike.

Brian: My Yamaha is a 2015. It came with LED headlights.

Robin: I had an 88 Hawk GT. It worked perfectly.

Joanne: Why wouldn't you want better lighting? I mean, why, what would the benefit be of keeping older style lighting? Is there a benefit?

Robin: Funny, you should ask.

Brian: There are a couple of pitfalls with LED lights that you'd have to work around. And one of those is that the lighting pattern is all goofy or the beam is getting into everybody's eyes or it's not doing any good.

Robin: There's no density to it.

Brian: Yes. It's all reflective. For my motorcycles, there are a couple of things that I've done on my older bikes. My KLR and so forth is, and my GS850. One thing is look for an LED replacement that has emitters like in the same spot as the original H4 bulb. That goes a long way. And then the other thing is sometimes you just have to try a couple of different ones. Order some whatever alphabet soup from Amazon that seems to be well reviewed. And sometimes you got to try again or go with something that other people have said works. And the other thing you can do is just buy a replacement like my GS850 has a standard seven inch headlight globe. And then you put an H4 bulb in the back of it and you can actually get a really, really great replacement for the whole shebang, a couple hundred bucks. Yeah.

Robin: They're hot though. They run super hot. Yeah. You got to get the ribbon sets so they can cool themselves down.

Brian: Dale has one of those on his bike and they work beautifully.

Robin: We wrote an article. There it is. We wrote an article about this back in 17. Got an article, like to hear it. Here it goes. The summarized, you know, the TLDR on this from my observation then was that, and I mean the lights have come a long way. If there's an LED bulb, I will always go that route because I do most of my riding during the day. So the visibility is excellent and they look better. They use far less power, like significantly less power than a standard bulb. So your battery is being treated with more respect on and on and on. Of course you might get a dash alert if you don't use a resistor or something like that. But on those occasions where I was like, Oh, it looks like I stayed at the garage night with all the people from vintage, you know, Vin Moto for too long riding home. There was some strobing and the density of the beam brightness does not necessarily always mean the same thing that the projection of a beam, how it is traveling through the air. You can see more of what is in front of what the light is reflecting off of as well. Whereas with LED in that day and age, all you saw was the reflection off of signs or the reflection in the road, but you didn't actually see the texture of much. So to be seen, excellent. I think they're fantastic. I'll do it every time. But like I said, most of my riding is done during the day.

Joanne: Yeah. I've only ever had LED. I've only ever replaced my turn signals. I've yet to tackle the headlight or the taillight. Haven't touched the XT. But definitely the LEDs on the turn signals made the biggest difference, huge difference because they're really small. I got Rizoma's front and back.

Brian: Oh yeah. Those are so nice. Yeah.

Joanne: But they're bright. So I love them because they're more visible, but they're really tiny and low profile and I love it.

Brian: Yeah. You spent the bucks on the good stuff too.

Joanne: Well, I did get some for free, so that was nice. But also, yeah, and it came with a Rizoma fender eliminator, so I just liked the look of the lighting. I thought it looked really perfect with my bike. We actually have LED upgrades on the Jeep, on our Wrangler. So the tire has a ring light. So in the spare tire is a LED ring, which is really nice, nice and bright. We also updated the taillights LED and that made a nice difference. And actually the headlights too. What am I saying? We got JW headlights. Those are also heated or something. We got them when we moved to Colorado and that makes a nice difference as well. But I know what you're saying about like how bright LEDs are now and they're in everyone's faces. They're just, they're too good.

Brian: Yeah.

Joanne: They're kind of too good. They can be.

Brian: Some of them are.

Joanne: All I want is a CarPlay upgrade for that thing with a backup camera. That's it. Everything else is fine. I don't need anything else for that thing. I just want...

Robin: Oh, I'll link you to something I did not buy.

Brian: That's right. We had this discussion earlier this week.

Joanne: And besides, I want to spend that money on my bike.

Brian: You have our support. We will help.

Joanne: Oh, great.

Brian: So the next question, are you ready, Robin? You have a roll here. Are you ready for this next question?

Robin: Yeah, I got a roll here.

Brian: You see it?

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: All right. So Billy, Jim, Joe, Bob, and in wherever, anyway, he wants to know, do biker bells keep the... No. Next. Okay.

Joanne: They're nice. If you want to have it on your motorcycle, you should have it. Do whatever you want.

Robin: She's doing things that I was about to do. No, this is good. This is a good thing.

Joanne: Look, we need to stop judging each other. Motorcycling is such a heinously nit, you know, it's such a like high school, catty place.

Robin: Well, so I've actually, this is like the, maybe the fifth episode where I brought this up. I'm trying to say the same thing, 20 different ways where, am I superstitious about it? Like, am I going to, am I ordering a bell? No. Do deer whistles work? I don't freaking think so. Do I have deer whistles on my bike? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So think about, think about what I'm saying. Like, I mean it. I don't think they do anything. I would not subscribe to that science, but I installed some on my bike.

Brian: I've seen the elk in Arizona and New Mexico. They don't care.

Robin: Wisconsin's biggest deer on stilts.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: No messing around. Moose.

Joanne: Yeah. Same here.

Robin: So like, my theory is that like, if you feel good about it, like, um, if I have a close call, which I try not to, and I find a silver dollar, that silver dollar stays in the pocket of whatever jacket I was wearing for the duration of my owning of that bike. Does this work?

Joanne: Uh, I don't personally, I don't think so. That that's just me. I think they're adorable. I think they're cute.

Brian: You get it. Yeah.

Joanne: I don't think they do anything, but I think they're really cute. It's a nice little accessory.

Brian: One of my friends, his, uh, his tradition on every ride is to, is to buy a lottery ticket somewhere along the way when we stop and get gas, I get a lottery ticket at some point during the day. I have no idea why.

Joanne: I love that.

Brian: So I guess there are some superstitions, uh, but anyway, another question I've seen that comes up quite, it's actually comes up quite a bit, you know, on motorcycles, you have a sight glass on a lot of bikes anyway, not a dipstick. The oil in the sight glass seems to turn black really fast. Is my bike trashed? Is the engine at an end?

Joanne: No.

Brian: The answer is no.

Joanne: No.

Brian: No. It's, it's oil doing what it's supposed to do. It's supposed to keep things in suspension.

Robin: Um, it's there to stop metal from coming into contact with other metal. It keeps everything separated yet moving at the same time. The oil behaving that way is just whatever oil you decided to use, which is a whole different. We don't go there kind of discussion. You know, I like what I like. Use whatever you want. Yeah. Pretty much. Do whatever you want.

Brian: Olive oil is a slippery. Yeah.

Robin: It's okay.

Brian: Do whatever you want. Or maybe, maybe not mustard oil. Like, uh, the, the, yeah. One man caravan. Oh yeah. Yeah. That, that he had, he got some oil from some Bedouins and they couldn't speak, but anyway, it turned out to be mustard oil, which when heated produces like poison mustard gas or something like this was a 1920 or something.

Joanne: Oh, that's funny. Don't use food-based oils, friends just avoid, you know, leftover vegetable oil. Otherwise you'll be fine.

Brian: Yeah. I don't. Yeah. Don't use the Evo in your bike. It'll be fine. Well, if you'd like us to field your questions in a similar and highly professional and, and focused manner, uh, email podcast at TRO dot bike, TRO dot bike, bike, bike, bike, bike.

Robin: Now for the reason we brought Joanne early, this is going to be fun. I'm looking forward to this. This is the time we got her. We got to let her do most of the talk and then we'll take it after that.

Brian: This topic was Joanne's idea last time, and it's a great idea and very thought provoking. And the idea was first time tourers, you know, like if you're going out for your first sport touring trip, uh, you've been riding around town, you've been riding to work, you've gotten some training, right? You've gotten some good gear, uh, you're ready to, you know, strap on your bedroll and hit the open road or whatever it is you do, or hit the hotel, whatever, what are some things you need to know? What are some things to think about? We've got a whole list here that's semi-organized. If we go through this entire list, we're not going to make it through the first four dots. It's going to be a four hour episode. I know.

Robin: No. Well, we sort of can.

Brian: So there's, there's four main divisions, uh, planning and prep, you know, these are all things we talked about. Okay. We talked about stuff, like all the stuff you bring, some of the, the, the practices on the road to kind of keep you safe. And then, and then we've also talked about gear and that's probably, you know, obviously that's Joanne's expertise.

Joanne: Let me throw, I want to throw just a couple of bullets for each one. Okay. So planning, if you're a map person, sure. Get some paper maps and highlight out a route and then write directions. You could, I mean, back in the old days, that's what we did. I wrote, I wrote my directions and I taped them on my tank with painter's tape, done. That's it.

Brian: Yeah. Back in the old days.

Joanne: Yes.

Brian: Yeah. I'd done the same.

Joanne: Pre phone, pre Zumo. That was fine. And sure. You might get lost, but you turn around and you turn back, you know, I, but you carry, you get maps, you know, like Delorme maps, uh, Atlas physical ones, just get some maps like from your AAA so that you have that if you, that's your way or use fancy route planning, right? Use a Garmin, use your phone, you can use Google, do some map route planning.

Robin: Ride with GPS.com.

Joanne: Right. Or that. I don't know what that is. Uh, I use a couple of phone. Sometimes I use my phone. Sometimes I use the Zumo. It depends what kind of trip I'm doing. If it's a very basic route, I use my phone. If it has a more complex route, I might use the Zumo, just a little more robust for planning. And then, uh, for the other thing with planning is I have a personal rule. I don't ride after dark. It sucks. It does. But as a middle age, I have to reduce my late night driving because my vision is not as great as it used to be. But I used to ride at night. I used to ride well into like nine, 10 o'clock.

Robin: I didn't like it then, except for in the city. Then it was cool.

Joanne: And my vision was good. So I could see, but now I can't see as well. So that's a personal rule. So you might want to not overdo it and just plan a like 9am to 3pm or 10am to 4pm. You don't have to ride for 14 hours straight. So plan a very conservative, easy route. And then if you're like, wow, this is easy, then you could go ride more, but don't set crazy expectations of I'm going to ride 500 miles today or whatever.

Brian: Oh yeah.

Joanne: Be conservative.

Brian: Yeah. Robin, what's your rule on the tours?

Joanne: Yeah. Daily mileage. What's that like?

Robin: The daily mileage on our tours rarely goes over 300 in a day.

Joanne: Yeah. Wow. That seems high. Couple hundred?

Robin: Yeah. We shoot for like 225 to 250.

Joanne: Yeah. Yeah. That's reasonable.

Robin: It's just that now and then it's like, okay, now we got to throw down another 30 miles of straight ahead to get to wherever we're going. This works. Then it's like 20 more minutes. That's okay.

Joanne: If Robin is running a tour at 250 and this is, you're going on your first actual overnight or long ride by yourself, then you should subtract 100 and just start with like 150 or by hours, five hours.

Brian: Yeah.

Joanne: And then take a break and decide what you want to do, but don't create some crazy, stressful, tiring trip that you're not going to finish. Ooh.

Robin: The witching hour on large animals, roughly two to three o'clock is when the deer start coming out. So the witching hour on deer is a big deal. Try not to be riding by that time.

Joanne: Rewind. You mean the golden hour? Like dusk? Like five o'clock, six o'clock?

Brian: Yeah. They come out at dusk.

Joanne: Not at two o'clock. That's broad daylight. You're talking about...

Brian: I'm talking about two o'clock.

Joanne: Really?

Robin: Yes.

Joanne: Never had that problem.

Robin: I'll start riding around 9 a.m. Yeah. I'll be on high alert until about 10 or 11. Then I'm still on high alert, but my guard's a little bit more okay. This is as it usually is. Once you hit that two o'clock, three o'clock hour, that's when all of a sudden I'll see them in droves, especially here, especially mule deer.

Joanne: Maybe that's a regional thing, though, because it has to vary, right? And Pennsylvania, I think, was like the deer accident capital of the country. So Google what things are like in the areas you're going, but I would say that's not necessarily everywhere you're going to go. But dusk, I would say, yeah, five, six, seven. That's when your vision might change and lighting's different.

Brian: Yeah. One of the differences is in mountain environments, deer have to kind of commute to get to water and food. In the Midwest, like in Indiana, they tend to move around dawn and dusk, yeah, because they don't have to go very far. They're never very far from their food and water. Yeah. You will see out west, you'll see mule deer and elk, they'll come down or up the mountain much earlier in the day. Yeah, that's a good, I hadn't really remembered that, but yeah.

Joanne: Wait, what were the four tenants? The first thing was?

Brian: Yeah, we're talking about planning and prep and then stuff.

Robin: I will hand this to Joanne immediately, but if you go to TRO, mouse over DigiTools and click on Moto Packing Checklist, one of the nice things about a constantly maintained tried and true packing list is once it starts to seem ridiculous, you can go ahead and stop. You're probably going to be just fine because it gets pretty ridiculous. But it does eliminate the concept of the kitchen sink in that over much protest and mutual understanding and communication, this list has fine tuned itself into all things small, useful, and accessible.

Joanne: When you make a list too, you're going to want to edit.

Brian: Yeah.

Joanne: No matter, because, right, so what I like to do is throw a bunch of things out on the bed or the floor and then I edit, then I take away stuff. So look at things closely to go, do I use that? Because maybe it's something that Robin needs or Robin uses, but maybe it's something that you don't personally care about. So look at everything individually for you and go, do I need this? How important is that? But make sure you edit your packing. Just really think high priority. Like if you have medication, that's a high priority. Do you need two blankets? Probably not. Think about things that are like really high priority, but also your physical limitation. Because if you're riding, let's say you have a street fighter, you don't have luggage space on that bike. There's not really meant to carry luggage. So that's going to dictate how much stuff you bring. So your stuff should be measured by where you have space to bring it. So after you know what luggage you're going to use, then you decide what to put in it. And also tip, motorcycle specific luggage is motorcycle specific for a reason. There's a reason why 99% of us don't use camping bags and luggage on our motorcycles. They have to fit differently and they have to mount safely and they don't work the same if you just bungee everything down. So research your luggage options.

Robin: And heed their weight limits or don't, wink, wink.

Brian: Or don't. You can put two kilograms in this.

Robin: You listening to this, you should. We might not, but you should.

Joanne: If you're going into motorcycle travel with, I'm going to bring as much stuff as I bring when I go to Hawaii or when I travel by plane, maybe this isn't for you. Because traveling by motorcycle isn't inherently a very small thing. You can only bring a certain amount of products with you. And if you're not prepared for that, you don't have to do long distance. You don't have to do a long trip. There's no rules here. You don't have to do a long sport touring trip. You don't have to go a lot of miles. Do whatever makes sense.

Brian: Yeah. You can actually go down a hell of a rabbit hole. Like if your first sport touring trip is a camping trip, that's probably not a good idea. Think about hotels. Camping is a great idea. Camping is wonderful. I love it.

Robin: Motorcycle camping is fun. If you're not there yet, don't try to go there immediately.

Joanne: Yeah. That's a whole thing. Motorcycle camping is a whole thing, you know. I'd only attempt it if you maybe are a bicycle camper.

Brian: You've already got the stuff, yeah.

Joanne: That makes sense to go right into motorcycle camping.

Brian: Good idea.

Joanne: You're used to light. But if you're not that person, jumping into motorcycle camping takes a lot more prep and a lot more work. I would recommend Motocamp Nerd and Dork in the Road on YouTube for recommendations, and as the magpie flies, for recommendations on how to camp well. But if we're talking about street and sport touring, my stuff recommendation is always a tank bag. Mine is a tank lock, so it doesn't sit on the tank. Specifically, it mounts to the gas tank cap, and that way my bag isn't scratching up my tank more than it did when I used to have a regular magnetic bag. So I'm a huge fan of the tank bag, because then you can put a map there. You can put your phone if you want. You can put whatever. I like to have essentials right in front of me, you know, instead of a purse, right? I can't really carry the purse, so I like the tank bag, and then that way essentials are within reach, like charger for your phone, charger for the Zumo.

Robin: And I'll play Captain Contrarian that I've been all the time, and I'll say, I could feel the offense.

Brian: Yeah, anyway, go on.

Robin: No offense. No, I agree with her completely. I personally don't like tank bags because of the way I posture myself while riding. So it's like everybody's different. You might like it, you might not, but the experimentation's kind of half the fun. Yeah.

Joanne: Yeah, no, that's a really good point, because Robin, you're what, 5'11", 6'?

Robin: No, no, I'm a wee man with a big Napoleon complex. I'm 5'7".

Joanne: Okay.

Robin: And a half, and a half.

Brian: She was fooled by the pictures where you like stand uphill from me.

Joanne: See how I started with 5'11", not 5'4"?

Brian: Yeah.

Joanne: That ergo, right, you're right, might dictate a completely different comfort. I'm 5'2", and my torso is really short. So having a tank bag is awesome, but I do agree with you on too big, because I remember riding one time with like a 14 liter, and it was just obnoxious. So yeah, I was like, I mean, it was kind of nice. I had a long, long highway ride, and it was kind of cool. So depending on the kind of riding I'm doing, but my bag is like a six to eight liter. It's tiny, and it's aerodynamic. It's a SW Motec. So it's not a big square thing. It blends in with my bike. That's why I like it.

Robin: I love their stuff.

Joanne: Their stuff is just really lovely. So yeah, for stuff, that's like my thing. And then definitely I need my Cardo. I definitely need a headset now. Like I can't ride long distance without a headset. I have to have one. So that could be a different conversation later, but that's my core things I need.

Robin: Do you need coffee?

Joanne: No, I don't actually. That's the man. He needs coffee. I have weaned myself to tea or coffee.

Robin: Okay. But that was part of the whole thing for this episode. Camping, yes.

Joanne: We did. I do. Yes, we did need it for camping.

Robin: We have to go around then because it was one of the feature discussions on how do we solve that problem. Now, a previous cast of the show, Tim Clark, Travis, and myself, we all decided that there was this little battery operated espresso grinder. It was super small. You'd press a button and it would grind everything down and cook it out and you could just filter it through water.

Joanne: That's too much work.

Robin: That's what I thought. I was like, well, it sounds great, guys, please.

Joanne: I'm going to send my two links for how to have almost like the snobbiest coffee and pretty tasty without having to carry a whole espresso machine. I'll put it in the chat.

Robin: Well, see, that becomes the first answer then. We got to see what your answer is.

Joanne: Our go-to, I'll just leave you with this, is AeroPress because it's very portable, aeropress.com. You can make espresso. You can make Americano. You're basically making Americano.

Robin: I'll take it.

Joanne: Then the other thing is Bivouac Coffee. You could use any coffee brand you want, but Bivouac's a local brand here, Rene. He's a wonderful man and the coffee's really good. But if you're a coffee snob, it's really good coffee and they make an instant. You get like three or five packets, I think, in a package of their instant. For instant, pretty damn good with your AeroPress. But you could pre-ground your coffee, put it in a Ziploc, and then...

Robin: See she's got all three answers coming out at one time here. Oh, man. What I will tell you about the AeroPress, if anybody goes to that link and checks it out and they think, well, look at all that kit, here's the thing. That's hollow tubing and hollow tubing is negative airspace. If you're not using it, all you do is fill the negative airspace with something and it takes up no geometry. You shove the instant packets in there.

Joanne: You just roll up the instant packets and you stick them in the tube, but they're plastic and ours has lasted like 10 years.

Robin: Which by the way, is my answer. I scoop instant coffee into a Ziploc bag because I know that during any tour, I will not get out of bed if I don't have something.

Joanne: Wait a minute. Let me back that up because the Bibiwek is instant. You don't need an AeroPress for it. So the Bibiwek is just hot water and you know what else you can buy, which you got on Amazon? Creamer in powder form. You just add hot water and then it becomes creamer. But the AeroPress would be if you do want to bring your fancy beans, but you grind them first. Okay. Put them in a little Tupperware or a Ziploc and then you'll have the grind and then use the AeroPress because you only need water, hot water for the AeroPress.

Robin: Oh, okay. Not bad. And then you can have your favorite light roast, which is Joanne's favorite, is light roast coffee. Oh my God, don't do it. She prefers it.

Joanne: Don't do it.

Robin: Medium. So in the last episode, you might have noticed that she was insistent on light roast.

Joanne: Citrus flavors do not belong in coffee. That's all I'm going to say. Okay. So you crazy people who like the lemon and the weird fruit flavoring in your coffee, you've lost your mind. Sorry.

Brian: I'm going to cause you some offense here. Two things, two things. I habitually drink iced coffee. So I make coffee, put it in the fridge and when I'm on a trip, I'll buy like instant packets of coffee and sometimes I'll just put them in a water bottle, shake it up the night before and then in the morning, put some Stevia in there and shake it up, choke it down my neck so I can wake up, feed the caffeine monkey what he needs to shut up and get on with my day. That's a thing. You guys are talking about quality and palates and citrus and I, yeah, I just got to get something in there.

Joanne: When I'm traveling though, most of the time, no, I don't bring coffee with me. I mean, this is something that we did because not even instant. No, I actually, I will drink the coffee at, I'm a Holiday Inn Express girl.

Robin: Yeah. All right.

Joanne: No, I'm happy. I drink the coffee there or I'll have tea because I'm not as addicted to it the way that my spouse is like he has to have a good coffee. So if he has to drink the Holiday Inn coffee, well, an hour later, we got to go get some real stuff. He is hardcore, but me, I'm okay. Or I'll skip it. I'm actually okay skipping coffee for a day and then maybe I'll get it later. So when I travel, I actually don't really care. I want some, but I'll drink anything. I'll drink almost anything, honestly.

Robin: We all have our corks and I'm like, coffee, coffee, coffee.

Joanne: Yeah. Later we'll have to have a conversation about what James Hoffman recommends because come on.

Robin: Is this some mushroom coffee? Nope. Nope.

Joanne: Nope.

Robin: Nope.

Joanne: Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Robin: Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Joanne: Nope.

Brian: Nope.

Robin: Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Brian: Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. If something goes wrong, where can you find assistance, parts, people, you know, whatever you might need? What are the major cities along the route?

Robin: That kind of thing.

Brian: What's your safety net? Robin wrote a great article on that. Did I? Every time I was going through this, I'm like, we got an article for that. We got it. There's. It's what we do. It's like XKCD cartoons. There's an art. There's a cart. There's one for everything. And it's what, it's as if it's a website devoted to sport, touring, motorcycle, it's almost like that. There's also the question of who you go with. If you go out solo, there's a lot of advantages to that. If you go out with one or two buddies, uh, I would not go out with a whole riff raff rabble of weirdos that you don't know. That kind of thing. Yeah. Especially your first time out, you know, go like one or two people, uh, go by yourself, you know, don't put any pressure on yourself, you know, and that's pretty valid too. Or, uh, you know, or hire someone like Robin to, uh, take you on a nice tour.

Robin: We do our best to keep things safe and organized.

Brian: Yeah. It takes a, takes a load off your mind. The, uh, as far as stuff, uh, there's an old saying, bring half the clothes and twice the money. I like that. And that's kind of true. You're going to bring way too much crap.

Robin: Even if you do that mentally, it's not a bad thing. If you bring enough that you're like, this will do and it fits and it's, it packs easily enough. That's fine. But you can also relax and think to yourself, if I lose one of these things, it's not hard to replace it.

Brian: Yeah. And there's also, you know, wherever you are in the U S you're not far from a Walmart. You can kind of relax about some things a little bit, and maybe this takes experience, but it's also, if you're, if you're nervous about it, it's like, well, Oh, what if I forgot this? Well, I can probably get a base layer. That's good enough from Walmart. They have their own house brand. It's fine. Great value. That noise. As far as tools, you know, my little area of passion, I think the minimum is somebody, whether it's you or somebody you're riding with, you need to have a tire plug kit and a way to get air back in the tire. I think that's kind of the minimum. And from there, credit card, whatever, you know, that kind of thing, whatever you're comfortable with.

Robin: Which actually inspired me. I need to go through my toolkit again and revamp it because it's a different bike. So it takes different tools.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: What I did was like, I get these really cheap bath, um, toiletry bags and I just fill them with little bits cause they got compartments and there's not much to it. But uh, the truth is if you can get something that is good enough, like I know that Leatherman makes these fractions of a Torx bit, fractions of an Allen head that will still get a bolt loose and maybe a sock or two for the bigger stuff. You've already gone beyond tire kits. You're already doing that much more. You don't have to at least have a tire puncture kit. I agree with Brian there completely, but I do need to go through and revamp it. So, you know, double check your work.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: Look back and think, does this a tire iron need to go with? Probably not.

Brian: Yeah. And like I, you know, like I carry Torx bits, even though none of my bikes have them because you know, some of the people I know have European bikes, you know, you don't need to carry anything you don't need until you get to that point. The other thing, Joanne sort of touched on this a little bit, even if you're using electronic mapping and guidance and so forth, at the minimum, have a state map with you, have some way to understand where the hell you are and how to get to safety or civilization. It's good. Or just live in Indiana, keep going. You'll get somewhere. So anyway, in New Mexico, you know, you might be on the wrong side of a mountain.

Robin: I think I would edit that to say, don't depend on a data connection. So for example, on all of our tours, the sweep has the paper maps and the lead has at a minimum two phones, both of them have the data downloaded. So the offline maps are in-house wherever you go. And remember GPS does not use data. All it does is bounce a signal and triangulate. You're not extracting information.

Brian: So like Google maps won't work and where the good roads are, you know, unless you download them, then they will.

Robin: But I do love that you have human kit here because that's actually included. One of the things about TRO is I didn't necessarily build it for the audience. I built it for me. And then I was like, well, let's adjust it because, you know, maybe we can do some commission sales here. But if you do go to the digitools forward slash pack, whatever digitools mouse over in the navigation and packing checklist, there are some things in there about like vitamins and noise. And that's me personally, that's stuff that I've been using. One thing I do intend on in the future is I'm going to make a members version of the packing checklist, which will include the most basic voted on truths, but will also be blanked out so you can fill in the gaps with things that aren't necessarily, you know, particular kind of asparagus that you're going to cook for dinner that night.

Brian: That's particular to an individual and things like water and an energy bar can really save the day, you know, and in some situations, what do you got going on for what do what do I didn't know what to call this. And these are just practices I think that are good to know about and think about like build up your, but yeah, I'm an experienced writer and 185 miles really took it out of me on the first ride, first long ride of the season. We all have to build up and maintain our, whatever that muscle is, uh, or the butt muscle or the gluteus maximus maxi Zeus and the rest of the mojo and the muscles that go into, to writing, writing and writing well, you know, it's just don't jump from writing, writing back and forth to work to a 300 mile day in the twisties is just not going to work.

Robin: Pace yourself, but keep moving. I know that our rule of thumb has been mentioned before we do, when we start in the morning, we stop after 30 miles or 30 minutes. And then after that first stop, we extend that to double the time. So 60 miles or 60 minutes, take a quick break, three Pete that, you know, and just keep on going. Brian's got his, Brian just edited from 90 down to 60, which is fine because sometimes you're feeling it. If you don't need the break, it's okay to keep going. If you've got people with you, yeah.

Brian: Watch the flock. Yeah. Again, got an article about it. Several others check it out and, and get into it. You can lose a lot of time in gas stations and I never understood why people will hang around gas stations for literally an hour, gas up, walk around, excrete and leave.

Robin: I know why I've thought on this. I figured it out.

Brian: Yeah. What is it? What? Tell me.

Robin: You're anchored to society there. You're getting off the bike anyhow. And it feels good to get off the bike at that moment. So you're just like, I'll stay off for now. But if you put in just a little bit of effort, get back on the bike, ride 10 minutes at a Dodge. You're going to find some pretty place to just breathe in, breathe out by yourself and get some breathing room for a second, you know?

Brian: Yeah. And if you're leading a ride, there's a whole art to like putting on your helmet and just leave, you know, I mean, getting the herd of cats going. Yeah. You also have to pay more attention to managing noise, sun and wind. Make sure your earplugs are good. Make sure you're, make sure you're not going to get a wind burn on your neck or you're not going to get like an awkward sunburn on the backs, like the, like the backs of your wrists. If you're wearing shorty gloves will burn like, and you never noticed when you're just riding.

Robin: You won't feel it. Yeah.

Brian: And then at the end of a long day in the road, you're going to be very upset. So, and it's a longer trip, do laundry every few days. You know, whether that's some base layers, like I think you mentioned some base layers, you just wash them in the sink, hang them up at night and keep it clean as you go. Other stuff. You know, if you have more casual wear with you, you might want to just do laundry on day three or four and you'll feel a lot better and everybody else will be grateful. That kind of thing. Drink a lot of water, drink more water than you think you need to. Big mistake. I see people make. And honestly, as far as gear, just we've had Joanne give us a lot of good advice, that kind of thing. You basically need to have, you know, we can't go into a lot of detail, but you basically need to have a really flexible set of gear because weather tends to be more, tends to get more extreme than you anticipate. You know, it's probably going to get colder. It may get wetter than you think it will, especially if you're going for multiple days. You know, I know a guy who will not leave his rain suit at home, even when there's no chance at all of rain anywhere near that day, even on a day ride. Rain suits got to be there or else it's going to rain out of the blue. So just be ready for that. And we can have a whole discussion about, you know, Joanne was talking about layering last time, you know, the base layer and then other layers, that kind of thing. Kind of the last thing I was going to mention was there's like anything else, your riding gear, like your jacket is a tool and you have to learn how to use that tool. Zipper pulls. For example, if you're riding in the rain and you raise your hand, water's going to run down out of your glove into your wrist and everything that's on your shoulders goes down into your neck. Yup. Then you got cold, wet pits and it sucks. You know, and things like positioning yourself and making sure you're, I think it's called a placket. Whatever that flap over your zipper, for example, like if it's raining and that flap over your zipper is flapping or it's not secured, the snaps or whatever, you know, just all these little things, you know, or your posture. There's all these little things that can make your gear leak. Yeah.

Robin: Understanding what functions every strap does. Like even when I got the first batch of luggage for this bike, I got the GV easy bag system, right? And they have a bajillion different straps all over them that I just know. I just, no, no, no, no, no, no. In my case, I figured out which I needed for this bike and probably cut the excess off, which is not the worst thing in the world. Don't do that with your jacket. Those straps probably are going to come in handy at some point mid ride when you're like, wow, I really wish I could unzip my vents so I could get airflow, but I wanted to look cool. So I took the zipper pulls off. Don't do that. Leave the zipper pulls on. It's just one little thing that performs a function, a task that you may find yourself needing. So get to know it. Understand why that's there.

Brian: Yeah. There's a whole art to it. Uh, I, I've left chest vents open all day and wondered why it was cold. You know? I mean, it's just like, oh, okay, it's dumb crap like that. But yeah, if you've never really been out of town much, or you haven't gone on multi-day or where you're at the extremes, you may not know that stuff. And again, something I said earlier, make sure you deal with, with sun, wind and noise, uh, because those things build up, they fatigue you over time. They really take it out of you. If you're a member of the pale force, like I am when I lay, like, I can't bring a giant tub of sunscreen on the airplane with me. So I have to make sure the first thing I do is buy some sunscreen or I bring like a little tiny tube to, to get me through, uh, make sure you deal with that. Even if you're, you don't think you need sunscreen.

Robin: I will introduce you to a product when you get here, Brian, that you may use while you're here. It is a combination of sunscreen and bug repellent, and it's very good. Excellent. If you can combine two functions into one thing, do yeah.

Brian: So next up we have moments in motorcycle history with Jordan Liebman. Jordan's been narrating George Wyman's coast to coast journey, and it seems like he's gaining momentum in the effort to get east somewhere in what we would now call the wild west. And let's see where we're at. Take it away, Jordan.

Jordan: It sucks to lead. You found the path and somebody did it better. It sucks to lead. This is Honda's motto. They don't know it yet, but it's their motto. You with me? So he follows their overland trail. The rails were relayed directly over old wagon tracks. The trail veers away from the tracks here and there. The trail avoided obstacles like rocks, but the railroad workers moved the rocks. The railroad came through and said, no, we're going to play asteroid with this giant boulder in our path and not go around. We're going to blow the thing up and go straight through. And the trail hedges up with the tracks, but they go together for a while. And he mentions the prairie schooner. The prairie schooner was an enormous wagon, boat shaped, U-shaped, canvas over the top or whatever they had. This guy is in 1920s reflecting on what in his mind is the history from his school books. He's reflecting on the 49ers, these guys that went west to find gold. In his mind, that is lore. It's a whole different mindset. So anyways, he walks the first mile out of Wadsworth, he pushes the bikes about 10 feet and he's got to catch his breath because of the alkali sand. I just assume it's sand. Alkali to me means it's a base. It's not an acid, right? It must have been the term at the time for the sand that he's going through. This area was a shallow inland sea for billions of years, right? There's sand up there. You could literally go to the top of a mountain and find a seashell. And so he's running out of water and the railroad has supplies along the way, right? For themselves. They have water towers that he could fill up his water. So he's got fresh water that he had with him from Reno that he can drink. And he's got to fill it up with shitty water from this tower in Wadsworth. He could just barely choke down, but it's hopefully good enough that he's not going to shit his pants. So he gets out of Wadsworth and he fills his water bottle. Then he gets a flat. His first flat. He says it's a finger-sized hole, which he plugs and wraps with tire tape. So they have these mushroom plugs that they plug their tires with. He's got to take the whole wheel off. He's got the tire off. He's got to take the tube out. He's got to wrap the tube. He's got to pressurize the tube. He's got all the hand thing there to pump it up. And he gets back on the road. He laughs because here's the thing, he's in the middle of nowhere at this point. He's the only person in any direction. The guy could walk around naked and sing show tunes and nobody would know. And what blows his tire out? A broken beer bottle from Milwaukee. He's in the middle. It could have been a railroad spike. It could have been a sharp rock. It could have been a buzzard that lost its path and landed on his tire. But he hits a fucking beer bottle from Milwaukee. And he laughs about it because you got to laugh, otherwise you're going to cry. Otherwise, it's submission and misery. That's it. He gets to the town called Lovelock and he buys another cyclometer because that's his cyclometer number two. Goes another 30 miles, 33 miles to a town called Humboldt and stops there. Towns, Wadsworth, Nassie, Upsil, Browns, Lovelock, and Humboldt. 96 miles for the day. And only 10 of those 96 miles were on roads. Everything else was on railroad tracks. Which is why I said, go to the nearest rural railroad tracks that you can see by your town and say to yourself, look at those tracks. Cross those tracks, this pause in the middle, and look at that. Say, can I ride that? It is actually better than everything else. What can't ride that? The car that left two days later. It's too fucking wide. Dig that. There's a lot going on here. This is why he makes a trip in 50 days compared to their 62 days. Single track win. Saturday, May 23, 1903, Humboldt to Battle Mountain, Nevada. Leaves Humboldt, 540 AM, no breakfast. Fuck it, get on the road, goes 45 miles to Winnemucca, and gets stuck in deep sand, where he pushes the bike for an hour. The sand is so deep that the bike stands up on its own. He does take a photo of it, not being able to move at all. I think probably half for himself and half to prove to his manufacturers that you basically told him to cut down the biggest tree in the forest with a Herrick, to quote Monty Python. You just asked him to do the impossible, and this is the condition that I'm trying to make you look good in. Takes a picture of the bike. He loses his revolver. He's got a gun. You're out in the middle of nowhere. You don't know what you're going to come up with against. And he loses his wrench. Threw a hole in his pocket or whatever the hell it was. He's got to go backtrack for an hour to find them and find his gun. And he's so pissed off at the lost time and everything. This was 1903. He sees coyotes and he shoots at them and he kills them. He kills coyotes on his trip. I'm not into killing coyotes, but this was a totally different era. And that was just a pot shot. He doesn't know any better. It's a dick move, but that was 1903. And here's where karma comes in. Karma interjects and his handlebars break. Handlebars are important and they're bent metal. And there's a weak point and they snap. And he pushes it till he finds an old lineman. So the linemen are running telegraph lines and telephone lines and whatever else. You know, probably not electrically yet. And the lineman says, let's get aboard. And he tapes it to his existing stub of a handlebar and wraps it with twine and tar and gets him back on the road. And he makes it to Battle Mountain. Battle Mountain is a Mormon historical site where they killed a bunch of Mormons. He marks that it happened at 7.15 p.m. So now we're starting to keep better track of what happened at what time. Battle Mountain is the site of a great Mormon massacre and their maiden's grave. Otherwise, it is another frontier settlement. He stays at the house of a Mrs. Brady and is depressed about the handlebars and his pain and struggling. Humboldt, Nevada, Winnemucca, Nevada, Battle Mountain, Nevada, 106 miles in 13.5 hours, just under eight miles per hour average. That's probably two jogs, a jog and a half probably. It's not very fast, but that's his average. And it's not pavement, it's not flat, it's not roads, it's not right-of-way passage. It is just him and earth, like a biblical landscape. I'll drink to that. Let me just tell you what I got here for you. There are a couple websites that talk about his first motorcycle trip across America. And they verbatim quote what goes on in The Motorcycle Magazine in six issues over that trip. There is another article written in 1988 by Bob Carpenter from Road Rider Magazine, which I am a huge fan of. I read it at my grandfather's breakfast table when I was eight years old on through, which does more research. And then there's the historians that do the research on what happened there and they map it out with waypoints here and there. But what you're getting here is the deep dive on George Wyman, because I don't see it anywhere else. I don't see it. And I'm reaching out to people at, like I said, Wheel Through Time and Barber. And I hope they give me information, but I expect I'm going to be giving them information. So this is what you're getting right now. This is me. This is how I am assembled into one cohesive thing where I get into this guy's brain. I love it and I hate it. I hate that I love it. But anyways, we're going to go from Carlin, Nevada to Wells, Nevada. We're going to wrap it up in Wells, Nevada. He talks about, this is day 10, Monday, May 25th, 1903. And he says there's a nice hotel. These are nice hotels. The guy's being put up. He's going to milk this shit. Eat like a pig for 50 cents. 50 cents is the going rate for feed your face until you can't eat anymore in 1903. Gasoline is two and a half times that in some points for a gallon of gasoline. But he pigs out for 50 cents and the menu offers a portion called gorge, meaning for 75 cents, you get way more than you would get for 50 cents. And I think it's probably like the guy that could eat the 92 on steak in one sitting or whatever. But he goes from Carlin and he leaves Carlin at 5, 10 AM, follows the canyon for 10 miles. And he's got to get back on the rails again before Elko, Nevada. And there's a rail tunnel where he can't see the light at the end of the tunnel because tunnel curves. How, what do you do? You got no headlight. You got to get through the fucking tunnel. Railway schedule. You know what time it is roughly. You put your foot against the one rail where you can feel the rail and you follow it around until you get to where you can see the light. He's totally in the dark. I have historical documentation that this tunnel was completed in 1903. It's a brand new fucking tunnel. And he's the first one that goes through it on a motorcycle. What was that book by Stephen King about the pandemic? This is kind of like that, but the tame version of that. He gets to Elko, Nevada and they're all shysters. I'm sorry. That's the way we're going to call it. He buys three pints of gasoline spelled wrong. G-A-S-O-L-E-N-E because gasoline's a new thing. He pays $1.25 a gallon, which is an absolute ripoff in the middle of nowhere because the average price he's been paying on the entire trip is 40 cents a gallon. I've done the math. This engine, the way he's riding it, is getting him 100 miles per gallon. Very odd that it comes up to a good square number, but which is actually ideal. It's fucking great. His regular tank holds two quarts. When he's in the far West, he keeps an extra tank on his luggage rack, which holds two gallons for emergencies. So he can make it a good distance, right? After Elko, he hits the high plains, or as he calls it, the great American desert. And he hits good roads until he hits washouts. But we're going to go from Carlin to Wells and he's going through Elko. And he spells Elko two different ways, but that's his problem.

Brian: Pretty cool, right? Mind-blowing. The balls in that guy.

Robin: Right? Just stupefying. Riding railroad tracks across trestle bridges where you don't necessarily have a good train schedule. You just have the railroad map because that's all they used in the day. That's insanity. Ah, well, it's just you and me, man. Time for us to wind everything down. So that means I'm up a bet to host the next episode. What would you have me work on? Assign me task after task and I will do my best to make something interesting happen. And nobody will be offended. Nobody.

Brian: Pick a topic. Okay. I'm going to use a word that I hate and you hate too, I bet. Okay. Let's talk about the process of making a new bike. A bike that's new to you to making it your own, whether it's used, whether it's brand new. This is a process you're going through right now. This is a process you are, it's not a smooth process.

Robin: I am neck deep in it.

Brian: Yes. So let's talk about, you know, what, what are the first things you do? What are the things you pay attention to? And I've gone through this process. It's been a while since I bought a bike. So yeah, I think that'd be kind of fun to talk about, you know, how do you approach it? What do you do first? What are your priorities?

Robin: And if we want to feather that topic ever so slightly for a moment, I'd tell you it's, it starts with get yourself a really comfortable chair and sit your ass down in front of that thing. You're always going to have an opportunity to shop for what is made for the bike. But the first thing I do is I sit my ass on the ground and I stare at what the opportune aftermarket mounting points might be. What features that are bone stock, the one little thing that was just a little bit too, it's just uncomfortable. We're going to have to change that. What are you going to have to do? Because one size does not fit all. It never will.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: I will say I've, I've heard of massive mistakes in the past. I do know of someone who took an Africa twin and then they lowered it and then they modified it and then they altered this and they scratched out that and they removed this and replaced it. And in the end, what they did was they turned it into a Triumph Tiger 750, whatever it is.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I think that's a, yeah, that's a great point to reiterate is you can get, you can get tangled up and wrapped around the internet so much that you forget to lay hands on the damn bike, ride it, see what it's like, see what the factory thought it should be like. That's very important. We'll get into that next time.