Robin: So it's the day before New Year's Eve, and we've elected to get this out of the way, the 25 Recap, on a whim. We decided this yesterday, and between yesterday and today, I've been doing nothing but code automations for podcast production with no focus on anything we've done in the past year, which has been a complete blur. I have very little recollection of any episode's main topics, who was in it, who was on it, what they spoke about. Okay, let's see how this goes.

Brian: Just to look behind the curtain, it's the eve of New Year's Eve. It's time to record. And if you hear ice clinking in a glass.

Robin: Brian is drinking a gin and tonic.

Brian: A big gin and tonic, yes.

Robin: And I've been cutting the alcohol a bit, basically getting things done.

Brian: Like, I drink maybe once a month. I dream this was a good occasion.

Robin: And winter's a great exception. It does warm you a bit.

Brian: So we had this idea to do a recap of 2025, and I also want to talk about what we're looking forward to in 2026. I don't want us to get into anything that passes for being organized or anything, heaven forbid. So the first thing I did was I really went through, and I actually went through my calendar. There were rides in other states and places I stayed that I had forgotten about. I mean, It's been a busy, busy year. Robin and I have had the good fortune to share a lot of this riding.

Robin: Over the top.

Brian: And learning and etchimacation. Over the top. And so I'm just going to start the beginning of the year. In January, there was like nothing going on in Indiana. Triumph has their new model released in January. And the local dealer puts on a little hoorah in January. And so I went to that and that's all I got. and i and robin was probably swatting around in texas or new mexico riding every day enjoying warm.

Robin: Weather i don't know i have no idea where i was no idea at all i was wherever maggie was i went where she went

Brian: You're a portioning blame yeah february there's there's like a there's like an outdoor expo here in indianapolis which is it's mostly boats to be honest and then it's like hunting and stuff like that. But they've got one building at the fairgrounds. It's like motorcycles and power sports. Every year we leave and I go, this is lame. I'm never coming back. There's not much here. And every February I get so bored that I just go anyway. And in my neck of the woods in Indiana, March is when, like you can do a little bit of riding every month. There's a little, you know, you can get a day or two in here and there, you know, if you don't mind the salt or whatever. But March is when the season opener begins. That's when we have the first good long day ride. Usually it's a dual sport ride on KLRs with a couple of good friends. You know, about the middle of March is almost like clockwork every year is when we're out. And then it's just, it's just on. That's when it starts. Okay. So here's where Robin comes in, in April.

Robin: Well, dude, remember it's weird that you say March because where I'm at right now, March is a cold month here. I'm not saying it's freezing. I'm just saying that you can probably make it to silver city, but trying to ride devil's highway would be an incredible mistake.

Brian: That's high elevation. Yeah. Yeah.

Robin: The lodging isn't even open. You can't reach them by phone because there's nobody there. It's shut down. The whole place is winterized. So in the meantime, you've taken a month and got some writing in. That's pretty good. All right. So April enter the truth of consequences tour. Yeah.

Brian: Did this truth of consequences tour for the second time. It rented like my fourth or fifth choice bike again. which was a Honda Africa twin. It did great. It had huge bags. Like I couldn't even fill up all my crap, but the bike was a wrestling match on tight roads and it was just a sweaty wrestling match, but it was just a hell of a lot of fun. Uh, that was, uh, me, you and, uh, Paul, Paul Rosner, Paul on his brand new, brand new sport bike on sketchy, crappy roads and.

Robin: Loosely regarded sport bike. That thing is a total street fighter with a sport bike engine rocketeering it.

Brian: Oh yeah. So the cool thing, so the next weekend I did the Triumph demo day. So I spent six hours like frantically riding all the Triumphs I could ride through this like loop through the hood in Indianapolis, which is hilarious. Like you, you leave this little area where the Triumph dealer is, which is really nice. And it's, you know, it's all bougie. I mean, you turn the corner and you're right into like, you know, graffiti, people laying around in the street, you know, dirt, every, you know, it's, it's, it was a great route, actually. it.

Robin: Made for some serious editing on the photo selection in the article that you wrote so anybody can find that on tiara to bike if you look up triumph demo days you'll see it

Brian: A lot of fun riding you know riding other people's bikes for for several hours was just it's always a blast some of the graffiti was maybe a little too spicy for the family audience of tro so robin had to do a little cropping i got the idea of taking pictures in front of graffiti and some of it was a little yeah the.

Robin: There's like stick figure boobies then there's Banksy you got to decipher but yeah

Brian: And then the following week after that I mean again it was a non-stop April April was just April of action dual sport trip and this was a different set of friends we based in Newport Tennessee which is kind of on the north side of this great Smoky Mountains National Park and a little less known like there's a lot of people that show up there for fishing, But there's hardly anybody on motorcycles, but it gives you access to some just amazing, crazy roads. And if you're on a dual sport bike, some really crazy, they're dirt roads and they're roads. There aren't really any trails, but some of these roads really overlap quite a bit with the definition of a goat trail. I mean, it's something you would...

Robin: West Virginia?

Brian: No, that was Tennessee, North Carolina. Yeah, and that's where I had two flats in a row and a god-awful tire that was made out of cast iron and lesson learned there. So I don't know what you were doing out there in New Mexico, but I know you were preparing in May for the big trip to Wisconsin, I believe, in May.

Robin: Yeah, I think early May we would have been packing up for that.

Brian: I don't know if it started on June 1st or May 30th or whatever, but the 777s tour. Sure.

Robin: We have a mark on our calendar. May 15 is the moment where if we drive north to Wisco and get set up there, the weather will be entering full on tolerable level. We'll be talking about warm spring. And so, yeah, when we got up there, got everything set up, it was time to start really prepping stuff. But I don't know, this time around, it was definitely eventful. Some of that is personal matters you can't get into, you know, prepping for it. I was very casual about it. I've done it enough times now where I was just like, uh-huh, pack the damn bike, get to the dang thing. All the places are booked. All the things are ready. And then Travis Burleson is the sweep for sevens. He also was pretty smooth, but at the same time, there was a little bit more, well, maybe I could do this or maybe I could try that because he got a new bike. Like you got that CB650RR, whatever, the Neo Retro Naked.

Brian: Yeah, the Pirate Edition, yeah.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: And I think, and also I must say, the 7's route is perfected. Do not change it.

Robin: I mean, even the deviations, the forced necessary detours when they happen will be fantastic. But as a default, those baby shoes are bronzed.

Brian: Yeah. I think you had a few deviations because of construction or whatever. That's just part of life.

Robin: I'm anxious to get you on it, man. I think you'd enjoy it.

Brian: I'm hoping I can.

Robin: I'll add that for the wish list for 2026. I'll talk to you about that.

Brian: June was action-packed for both of us. I jumped in for the last few days of Sevens, brought Travis a tire because thanks to Unlop. In Kentucky, did the last two days with them, you know, just to hang out and so forth. And then the Brown County Rally, which is a vintage Suzuki rally that I run in Indiana. Indiana has much better roads than people might think. And we get together and most of us are on vintage bikes and we have a good time and so forth. So anyway, that was three days. That was Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. We bit off a lot here. Robin and I came back to my house on Sunday. It was 100 degrees. It was no less than 100 degrees. We ran around and we ran around for like three hours loading, well, everything. And we were throwing crap into my van. We loaded up two bikes on the trailer, just a load of franticness. And then we hopped in, headed north to Blackhawk Farms for a track day on Monday morning.

Robin: First track day of the year?

Brian: First one of the year. My first one ever was 2024 on Labor Day. Fantastic track day. It was hotter than a very hot thing. It was hotter than Satan's whatever. Anyway, it was awful. Anyway, like all track days, it was just an absolute blast. Had a great time. Was this the one where Matt joined us?

Robin: And we spoke about that last episode. He looked like Han Solo dressed as G.I. Joe on some kind of rocket ship. He was hauling the mail, didn't even know it. Yeah, he was.

Brian: And in the front straight, he's like just tapped out at like, I think 75, maybe been the top speed of that bike. Like, I mean, he gets to the corner and everybody's like, what, what was that streak in that baggy arrow stitch? And again, mixed in here are like, you know, weekend rides all over the place locally for me, stuff like that. I'm sure for you too, you're all over Wisconsin. You did a Wisco Disco, I think in July.

Robin: We aimed to, I don't think that actually happened. I went for a ride, that's for sure. And that tells you how hectic it's been just trying to organize and keep all this glued together, you know?

Brian: Yeah, there wasn't like an official TRO.

Robin: We didn't really make that effort.

Brian: So yeah, in July is when Neil Sullivan filled in for a few weeks. Robin had a lot of shit to do. Neil Sullivan filled in as host for a few weeks. That was a lot of fun, different perspective, different energy. We talked about bourbon. August, the highlight of August was the track day at Road America. Even though it rained all day, like any track day, it's going to be awesome. I learned a lot. Road America is absolutely amazing. It's an amazing part of this planet. It is great. Huge fast track.

Robin: Even in the wet, it was an exercise in maintaining upright riding. It was a good time.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah, and coming out of that last corner onto the front straight, you know, looking way up, you know, you're climbing this hill. I mean, the whole thing was just a visual overload. And I can't, you know, like I can't imagine what it's like when it's dry and sunny. Stuff blowing away and the whole debacle with the front end chalks and anyway, and the lady helping, you know, it was just happiness.

Robin: Is the goal.

Brian: Happiness is a goal. Until I looked at my calendar, I had forgotten about going to Missouri again. Again, 1,000 degrees approximately, 100 degrees minimum. Very hot ride, but Missouri is always great. 34 in Missouri is just worth the entire trip. Yeah, Robin got to experience basically what passes for an Autobahn in the United States. I-69 in Southern Indiana is just like...

Robin: That's the most fun I've ever had on anything slab related. That set the bar. I actually was enjoying it, which is unheard of. I don't do, we're running off into the sunset chasing the horizon. No, I'm not chasing the horizon. I'm looking for ramen. Lots and lots of ramen.

Brian: Your brain's a wild place, man.

Robin: Twisted place.

Brian: So to get to the ramen, we had to go through the uncooked noodles of, yeah, linguine. I don't know. But September's also when we did the arc. Robin pulled strings and levers somewhere and a man with a beard showed up and ran us through the arc course and we all like really tightened up and, you know, it's amazing. You know, like I'd love to do that again. Like you say, do it every year. It just tightens you up and puts the polish on. Yeah.

Robin: Quick shout out to Chad and writers first. Also, many thanks to Dale and Rodney for joining us. Hey guys, hope you're doing well.

Brian: That was awesome. Yeah, it was a great hang, too. And, you know, we took Chad to lunch. But, yeah, just those few hours of practice really polishes things up. And, of course, Robin and I had one last ride before we took off for New Mexico, the haul of all the ass episode. And also, I did a Triumph demo for the Scramblers, which is a little less successful. They only had a few bikes, and it was like, well, whatever. And then I also, on the way home from that, I passed the Indian demo ride. they keep sending me emails saying we got your bike you know come and buy your indian it's like no i you know make something i'm interested in you know come on yeah it's always like i will i will ride anything i can i've got a one knee that's worse than the other and if i can get on the bike i will ride it no matter what and it was really interesting to see what indian does and what they're doing well and what they're not doing so i think september is when you were, hightailing it back to, I think you went through Texas and then New Mexico. I'm not sure. You don't even remember.

Robin: No, I did not know. I went direct from Wisco to here. Well, at one point we were in Indiana.

Brian: How many leaf springs did you go through? Yeah, you camped in Indiana for a while.

Robin: Man, that's a fine question. And what a nightmare. Trick is have an extra pair of leaf springs, have an extra pair of U-bolts.

Brian: Have an extra trailer.

Robin: Yeah. I think for the time being, I live in New Mexico right now until further notice. And when I feel more safe and sound about how this whole operation is operating.

Brian: This rolling earthquake. Yeah. So we're, yeah, we're talking about September and I think you guys, I think you guys made it there in, in early October or something like that. I remember, I remember hearing like a long sigh from the West, like, ah, when you finally got there, cause it was a journey.

Robin: This is a comfortable place for us to be I want to say there are three or four locations where I feel like this is okay we're going to be fine everything's good Wisconsin is one Illinois can be that way as well we've just got connections there to make the trek to wherever we're going to for the winter Texas or New Mexico when I land there are people here that help me get shit done and it's a very comforting thing because I know that problems can be resolved. I tend to know about 66% of the 100% I claim about any given topic. Knowing there's somebody there to fill in the 33.333 with actual, you're not going to make it unless you know how to do this thing that you don't know how to do knowledge. Well, that's where I find that down here and it helps a lot. Sort of like with the valve check with you, man.

Brian: I was going to say right before you left was when The valve check, check, check.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: When the valve check happened and all that hilarity, throwing radiators across the garage.

Robin: It was covered in coolant and I grabbed it on a point that looked dry and was just jacketed in jello. And I picked it up and it just went, like I heard it rotate. I heard the whistle.

Brian: Like a radiator frisbee.

Robin: That sonic shift of the open canisters, like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, bonk. And we got lucky. That's in the article. When you compress a complicated effort that you've never done before, and the person you trust who does know about these things, who's also never done this before, and then you compress it into a finite amount of time that is fly or die, that is hard. So my article basically says, give yourself two days. I did it because I had to. We did it because we had to, and it went the way it went. But in hindsight, it's one of those things that you should allow yourself to exhale. You know, peak winter, how nice is peak winter? You know, I turned a bolt today. I'll get it done early if I do this.

Brian: And then the big event in October is kind of the season ender for me is the Kentucky Crawl with a closely guarded group of friends.

Robin: Fight club.

Brian: We base ourselves in Georgetown, Kentucky, and roam around south and east of there on the Twisty Rose. Absolute blast. And then after that, yeah, pretty much I lay low through the rest of October and December. Recorded a podcast while looking at the ocean on the Gulf of Mexico. That was fun.

Robin: Not bad, right?

Brian: Had my mic hanging on a duct-taped spatula.

Robin: Proof of concept. I swear I should be able to ride my motorcycle with my Scena going and use that as an input. well if you ask me it's been my experience and then lose connection and

Brian: In action on Christmas day did about 250 miles to go see, the grandkids, and drop off presents. We just happened to get a day where it was like between 46 and 50 the whole day. And I'm like, I can make this work. You know, I'm not going to. What's the worst that can happen? So I feel good at least got a good solid ride in in December.

Robin: Nice. I should have asked, did you ride today?

Brian: Yeah. Not today. It's like 20 degrees out. And so recapping your year, I think you got the Gixxator in March.

Robin: Yes, and it has well over 15,000 miles on it now.

Brian: The flogging began immediately. Oh, God. There was no mercy, no quarter given.

Robin: It does all the things. It's a little too easy to ride. Those bikes are so good. And in hindsight, what you and I got through in a very compressed amount of time was not really that big of a deal. It's a very manageable maintenance task. I love the bike. A machine that is that well-balanced and that easy to maneuver, it does everything really, really well. If I want it to feel like a fast, big bike, you just got to decide where you want to put the RPM range. At the same time, it also has a little bit of that riding a slow bike fast feel. It's a sub-liter bike. I just love everything about it. I mean, if anybody on a more powerful bike wants to blast by me in a straight, they'll probably be able to do so. But if you tell me to activate in the corners, we're going to have a conversation.

Brian: Hi, how you doing? Hi, how you doing? I'm Robin. Hi, hi, how you doing? How you doing? I'm Robin. That was the fun part of the track day. You were in a different group than I was for both of them, actually. So, yeah, there's all these people on track bikes and Ducati's and so forth. And here's this guy on a sport touring bike with a tall windshield and he's sitting up right going, excuse me, excuse, excuse.

Robin: Excuse, excuse me, excuse me,

Brian: Excuse me, pardon me, excuse me, pardon me, come through.

Robin: It's a funny but annoying picture from Blackhawk where by the bus stop. Just before that, I had been passed by a better rider, clearly. Went around, was totally cool. and then he got caught by the two people that I was trying to get around and they slowed down even more so that they could get the right lean angle for the photographer in the corner while I'm sitting there like you tools I think the guy that passed me had already made it through like two corners ahead he was like no no screw these kids I'm out poof he was gone I still haven't quite arrived at the bravery necessary to pass certain types of bikes in certain types of conditions on the outside because they look reckless.

Brian: Well, you're still paying for it. I mean, come on.

Robin: That's the other thing. I got called out for that by one of our friends who said, Hey man, if I didn't know any better, it looks like you know what you're doing out there, but I can still tell that there's a bank loan involved. And I kind of laughed. Yeah, it's time. It is legitimately time for me to invest in a true to form dedicated track weapon that I can make mistakes on and smile about at the same time. But yeah, I bought the Gixxator in March and it's got over 15K on it. I'm reading Brian's notes here. You are correct. Maggie Dean did in fact buy her bike. She finally got rid of the Triumph. Thank you. I don't care where it's at. It's probably doing good enough for rock and roll. And now she's got this current generation SV650, something I can access, something I can maintain, something that doesn't get in my way while I try to make use of it you know very happy about all these things the migration stuff and oh The trip to Wisco, we lost a leaf spring. We lost it in the middle of nowhere. I sank my head on the steering wheel, looked over Maggie. I was like, that's it. I got nothing. You got it. The stress is too much. You're going to have to solve this problem. Like I can fix anything that I have access to the materials for, but we're in the middle of nothing. And I don't know how she did it, but she made one phone call to one camping world or whatever. They sourced a guy who could repair it. We paid for the parts over the phone. he picked them up in front of the door and then arrived at me with my head on the steering wheel and said are you robbing a maggie dean and like fix this up i would very much like to have him on the show shout out to selly's auto repair llc that's selly's auto repair in lebo kansas All right. Sally's auto repair. That guy knows his noise. He's a CDL. He's a dedicated wrench. He's got a family to take care of. He's got a wife who manages the office. They are fantastic. And I look forward to hearing some of the tales he's got to tell. The podcast takes so much and I really miss writing. I'm still trying to work on that article, making time for it while working on other things that require my attention. I really am working hard to make things easier to produce these things so you can you and I can just hang out and talk and then it does as much work on its own as possible and we're getting there yeah it's amazing other than that motorcycles motorcycles motorcycles motorcycles i'll tell you this is good timing what i see in the outline here because most of what i've been doing this year is the podcast so now let's really get into the true seasoning of this episode and that's a podcast for all we've managed to do this year 36 episodes now

Brian: 36 episodes i can't believe it either like in the summer it was very difficult to record and then it picks up more when we're not out riding but i guess that's natural it also hopefully mirrors what our listeners are up to where they're doing more writing than listening in the summer so hopefully it all works i think joanne's i don't remember when she started recording with us but she got very regular with it in 25 and is just dropping knowledge bombs on us about gear all throughout the year it's been great i've learned so much i've bought stuff i've, been more comfortable. I've been warmer. I've been drier, you know, because of what she has brought to us and brought to everybody, I hope. Jordan Liebman's segments have been amazing with the knowledge bombs about motorcycle history, Devonian period. I believe he started first thing in 2025.

Robin: First episode.

Brian: First episode, yeah.

Robin: He's my favorite segment to produce every time. It's And it's like the things I have to take out makes me cry. This most recent episode, you'll hear him say, what kind of spark plugs were the Brits using during the 1970s? I don't even know. Just the angst is so important to me. Just the best.

Brian: And the highlight of the year for him was that we recounted George Wyman's entire journey from the West Coast to the East Coast in the early night. It was 1906, something like that. But like Jordan dug up and brought together from all kinds of sources, kind of the whole story and really put us there in the moment, in the mud with George.

Robin: And any links that didn't connect, he was like, I got to call bullshit on that.

Brian: That's true. Yeah. And like with Bessie Stringfield. Yeah. Yeah. He brought us a story and he said, okay, well, here's the story behind the story. And here are the things that don't add up. What's going on? We'll never know. We started doing more and more listener questions. Like we'd go out and find them or we'd get listener questions, things like that. And I think we got a really interesting variety. We got like more newbie type questions than I would have imagined. But there are a lot of people that really need a source of information. Tried to pick up questions, like if they got technical, that there were questions that could have a little more of a wider application. Hopefully generalize those successfully. I think we mentioned earlier, Robin had to like, just go get stuff done for a while and busy year. So Neil Sullivan, good friend of us both, you know, a guy I've known for years, ridden with Neil on many, many blissful rides.

Robin: I love riding with Neil.

Brian: Neil's such a vibe.

Robin: It is legitimately time for me to tell this story. It's just time. My favorite Neil Sullivan story goes like this. he and I are riding to a rally and we pull up to an intersection at one point and he looks at me and he points kind of vaguely over there. And then I said, Oh, okay, whatever. And I follow him over to this park and my bike is running because we had just gotten back on the road. If I remember right, I don't know. And he gets off his bike, walks over to a picnic bench, lies down and he goes to sleep. My bike is still operating. Shout out to Neil. He is my first call to sub for me anytime because the dude's just so fun, mostly.

Brian: I'd also call it the debut of Angel's Journey. She's a brand new rider. We got a chance to talk to her, I think it was like the day after she completed the MSF course. We've had some really interesting conversations since. and we got to set Angel down with Maggie and Joanne and they had a great conversation. That was a fun episode. Robin and I stayed the hell out of it. It was great. So we're hoping in the coming year, we'll check in with Angel every so often and see how she's doing. She's out there riding around and learning and having a great time. And then a second interview with Dylan Code talked about some of the technology and tools and some of the techniques of learning. Pretty interesting stuff.

Robin: And surprisingly, not hard to do. He's a very personable character, always trying to get the word out, loves to be challenged. He'll say it. He's his own worst critic and is always trying to improve upon whatever it is he's doing.

Brian: Just overall, I really like to feel that there's something for everyone here in this podcast. You know, like it's not restricted to a certain, like you must be a sport touring rider with 36 liters of luggage capacity and the ability to, there's something for everyone here. And that's kind of what we've been seeing in our feedback and what we've been hearing when we get people to have questions. And that's something I think we can be proud of.

Robin: You hear me say it every episode, sport touring motorcycles or universal to motorcycling as a whole.

Brian: Yeah. So the TRO website recap. We've done some articles this year. I've written a few, gotten some out there. What do you want to say about the website and the whole, the resources?

Robin: We did get a good number of articles out. Is it our usual onslaught? No, because we've been perfecting this program, but.

Brian: Well, we have, we have, and I'm proud to say the definitive 9,000 word article on motorcycle earplugs.

Robin: Absolutely.

Brian: From yours truly.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: Nothing more needs to be said ever about motorcycle earplugs. Let me tell you.

Robin: John Barthol gave us get more bites tips to help sell your motorcycle than Brian's earplug extravaganza. I wanted to look up some keywords that weren't being responded to on the interweb, so I wrote about motorcycle detailing services near you. Then Ringer came out with the Triumph Demo Ride Report. I've been dealing with a low-voltage turn signal draw hyperflash situation for LEDs, even though my bike has stock LEDs on it. I just think they have a resistor in it, so I wrote hyperflash and the dash. Then there's the LED license plate light combos for running brake signal and lamp.

Brian: Technical.

Robin: Brian's Urban Motorcycle Writing, Advanced Tactics for Two-Wheel Combat. That's it for this year. 2026, I believe, is going to be a fantastic year for our articles. I'm looking forward to this.

Brian: You're going to write the first ever and the definitive 10,000-word opus on the ADAR engine valve check process.

Robin: It's going to be longer than the manual, Brian.

Brian: But if it's in one damn place, you will get everybody with one of these bikes.

Robin: Well, it's going to be a pop-up book.

Brian: Pop-up book. We're going to have little multimedia that plays. You're going to have to put batteries in it.

Robin: Mad Magazine fold out.

Brian: I know that's gestating and it's coming out and got some more ideas too.

Robin: If I look at the feed and if I really draw back, Jordan joined us for the very first episode. Thank you, Jordan, with the Devonian period. Then he got into the De Deon Bhutan motor, that little itty-bitty thing that may as well be a sewing machine that plopped onto a bicycle and went riding. We did wireless whereabouts. I don't remember what half of these words because I was titling them just creatively, not thinking about the segments. But we talked about paper riders after we got rid of the Triumph and all that. Pinch and pennies, how to basically say, I think that may be when we cornered Joanne into please, please work on the budgeting for this episode and tell us, can we make tires out of garbage bags?

Brian: And Joanne's solution was, you know, buy expensive gear, but buy it used.

Robin: There was re-mojination to get your energy going. workout basics. We were joined by Joe Wilson, my friend from Chicago, who happens to be really, really in the know about such things and maintains good health. The first timers thing, I don't remember what that was about. Frostburn to Sunbite. That I believe was a high elevation temperature shift route. Didn't get, wouldn't bet. The bikes that may or may not make to the States. The inclement weather ride. That ride was where we ran into wild horses with our good friend, Paul. Whiskeyed Wanderlust, which I believe that That was Travis and I getting ready for sevens, mud, sweat, and gears. Bird is the word. Responsible misbehavior 101, which is one of my favorites because it's just putting it out there that, you know what? Safety instructor or not, I enjoy super legal speeds in my own free time.

Brian: Just admit it. Yeah.

Robin: Corner by corner where you got to be able to judge only that which you can process. We're going to be talking about that a little bit in the next episode. Road Ramble, Cordura Confidential, Ego vs. Asphalt, Confidence Confidants. Now, that was Maggie and Joanne having their first sit-down. Tougher than Asphalt. That is the recap on George Wyman.

Brian: Yeah, me, Neil, and Jordan, obviously.

Robin: Appetizers, which was all about decent apps for phones. And if you don't want to deal with Garmin units and things like that. Paddock Paranoia, which I believe was our track day. The Helium Tool Roll, which you helped me try to figure out better tools for transport. I mean, I've got a decent tool roll, but there's better ways to have lighter things and multi-component stuff. Incommunicado, talking about helmet comms. Hall of all the ass. That's when Brian just attacked Indiana, his own home state.

Brian: We had one hour. we made the most of it.

Robin: The gsx valve baptism which was wow special the winter brain scrub just to give yourself space to kind of reprocess and get ready for the next season terminology dermatology all those words that people talk about and when they speak about them they speak as though they're speaking about something that is totally different from the other person the mix-up of definitions field fixery whether or not it's okay to fix this or that while you're in the middle of the road, the helmet fire, enter angel, friction zone fever, exit, Robin and Brian, EICMA 25, an outstanding look at bikes we'll probably never have the coin to buy. They should just give us one, whatever. One of my favorites of this year, mentorship, community, and responsibility. I really enjoyed that conversation.

Brian: Yeah, that was fun. I like to get philosophical, and that one was right up my alley there.

Robin: A bit of a benefit show, our sit down with Steve and Christina for the ARC Academy discussion, which is now legitimately... a not-for-profit operation, just in time to lose all funding. Go to the website, arcacademy.com, help them out. And finally, the last one of the year, Mr. Dylan Coe, thank you for being here. Superbike School 26. That's every episode right there. And man, always a positive takeaway, these conversations that we get to have. I mean, I think that we really work hard to keep it in motorcycling, because the things we talk about are way more expansive than that. That's what we're here to do, is bide our time, talk about motorcycling, and then as my friend Don Green would say, get into the weeds a little bit.

Brian: Here we are in nice weeds over here. On that last one, Dylan Code, again, I will highly recommend Reed, look for his name on the Googlerator, and Reed, his definition of trail braking, and shut the hell up with your definition of trail braking.

Robin: I'm going to make that subdomain forwarder for TRO. So trailbreaking.tiro.bike will eventually point to his article, and we'll just call that done.

Brian: Yeah, it's done. The mic is dropped. It's over. Stop misconstruing the phrase.

Robin: Hey, hey, hey, hey.

Brian: Okay, go on.

Robin: 26. You've got the wish list here, and the first thing on my wish list for 26 is, for the website, we're going to start selling our self-organized tour routes. Self-organized tour routes, including Trip 7s, will be available for purchase on the site, complete with where to eat, sleep, and gas up, plus concerns where applicable. I'm going to make that happen.

Brian: Nice.

Robin: What's on your wishlist there?

Brian: I've got kind of an interview wishlist. Like, there are people who are sort of minor celebrities in the world of motorcycling. Yeah, I need to reach out and maybe some of these people are real people who'll get back to me. I think some of them will just Go away. I get all, everybody's bothering me. Piss off. But I forgot her last name, but her name is Amanda.

Robin: Hug and kiss. Please say hug and kiss.

Brian: You know, I don't know. It may be. It's a very interesting channel on YouTube. And it's called As the Magpie Flies. Sometimes she's called Blind Thistle as her username. And just kind of a very thoughtful, philosophical motorcycle journey channel. and, you know, she crosses the U.S. and talks about it and really shows you what life is like. She'd be a very interesting person to talk to. Doodle on a Motorcycle, her real name is Carolyn. She would be really interesting to talk to. Again, she's a YouTuber, cranking out content, trying to drown out Yammy Noob. And I think she's going to, I think she would be a very interesting person to talk to as well. Motorcycling has really led her into some interesting discoveries and interesting parts of life. Jocelyn Snow is an absolute incredible badass adventure riding instructor. She's a tiny, tiny little person who rides a gigantic BMW adventure bike and does things that people cannot do.

Robin: Sounds like somebody understands leverage.

Brian: She's unnatural, and I would like to absorb some unnatural thoughts and talk with her. and some on the list that are never going to talk to us. The Fort Nine people. Yeah, right. Whatever. They just released a movie, Yala Habibi. I bought it. I have not watched it yet. I'm just, I'm going to watch it in the next few days and we will talk about it because I think the world really needed a new motorcycling movie. Seriously think they did.

Robin: I agree.

Brian: Yeah.

Robin: We got it now.

Brian: And also, a motorcycle movie that gets the hell out of California. It's always been a, Pet peeve.

Robin: I would very much like for a 2026 to be the year of pleasant surprises. Maybe we can come up with a theme to each episode. Whoever is steering the ship, the other person is in charge of bringing something into the mix that is a good thing from left field.

Brian: Instead of a turd in the punch bowl, throw in a bottle of tequila. Boosh, here's what we're doing, you know. Yeah. Yeah, perfect. Yeah. Itchy boots, gnarly. you know, if you're out there, we want to talk to you, but so does everybody. And lastly, I would like everybody we talk to, to get a damn microphone.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: Yeah. Robin would like them.

Robin: Yeah. I've been working on that. Actually, if any listeners out there know of an app that is cross-platform compatible with a simple GUI that you can open up, it automatically detects the hardware max settings for the device it's on and makes the adjustments to the settings automatically, so long as it's being recorded at the max quality settings for that device, so that the person using it can hit record, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and then hit stop and know where the file is so they can then email it our way That's the app we need. If I have that, I don't have a complaint in the world. We've got people that are cranking up old phonographs and connecting them to like tin cans, then using Morse code with spoons. I'm like, no, this ain't. Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye.

Brian: The thing is, the best microphone in the house is attached to your phone.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: Getting it from there has been a challenge. We do interviews or we have guests and things like that. That's just us being nerds.

Robin: What do you got for personal hopes, Brian?

Brian: More time in the gym. I think everybody has that goal, but I mean, it's need to keep up on that. More track days this year. I want to move up to orange. I think it's about time for that.

Robin: Nobody's going to stop you from doing that. You're going to be just fine. I want to move up to green.

Brian: You want to go to where the chaos is, huh?

Robin: I would like to revisit my abilities to negotiate chaos.

Brian: That's a good way to put it. There's a track near me called Putnam Park. Sport bike track time runs those track days, and I want to try one of those. It's 45 minutes from my house. I don't see how you could top MotoVid the way they organize and do a track day, but I'd like to try a different one at some point and one that's closer to home. Five hours of driving on either end of your track day is a little bit of a bummer. I want to do some dual sport training. Haven't figured that out where to go. Maybe I need to go to Wisconsin. Talk to Jason.

Robin: RidingSolutions.com. They heard the advertisement.

Brian: RidingSolutions.com, baby. That arc would be great to do sometime this spring.

Robin: It's just a great warm-up.

Brian: Yeah, it's fantastic.

Robin: For where we're at, there's nothing truly advanced about it. You only get out of it what you put into it. If you work it the right way, the takeaway is exactly as advanced as you want it to be. For me, it's just such a great warm-up. And I coach that course. I am an ARC certified instructor. I love being a student of that course. I love being an instructor for it. Yeah, man.

Brian: Yeah, that, or I don't know if there's another something similar where you really put the polish on would be great. Maybe we need to call our buddy Chad again and get something going for the spring.

Robin: Yeah.

Brian: The big thing is I'm really starting to feel the rut a little bit. And I want to ride somewhere new. I want to do something different and new this year. So I'm still figuring that out what that's going to be. You know, hopefully I can do New Mexico.

Robin: Sevens?

Brian: Yeah. So, yeah, I'd like to do sevens.

Robin: We'll talk about that. I think it would be awesome to have you. Seven riders, seven states, seven days, barely anything more than a three-mile stint in all of it that is straight. Just curves all day, relentlessly, forever. However, I know how you work. We have to discuss the schedule.

Brian: Talk about scheduling and stuff like that, so I want to do that. I want to do some other stuff. Planning a street ride in Tennessee, North Carolina. A buddy of mine is going to have a brand-new bike. We need to really break in those tires. Brown County is always a fixture. That's a given. That's happening no matter what. And then also, a friend of mine is retiring and planning a big trip to the Rockies this summer. Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and so forth.

Robin: Nice.

Brian: Can I get in on that? I'm not sure. Logistics. I'm still working stiff. On the first of the month, I'm going to be a CEO, and it's terrifying. Yeah. So I don't know what my time is going to look like. It's not like it's a.

Robin: If you want to give me money, go to donate.tro.bike and bust out that wallet and sling some dollar bills our way. And I promise you I'll do the best I can to, well, keep the dream alive, fans.

Brian: That's right.

Robin: Dance, monkey, dance. I'll throw on the tap shoes and smash the cymbals together over and over and over for you. That's it. And, you know, honestly, be good to my wife, be good to my friends, and ride motorcycles. With that, I want to take a moment and say, Brian Ringer, thank you for being a part of this show.

Brian: Robin, thanks for starting the show, being a part of it, for doing the hard work of production, of listening to my horrible voice over and over.

Robin: No, no, you're fantastic. Maggie knows that I hate my voice. I hate my presence on this show. I have things I want to say, and then first I have to tolerate my own voice, then I have to tolerate what comes out of my mouth. And it's never what I mean. I've got this big, spiritual, intense, motorcycling-related message that's going to go, Motorcycles are cool. That's it. That's all I got.

Brian: A metaphor about monkeys spills out.

Robin: Yeah, kind of like that.

Brian: That's everybody. But yeah, I hope to see you soon, my friend. I hope we'll do a lot more writing this year.

Robin: We will. So what do you think? You ready to get out of here?

Brian: Let's get out of here.