Robin: I am traveling from New Mexico to Wisconsin to hang out with the one and only Travis Burleson. Brian is on a dual sport ride, and that got me thinking, maybe it's time for a reunion of the OGs. So welcome back, Mr. Travis Burleson, the original co-founder of, then it was the Writing Obsession Podcast, now Radio TRO. What's up, man?

Travis: Thanks for having me back. I finally carved out some time. Well done, sir. Also helps that Brian's gone and we're off schedule and the season's just getting started. You're on the road.

Robin: I am on, yeah.

Travis: Don't you have your regular setup? You're just like in the living room or on the couch. That's not punched out.

Robin: I got a tin can up against my face that is full of whiskey, by the way, before you even get to the string. It's just me and a tin can full of whiskey and a string connecting to the cabinet in the downstairs of our toy hauler. I was going to say that, uh, part of having you on, I was telling Tom Burns. He was asking what happened to, where is Travis? Where's Tim? Where's Armine? I'm like, well, Travis and I, we're always talking, but the fact is he's raising two hooligans with his wife. So the man is busy, basically described to him the fact that there's a door with a star on it, with your name in that star next to Tim Clark's door with the name and the star on it. That door is always open. Your dressing room is always waiting for you. It's just, when are you going to find time to use it, right? So it doesn't matter. Good to have you, sir.

Travis: That is the challenge. Yes. To, uh, two five-year-old boys to keep you, uh, to keep you occupied. Henry did, uh, assist me with a automotive oil change today. I remember you saying this, go on. Yeah. His brother wanted to go swimming at the pool. So mom took him to the Y and then Henry stayed home. I was like, you can't watch any more videos. We're going to the auto parts store. I got to change the oil. When we get back, you can watch more videos. But then we, you know, by the time we got to the auto parts store and got everything we needed on the way back, I was interested in what I was doing. And so he was like paper towel handler and helped me, you know, put the oil in. I got him a little milk crate to stand on, to do the above car parts.

Robin: It's a, that is an awesome start.

Travis: It's a total tangent, but that's a, that's what I've been up to today at least.

Robin: But that's how we're going to get this thing started. There's no way I can edit this into a form of a podcast. We're just going to release this in the raw, but like, okay. So quick banter, I'm on my way to you because we're going to be riding sevens and I'm going to be spending the entire summer riding every Wednesday with you as well, such as the plan, which means I have to figure out some work schedule stuff. But the point is I'm eating terribly. I had two donuts this morning, then I had ham and cheese and I just had Detroit style pizza and I'm drinking whiskey, which is going to be the water of today. We just started for the first time in the six years that we've done this. Instead of trusting our, uh, GPS unit, we finally, Maggie is pulling out the Rand McNally truck route maps for the use we're on, what's it called? The, the Santa Fe trail, which is mostly like route 50 and route 56. It's beautiful. Two lanes, nobody on it. Smooth. Well, uh, it's smooth when it's smooth and definitely not when it's not. But, uh, certainly agitates the drainage tanks good enough that they're, they drain really easily when we'd land. Man, beautiful. So that's my banter. My banter is I'm heading to you, man. I'm heading to you with big plans. That's the whole deal. How are you doing? The season's just starting as we're, you know, I've already led a tour.

Travis: Yeah. Uh, well it is, it is Wisconsin. Um, it's been thunderstorming a lot lately. So is it snowing there? Uh, probably was up north at some point. Got the bike out a couple of times just for commutes. Haven't actually been able to go on a like fun ride. Cause the weather or like the weekend weather has been uncooperative.

Robin: I hear it's weird up there right now. Right?

Travis: Yeah. It's like, it was like a couple of weeks ago. So we're talking like mid April, it was 80 degrees one day. And then it was 52 the next it was.

Robin: Yeah. And this episode hasn't been produced yet, but the previous episode has not been produced yet. But in that episode, we had a weather fluke in New Mexico on the weekend of the tour, like it was eighties, eighties, eighties, and then it was like 85, 75. And then on the last day of the ride, 35 unusable, unrideable. It was just really hard.

Travis: Amazing. Yeah. It's funny. Like just come, comes down off the mountain there with the Arctic vortex.

Robin: At random. Yeah. Once you start seeing weather information mentions Canada in New Mexico, you know that something big's hitting because they went to the trouble to alert you about a Canadian front. You visit TR to bike, you click on our weather forecast, that kind of information will show up. But if you see anything that for your area, we want you to know that something's happening on the other side of the globe. You might want to, you know, may raise eyebrows like a meteorite, you know?

Travis: It's a Icelandic volcano again. Yeah. Now I've been driving the moped a lot. That's like, man around town. It's just the best. And I can like park it on the sidewalk. Uh, I mean, you know, cause no one cares. I'm not technically allowed to do that. Used to be able to in the city. So no one cares as long as you're not obstructing anyone. So you're in the moped a lot. Um, which is just, again, you can't be sad on a moped. Doesn't matter how slow it is. Like when you're going up a Hill and it drops down to five miles an hour and you got it pinned, like you just, you giggle. Um, you can't not, uh, but yeah, doing that. And then, um, kept playing music. Our, uh, drummer had to have some sudden surgery. Uh, so he's been laid off for a couple of weeks. He's, uh, he's on the mend. He's, he's doing pretty good. I'll, I'll, um, I won't relay his medical history, uh, just his social security number over the air.

Robin: Is he looking for Brian? Cause I know exactly where Brian is.

Travis: We'll get, we'll get those two together. Yeah. It was a couple, went into the hospital for a thing and then let him out. They had to go back and then let him out and they had to go back. But, uh, he's, uh, getting his staples out pretty soon. We'll be back to plan. Our next gig is actually a friend's wedding. All right. He was like, I want you guys to play my wedding. Hell yeah. So we'll be playing at Murph's wedding and in June about it. Uh, not too much motorcycle stuff, trying to get ready for, um, for the season and make plans for the different things coming up, we'll probably talk about that later, but yeah, just, just easing into the, uh, easing into the, the motorcycle, the rusty, creaky motorcycle world at this point.

Robin: And all this discussion is just making sure we talk about something that is outlined and the rest is going to fall into a drunken stupor of, you know what? We'll do it. Here's an idea. So we'll get there.

Travis: What if a motorcycle was a sandwich? Fried bologna. Think about it.

Robin: Yeah. Bike prep, easing back in. What's going on with bike prep? Is everything set up? How is the Honda ready for riding?

Travis: Yeah, I've been riding it. Like I said, I've been commuting a couple of days, especially between the, um, the Honda and the, uh, Kawasaki, depending on how gross the roads are. I'll ride the Kawasaki because it's already been crashed once. I don't care.

Robin: I just threw new tires on the, on the new bike.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: I gotta be careful. Like if I get up there and we have a month to go riding, then I can use up more tread than I will have left to ride all of sevens. Yes. So I'm like, what do I do? Do I not ride all month or do I ride all month? Yeah, just mangle them.

Travis: No, you just got to have that. Um, you know, you got like five half used sets in your garage because you always need a fresh set for a thing. And then you never wear one out all the way before you need a fresh set for a thing.

Robin: Same for the next track day.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: Actually that might work.

Travis: Tread depth, I don't know how finicky they are about that sort of stuff. Or what the, what the limit is.

Robin: I remember being like a third, if not 50%, something like that.

Travis: Okay.

Robin: Uh, but don't quote me on that. Cause I'm not an employee of motovid.com.

Travis: I thought it was more than half, but maybe I inverted that.

Robin: It's very possible.

Travis: Yep. But that's it. Yeah. When I talk about riding this moped a lot, cause it's fun. Kids, vans, all that covered. When you get up here, we need to track prep the Kawasaki though. I have Racetech springs and emulators and a set of clip-ons. Hell yeah. Yeah. I got gold valves. Yeah. Yeah. No, the front suspension, I think is trash.

Robin: Yeah. No, it's garbage.

Travis: Like even just riding around town.

Robin: With Racetech and emulators, it's going to be sexy as hell.

Travis: It's going to be great. But yeah, it's like even just riding around town, the front end comes off the ground cause the front ends is so stiff. So this is for the folks listening. This is a 2009 Kawasaki ER6N, the Z650 of 2009 before they came up with a better name. So it's a, like the old Ninja 650 chassis, the Ninja 650 that had handlebars, if you remember.

Robin: Yeah. Real bars, seven eighths inch.

Travis: Like one, like one, like one Genigo.

Robin: Are they inch to seven eighths? I don't remember. It doesn't matter.

Travis: No, they're just seven eighths bars.

Robin: Seven eighths all the way.

Travis: Um, the ugly ass headlight. This is the 2000s. Yeah. They made, they put the stiffest springs they could in the front end of a standard fork. So I think, so it would be sporty. Just a dowel rod. And they're so stiff. The front end comes off the ground constantly when you go over rough, any rough, any rough surfaces. You're like, yeah. So I went to race, I went to a race tech site, you know, put in like, what do you want to do with this? Like sport riding, occasional track day, size and weight, all that. And it was like, here's your stock spring was like 1.2. We recommend 0.75. Oh, so. And then I was like, well, what if I do like hardcore, this is a race bike and they're like 0.8 it's like, oh, yeah.

Robin: So that's funny. You just bring this up. Shout out to Paul and Steph who, you know, Paul from the seven store last year.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: He went on the New Mexico tour and he got himself a used MT 10, which by the way is insane, but it's a street bike instead of a CBR. It's a street bike where they put the entire engine above the wheels and the tires are almost kissing. It's a street fighter all day.

Travis: Yeah. It's a, it's an R it's a naked R one. Yeah.

Robin: Oh yeah. But the wheelbase is three inches smaller than my jigsaw three inches. So all that power, there's no way to keep that on two wheels. So he wanted to get a suspension dialed in. I learned very quickly that, okay. So first off, Brian has memorized the formula. So he was just like, Oh, but dub dub, dub, dub, dub, dub. It should be this. And then he nails it. And you know, we tested some waters with that. We never, it was really soft for the entire tour for him. But over the course of the week after the tour, we sat down and really perfected the suspension sag calculator on TRO. So if you visit TRO to bike and mouse over digi tools, like on suspension, sag calc, it is now spot on. You got to know your exact suspension travel, and then you have to enter that in. I'm going to set it up. So it does a variety of things, but it'll give you the correct percentage for sporty riding. You want 25% of the total travel. We used it. We dialed it in. We got the rebound and compression that took a little bit longer because that thing's got a fully adjustable, but trust it, it does work. If we set your track bike up, our track bike, the official TRO track bike, my track bike, then if we set that up for 25%, it's going to feel beautiful anyway.

Travis: But yeah, I got that. Got the clip-ons for the, uh, I feel like the clip-ons are going to make me want to have rear sets and those are going to make me want to have a, like a race seat cowl on it, but you know, I'm only doing one track day a year, so it's not for the end of the world. How much are the resets? Real ones, like four or $500. If you get Alibaba, Amazon, eBay specials, like $80.

Robin: Hey man, I just bought SW Motec soft bags off of AliExpress for, it's clear they are not knockoffs. They are the actual product for half the cost.

Travis: They're factory direct.

Robin: They're factory direct.

Travis: Direct out of the back door of the factory.

Robin: Yes. But I say, do it. I say, go for it. That'd be fun.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: I've got some topic ideas. You've got some topic ideas, but you're the guest and you had some particularities that you wished to contest. Remember, remember, you've been out of the game for a long time and we are now Radio TRO and just be prepared for our amazing, this debate. There'll be a fight.

Travis: Yeah. Well, I meant to go back and re-listen to some of the old podcasts to remember what those things were. When I was listening, I was like, man, no, it's this, and I don't know what I had for breakfast, man. I don't sleep as much as I'm supposed to because children. Yeah. I don't even remember what it was. There was something.

Robin: That's right. That was one idea. What do you got?

Travis: So this was one, so you guys had mentioned a couple episodes ago about like formative bike rides, like one of the ones, like one of the rides that really has made you a part of who you are and also for bikes of a similar nature, motorcycles of a similar nature that we've owned. Yeah. So I thought we could dive on that because there's one that you forgot to mention that includes both of us. I think that we're both agree on.

Robin: I know. Well, because Brian wanted to know, and mine involved like spiritual rebirth at the loss of a family member on every, every destination was a memorial and I, so it became a pattern of discussion and I've failed to think about the fact that, yeah, go on. I know where this is going.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: And it's completely warranted.

Travis: Yeah. It was like the year after I moved up to Madison, we took a trip. It was when you were going to sell the condo and buy the rig and do that whole thing, um, you know, pre COVID before it was cool.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: You were thinking about going to the Pacific Northwest. So we're like, well, let's go check it out. So we decided to ride motorcycles there and spend like one day.

Robin: Hold on. That was way off though. That was way off. We were going to sell the condo and move to Libertyville. We had no intention of doing the, the, uh, travel trailer thing yet.

Travis: Yeah. Well, I thought that's why we're going to, we went to the Northwest because you wanted to see what it was like.

Robin: That I did do. But yeah, I remember it was just like hodgepodge casual. Even then I remember you and I were friends and then I posted like vaguely, look, I'm going to ride to Portland, Oregon. If anybody wants to do this, join in. And of all the people, I was like, yeah, it was you. I was like, this is going to be good.

Travis: And it was that amount to do a lot. Go on. Is there podcast content on that? Recalling that tour wave from way back?

Robin: I don't remember, man. I don't think so. I don't know. We didn't have a podcast yet.

Travis: We did like record stuff though. Didn't we? Or was it a write-up? We did a write-up.

Robin: Yeah. I mean, there's like pages upon pages upon pages.

Travis: It was just like a two and a half week trip.

Robin: Yeah, it was supposed to be, we're going to go for like a week or like eight or nine days. And it just was so hard.

Travis: Yeah. Now it was like April or something. Wasn't it early in the season?

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: Cause there was still, there was still snow in the mountains.

Robin: Once we got to the Rockies and Coeur d'Alene and all that. For the listeners. If you go to TRL bike and you click on touring and go to articles, touring, or if you just hit search and search for Portland, there's one introductory article that Travis wrote. It was like, you know, a thousand words or some odd, giving a basic overview. And then the links begin that link to every single consecutive day. I remember I was a completely different editor then. I was a completely different writer then. And I've never taken the articles down cause they belong on the site, but I was writing them from, there was a lot of poetry and motion kind of stuff going on and writing the articles from a present tense perspective. So we are this and this, that, and this, and this sort of like trying to set the stage that way, but, but all in all, it covers a lot of ground. It covers side bacon, the bowling alley steak.

Travis: When's now? Now, when will then be now? Soon.

Robin: Ah, Spaceballs. Thank you. Yeah. But yeah, you can find that entire thing there. We did the write-ups. We took turns covering each day so that we would get a variety of perspectives and they were edited to what they are. As far as the podcast is concerned, it's not there. And man, to make that decision and just go for it. Holy shit.

Travis: Yeah. It was a lot of stories. Maybe we should do a, um, recap podcast as far foggy minds can remember from like 10 years ago.

Robin: Let's do that.

Travis: We'll have to look at our own old articles.

Robin: So we'll have to read the entire series to ourselves, make notes of things we want to bring up about past memories that weren't mentioned, and then have it out for a good hour and a half. And just, I think that'd be a great episode. We could, we should totally do that because we're not the same writers. No, we're not the same writers either. And we're certainly not the same podcast as we were. The first episode we did the podcast was 2015.

Travis: 10 years ago.

Robin: Yes. But what was it about?

Travis: It's probably a lot like this. It's probably just us remembering.

Robin: Podcast. I'm clicking on it now. By the way, shout out to Brian Ringer because in the past year and a half, two years, he and I have recorded more podcast episodes. We've outnumbered them in a year and a half. Kind of crazy. 2015 was the international motorcycle show.

Travis: All right. Which doesn't exist anymore.

Robin: And then the winter blues, spring motorcycle safety tips. I'm doing this. These are all like 2015. Laser beams and O-rings. That was January of 2016. And then nobody's Buell, which was the XB.

Travis: Weren't you guys still just talking about Buell the other day?

Robin: Since then, since January of 2016, we had Buell on the show.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: So like, anyhow.

Travis: So that was a formative ride. Ups, downs. Many little vignettes of weird things that happened. Lucky breaks and bad luck.

Robin: Name five. Can you think of five in order in series? You're like, Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. That happened.

Travis: Can you do it? Yeah. I mean, there's the, my bike broke in Nebraska. I think the pass in Colorado might count.

Robin: The pass in Colorado?

Travis: Yeah. Up through when it came down to the Steamboat Springs.

Robin: I think that was six.

Travis: Yeah. The other mountain summit in Utah when we got out of the desert and then went up to the snow line. Yes. Crossing that Southwest corner of Idaho with like the 60 mile an hour crosswinds. Diagonally. Yeah. Did anything particularly bad or good happen in Seattle or Portland other than us hanging out with our friends?

Robin: The photo where you thought we were being serious and smiling and Ben and I were being dorks. And you're like, Hey, and then we're just being dipshits.

Travis: There you go. That's five.

Robin: That's five. All right. My turn. Exploding particle board that flew off a truck. My chain went south. Was that on the way back?

Travis: Yeah. It was in Aberdeen, South Dakota that it got replaced.

Robin: Before that, the best martini I ever didn't drink. Watching you drink a martini where you were just like, Oh yeah. Yeah.

Travis: That was after that Southwest corner of Idaho when I was just death gripping my little single cylinder bike.

Robin: And you drink that martini down like this is the best thing ever. On the way back, the bowling alley steak.

Travis: Oh yeah.

Robin: And what inspired that. So again, one back. Fifth one before that would be the hail. We got hit by hail.

Travis: Forgot about that.

Robin: I chimed in. I was like, Travis, let's stop, dude. Let's stop. I don't like motorcycles right now. Let's stop. And we just hit a hojo.

Travis: Yeah. We found that we found the closest hotel that had a hot tub. That was the criteria.

Robin: Yeah. And they, they did. And there was a steak and it was basically like having dinner at the hotel. That was the shining, except it was abandoned roller rink. Uh, yeah, dude.

Travis: Wow. That's a good, that's a good ride.

Robin: I can't apologize enough for not giving it due mention, but my conversation found a theme of death.

Travis: Yeah. It was all appropriate.

Robin: But that was a, that was our first big fricking ride, huge multi-state cross country.

Travis: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then there was like, I took a trip on my rebel two 50 when I first started riding to like Michigan and back. Yeah. And that was, um, it was like a 900 miles on a rebel two 50, the whole pack on it from, I think it was Sullivan in Chicago then to Eastern Michigan, and then got caught in the rain, had to stay with my buddy for a couple of days. That was a whole situation. Um, the shucking pears story. If I haven't told that one.

Robin: For everybody listening, Travis is six one and a rebel two 50 was comfortable.

Travis: Plain and simple. I made my own custom seat for it. It was great. I still have it. I should probably sell it. I don't know why.

Robin: Yeah. We got to talk about my house, which is in your basement. I need to, I need to, I need to get rid of everything into the store. We'll get another time.

Travis: We had that ride too. And then, um, those are probably like the two biggest ones.

Robin: Okay. So do I need to pour myself another whiskey?

Travis: Well, that's up to you.

Robin: Well, because I see the next topic on your list.

Travis: Yeah. Formative bikes. But for me, it's, it's, you know, I think the genie, the jackhammer, the bike, I took that, uh, that trip with you out West.

Robin: BMW F six 50 single cylinder.

Travis: F six 50 CS, the city street, the Scarver, according to a BMW's a marketing team. If you want a blast from the past, look up the original commercial for the BMW F six 50 CS. There's a lot of radical young people, rollerblading and having fun.

Robin: What is that? That's an F six 50 CS. Yeah. Dude.

Travis: It's to not get too, uh, tangented on that. Part of its design was that it had multicolored panels that you could swap out and switch and change the color of your bike.

Robin: And shade tree surgeon had this crazy sport bike. He called it a metric trapper keeper on acid. Uh, so you're saying that thing could be all disco'd out with neon flush.

Travis: Um, no, no, it was very German. It was nice, subtle colors, but you could change them in this version of black or even gray, like pastel blue and stuff. Like inspired by, remember the IMAX, a tube TV with computer built in and the colored translucent back part of their design ethos. And it had like translucent plastic parts on it until they realized that, oh, these just die in one year from the sun hitting them.

Robin: And it goes yellow and foggy.

Travis: My bike the last year had black plastic turf.

Robin: Very nice. Instead of the future colostomy bag, that is the freaking translucent shit.

Travis: I think you said yours was your, um, your sake.

Robin: I tried not to honestly, but it kind of tied the two things together with like a first go of anything. When you do something confidently with ignorance and nobody else gets hurt, don't be confident and ignorant about how you address other people. But if you're confident and ignorant on your own terms, writing a ball of fire between your legs, you don't understand what displacement means. You don't understand what a tune is, what over square versus under square, what valves, what, uh, uh, oh, that's a missing bolt that holds your engine on kind of stuff isn't. If you're there and you make the trip, I think that somehow you actually might have the fuel for fodder to succeed at doing it. And I wanted to do that. And so the, the Seiko was a big, that bike by itself. Let's ignore the family events that led to me trying to ride that to Florida from Chicago, 400 CCs, 18 inch rims to Florida. But that bike was the first bike where I met people. And I was like, this is what I wanted to do. When I got into motorcycling, there's all that I could not afford.

Travis: There still is.

Robin: Right. Yeah. No, no. Right. Looking at you, Beamer. The fact is, is that, uh, that bike was what was accessible and I wanted to travel on motorcycles. I wanted to ride motorcycles with more skill than I had the day before at speeds that fellow instructors would probably frown upon. Fuck them. And I wanted to develop how I went about it. That amazing indestructible turd of a load displacement machine got me there. Think about it this way. I now decided to drop 400 CCs. I decided to. They just lifted the curtain off the new R 1300 RS and it looks good. I'm extremely happy to be on my Suzuki Gixator by choice. So it's come full circle to what do I see myself doing? I can actually write things off with taxes. So.

Travis: The F650 was really like, you know, we did that trip on it. I mean, it was my second bike. The Rebel 250 I had for like a year and a half, two years, rode the crap out of it. And then I wanted something bigger and better. And I wasn't sure, you know, like, do I want to cruise when I started riding? Like, do I want a cruiser? Do I want like a sport bike or what? It's like, but I got a Rebel because that's what they had in the class. And it's really kind of a standard. It kind of looks like a cruiser, but it doesn't ride that different from the Nighthawk 250, which is what I wanted to get, but couldn't find.

Robin: Still forward controls. Those are forward controls. And it's a long rig.

Travis: Yeah. It's like a, it's like a classic standard.

Robin: What the Rebel? I disagree. Well.

Travis: No, the Nighthawk.

Robin: Oh, the Nighthawk is.

Travis: Yeah. The Rebel, the Rebel does kind of, but it's like more like mid controls. It's not, it's, it's.

Robin: You and I have discussed this at length on many an episode. The classic standard is sitting in a chair, not forward controls, but sitting in a chair. The modern standard is sitting on a bar stool.

Travis: Sure.

Robin: I'm right.

Travis: The, uh, that's an opinion. That's great.

Robin: Thank you.

Travis: Thank you for your, thank you for sharing, Robert. It's like the bike too, where like, remember we had that, uh, abandoned development park racetrack.

Robin: Yes. That's still on my YouTube channel, my personal YouTube channel.

Travis: Yeah. So there was this, you know, we went to the Chicago suburbs and we built them in Chicago and they had built this development, but then stopped. So they'd put the roads in and did not build any buildings.

Robin: Shout out to Bob Deeda. You're the one that sent us the satellite coordinates for that via Google maps.

Travis: And he could kind of set up this little sort of like figure eight oval sort of racetrack around these streets.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: No one out there. It's like, it was in the middle of nowhere. And yeah, we went out there and ripped around. So it was like, that's like, that's the bike where I was like, got into like riding assertively and having fun and going fast.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: And then like doing trips and like hauling way too much stuff on it and breaking the subframe poles. And that bike is the one where the output shaft bearing went. So I had to drop the engine and disassemble the entire engine and reassemble it. I ran, you know, that's the bike I first, that's the first time I went all the way into a motor.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: Removing the crank and everything. Yeah.

Robin: I remember the way you said it, I was like, so output shaft bearing, what do you have to do to fix that? And Travis kind of pauses. You have to crack the case alongside like, so what's doing this winter? I'll be in the garage a lot.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: But every bike we got, it was transformative. Like, uh, maybe not the big one. I mean, you got to ride it, but was it like transformative? You know, the Honda big ones.

Travis: I think that one made me like four cylinders because I was like, four cylinders are dumb. Why don't you force? I'll never run four cylinders. And then like I wrote, I had that bike as a, so when my Beamer broke, I bought this bike off of Craigslist scope in the archives. We talk about it, but I bought this bike for cheap off of Craigslist and it needed some work and I got it running and did a trip. Was it Brown County on that? I think, didn't we do the test on sevens? Yeah.

Robin: You were on the NC by then.

Travis: Yeah. Cause I only had the big one for like two years. So yeah, but that one, I mean, two was, it was look up the Honda big one. It's a whole story. It's heavy.

Robin: It's like a 600 pound bike, 18 inch wheels, tall as hell.

Travis: The weird naked version of the Honda hurricane that they made for a couple of years.

Robin: Strange power distribution, but it did its thing.

Travis: I mean, it was just like, brr, how is this four cylinder? I don't know. I thought it was like a Turkey, big four cylinder from the nineties.

Robin: Yeah. But then came the NC, you dropped power and increased handling. That was nuts.

Travis: Yeah. I mean, it's a smaller bike with a center of gravity that isn't like in your chest, like the big one. What was it like 60 horsepower, 50? Yeah, like 55 or something like that. But I rode the crap out of that bike. I mean, you could attest to that and it would never let me down. It was, it was the pinnacle Honda appliance motorcycle. And it was great. And it was fun to ride because motorcycles are fun to ride.

Robin: But I finally found myself telling Maggie about the, like the BMW R series GS bikes or any of their adventure bikes. I figured it out. They all look like bottle openers. They're a bunch of Swiss army knife bottle openers with like hidden screwdrivers.

Travis: They're tactical design for tactical men, tactical tasks.

Robin: Exactly. That's what I see in looking. It's beautiful. I don't know, man. It looks jagged.

Travis: Beautiful. Isn't the word I'd use.

Robin: It's a bike that you use in a mine to smash rocks.

Travis: Yeah. It's like a component off a bucket wheel excavator.

Robin: When I bought the bandit, that was a big change because I finally arrived it. I always wanted a leader bike. I wanted a thousand CCS plus for touring. I, I listened a lot. I know I talk a shit ton, but when I hear people talking about what's necessary for a bike to really be tourable, one of the things is a less wear and tear on the motor by way of higher displacement and the number of cylinders divided. So I really wanted that bandit because I knew it would be good for it. You know, it's like, what kind of truck do I want to use to pull my 37 foot fifth wheel toy hauler? It's not a Ford F one 50. I'll tell you that much right now.

Travis: It's a Ford F three 50.

Robin: King ranch, Lariat, super duty, Julie crew cab. It's a beast. You know, it's like you want the right machine for the job. And I still feel like by today's tech that even downing it by 400 CCS, I just, I really dig the bike. The bandit was a massive step up for me to do all the things I wanted to do. And even that, you know, it was long in the tooth for a second jet to then get the beamer. That was it. It's on now. All the photos on the website need to be updated. This is the epitome of sport touring. This is the ultimate sport touring machine. He's either the K 1300 S or the R 1200 RS BMW. If not the VFR, if not, you know, it's like a very specific sporty profile of machine that's decided to just, that's designed to just melt curves. I got that. Now I'm like, well, let's stretch the boundaries on my terms, 800 CCS of Suzuki that I don't understand yet is grotesquely underpowered above until you reach 1500 shy of red light. And then you can smell gas after you park it in the airbox. I'm learning more about it. And apparently it can handle a tune. It can handle a power commander. There's a lot I want to do to it.

Travis: Same thing. I, when I had the big one and it was slow for a leader bike, you know, it was 1994 with like a engine from the late eighties.

Robin: So you got above 7,000 RPMs, but it was still, I mean, it was still a leader bike.

Travis: It was plenty fast, really peaky. Wasn't the bandit.

Robin: Yeah. Linear street, which I mean, it wasn't like super peaky.

Travis: It was still like street tuned, but compared to what the band, it was where that was more of a, a touring motor. This was still very much a sport bike motor.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: But yeah, and then coming down to now that I went down way down in power, you know, less than half because of medical reasons at the NC, which would turn out to be a great bike that had for many years that I wanted more power again. So the CB 650 fits right in there as far as power delivery and weight. And I know there's like more powerful bikes and there's like lighter bikes kind of in that class, but it's the best one. Like it just has the best components. It looks the best. And it was a good deal.

Robin: I'm really happy with my purchase.

Travis: Well, I mean, when I bought that, there really wasn't this like 800 CC weird class, you know, it was, it was this or like a Ninja versus 650. I did look at an FJ 09, but I didn't like it. Interesting. This is ringers. Is his FJ 09 or is it a tracer?

Robin: He's got the FJ 09.

Travis: But yeah, so I went to go test ride one. I don't know. I didn't like it. Just like every time I, like I went, every time I wrote a versus 650 on paper, I should like the versus 650. And every time I wrote it, I was just like, I, I don't like this bike. This doesn't feel weird. I don't know. Because I have the, the, the, the 650, you know, naked bike. That feels great. The versus 650, just the way the suspension and the handlebars are, I don't know what it is. It doesn't, maybe if I had one and I could judge it and make it, but it's like every time I've gotten on one and test rode it, I was like, oh, but the, the CB, I always liked the way it looked in the red. And it was there. I parked the FJ 09. I was like, can I take that CB out too? I always liked those. The first time, like once I got out of the, the kind of crowded city area, then I just got to the first stop sign and was smiling.

Robin: That's the thing. It was closer to what you wanted from the beginning. Like, I think like any motorcycle, if you're like on paper, if you say on paper, this bike, I should love it. Probably you can, but first you have to acquire it and then convert it. Like you have to go through many steps to sculpt it into, okay, different set of bars, different options, different, you know, uh, update the suspension to what I prefer, all the different things that you have to do to make it into the thing. But if that bike is already extremely close to what you wanted from the get-go, you're golden. And I'm a little bit more neurotic about my upgrades. You know, some things from the Beamer, I don't want to not have. So I'm finding ways to get them on this bike. And one example is you and I both have this situation. We have one adjustable shock that has one adjustment.

Travis: Preload only.

Robin: Yeah. Preload only. So we have no front side adjustment. We have no rebound or compression damping. We have only the one knob on the rear shock. I am looking at upgrades immediately.

Travis: Like, I mean, it's like 12, it's like 1200 bucks from basically anyone. It is. There's not a cheap way into that.

Robin: You're right. I mean, I guess I would take a rebuildable preload only bike or a suspension. I'm sorry. But at the same time, I'm looking at some companies in Europe that make a fully adjustable, fully rebuildable suspension that definitely has my interest. You know, on the bike side, Maggie's looking at bike possibilities. So we've landed over and over on the SV.

Travis: The Miata of motorcycles.

Robin: Absolutely. She gets it. Okay, let's hand it to the Triumph. I've complained enough about it. It's time for my co-host to hear me not complain about it. Luckily, that usual co-host isn't here. So you get to experience the not displeasure of me bitching about Triumph and their immobilizer nonsense that stranded us. Oh, it is. Absolutely. It was an amazing machine. So she and I were talking about this today that she still loves that. She loved it. She chose that bike. She singled it out. It was like, that's the one. I want that machine. The Triumph second gen of the bug eyes.

Travis: They're not round.

Robin: Technically, it's like the third generation. I didn't know that there were two generations of the Mosquito I version. And now there's a third. But she saw it. She was like, I want that bike. Specifically this one injection. She called it all out. She's like, this is the one. And, you know, it lasted as long as it did until it started finding her. So we started talking about what's easier to work on. What's accessible? What's light? What's low? And what's sporty? You know, it just always landed for her on SV, SV, SV. So today we're going down the road talking about CFMoto. Which, for those of you listening, I mean, they're a Chinese company.

Travis: Everything that I've been hearing about them has been, you know, positive. And even, uh, yeah. Who, um, who bought one? We were, they were at Road Wisco last year. The one that they don't sell anymore. The, um, versus clone.

Robin: Yeah, basically. But dig this. So for about the same price as my new machine, actually less, actually significantly less, a couple grand off. She can get an injected bike with the same ergonomics as the Triumph for a fraction of the cost of the Triumph with a fully adjustable, rebuildable suspension and the same motors that they were basically shipping off to KTM.

Travis: You're looking at the 450 or the 800 and K.

Robin: We're looking at the 650 sport bike. The 675 SS. Yes. Fully fared machine. It's a triple. The ergos are nice. It's pretty lightweight. The end seems around 31.5, but she's kind of done with all that crap. She just wants to have a nice, comfortable bike. She can handle one footing at this point. And, uh, so it stands out. The only qualms about it are parts availability. That is in question. Again, it comes down to that bike has all of the bells and whistles. Tuneable workable, no big deal versus the maybe aging SV. But the fact is it's been around so long. I started the conversation with her. It began with, I don't want to influence your choice. I don't see you doing any wrong. I will tell you if you're choosing a bike that I'm not willing to work on. Ducati Aprilia. And she said, okay, I understand. I understand her.

Travis: Triumph.

Robin: Yeah. Right. I mean, I'm willing to do it so long as it's going to have a result. Like once Tim Clark, our revered fellow cohost on this podcast, opened up the chip sets to look at the circuit boards, because he designs circuit boards in ways that he can't even talk about. And when he looked at the actual form of these circuits, he said, yeah, here's what's happening and explained that it's expanding and contracting and creating short circuits and yada, yada, yada. Thanks. Prince of darkness. It's right back. You can get as complicated as you want, but you're still the prince of darkness. The CFMoto kind of stands out as a very definite possibility, but she still rewound to like, I don't want to deal with parts issues.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: We're going to talk to dealerships. What's your, what are your thoughts on this?

Travis: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, that is really the one qualm I think that I have read and seen about CFMoto is that they're a new company, China, current political climate.

Robin: They're not new. They are new as a motorcycle manufacturer. They're not a new company. They've been working with KTM directly for years.

Travis: But they haven't been in the North American market for years.

Robin: Agreed. Yeah. They kind of saved in COVID they were in.

Travis: And that sort of, um, you know, that that's where you get that parts availability is just having dealerships and networks and stuff sitting on shelves and in the country where you need them. Yeah. That's the one concern. All the reviews seem good. I haven't seen anything negative yet, but I don't know. If they've been making motorcycles long enough for stuff to really start showing up for people, but I've heard, you know, more bad things about KTM bike reliability than I have CFMoto reliability. So, but yeah, I mean, obviously the SPs. Established. It's been around for so long. It's everyone knows it's good. There's such an aftermarket for it from the, the twins cup racing. So you can probably get like used race forks for a couple of hundred bucks on eBay or wherever and throw them on there. That someone that aren't good enough for the track or whatever anymore, or the bike got wrecked otherwise. And you know, that's all out there.

Robin: So it doesn't weigh on her decision, but she already made it. She's like, nope, nope. I'm back to the SV. I'm like Maggie fricking Dean. I could marry a woman. Like, wait a minute.

Travis: I did marry a woman like that. It's come up a couple of times with Laura about getting back on a bike, but there's no time and money for, for those shenanigans around the South. Yeah. There's no problems, only solutions. Maybe if you guys find an SV while you're up here, Laurel can sit on it and see what she thinks.

Robin: Yeah. I think we may have found an SV that we were thinking about creating a team of annoying people who know too much about bikes to walk into the store. That would be myself, you, Ms. Maggie Dean, perhaps Tim Clark, and maybe a pile of other people just to walk in and just know everything needs to be known and just bulldoze the sales reps out of our way and just take a good look and see what we're going to do. She and I are going to go in on that bike as soon as my current machine is halfway paid down, which it almost is. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Here's another one. Two episodes ago, Brian made mention of music that he could not differentiate as being from the 80s or the 90s. And then he sang Van Halen.

Travis: Running with the Devil.

Robin: I want to take a moment to apologize to our listeners about that. Van Halen's cool. I got no beef with that. But it got me thinking about like, what the hell would we listen to when we're riding? And Brian doesn't actually listen to music when he's riding. Shout out to Brian. So three favorite songs. You and I back and forth. You a song, me a song, you a song. Okay. So six songs total. Three favorite songs to ride your motorcycle to. And in order for me to do this, I got to look at my playlist. I got to look at Robin's Road Ruckus, which is in my signature at the bottom of every Shabbadorp on this website. Let me open up title. We're going to sort it by date added. That's the only way I can find the hippest shit that I'm listening to staying relevant on the streets.

Travis: Yo.

Robin: You want to go first? You want me to go first?

Travis: You go first. I'm still thinking about it.

Robin: This is perfect. So this is a particular song that I listened to riding with you through Chicago city streets at ridiculous hours of the night after a garage night. And that is Groove Armada, Super Stylin'.

Travis: Oh, my stuff's just like that. I like the most fun to ride to is my punk rock stuff, which is, I mean, absolutely most of my stuff. So let me go with the Chatz six liter GTR.

Robin: I'm going to add these to my list here. Okay. Then my next choice for that, The Hives, Hey Little World.

Travis: Nice. I don't know enough about The Hives. All right. So The Hives are Swedish and they like started in the mid nineties. Yeah. I'm going to go with Supersonic from Bad Religion.

Robin: Right into the, just a concrete foundation underneath all of it. Right to it. There's so much music in here that I'm looking at in my playlist right now. There's 25 hours of music in my playlist. I know every single one of these songs to a fault. Like I'm sick of this and it's all good music. I guess I'll say Beck, Lonesome Tears, which I used in tribute to our good friend, Michael Gordos. He's no longer among us in this world. It's just a great song. These moody melodramatic songs are where I'm in the most state of like zen calm. And that's when I am writing with the most accurate deep cornering strategies. You know, I'm seeing, I'm seeing 15 curves ahead playing the anti-hero. That's the word.

Travis: Yeah. You make me pick one song. It might be tricky, but I was going to go with, you know, Les Claypool's Duo de Twang. Oh, four foot Shaq album.

Robin: Hell yeah.

Travis: It's just, it's, it's so much fun. Primus just made a new song. They just, I have to watch their, uh, whatever they call it, their drum derby. They like video. Did you, have you seen any of that? No. So to find a new drummer, they like held auditions and put them all on YouTube.

Robin: They went straight to Danny Carey at one point from Tool.

Travis: And, um, Fred Armisen, I guess, makes an appearance in the, he like auditions.

Robin: Yeah. So comedic. Yeah.

Travis: He's a real drummer, but he is, but he's also a, he's a prankster. He's a jokester.

Robin: Yes. He's a real drummer. He's a solid drummer. I don't take his drumming seriously.

Travis: Neither does he. And that's the whole point. Yeah.

Robin: Right. Yeah. He tells the best drumming jokes ever though. Like the whole, like, okay. Okay. So the next thing we're going to talk about, so this is another thing drummers will do. And he'll go into, that's the, that's the intro to every joke.

Travis: That was his special, right? The jokes for drummers. And it was just jokes for drummers. Like if you weren't a drummer, they didn't make any sense.

Robin: There's no dishonesty. You can't hammer him about it. Cause he was totally being real about it. He was just like, this is what this is going to be.

Travis: I think he even says at the beginning. It's like, is anyone here who's not a drummer? And it's like, why, why are you here? This is for, oh, your boyfriend's a drummer. Okay. Do you know a lot about drums? No, this is not going to be fun for you.

Robin: Oh, shit. While discussing motorcycling, how can we get more music into the podcast? It just never happened. So I'm just shouting. All we're doing is shouting titles. I mean, in a perfect world.

Travis: Bands no one's ever heard of.

Robin: Yeah. I can't play the music on the episode. Cause then I'll get flagged for like, you know, content infringement or.

Travis: Go get it. You know, however you get your music.

Robin: I just happen to love listening to music while I ride. I'm always listening to music while I'm riding.

Travis: Yeah.

Robin: I can still hear my motor. I've suppressed, I'm not talking about speakers in my helmet, then earplugs that make it so I can't hear. Like that might be a Travis Burleson thing. I don't remember. Do you wear speakers or.

Travis: Um, I used to just do speakers in earplugs and that was actually pretty good. And then, um, you know, I do the buds.

Robin: Yeah. I'm all about the buds. They seal out so much more sound and the volume, the music's clear. I can still hear the engine. I'm calm. It makes me right. I feel more relaxed when music's going while I'm riding. I'm still attentive. The music is just backdrop, you know.

Travis: It especially depends like what you're doing, right? Like if you're really killing it, like you're not the music's background, right? That's not where your focus is. But if you're just putting some miles down, sit for eight hours on a, on a bike with you have lived in my brain. Some people can do it, you know. You want to talk about seven? Sure. All right. Good shot. Seven, seven's past or seven.

Robin: Seven's coming up, man. Like we still got three spots. We have three spots left. The advertisement says two, but we are one rider down now and we're still running it. So screw it. We'll make it happen.

Travis: Thanks to our generous patrons.

Robin: Yes, that is a pretty rock star.

Travis: At least this year we're well past the Kentucky Derby. Remember when we did sevens and got stuck with Kentucky Derby? Was that just the two of us? Was that the tour tour?

Robin: Was that last year? I don't remember any major hiccups.

Travis: There was one where there was like a big rainstorm and we were leaving like Red River Gorge.

Robin: That would have been you and I solo.

Travis: Yeah. And we were going to go south and do like the Kentucky Farm Roads, but there was a big storm rolling in and we're like, nah, we'll just take the interstate. And it took us through Louisville where the Kentucky Derby was happening in that weekend. And we're like, oh, we should have just taken the back roads because the traffic was terrible. Yeah. So no, no Kentucky Derby. It'll be good.

Robin: So we're doing it earlier than I think we've ever done it in terms of a spring run or summer run. We recently after the New Mexico tour, which I have to get you on. It's the sickest shit ever. It is so, so good and it is perfected and it is done. Sevens is also now a completed package since we've abandoned anything involving any diversion through Northern Kentucky. A new rule is we will not be running any tour on any holiday of any kind ever again. There'll be no holidays. I spoke about it with Brian in a previous episode where it was like, hey, man, I'm about to change the tires on the scooter and those are little wheels. So this is either going to be way, way easier or it's going to suck infinitely way, way harder. Oh, it was impossible. So the same thing happened with holidays. Oh, I figure people already have the time off. So this will work to our advantage. They will not be on the road at going to work. They will simply be at home and have free time. No, nobody on vacation is allowed to do anything they want. They have to do what everybody else tells them they have to do because that's the only opportunity they have to do it. There will be no, you know, the signups will dwindle. Lesson freaking learned. It's going to be a good run. Sevens is a completed package. So much so that soon the store on the website will be opened and we will be selling a choose your own adventure tour package that you download. You do all the calling. You schedule it for yourself. You make it happen on your terms.

Travis: But you get all the info.

Robin: Yeah.

Travis: The routes.

Robin: Yep.

Travis: Anything you want to tell the audience before we get out of here? If the, if the surprisingly good Kendas, and I think I've talked about the Kendas before when we did the track day recap last year. Yeah. How good, how good those cheap Kenda tires are. Do they have steel belts? Yeah. They're regular tires. They're not like. All right. I mean. Or they're probably Kevlar, Aramid or whatever they do.

Robin: Do they have center siping? My biggest thing is I'm not going to buy any tires that don't have a center site because I can't tell when they're out. And then I ended up in belts. Those continentals.

Travis: They, they do. It's not down the middle, but yeah, there's, there's crisscrosses over the middle.

Robin: Okay. That's important.

Travis: But then I got the Bridgestone Batlax ATX 41S, whatever it's called.

Robin: You have to say the name of this tire because Travis is one of the people who maintains our Road Rubber Rankings. If you go to TRO.Bike, mouse over digital tools, click on Road Rubber Rankings. That is our personal experience with tires review. You know, there's some opinions in there for the tires we've managed to ride, but Travis got the longest title in history. So Travis curates this page with Brian Ringer and myself.

Travis: I need to get a Suzuki GSX-S 1000 GT plus. So that you can put what tires on it? The Bridgestone Batlax Adventure Cross Scrambler AX 41S tires on it. Sounds so important. So much work, much value. Syllables. But I do have a set of the Bridgestone Batlax Adventure Cross Scrambler AX 41S tires to burn through on sevens. So we'll see how those go. I'm excited. They're like cheap Dunlop mutants.

Robin: What do we do though, man? Do we ride this month or do we just look at our bikes and wait until sevens? What do we do?

Travis: No, I got to get back into the saddle. I'm not fresh. My skills are not sharp.

Robin: Then work with me on this. I've got a Rubiconda. So are you going to do freshies before we go? Yeah. Okay. So if I order my next set of tires, would you bring your tires out to Lone Rock and we'll have a tire change party between the two of us before we do sevens? Sure.

Travis: Yeah, I got my new tire changer too.

Robin: Oh, did you now? You got the floor one, right?

Travis: Yeah, the floor one. It's somewhere between a Rubiconda and a Nomar.

Robin: I remember seeing this one. You've got to see the Rubiconda, not to make you sad, but that way I don't have to come to you with my tires. We'll probably get to stay at Chateau de Ringer on our way to sevens and spend some time with the man himself.

Travis: Sounds like a plan.

Robin: I think we'll invite him to join us for the last day of sevens as well, like last time. Anything else you want to talk about?

Travis: I think that's pretty good. All right.

Robin: So you know what? Brian, get us out of here.