Brian: In this episode, incommunicado, the inner workings of a mid-ride, let's say, discussion. Fight! That wasn't an argument. It was a discussion. Gear chick Joanne Dons got blue teeth. So is she eating some blueberries? Is she cold? What's going on here? Electric blueberries. She's connected? I'm not sure. We'll figure it out. And Jordan Liebman carries on about the history of U.S. pavement. Yes, pavement. It's a lot more interesting than you might imagine. Thanks to Jordan. Thanks to Jordan. Opening announcements, banter, corrections. What do you got?

Robin: Shout out in order of acquaintance to Jack, Mallory, and Adam, who were set up next to Brian and I at a recent track day at Road America. Jack handed me his loading ramp to move Brian's bike off of his trailer. Mallory repeatedly stood on our front wheel chocks. They both kept scooting across the ground. And her boyfriend, Adam, well, let's just say he tolerated our constant need for Mallory's assistance and a Snickers bar. Thank you for all of that.

Brian: Yeah. My trailer includes its own ramp. I don't sure why you needed one. Or did Jack just like, hey, he was right there.

Robin: You had classroom things to do. And I had been a grump for like three days. I was like, I'm going to help. I'm going to just, you know, actions speak louder than words.

Brian: Very kind of you.

Robin: I didn't know if it was going to bottom out. I don't know your trailer. I don't know the undercarriage. I didn't know if that angle was an issue. I wanted it to be smooth, so I used his ramp. And I have that exact same Harbor Freight ramp. It's exactly not long enough to use with a bed of a pickup.

Brian: Well, no, not an F3000, you know, super tow.

Robin: Voltron Ford.

Brian: Voltron 4000. Yeah. Yeah. Not, not something, not those dually diesels you guys had. No, that didn't work really well. Not at all. Yeah. Track people are the best people and these people were great people. Wonderful.

Robin: You got on here about how the Gixxator gets naked.

Brian: Yeah. I noticed a little news item, the GSX-8T and TT. So basically, Robin's bike, which is the Gixxator, the GSX-8R.

Robin: I love how you asked me, is it the Gixxator or the Gixxator? Me, it's the Gixxator, Brian. All right. So Robin's Gixxator.

Brian: Yeah. Robin's blue bike. It's pretty. So the same platform is now out there in naked form without the fairings. And what's interesting is they've also got like a styling where it's kind of this retro style vibe. They've got another version. It's pretty interesting. I like it. I like it a lot. I mean, I'm not going to go out and buy one, but I like it.

Robin: There's officially four bikes that represent the GSX-8 platform. So I've got the Gixxator, the GSX-8R. There's also the GSX-8S. Those are both identical bikes, minus the fact that mine is faired. That's all it is, is the front fairing. Same basic setup. Some, they're not clip-on bars, but they're bolt-on. You know, they're not standard tubular bars. And so now they've added two new bikes to the mix, one of which is definitely heavy on the retro. That's the GSX-8TT. And the one that I like, which is a little bit more of a neo-retro modern standard, is the GSX-8T, single T that is. No bikini fairing on the front end. I would not kick that out of bed for eating crackers.

Brian: That's a sweet looking bike. You know, and the same engine is also in the newer V-Strong too. I mean, like Yamaha, Suzuki, you know, they're making, they take one engine and make a lot of motorcycles with it. It's a good thing. Absolutely. It's a sweet power plant. Yeah. Anyway, glad to see it. And I hope they sell an absolute million of them. So they're all over the place. Me too. Me too.

Robin: The 8S is funny to me though, because the 8S was their original naked variation. And I thought, in my opinion, that's an ugly bike. I'm not drawn to it. And then I saw one where all they did was they add, you can get aftermarket winglets, like downforce wings. Completely changed the profile of the bike. And then it looked good. It's just a very subtle change. All of a sudden it looks good.

Brian: Oh, okay.

Robin: Not as good as my 8R, but.

Brian: Yeah. The 8S has like this little spider thing for the, for the headlight. Yeah.

Robin: The headlight is a bottle opener.

Brian: Yeah. Okay. So, and the T's kind of go for a retro look. Interesting. Pick your poison. They're all good. They're all fantastic. Go buy one right today. Suzuki, come and sponsor us. Absolutely. We'll sell a lot of bikes for you. Speaking of Suzuki's, what's up with that?

Robin: So we almost bought an SV650, current generation, current frame, the trellis. There haven't been any changes made to it. It was a 2018 that we found and we just got a little bit too excited. I mean, it was going to be a perfect purchase, except for one major component that we definitely wanted for it. This is a bike we're trying to get for Maggie Dean of TRO Authorship fame. She wants a current generation SV650. This one had all the fixings and upgrades. They had already installed a tail tidy. They had clearly loved it. It was in really good shape. It never really hit the ground. The one thing it was missing was ABS. And some people say, well, that's okay. Yeah, it is okay. It really is. But if you can have the current safety features as a choice installation on your machine, why wouldn't you? Mags wants ABS. It didn't have it. And what really blew the roof of the house was the fact we had already moved money around. Large sums of cash were being shifted into different things. And we didn't end up getting the bike because like only after the enthusiasm put us in a position to make the buy, we discovered it didn't have a component that we definitely want. And that kind of momentum, if you've made the decision as to what you want, there's no amount of painstaking preparation for the wrong thing that makes it a legitimate buy. You should get what you want.

Brian: Yeah, I agree. ABS is, I mean, the whole reason I got into a modern bike was I think ABS is really, that was the feature that pulled me into the 2010 plus era. Nice. And you get all the rest. You get them, you know, the power, the fuel injection handling. Yep. You get all the other good stuff, but ABS is the feature that I wanted. And so that's, that's why I, I finally updated after a long time. Yeah. Wait, so did you ride today? I did not ride today. It's a long story, but I had to, I had to move some office furniture around. So yeah, I just.

Robin: Oh, screw motorcycling. Tell me more.

Brian: Yeah. What about yesterday? Yeah, just a little bit. Did get my Yamaha back together. You know, all the street stuff, I'll back on it after the track day. Nice. People like Robin show up and just like, throw a roll of tape at it and let it streamers come off. They don't care. I'm still a newbie at this thing. So I like, I neatly tape up the lights. I remove the turn signals. He got a track day wrap. I got to work on my casualness, I guess. Yeah. Let's talk about the track day. Let's talk about, put some echo on this road. America.

Robin: America, America, America. That was a great time. I actually started typing out my experience in outline form and then realized I'm getting boring fast. Just talking about how we got there. But basically I rented a U-Haul, which turned into a fiasco.

Brian: The standard.

Robin: Basically I booked a motorcycle trailer nearby and then they texted, well, we're not going to book this thing for you till it call us and let you know. Cause we don't have it here. Like, well then why is it on the website? Well, okay, fine. Whatever. Went into town, into Madison, Wisconsin for a date night. And it rained hard enough that I was like, screw this. I am not riding the bike back. I dropped it off at a friend's house. We took the truck the rest of the way home. And then I rented a U-Haul in Madison, picked up the U-Haul, went to my buddies, got my bike, went out to lunch and off I was. So thing was we arrived at road America anticipating a lack of access. And Brian was definitely ready to wait as needed. You know, it was like, we're looking through the gates here. Look at the chain link fence. Shout out to Matt and Angel Berry for offering up a guest room plus a couch.

Brian: Yes. Fantastic.

Robin: Yeah. Whiskey and burgers. Then the very next morning, early morn, Brian had classroom stuff and I've been a grump. So I figured the least I could do was pull the bike off the ramp. Thank you, sir. Yep. Canopies went up with a preexisting tear or two. I think I actually made a new one. My favorite moment in the morning beforehand was the ground chocks. They slid as expected. So I told you, here's what we're going to do. I'll stand on yours so you can go. And then when you get back, I'll do the same and we'll trade roles for my session. Brian. Okay. Brian shows up and I have completely abandoned you. Just gone. Like, I didn't even remember I even said it. So again, shout out to Mallory. When I came back from my first session, I had not seen you. I show up and here's this lovely person standing on my chalk. And she's like, hi, I'm Mallory. I met Brian. He told me you might need some help. Yeah.

Brian: Yeah. She saw me struggling to get into the chalk or out of it or something. And then came running over, stood on it. I said, thank you very much. Came back, talked to her. I was in yellow group. I was in, you know, the, the diaper baby yellow group. Robin was an orange. And so basically rode right after one, right after the other, we did not have the chance. And all the hustle and bustle didn't take two minutes to consider the problem. And that we had everything we needed on hand to solve this problem in about five minutes. But we just went all day like that. Like idiots without thinking. Oh, all I, all we need to do is zip tie this to the gate on my trailer and it won't go anywhere. Either way that, that would work great. And we didn't even think of it. And so this, this, this woman just keeps running over. She's very, very kind. It was nice. Yeah. Track people are the best. Jack people are great. So Robin's been to road America before, and you've been there when it's dry. That was the big theme of the day is, is, is an absolutely gorgeous track. It's, it's a wonderful facility. It's amazing. Mind-blowing all the superlatives. We had rain and we had a wet track pretty much all day. We did not have it like a way that we maybe had a few laps where it was 60% dry ish. That one session and it was balls out. It was still wet in a few spots, but you could deal. And then we had actual rain, several sessions. And then we had, and then I think the afternoon after that huge storm rolled through, there was kind of a rain delay for about an hour and a half, a lightning delay. After that, the track really stayed wet. Although it wasn't actively raining. And again, going back to not having two minutes to think about things. Just before the last session, I remembered, oh, I've got a pin lock in my, in my van. So I put the pin lock in my visor and, and suddenly it was a lot easier to see for some odd reason. So my notes were. Holy shit. You know, this is a big track. Speeds are big, you know, 130 miles an hour plus on the front straight on a naked bike in the wet is kind of a mind-blowing experience. Hell yeah. I don't care who you are. The guys on the leader bikes and the four-cylinder bikes were blowing past me. And it's also mind-blowing in that there are a couple of other straights or near straights on this where you're over where you're easily over 120, you know, you're way fast in several other spots in the track too. And then you have to haul it down for a, you know, 110 degree corner, not even a 90 degree, that kind of thing. The main impressions afterwards, this is the most mentally exhausting day of riding I've ever had.

Robin: Oh, road America in the wet. One of the things that happens is turn five for me was doing it every time.

Brian: Like, oh, there's a river across it. There's a surface change. There's all this.

Robin: Yeah. It's a snotty run and I'm breaking a hundred miles an hour coming into that. You get used to it. And one of the things that I heard myself saying in my own helmet, one of the two times I began to lose the back end. If you've never done it before, you're thinking. Ah, in my case, I've done this before. Bizarre how comfortable you get with that feeling. I heard myself go, oh, this is going to be expensive. That crusty angst of dang it. There's no fear. It's just, I don't want new plastics.

Brian: You gathered it up and made it no incidents. There were a few incidents, a couple of people, nobody hurt. It was a very challenging day. My neighbor is a martial arts instructor and we were talking about it and he's like, oh, I bet you're all tired from being all tense. I'm like, actually, no, I wasn't. Yeah. Physically. I was not tired. It was all mentally draining. You know, I've most for the most part learned how to relax.

Robin: Well, you wrote a really great article about how to overcome the fear of getting back on the bike, for example. And one of the great quotes in that article is that fear and tension, they are not fuel. Yeah. You can't very easily feed off of fear or tension. And I think that at a track day, you've volunteered to be there. You know what you're getting into. So there's no tension. There's excitement.

Brian: Yeah. It was exciting. I was able to stay physically relaxed on the bike. I will say having variable friction between your, the ass of your leathers and your seat is really annoying when you're trying to move around. But anyway, that's, that's my problem. That's nobody else's problem. Yeah. He's an instructor. He knows about teaching people new things. And I was like, well, actually come to think of it. Yeah. I was physically fine, but it was mentally exhausting. Like I didn't want to think about, you know, having a really calculated high speed. Your traction was really interesting getting back. It's a five hour drive of absolute. The worst suck ever. You know, this is a way North of Milwaukee all the way to Indianapolis. I mean, there is nothing to see here.

Robin: I can't believe you did it. I couldn't, I got to Burleson's place. I was going through road hypnosis and getting REM. I'm like, I'm going to stay here the night Maggie left me behind, went home.

Brian: And well, and you know, once I was past Chicago, it's like, well, it's two hours. I'm just going to grind it out. And I did. Yeah. The thing about being in yellow group is you have a classroom session after your first. After all your sessions, I think up till that first one after lunch. And so there's always somewhere to be always somewhere to be, you know, you put your bike up, you have time to grab a, grab a water, go to the bathroom, go to the class, you know, listen to whatever wisdom that session, then you have just enough time to get back to your bike, get your earplugs in, get your helmet on first call for yellow coffee. You know, it's kind of a fast pace. Yeah. Maybe that's by design. So you don't have time to talk. I don't know what it is.

Robin: No, they're just trying to put a lot into a small amount of time.

Brian: Yeah. Really the logistics, Porsche McLaren, there's a big GT car event that weekend. And so we were not allowed to get into the track until like nine o'clock at night, but they did a really nice job of, you know, you could do all your check-in paperwork and so forth, get your wristband. And actually go through tech with your bike on a trailer. Here's my leathers. Here's my gloves. Here's my boots. Here's my bike. Wiggle all the stuff, put a sticker on and get that out of the way. And then we went and then we took off. I'm really glad we didn't camp. Yep. I don't know where people were camping. I saw a lot of people just camping right there on the pavement in the paddock. That didn't seem very restful. I'm thinking no, right? Yeah. We were, we were packing up afterwards and Herrheim made a point to come by and say hello and tell me I was doing great and looking like I was getting faster and faster. And I'm going to live on that for a very long time.

Robin: I'm going to level that out a little bit though, and say that if there's any one thing that stood out to me the most about Herrheim's classroom presentation was his will to attempt bending his motorcycle around a human-sized door. The frame doesn't do that. And I do very much enjoy anytime I can get him to say, really? Going to leave me here? Anytime I can get him to say that, I have plenty of laughter fuel for the next hour.

Brian: Nice. The track is the kind of place where you could just cruise around at 20 miles an hour and just look around. It is gorgeous. But the view of that, that really sticks in my mind is you're coming around the last turn onto the front straight. We'll turn 14 onto the front straight and you're looking up a hill at a bridge across the front straight running and gunning. You can't see. And your job is to pin the throttle and ride as fast as you goddamn can up this hill. And yes, you know, it's like being on a roller coaster, except it's real, you know, like this is, yeah, this is real speed. This is real. As hard as I can go up the, you know, leaning over the front to keep the front end down and, you know, first, second, third gear. I'm not in first gear on that corner, but yeah, leaning on the front end to keep the front end down, clicking it into fourth. When I read line in third and then you pop up and you see the rest of the front straight, you know, under that bridge, it's really, it's crazy. And then you're like often to miss somewhere is a right angle turn. It's turn one missed and everything. And I'm getting beat up. It's a naked bike. Yeah. It's just a, it's just an all body sensory experience. And it's just a hell of a lot of fun. The rain added a lot to it. That's for sure. It added a lot of mind load to it.

Robin: That's where all the fatigue came from. That's where there was, you know, the mental.

Brian: Yeah. That was a lot. Yeah. Road America is a lot and that's what it is. That's everything. It is a lot. The carousel, you know, the, I highly recommend it. It was, it was a big, expensive day, right at the, you know, the limit, just a long day away, but it was a lot of fun. Yeah, man. Next up, we have listener questions. If you'd like us to field your questions, visit email dot TRO dot bike in your web browser. To place an electronical message into our brain cavities. We can't promise you'll get the right answer, but we'll look at your question and you may get an answer of some sort, blah, blah, blah. I come to you this week with a real question. I really got from a real person. MZ asked, Hey, what's a good motorcycle battery and where do I get it? Pretty simple. I'm going to give my recommendations and I don't know if Robin will disagree with me. If we have some violent argument, but I've given this recommendation to Robin and he followed it before with good results. Two specific recommendations. If you need a new battery for your motorcycle. The first is a Deca batteries. They have these distinctive chunky solid lead terminals. They look a little different than other batteries and they're sold under many different brand names. One of the easiest ways to get one of these is to go to O'Reilly Auto Parts and get a Superstart brand battery. I don't know why they give them their own name. It's a rebadge. Yeah, the rebadge. They're also available under the name Big Crank.

Robin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian: So they're also available under the name Big Crank and some other names in other places. But once you see them, they kind of have a light gray. Most of them have a light gray case and they have these kind of really chunky lead terminals. They're very good batteries. U.S. made and that's my usual go-to recommendation and they're easily available at any small town O'Reilly Auto Parts. Second recommendation, if I want to be real specific, is called MotoBat. They're bright yellow batteries. They have like four terminals on them. So you have extra terminals so they'll fit more applications and they're an AGM battery and they're excellent quality, excellent power. I've used them several times. You can get them online on Amazon and whatever. Just MotoBat is a good one. A third recommendation, if you just need something cheap and you don't care if it just lasts a year or two, that kind of thing. There's a company called Chrome Battery that is a distributor of decent quality Chinese batteries based pretty close to Indianapolis and Westfield. But if you just Google up Chrome Battery, they got a website, they sell on Amazon and so forth. But if you need like a decent battery that's inexpensive, Chinese AGM battery, it'll do the job for you for a while. Bargain prices. As far as sources, I've had good luck with Impact Battery and Battery Mart as far as websites go for buying all the above. I'm not going to get into details, but I've had some bad luck with Yuasa batteries, even though they're kind of one that a lot of people recommend. I've had some issues with them. But that's me. That's another rant for another day. And so the follow-up question on this that I get sometimes and my answer is, I don't know, try it. Should I spend up for a lithium battery? And if so, how? Thanks, Robin. That was very enthusiastic. So yeah, for lithium batteries, I say if you don't mind spending the cash and you think the lightweight will be helpful, you know, some of them boast better performance. You know, that's kind of anecdotal to that kind of thing. Yeah. If you don't mind the extra cash and you want to try it out, why not? You know, I don't think there's the big caveat with lithium batteries is don't buy whatever BS are selling on Amazon, spend the money and get a good known brand of lithium battery. Some of these brands are kind of like Shorai, NoCo, Antigravity, EarthX, and I think MotoBat. And there's one like Ionic. Just spend the money. It'll be half again or twice as much money as an AGM battery. I think they're worth trying. I haven't really bothered with them yet. I've just slapped in the tried and true AGM batteries. And I stopped bothering with wet batteries a long time ago. It's always AGM.

Robin: Oh, yeah. No more wet batteries. No more distilled water. Thank you.

Brian: Yeah. No more puke tubes on batteries, you know, where it drips on your acid on your chain. No, let's not do that. We don't do that anymore. And I don't think Robin has an argument here against this. I do not. Sealed batteries. What's next? Let's get to the meat and the potatoes here. Well, we'll see if we can have a discussion. So we're going to call this incommunicado or maybe incommunicado to communicado. This all originated as a discussion in the middle of a ride on a very hot day in southern Indiana. It all got sparked. Robin was trying to figure out a route for the 7th Tour. I was leading a ride. The meat of it was Robin was asking questions. I'm like, oh, well, you just you do this, that and the other. So I was giving him pieces of string for him to knit the sweater he wanted to knit that day. And we finally got the one. I'm like, OK, take this route on a GPS. Do that. Bye. He did that and became happy.

Robin: That was the trick. So basically, at this time, Brian was providing me with ingredients, but no recipe. Yeah. And we'll get into the bulk of it here in a second. I thought about so many different kinds of people communicate in so many different kinds of ways. When you have a complete objective, there are pinpoints to that objective that you have to get through to explain what it is you're trying to do. You know, dot to dot to dot, like on a detective's board, wrap the yarn around it until it surrounds the totality of what you're trying to accomplish in a clear way. But sometimes you're going to be telling people that. And OK, I heard there was that pin. OK, there was that pin. OK, there was that pin. And they might pick any one of those pins, then zoom in on it and call that the objective when actually it was just a breadcrumb leading to the objective. In my case, that day I walked out to you and you were standing by the bike. And I was like, well, here's what I need to do today. You don't have to be there. Yeah. Brian was like, but I'm going to be there. OK, well, then I need you to know that this is sort of what I'm going for here. And then anybody who would normally follow Brian, who was essentially going to be writing in parallel with me, flocked to him. And it became a whole different mission. In my case, I had limited time. I needed to figure some things out. I had a definite objective. And Brian heard all of the pins. It was just like, OK, I don't know, man, whatever. I have people to deal with. But if you're looking for this, here is a bunch of broken glass. It used to be a bottle. Yeah. Rebuild the bottle. And it was just like in the middle of the ride. Neither the time nor place. It's how the day found us. My favorite part, though, is you've got two independent writers. Now, there was a day when I was like, whatever Brian's doing, I'm doing. I'm going to follow Brian. Brian, Brian, Brian. You've got two people who are completely independent now. All right. And the people who are not seemingly so independent are watching the two independent people say, like, well, I'm going to go do my own thing. They're looking at us like, oh, my God. Oh, yeah. Robin and Brian, they're not agreeing. We weren't disagreeing either. We weren't disagreeing. I was like, no, man, I got, dude, I got to go. I got to fix this shit. And you were like, cool, but I think I could help you do that. And we sort of did. It worked out.

Brian: We did. What that led me to, this is big and weird. I don't know if it's going to work even. But how we perceive the environment that we're in, do you see the world like a Google map? Or do you see it like point to point? Like you were talking about point to point and pieces and so forth. Some people think that way. Some people think about the whole thing. If you poke me in the shoulder and say, which direction is north? I can point pretty much 24 seven anytime. Yeah, me too. And some people can't do that. And there are differences. I wonder where these differences come from. For example, you're one of those perverts that has your GPS set up so that your direction of travel is always up. Yes. Yeah. And I'm one of those weirdos that has it. So north is always up. So if I'm traveling south for me, for some reason in my weird brain, it's easier. My map is moving and I'm going down. So if I need to turn right, it's going to be left on my map.

Robin: But all of a sudden, Pac-Man's coming out. It's all. Yeah, no, I get you.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: No, I mean, there's also a compass right there.

Brian: Yeah. Well, yeah. And that's kind of the thing I was wondering. Here's a road that, you know, well, and I've been on a few times as New Mexico 159.

Robin: Oh, man.

Brian: What do you think about when you think of that road? Do you think of the scenes? Do you think of the end points? Do you think of the experiences? Do you think about the elevations or the feelings? How do you perceive that? And how do you connect that with the other pieces? Like I remember 159, but I don't remember the number of the road it connects to. I remember the town.

Robin: Well, first off, I'm glad you said 159 because that's not a road there. And that's good. Don't correct that. Okay.

Brian: Are you talking about on the bike or in planning? On the bike, you're going along, you've got a line on your GPS. Yeah. Or maybe you don't have a line in your GPS and you're just going out for a ride. Or maybe when you're planning a ride, how do you remember? I'll give you an example of my perception. That's kind of weird. When I leave the house and takes people on a ride, obviously, I know Indiana really well. So I have a whole rat's nest of tracks on my GPS. I don't even really need the GPS, to be honest.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: As I'm going, it's like a network appears in front of me. And so I can string together these things. I know what each of those segments takes. It's like the matrix. And then there's a network and I can, and all these nodes and things I can put together. Oh, this connects to this. This connects to this, you know? Oh, I feel like this, or I I'm on a whim. I'll go this way. Oh, this is not paid. I remember that now. That's just on the bike while I'm, while I'm moving along. Yeah. How do you maintain your orientation? Do you follow a route or do you want to discover things? Or do you want to, how do you remember a route? Like if you see something new and you go down a new road and it's awesome. How do you remember that? And how do you put that back into your mental map?

Robin: Oh, I keep it on record. So I boot up ride with GPS and I hit go ride, which does not involve like choose a route, start following the route. It's more just hit record. So it's keeping track of what I do. And then I can kind of follow some mileage, zoom in, check out what was the curve structure like there? What was the general elevation shift? What was the pavement condition? And those things are easy to remember. Be like, no, if I tell myself in my helmet, you got to remember that when you get home, you got to document this. You got to keep track of this. I don't forget. I get home and I layer it and I add it to whatever is a permanent static bit of awesome. I don't think New Mexico is the best example though, because we have top secret hidden ingredients there. They're limited. Yeah. They're amazing, but they are limited. You get into Kentucky or Wisconsin. That's a different animal.

Brian: It's a spider web there. Yeah. There's a lot of options.

Robin: Totally. Yesterday, I just knocked down 350 miles. Travis Burleson knocked down over 400 riding what we call the Driftless Double Helix. Now that is part of the Wisco Disco Tour that runs out of Mount Horeb all the way to Bosco Bell. We also extended it to the Iowa border and back. The great thing about the Double Helix is that it spins over itself multiple times. If at any point you're done, you're close to home. You've been meandering and getting nowhere at the same time. That is wonderful because you know that no turn is going to take you too far from where you want to be. So do I like the sense of adventure I get from, let's go see whether or not that hollow really is paved or let's find out if they really did fix the bridge that we've been wondering about on this road. Yeah, I can do that. I can definitely enjoy it. But in terms of my orientation and planning, it's more about looking for markers that come up. They're going to keep everybody comfortable, making sure I know where my stop options are. I do orient it with the direction of travel just because I know there's a compass there. If I'm on a long straight and I'm approaching where it's going to get hairy again, I want to see that approaching in comparison to my zoom on the phone itself. I tend to zoom out to where I can see about three miles ahead. I don't really glue my face to it. You got to remember the biggest, most important thing that I have going on is I like having only the road name changes announced to me once a mile before. That's it. In one mile, turn left on Mispronunciation Road. It always mispronounces the road or the state, and that's all well and good. The only thing I ever look for is at the top of a screen, and that's in five miles, turn left on Peabody Lane or whatever the hell. It's at the top of my screen, so I just look down and I've got five miles to my turn. Cool. But it's got a road name. It's got a whatever. I can get back to not caring about it. I can get back to worrying about the road, but this has nothing to do with our communication.

Brian: Yeah, no. People in general just have different ways of perceiving the landscape and the roads and topography and everything like that, like remembering road numbers, remembering names, things like that. Oh, yeah, you're going to turn north. You're going to turn north on 58. And some people, that may not make sense. And other people would be like, you'll get to the end of this one and you'll turn left on 58, and that will make sense to them.

Robin: In a flyby communication, you're going to take 58 to Z to double S to SP, then you're going to get on the interstate for one exit. People don't really absorb that in a state of communication. Like we're on a break and it's just getting blasted out there. Whereas when I say, okay, let's write this on paper, let's figure this out. Objectives matter.

Brian: The other thing too is when you need to improvise, when you need to go off of your plan, when you can't follow the line anymore, there's a bridge, you've got weather ahead of you. Somebody needs to get back to the bunk and things like that. I mean, these are all things we talked about in articles about leading rides that we've talked about before, how to plan and lead sport touring rides, like watching the weather patterns, things like that, understanding how weather works in mountains and so forth. And that's the thing is like, I kind of see this web in front of me and I plot out ways to get around and do where I need to go. Wherever I am, I know the hotels that way or this way, that kind of thing. And the interstates here and the barriers are here. Is that all in your head too? Are you using the electronics more?

Robin: It's not all in my head because we see so many different environments, but typically I know the roads, the north, south, east, west. I know how to read the sun. That's a big deal. The hard part is that that road that goes straight off to the north and you're trying to get north, well, all of a sudden it's destination. It's like Mexico. It just deviates because it is a southbound route that requires you to go north to get there. So there are little hiccups that can create a stutter step in the process. Two situations. One is, can I solve a problem with the navigation on the fly in the moment? The answer is yes. Do I always? Sometimes I have a sweep for that. And if I have a sweep rider who has been employed to take on the task of sweep, they CPR certified and they are going to get worked over with, Hey man, uh, we need a gas stop and this road's closed. Go ahead and get me that gas stop now, would you please? Nice. They signed up for that shit. They're going to do the job. So am I capable of it? Yes. If I have somebody who's been brought in to do that for me, best believe they're going to be called on to do it. Tim Clark is one of those people, Tim Clark. And I've told this joke way too many times. He will just tick the bike till it's perpendicular to the road and then disappear into a ditch up the side of a cliff, up the side of a mountain on two wheels. And then he will put his hand over his brow and search the horizon. Robin, I have found our solution and he will lead us to profit. Still, I will maintain that I'm the one who's leading the ride, damn it. Know what the hell you're doing. Bring help and make sure they know that they are expected to actually do so.

Brian: Good point. And I'll point out you're the one who has actually made a dollar or two leading professional motorcycle tours. Commercial. I don't know about professional. You can find out more on TRO to bike. I'll go ahead and point out. I have done nothing except spend gas money and burn up tires leading rides. I love following Brian around.

Robin: I know that it's going to be relaxed. It's going to be fun and it's not going to have the imposed itinerary of what needs to happen when that comes with leading a commercial tour. It's always refreshing. Unless I'm trying to figure out the commercial tour and Brian is just giving me this bucket of broken glass and say, this used to be a Coke bottle. Have yourself a soda. That was funny to me because I knew we weren't arguing. It was just like, look, man, I need to figure out a way out of this conversation so I can leave you stranded here with these guys because I need to go do a thing. And you're like, yeah, yeah. And everybody else was just like, why are you fighting? Like we're not. We're discussing. Do you pay attention to the route or the whole map? I pay attention to the route. What about you, Brian? I have the whole thing in front of me. A network or a line that depends on where we are. Numbers. What do they mean? How do they connect to each other? I don't know. Do you remember the experience? I remember my center of gravity. I remember how the inertia of the bike felt. That's what I feel when I'm riding. There's a little focus on the color of the leaves beyond the approaching horizon of that looks beautiful out there. Isn't it a beautiful day to go riding? But once I'm in the corner, the float point between the wheels is all I'm about. Which way is north? Natural barriers. Unnatural barriers. The sun, shadows, winds, clouds. The sea captain's eye. Well, road America was a lesson for sure. When it comes to the unexpected weather and such or unexpected air pressure changes, anything. When is a shortcut necessary? When somebody is not doing so well. When they're on the ground and they need help. When the time is too late and it becomes deer o'clock. It's definitely time for a shortcut. When the ride is beyond 300 miles and we're just exhausted. Time for a shortcut. Sticking to the plan versus improvising. Two very separate ingredients. Fortunately, many of us have communicators for that exact reason. Bluetooth communicators. And it's funny that we should bring that up right now because there's Joanne Da.

Brian: Nice segue.

Robin: Who wants to talk to us today about the very same Bluetooth communicators that help us communicate when we're incommunicado? It's time for The Armory brought to you by gearchick.com.

Joanne: It seems like all the brands now, all the OEMs with all the current motorcycles that are coming out, they're all doing, you know, digital displays. Right. That's my understanding. Mine is old school digital because my bike just has, you know, tack and speed and trip. My understanding is, is that a lot of the OEMs are creating their own systems that have integrations. But I think it's really up to the user how they want to do it. Learning new technology can be really challenging, especially when it comes to motorcycles. Those two don't seem to go together very well. And I'm a fan of third party. I want the bike to be amazing. I love my bike for all the amazing things it offers, but I'm not going to rely on it for mapping. I don't know what the Himalayan offers you. Does it offer you like turn by turn? Can you like put in a point to point?

Brian: That doesn't come from the bike. It basically, you can connect to the bike. So the data and everything comes from your phone. The bike can actually display what your phone is sending it. And I think you can also, and a lot of, and I've seen this on other new bikes, CFMoto, where you can connect to the bike with Bluetooth and you can like see how long it's been since the last oil change, things like that.

Joanne: Interesting. So like maintenance, health about your bike, like more about getting metrics and stats about your motorcycle via the phone, maybe a phone app. Maybe there's a CFMoto app or a Royal.

Brian: Yeah, like they have an app and it connects to the bike and so forth. There was a, I was looking at motorcycle batteries and there's a lithium ion battery that for some reason has Bluetooth. I don't know why I would want an app for my battery.

Joanne: Look at health. Interesting. You maybe connect your phone to your bike just to get those health stats. But when it comes to navigating and then communication, because those are two totally different things, right? If you want to communicate, talk to your partner, talk to Robin, then that's where I can see the third part, you know, getting a Cardo or a Sena, which are really your two biggest names. They kind of dominate the audio market for motorcycles.

Robin: I'm all about the Sena for sure.

Joanne: I'm a Cardo. And whether you do a Sena or a Cardo, it is no different than do I want a Royal Enfield Himalayan 450 or CFMoto Ibex 450? They're both great.

Robin: Good callback.

Joanne: It's the same thing. Or, you know, do I like a Tiger or do I like a GS? And they're really just they're both great. And they're great for different reasons. And you pick what works for you. And there's not a right or wrong here. And a lot of the times you're going to pick your Bluetooth com based on what your group is doing, because it's so much easier just to slide right in with whatever your group, if you're doing group things. If you're not going to do group things and pick what you like, you know, watch some videos on YouTube and see what people say. But I like Cardo and I switched because of the waterproof, that IP67 certification. It is a submersible product. And that's how I lost the battery on one of my old Senas, because I had to ride in the pouring rain across West Virginia for eight hours. And I just prayed that it would last long enough. Like I had no choice but to ride in the rain. And that unit had an external battery that that stuck onto the base of the neck of the helmet.

Robin: So that was the Sena R?

Joanne: Yeah, the Sena R and the battery died. The unit did not because the unit is actually sealed. So the battery died and it actually took a couple hours. But, you know, not that I'm riding in the pouring rain, let's be honest.

Robin: I think what's interesting is the why. Why somebody prefers a Cardo. You're into it.

Joanne: I'm into it because I have a Pectoc Edge. And before this, we had Freecom 4s and the Freecom was more low profile. And what I wanted, what we wanted were low profile units like the Sena R. But I didn't want to get another one because that's a 10 year old product. That's Bluetooth 3. So friends, when you're Bluetooth headset shopping, you really want to match the Bluetooth of your amazing phone. We all have amazing phones, Galaxies and Pixels and iPhones, and they all are running Bluetooth 4 and 5 and even 6. So with Bluetooth products, a lot of people struggle because they're pairing old Bluetooth to new tech. The other day I noticed my Bluetooth keyboard keeps disconnecting every 20 minutes because it's a first gen wireless Bluetooth keyboard. I'm a Mac girl. My MacBook is like the latest generation. It's dated. So I had to buy a new keyboard. The Bluetooth connections are only going to be maintained if you at least maintain some compatibility. But I love Cardo because the Freecoms are low profile and I didn't want a giant unit on my helmet.

Robin: Rotary phone.

Joanne: Yeah, it's just the wind you can hear. I don't have a fairing. I have no windscreen. And so everything's loud. So that's why we switched to the Freecom and it was great. But then that unit started to, like some of the features started to die and the Bluetooth connection wasn't stable anymore. And then when the Pactalks came out, wow. And Brian, do you use Sina too?

Brian: No, I don't have a communicator of any sort.

Joanne: You don't have any.

Brian: I'm going to have to one of these days. It's not a nightmare. Okay, why does it seem like a nightmare? I don't want to talk to anybody. I mean, there are times it would be handy, but yeah.

Joanne: Right. It's the beauty of the communicators today. And listen, my first communicator was a CB radio.

Brian: Breaker one nine.

Joanne: We bought Motorola radios and then we found a company that made speakers that had aux ports that we could plug into the walkie talkie.

Robin: Yeah.

Joanne: And it had a button remote on the clutch and you had to scream at 50 miles an hour for is this with earplugs?

Brian: A tin can and a string handle.

Joanne: You had to scream at each other just to say, I didn't guess. Like there's no talking and we weren't doing music. Crazy how far comms have gone. But Brian, no, you don't trust anybody. Like the only person I talk to is my husband.

Brian: Yeah. So if I end up getting a communicator, I will need to be one that's compatible with whatever Robin has, because that's probably the person I ride with the most who has a communicator. Robin is on team Sena, I believe. I'm on team Sena. Yeah. They're not cross compatible, which is annoying.

Joanne: They are.

Brian: They are.

Joanne: Hang on a second. They are. They're just not compatible the way that to say two Senas, they don't connect the same. Right. They're not going to pair the same, exactly the same, but you can pair opposite units together. Both of these brands have recognized the fact that both of them are in the market and they need to be compatible. So they've created the ways to do them. They're just not the same button sequences and pairing methods as if you have two of the same brand. So you can cross connect. However, my understanding, and I haven't read up on the latest and greatest, but for the most part, the advanced features like mesh networking, which is what you'll do on a tour. If you have 10 people and you're trying to talk to everybody, those are the kind of features you can't cross pollinate. But just to talk like me and Brian, we just need to talk to each other. Yes, you can connect, but it's a lot of work. Yeah, but you might as well. Yeah. If you're riding a lot with Robin and you're riding a lot with other people who have a certain brand, yeah, go with that brand. They're both great. What I like about Cardo is that they actually end of life their products and they go, okay, we're done with this freecom. Now we're going to upgrade it to the freecom X. Sina doesn't do that. It is still selling products from 2010 that should not be on the market anymore. And we don't, I don't know, understand it. The challenge is if you don't talk to someone who's really up to date on the products, you might end up buying an old product with Bluetooth three. So you just have to be up on what the latest units are and just buy that. Which one do you have, Robin? Do you have like a 20S or a 50K?

Robin: I have an SMH 10. Oh, my God. I don't know how you do group. It's doing fine.

Joanne: It will until you want to bring in, say, six people.

Robin: I do not want to bring in six people. I will never want to bring in six people.

Joanne: The reason you would want to upgrade is if even you have three of you, let's say the three of us go riding together. I am not going to ride 10 feet behind you. In fact, I will probably ride so far behind you. You can't see me because I need space. Now, where a better unit will serve us is if we're all kind of half a mile apart, the better units will give you more range to stay connected to each other and advanced features where let's say we're doing twisties. We're like on the dragon. And when you're in twisties, then line of sight connections can cut off because the signals usually need open, flat areas, not tight twisty. But just to be connected from like one person to person number two, a better unit gives us more distance from each other. But if there's three or more people where, okay, we got four, maybe it's me, Evan, you and Brian. What the mesh does is bring everybody together regardless of distance using data. So you can be a mile away. It relies on closeness and proximity. No shit. These units are way more advanced and I'm surprised you're not at least up at a 20s.

Robin: That's the thing of it. Now let's have this conversation.

Joanne: I'm happy. And that's exactly it. If the features you have work for you, of course, you don't need to upgrade. Not at all. When you start having problems like connectivity, gosh, I can't keep a connection with Brian for more than 10 seconds at a time and it keeps dropping even in open terrain. Then you got connection problems because your unit is literally 15 years old. That unit came out a long time ago. That's when you might be triggered to upgrade. But absolutely with, you know, headsets, you just use what works for you. You don't have to buy the super fancy headsets.

Brian: Senna's product lineup is extremely confusing too.

Joanne: Because they don't end of life anything. Yeah. Your secret is this. The higher number. Seriously. It's 30 and up. You ignore anything below 30. That's the secret.

Brian: They got the 50, the 60 and then the SRL and then the 30 and then the Spyder and then the Evo. It's all over the place.

Joanne: Right. Because they have integrations with other OEMs. Spyder is probably for the Spyder. For motorcycling, again, anything below a 30 are old units. Something at their website. 3, 5 and 10. I mean the 10 series.

Robin: I love it.

Joanne: My first dealership job was in 2006 and that fancy 10S came out in like 2012. Unless they're updating the hardware, I doubt it. Oh, look, they did upgrade it to Bluetooth 5. So look at that. So they actually are at least updating some of the tech. Good. Let me look at their 3 series, which is like their tiny, super low profile unit. But that's for a passenger driver. You're on a Goldwing. You're right next to each other. That's who that's for. That is not Robin and Brian riding, you know, far apart. So for what you do, you want to do a higher unit. Yeah. Yeah.

Robin: The 3 actually has no electronics in it. The trick is it makes you look like you have a comma, but you yell at each other from the passenger seat. Yeah, you just yell.

Joanne: It's their basic unit. So super simple. There's no buttons. Yeah. Even honestly, if you get a 10S, you'll at least be in a Bluetooth 5 product. There's a dial, which is nice. There's not tiny little buttons.

Robin: That's my favorite part.

Joanne: That is the ingenious proprietary feature that Sina invented is that jog wheel, right? And the fact that you can tap it as a giant button or spin the wheel. And I think the 10 has always been the easiest unit. The original 10 was a giant. Instead of that flat wheel, it was like a ball. And you would accidentally hit it. Oh, God.

Robin: I got it right here. I hit it when I would turn my head this way, be like, boop. And it'd be like, I'm not available.

Joanne: It'll be even better. But I really wanted the smaller units because of our helmets. And like, I can hear the noise coming over the headset. So that was for me. But Brian, whenever, you know, whenever you think you want to invest in something, I'll help you pick out something really simple. And they're very easy to install. And a lot of the dealers who sell them, they'll install them for you. Like if you go to CycleGear, they'll do it for you. But my recommendation usually with doing that is if you install something and try to return it, that's very difficult. You don't want to just go buy one on a whim. You know, it's just take a little time to research, decide what you want. If someone else has one, if you can kind of listen to it, you know what I mean? Because it can be challenging with tech. These days, Cardo and Sino have done such a great job. You really can't go wrong with any of their new units. I love the Pactalk though. Man, that thing. Quality is insane. The voice commands are great. Lasts forever. Battery's like two days long.

Robin: Well, for the record, I don't want to talk to either of you while I'm riding anyhow. That's OK. I don't want to talk to you either. And the emergency discussions are, are we turning right here? Yeah. OK, cool. You know, I'll talk to Travis a little bit. But actually, the truth is, I would talk to both of you.

Joanne: Here's the other problem, though, that Bluetooth 2 is audio quality, right? Because people are expecting quality that you cannot get. It's a helmet. You're on a motorcycle here. But given that, both Cardo and Sino have done a really great job to put really good speakers in. But it's also really important that you use earplugs to maximize the quality of a Bluetooth headset, period. And I will die on a hill with that because you need to kill the wind noise. And people think that they won't hear anything. But it's the opposite.

Robin: Yeah, no.

Joanne: The quality is not as good as your amazing at home earbud system. But you can also plug in earbuds with an aux jack into these units, into the higher units.

Robin: That's what I do. That's a big deal.

Joanne: Yeah.

Robin: We've mentioned this several times on the show that, you know, we want to protect everybody's hearing. You've basically arrived at a long standing discussion about it. I do exactly what you said. I've got a 3.5 millimeter jack. Yep. I've got noise canceling, construction level, audio active earbuds, and it does the job.

Joanne: And the really cool thing is it probably is on your headset is the connector from the speaker to the unit is an aux. It is a speaker jack. So that's why you don't have to use the speakers that come with the headset. And if you have high end, like super fancy earbuds, well, you could plug those in and you'll have really good quality. You'll just have a few more cords. So the benefit to the Bluetooth is no more cords. Everything's all enclosed. You put the helmet on, everything's ready to go. Everything's installed right there. So you don't have to do anything else. So that's it is convenient. Remember, I went from walkie talkie to Bluetooth.

Brian: Similar banter at higher revs can be found via the GearChick website. Visit GearChick.com and dig in. Segment three moments in motorcycle history with none other than Jordan Liebman. North America was once covered in mud. So the wildlife made sense of where the water was. Then the wagon wheels left a rut. Then there were railroads and dynamite and cars. So we needed a smooth surface to express our speed on. Jordan's going to tell us all about it. Have at it, Jordan.

Jordan: By the 1860s, the railroads became the dominant means of transport and the national road traffic slowed down and sections fell into disrepair. But by the 1880s, a revival of the national road was spearheaded by, ready, bicyclists. I shit you not, bicycling was a new craze and it swept the nation, the world, in fact, as a new leisure travel. Locals began to maintain the roads. You look at it in terms of business. This was a road that was designed for business. It was for trade so you can get goods from one place to the other. All of a sudden, we have this thing called the railroad. They're able to do it faster and cheaper and more reliably on an actual schedule eventually. Businesses are obviously going to not use the national road and a wagon of some sort. They're going to use the railroad. So there was a period there where it fell into less popularity, I should say. And if it wasn't for bicycles, until the invention of cars, it would have fallen by the wayside. It would have gotten weeded over and that'd be it. I have here, these are the dates of incorporation as states in the United States. Illinois, 1818. Indiana, 1816. Ohio, 1803. Some of these, I'm going to squint at a little funny. Pennsylvania, 1787. New York, 1788. And Maryland, 1781. These are all post-1776, but they already existed as states, but they were incorporated into the nation on these dates. You can see that the road is going through places that are established and I want to also add, and this may or may not make the podcast, but when George Wyman crossed America in 1908, the main road across America was through Vandalia, Illinois, which is on the south end of Illinois, just east of St. Louis. And I think that the reason that he went through Chicago is because there were bicycle and motorcycle shops there that he thought were going to be able to make him a crankshaft and they refused. And then you can see what happened to the magazines. They blacklisted Chicago. They blacklisted Illinois. So that's what I'm thinking, a little after the fact, but if he had gone south instead of north, he would have had a good road all the way to the east coast. Well, I've got to do a lot of thinking on the side. I printed some maps for myself here. The National Road eventually becomes what we know as Route 40 across the United States, effectively to Illinois and beyond. It starts in the Baltimore Pike. There were additional roads that were not federally funded. Like I said, there already existed roads in Maryland. The reason they started in Cumberland because there wasn't anything there. There were additional roads that were started in Maryland that existed before this that ran to the east coast. So this was called the Baltimore Pike, which ran from Baltimore to Cumberland, Maryland. Basically, we have the entire access all the way to the Atlantic. Primarily commerce in the form of farming and livestock in wagons and later trucks drove the development of the National Road until the advent of non-rail internal combustion transportation in the late 1800s. It would be cars and motorcycles for you and me. The invention of trucks made it possible to expand trade to areas not easily reached by trains, boats, or beasts of burden, and access to tributaries sprung up all over. Just like Dayton and Eaton, Ohio wanted access to this National Road, local towns that wanted the commerce, they wanted the trade of the National Road, started building their own roads to the National Road all along the path. It's almost like watching the roots of a tree grow, or roots of any kind of plant grow, but it's in reverse. The tributaries are going towards the road. Eventually, these become the routes that we know now that are on the maps. But they weren't all federally funded. They all started wherever there was a need, basically to gain access to the main road. Now, eventually, much of the road was converted to concrete, and eventually asphalt. By the 1920s, so now we have cars, and not everybody has cars, but we have cars in the 1920s. We've already done it well into the 1800s, 1890s, etc. Bicycles in the 1880s. By the 1920s, we have concrete and asphalt. Well, concrete goes back to Portland cement, which was invented, I believe, in the UK. They call it Portland cement, and it has to do with its durability, and its density, and uniformity, or whatever. I'm not any kind of concrete expert. I'm sure there's some kind of civil engineer that could answer those questions. But concrete was, for them, it was basically permanent. And there are a lot of places where the concrete is still good. These days, we don't know that as much, because of the corruption of our road building, because they are basically designing roads that they can go ahead and charge us for in four years, when they got to do the whole damn thing again. But back in the old days, they had concrete that lasted damn near forever. So what's the difference? I don't know. By the 1920s, the national road was fully paved, and became part of US Route 40, which eventually extended all the way to California. This is a road that crossed the United States. This is the first road to cross the United States. Route 40 no longer goes all the way to the California coast. There's a section west of Nevada that they just went a different direction with. But Route 40 does go into Nevada. Back in the 1920s, it went all the way to the coast. Now, you remember, I asked Robin about this road in California. Did you ever ride this road? And it had like, you know, 2000 turns and X miles. That road is gone. That was part of this road, okay? This was part of the road that got you from one place to the other. It's sad. I mean, you can go there and wander it, and it's like going to the ruins. You can't take your motorcycle and ride it anymore. They found better and different ways to do it. It is estimated that at its peak, the national road, on the national road, there was a tavern every mile. Maybe we need to look at the national road as the beginning of drinking and driving in the United States. The national road was started by our founding fathers for a variety of reasons, and developed from federal and state efforts, and grew organically by additions from local interests over a period of around 100 years until it became our first national road, U.S. Route 40, which spanned the entire country from coast to coast. It gave us road signs, distances to next towns, and mile markers, tolls, and other aspects of riding and driving we are all familiar with today. There's your buckle.

Brian: So the wind down. Let's talk about what's next. A little glimpse of what's coming up. What are some things we want to talk about next time, Robin?

Robin: Terminology. I want to talk about the low-hanging fruit trail breaking as different training curriculums use different explanations. This is all well and good until anyone who wears said curriculum like a pair of horse blinders, meaning the history and culture of the original statement for that term is obscured, leaving the mouth of confident ignorance arguing moot points. So trail braking in one curriculum is compressing the front suspension so that you can corner a little bit harder, and as you reach the apex, you begin to release the brake while applying more gas. Whereas if you're a new rider who's not supposed to hear about it in some MSF course, all it means is braking beyond the entrance of a corner. With no reference to the point of doing so. I've had conversations with riders who are like, I don't trail brake unless I made a mistake. And I thought you are on my do not ride with list. Trail braking is a tool. And it's just one example of various terms in motorcycling that get blurred by third parties saying, well, we can invent our own version of that ourselves. And it has nothing to do with the original.

Brian: Excellent. I can think of some of those. And there's so many terms like that, where people get all tied up in knots. I don't even want to say it. The word counter steering. Ready to get out of here? Yes. Let's get out of here.