WEBVTT

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Robin Dean: In this episode, we sit down with Curtis Minder, author of Cyber Recon,

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Robin Dean: to expand on modern vehicle hacking concerns.

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Robin Dean: Then, Joanne Don shines a light on the exacting details of manufacturer model

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Robin Dean: specifics, meaning how to buy your brands.

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Robin Dean: But before any of that, Brian and I have a lot to unpack after riding the gnarliest

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Robin Dean: four-digit roads of Berea, Kentucky.

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Robin Dean: Opening announcements, news, corrections, banter.

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Robin Dean: Random Song of the Minute this round. If you would like to hear our random songs

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Robin Dean: of the minute, visit radio.tro.bike in your web browser.

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Robin Dean: This time around, it's All Hits by the Night Marchers.

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Robin Dean: Here's a backstory to why I chose this song. A friend posted to social media,

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Robin Dean: you walk into a room, your theme music starts playing.

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Robin Dean: What is your choice of a theme song?

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Robin Dean: This is my choice. Check it out.

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Brian Wringer: Sounds deeply personal. I like it.

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Robin Dean: On the news, Topdon's new motorcycle scanner puts the dealer tool question in your garage.

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Robin Dean: This comes from topdon.us. That's T-O-P-D-O-N.us.

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Robin Dean: Topdon has launched the OneMoto, a $1,950 diagnostic tablet with claimed coverage

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Robin Dean: for more than 100 motorcycle and ATV brands.

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Robin Dean: On supported machines, it offers live data, bi-directional tests,

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Robin Dean: and service functions such as ABS bleeding, Brian, and maintenance resets.

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Robin Dean: Two years of updates are included.

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Robin Dean: Continued updates are listed at $499 per year.

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Robin Dean: Coverage is not the same as every function working on every bike.

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Robin Dean: The useful question isn't whether it can clear a light. Can it finish the job

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Robin Dean: that otherwise sends your bike to a dealer?

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Robin Dean: It's really about model-specific compatibility, independent shop access,

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Robin Dean: and whether a multi-bike household could ever justify shop tool money.

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Robin Dean: You know, it's like, you got to check the exact bike and function before buying.

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Robin Dean: At that price, it's like, how many of our friends would we need to go in on it?

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Robin Dean: Should the GS Resources own one?

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Brian Wringer: And everybody's going to be like, well, that's why I have a vintage bike.

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Brian Wringer: I can, you know, whatever.

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Brian Wringer: But pretty much everybody also has a modern bike. I think the last few holdouts

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Brian Wringer: bought Triumphs and Yamahas or something.

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Robin Dean: Yeah.

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Brian Wringer: So a couple of things. Top Don is a really well-respected brand in scanners

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Brian Wringer: and the automotive world, that kind of thing.

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Brian Wringer: The other thing is $1,950 is, good Lord, that's a lot of money. That's the MSRP.

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Brian Wringer: The actual selling price, I'm sure, will be, after a little while anyway,

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Brian Wringer: I think the actual price, the street price is going to be somewhat less.

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Brian Wringer: But damn, it's still going to be a lot of money, even if it's discounted.

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Robin Dean: Divided by 10. Let me see here. $2,000 divided by 10. Math is hard.

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Robin Dean: 200 bucks a man. Let's just get 10 people.

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Brian Wringer: Now, the neat thing about it is it does come with a connector kit because motorcycles,

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Brian Wringer: most motorcycles, are using OBD-II like cars, which is all standardized across everything.

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Brian Wringer: But a lot of bikes are still using like weird little connectors and you need

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Brian Wringer: an adapter and you need a connector like my Yamaha, for example.

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Brian Wringer: A lot of Triumphs are using OBD-II. So anyway, it comes with a kit of 36 connectors.

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Brian Wringer: So hopefully that means that we will cover and get it to check and see,

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Brian Wringer: make sure it does the ABS reset and all the two directional stuff,

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Brian Wringer: like activating your EVAP and blah, blah, blah, and all that crap that you need to do. Interesting.

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Brian Wringer: I'm in no danger of accidentally buying this anytime soon, that's for sure.

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Brian Wringer: And I did notice, you know, like when I was looking into it for ABS bleeds on

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Brian Wringer: my bike, there was about a $900 tool that would do it, among other things.

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Robin Dean: So just double that and everything will be great.

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Brian Wringer: Yeah, that'll be great. Now, what was the old ad for Motorcycle Institute?

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Brian Wringer: It was something, you know, watch your friends and neighbors gather around to

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Brian Wringer: watch you tear down and tune up all kinds of motorcycles.

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Robin Dean: You'll be the talk of the neighborhood.

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Brian Wringer: Nobody talked to me. Seems interesting, and I applaud this, and I want to see

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Brian Wringer: more of this happening for less money. All right.

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Brian Wringer: So what we have next is a stick-on medical ID for the helmet you already own. Interesting.

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Brian Wringer: Twice Me and Parts Unlimited have announced an adhesive NFC tag for existing

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Brian Wringer: helmets with U.S. dealer network availability planned for later this year.

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Brian Wringer: Twice Me says a responder can tap a phone to retrieve the rider's chosen medical

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Brian Wringer: information and emergency contacts directly from the chip and the sticker without internet access.

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Brian Wringer: So we're turning ourselves into cyborgs here. So Setup uses a free app,

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Brian Wringer: which also offers check-in and alert features.

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Brian Wringer: And it's a good way to add some useful information without replacing a perfectly good helmet.

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Brian Wringer: So the question is, would responders recognize the tag? Would we keep it updated?

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Brian Wringer: Would we be comfortable with the information on the tag and the chip on the tag?

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Brian Wringer: It's an interesting idea. Yeah, it would need to become a little bit of a standard.

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Brian Wringer: And what happens to the medical information? You know, can anybody just walk

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Brian Wringer: up and get your info? So that's kind of, you'd have to know more about.

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Brian Wringer: So we're interested. We'd like to know more.

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Brian Wringer: The app has some alert features, you know, whether that's anything,

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Brian Wringer: you know, that's not really a satellite rescue beacon. That's kind of a different gadget altogether.

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Brian Wringer: I could see where that would be useful. Interesting. Let's see what happens.

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Robin Dean: Yeah. If I can't speak for myself, I would love to know that there's something

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Robin Dean: that medical practitioners observe and recognize that can. That wouldn't be so bad.

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Brian Wringer: Like chips and cats and dogs became pretty standard. You know,

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Brian Wringer: you can chip your dog and every vet's got a reader. You know,

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Brian Wringer: that, I mean, obviously there's a lot of work behind that, but that became standard.

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Brian Wringer: So something like that could, you know, could be standard for motorcycle riders or anybody.

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Brian Wringer: That could be really interesting.

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Robin Dean: Let's talk about something a little bit more important on the cyborg level.

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Robin Dean: More important than our own safety, three recovered bikes make a case for the

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Robin Dean: people behind a tracker.

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Robin Dean: This comes from MotorcyclePowerSportsNews.com. A new report describes FIN-assisted

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Robin Dean: recoveries of three stolen motorcycles in Virginia and Maryland,

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Robin Dean: including a Suzuki GSX-8R.

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Brian Wringer: Who the hell would steal that?

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Robin Dean: Oh, give me a break. This is newly published recovery coverage,

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Robin Dean: not three thefts from this week.

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Robin Dean: FIN credits its tracking hardware, recovery team, and cooperation with police.

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Robin Dean: These are company-reported examples, not an independent recovery rate study.

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Robin Dean: The interesting purchase isn't just a dot on a phone.

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Robin Dean: Who answers when your touring bike disappears from a hotel lot?

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Robin Dean: Who works with police and what coverage service fees apply?

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Robin Dean: It's worth comparing the recovery process and limitations, not just the gadget

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Robin Dean: itself, But a tracker is another layer, not a replacement for locks or a promise

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Robin Dean: that the bike comes home.

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Robin Dean: Put a tracker on my helmet. Put a tracker on my bike. I'm down. Go for it.

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Robin Dean: The last four digits of my social security are now good.

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Brian Wringer: Yeah. Witness me.

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Robin Dean: All right. What do we got next?

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Brian Wringer: Next in happier news, assuming you hang on to your bike and your cranium,

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Brian Wringer: fall color reports beat picking the weekend and hoping.

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Robin Dean: Yes.

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Brian Wringer: From ultimate motorcycling.com. So they have a fall writing guide that collects

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Brian Wringer: color report links for Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio.

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Brian Wringer: Timely trip planning resources rather than just another scenic road list.

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Brian Wringer: And of course, weather can move the color window.

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Brian Wringer: And a route that works on a long summer day may finish in darkness now.

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Brian Wringer: So you still have to do some work.

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Brian Wringer: But you could build a day around the current report and a daylight return and

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Brian Wringer: then decide which roads are actually worth the detour.

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Brian Wringer: The question is, what changes first in your fall plan? Departure time,

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Brian Wringer: mileage, or the gear you pack?

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Brian Wringer: Yeah, if you're later in the leaf season, the leaves are going to end up on

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Brian Wringer: the ground, on the pavement leave

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Brian Wringer: room for low sun and of course wildlife activity increases in the fall

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Brian Wringer: and yeah i've done this a time or three where suddenly it's five o'clock shadows

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Brian Wringer: are getting along and we're still two hours from the hotel so take that into account in the fall

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Robin Dean: But the beautiful thing about this is listeners we're trying to hook you up

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Robin Dean: here if you have a significant,

00:10:21.118 --> 00:10:27.709
Robin Dean: carving, snarling beast attack-riding posture that we usually find ourselves taking on.

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Robin Dean: Bring somebody you want to impress and light up their eyes. It'll be something,

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Robin Dean: you know, that's just one of those things. And every now and then you got to

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Robin Dean: do, you got to dial it down for a little bit, have a good time.

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Robin Dean: And remember, the adrenal gland is waiting after, and that's fine.

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Brian Wringer: I was going to say, it's interesting they don't go any further south of the

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Brian Wringer: leaf reports because I've also learned in the, like in the Smoky Mountains,

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Brian Wringer: In North Carolina and Tennessee, they have a spectacular leaf season,

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Brian Wringer: and it's layered because it goes by elevation.

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Robin Dean: Oh, nice.

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Brian Wringer: So leaf season in the mountains is more complicated, but it's also really worth

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Brian Wringer: seeing. Really gorgeous. What's been going on, huh?

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Robin Dean: Here's what's going on. New Mexico or bust. We are here. We were in Indiana.

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Robin Dean: We had three days early before it was even time to start packing up. I was like, we out.

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Robin Dean: Let's get out of here we gotta go let's just not be in indiana anymore,

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Robin Dean: so brian in indianapolis greetings from new mexico along the way we stopped

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Robin Dean: in a couple of really nice places but the one that stands out is santa rosa,

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Robin Dean: which is where we stayed for the past three nights just to,

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Robin Dean: sort of wait for our reservation to open up at our regular park so santa rosa,

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Robin Dean: is a really nice hub along route 66 and while,

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Robin Dean: the majority of Route 66 is gone, dilapidated, or just,

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Robin Dean: not maintained in any particular way. Santa Rosa is doing a fairly good job

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Robin Dean: in that they have things that you can go see.

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Robin Dean: There's a couple of hotels. There's a couple of old signs. And then there's,

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Robin Dean: for example, there's one thing called, don't laugh, it's called the Blue Hole.

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Robin Dean: It's a random cold water spring or something. There's something going on underground

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Robin Dean: where a cave system is full of 15 degree water.

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Robin Dean: It is freezing.

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Robin Dean: We went to see this and lo and behold, it just goes straight down in the ground.

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Robin Dean: It's probably about the size of like a basketball court and just goes down lower

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Robin Dean: and lower until there's all these caverns and caves and stuff.

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Robin Dean: And divers like to go there.

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Robin Dean: So we went and saw that and the people looked, wow.

00:12:43.426 --> 00:12:45.209
Robin Dean: We saw people jump in from the cliff side.

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Robin Dean: And the first thing I heard a guy saying over and over was, I'm still warm.

00:12:48.901 --> 00:12:50.373
Robin Dean: I'm still warm. I'm still warm.

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Robin Dean: No, that's not, that's not reassuring. They also have an amazing auto museum,

00:12:57.219 --> 00:13:02.264
Robin Dean: the Santa Rosa auto museum. It's right across from Bozo's garage, which still exists.

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Robin Dean: I just, it was so fun to have that entire place to ourselves and just walk around

00:13:09.147 --> 00:13:15.084
Robin Dean: looking at all these incredible cars from the start of the automotive revolution

00:13:15.084 --> 00:13:17.640
Robin Dean: all the way up to like the late seventies, mid eighties.

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Robin Dean: It was really cool. So I took a whole bunch of pictures. Hopefully I'll get

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Robin Dean: those posted with this episode.

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Robin Dean: We'll see. But yeah, that was really cool. So just cruising around Route 66

00:13:28.494 --> 00:13:31.334
Robin Dean: and just the two of us having this entire town to ourselves,

00:13:31.798 --> 00:13:33.842
Robin Dean: eating barbecue and smiling. It was all right.

00:13:34.300 --> 00:13:38.294
Robin Dean: But by the time the listeners hear this, I'll hopefully have surprised our friends

00:13:38.294 --> 00:13:41.444
Robin Dean: down there who think we aren't arriving for at least another week.

00:13:41.444 --> 00:13:42.860
Robin Dean: Now, this already happened.

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Robin Dean: And I did surprise them. Shout out to my friend Will.

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Robin Dean: I wasn't exactly received with, yay, it wasn't a lot of that.

00:13:49.974 --> 00:13:53.674
Robin Dean: I was just like, oh, hey, man, wow, hi, let's have a beer, which was pretty

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Robin Dean: cool. That's how I'm doing.

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Robin Dean: So your turn. Catch me up. What's good? What's your world all about? Talk to me.

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Brian Wringer: So, yeah, it's funny. After Kentucky, a discussion coming, my tires were like down to the wear bars.

00:14:05.999 --> 00:14:08.791
Brian Wringer: I think I got 2,200 miles out of this set.

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Robin Dean: Wow.

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Brian Wringer: So set number seven of the Pirellis went on and changed the oil,

00:14:15.078 --> 00:14:20.732
Brian Wringer: changed the tires, went to the track day in Putnam Park, went to a trip to Missouri,

00:14:21.191 --> 00:14:24.981
Brian Wringer: had several rides with you here in Indiana, which are not gentle,

00:14:25.411 --> 00:14:29.405
Brian Wringer: and then Kentucky, and they were roached.

00:14:29.620 --> 00:14:34.351
Brian Wringer: And they led an exciting short life, edge to edge, like no chicken strips,

00:14:34.815 --> 00:14:40.666
Brian Wringer: absolutely roached very happy tires very tired so anyway yeah this is set number

00:14:40.666 --> 00:14:43.399
Brian Wringer: seven of the amazon pirelli's

00:14:43.864 --> 00:14:50.256
Brian Wringer: angel st and still happy they still work and they are still a bargain even though

00:14:50.256 --> 00:14:54.126
Brian Wringer: i beat the hell out of this set normally i get around 3 000 i think you were

00:14:54.126 --> 00:14:57.889
Brian Wringer: getting a little little more you know it depends on usage quite a bit

00:14:58.347 --> 00:15:01.621
Robin Dean: 2800 if i'm being really well behaved about 3,300 and yet,

00:15:02.074 --> 00:15:06.876
Robin Dean: the last set that I had before this one I made the 4,000 mark wow I made 4,200

00:15:06.876 --> 00:15:10.506
Robin Dean: miles on that set of tires which doesn't really happen not regularly yeah so

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Robin Dean: it just tells you the kind of season I had when I was in my off time most of

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Robin Dean: the vengeful riding was done with you.

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Brian Wringer: We have witnesses and yeah right now like today I was at a conference downtown

00:15:21.506 --> 00:15:25.700
Brian Wringer: Indianapolis standing and schmoozing all day and and is

00:15:26.165 --> 00:15:29.736
Brian Wringer: a brutal way to live but you know you got to get out you got to see people you

00:15:29.736 --> 00:15:31.279
Brian Wringer: got to got to make contacts

00:15:31.743 --> 00:15:34.716
Brian Wringer: people got to learn to trust you got to got to look them in the eye that kind of thing

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Brian Wringer: yes and in some weird quirk of scheduling i've ended up with two conferences

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Brian Wringer: back to back so i am head we're leaving saturday we're going to drive out to

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Brian Wringer: denver and make i make half vacation half conference

00:15:48.089 --> 00:15:52.206
Brian Wringer: work thing out of it but we're going to go spend a week in denver recording

00:15:52.206 --> 00:15:57.371
Brian Wringer: logistics and you know what's going to go where and when we're going to do laundry i mean every detail

00:15:57.836 --> 00:16:00.512
Brian Wringer: it's going to be it's also going to be a lot of fun and

00:16:01.034 --> 00:16:07.013
Brian Wringer: Open to get together with a gear chick, Joanne, and maybe have a drink.

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Robin Dean: Some high five. I like it.

00:16:09.672 --> 00:16:12.743
Brian Wringer: Maybe high five, have a drink, make Robin jealous.

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Robin Dean: Well, are you ready for some questions from the wild?

00:16:16.928 --> 00:16:17.317
Brian Wringer: Sure.

00:16:17.770 --> 00:16:22.017
Robin Dean: Now, if you'd like us to field your questions, visit email.tro.bike in your

00:16:22.017 --> 00:16:23.441
Robin Dean: web browser and send us a message.

00:16:23.912 --> 00:16:30.407
Robin Dean: First one, when a fork seal starts leaking, should you repair stock suspension or pay for an upgrade?

00:16:30.872 --> 00:16:35.157
Robin Dean: A Yamaha Tenere rider in Germany has a leaking fork seal and sees the repair

00:16:35.157 --> 00:16:38.249
Robin Dean: as a chance to improve the suspension.

00:16:38.713 --> 00:16:42.867
Robin Dean: The rider weighs about 205 without gear and splits riding between commuting

00:16:42.867 --> 00:16:45.110
Robin Dean: and off-road trips beyond simple fire roads.

00:16:45.551 --> 00:16:49.927
Robin Dean: A full Olin setup is outside the budget, leaving, I guess, these brands,

00:16:49.927 --> 00:16:56.337
Robin Dean: I don't know, Andriani Rally cartridges or a K-Tec revalve with stiffer springs under consideration.

00:16:56.790 --> 00:17:02.839
Robin Dean: When does combining repair and upgrade save money and when does it become paying twice?

00:17:03.303 --> 00:17:05.329
Robin Dean: Huh, interesting.

00:17:05.782 --> 00:17:06.014
Brian Wringer: Yeah.

00:17:06.211 --> 00:17:10.797
Robin Dean: I am going to let you feel this one to death because I'm not even sure how to conjure an answer.

00:17:11.262 --> 00:17:16.341
Robin Dean: The wallet changes, the options shift around, and as bikes get older,

00:17:16.672 --> 00:17:19.557
Robin Dean: the options begin to disappear. So what is your take on it?

00:17:20.010 --> 00:17:23.797
Brian Wringer: First, I had to very quickly Google a picture of a Tenera 700.

00:17:23.797 --> 00:17:25.281
Brian Wringer: This is a Tenera 700, yes.

00:17:26.594 --> 00:17:30.489
Brian Wringer: If you have upside down forks, which I believe the Tenera 700 does,

00:17:31.701 --> 00:17:37.955
Brian Wringer: Then basically the labor for doing fork seals is pretty much have to completely

00:17:37.955 --> 00:17:38.925
Brian Wringer: disassemble and so forth.

00:17:38.925 --> 00:17:42.985
Brian Wringer: So what I was getting at is on right side up forks, a lot of times,

00:17:43.449 --> 00:17:47.535
Brian Wringer: you know, it depends on the fork design, but sometimes you can replace fork

00:17:47.535 --> 00:17:52.245
Brian Wringer: seals without doing a complete disassembly and so forth.

00:17:52.245 --> 00:17:55.948
Brian Wringer: But I think in this case, in most cases, it's kind of the same amount of labor.

00:17:56.267 --> 00:18:00.255
Brian Wringer: If you're delving into the fork seals, it's pretty much, it's going to be a complete disassembly.

00:18:00.719 --> 00:18:04.748
Brian Wringer: So you might as well, when you put it back together, hey, throw these parts in.

00:18:05.206 --> 00:18:09.895
Brian Wringer: That said, sometimes parts, like sometimes fork springs are just a direct drop

00:18:09.895 --> 00:18:13.465
Brian Wringer: in. Sometimes you're going to have a little extra time in setting up the fork

00:18:13.465 --> 00:18:14.599
Brian Wringer: space or that kind of thing.

00:18:15.057 --> 00:18:19.245
Brian Wringer: And also things vary for cartridges or revalves and things like that.

00:18:19.245 --> 00:18:21.641
Brian Wringer: You know, it may add to your labor cost.

00:18:22.099 --> 00:18:25.657
Brian Wringer: But overall, yeah, I mean, as long as you're in there anyway,

00:18:26.069 --> 00:18:31.327
Brian Wringer: depends on the forks, depends on the modification. Yeah, it could save some money and so forth.

00:18:31.786 --> 00:18:35.185
Brian Wringer: The larger point here is that the money is kind of beside the point.

00:18:35.185 --> 00:18:37.980
Brian Wringer: You're going to end up with much better working forks.

00:18:38.444 --> 00:18:43.390
Brian Wringer: And that's worth something right there. You know, you're going to forget about the cost.

00:18:43.849 --> 00:18:48.825
Brian Wringer: I mean even just dropping some springs in this person is a little heavier than

00:18:48.825 --> 00:18:53.565
Brian Wringer: average Japanese test rider so they're going to need if they do nothing else

00:18:53.565 --> 00:18:57.335
Brian Wringer: drop in some heavier fork springs and that will vastly improve things

00:18:57.821 --> 00:19:03.911
Robin Dean: I've always enjoyed investing in Racetech or Works springs like Works suspension,

00:19:04.375 --> 00:19:07.324
Robin Dean: and Racetech suspensions have always treated me quite well.

00:19:07.777 --> 00:19:11.486
Brian Wringer: Let's see you can spend $5,400 here I'm looking at this

00:19:11.956 --> 00:19:16.726
Brian Wringer: mxt complete forks by enduro spec you know it comes with everything like you

00:19:16.726 --> 00:19:21.646
Brian Wringer: don't even use your any of your old front end you can spend all the money on the forks

00:19:22.546 --> 00:19:25.719
Brian Wringer: so choose what you can spend i would say

00:19:26.189 --> 00:19:30.306
Brian Wringer: yeah the fork seals and the labor is almost a really minor consideration compared

00:19:30.306 --> 00:19:33.856
Brian Wringer: to some of these upgrades that they were thinking about so but yeah it can make

00:19:33.856 --> 00:19:37.196
Brian Wringer: sense to do that it makes sense to combine that and you get it back and you

00:19:37.196 --> 00:19:40.434
Brian Wringer: don't have to worry about the fork seals i say go for it man

00:19:42.268 --> 00:19:44.676
Robin Dean: Pull the trigger do it do it do it you know you want to.

00:19:44.676 --> 00:19:45.124
Brian Wringer: All right

00:19:45.588 --> 00:19:50.556
Robin Dean: The next question up i like this one would heated gear controls in carplay simplify

00:19:50.556 --> 00:19:57.866
Robin Dean: touring or add another distraction a 2019 honda goldwing dct rider already has

00:19:57.866 --> 00:20:00.362
Robin Dean: gerbing jacket and pant liners,

00:20:00.827 --> 00:20:05.156
Robin Dean: gloves and insoles controlled through a wireless two knob remote i have this

00:20:05.156 --> 00:20:06.515
Robin Dean: stuff i do have these remotes.

00:20:06.974 --> 00:20:10.886
Robin Dean: The rider wants a phone app that appears in Apple CarPlay and adjusts the heated

00:20:10.886 --> 00:20:13.267
Robin Dean: gear over Bluetooth from the motorcycle's display.

00:20:13.725 --> 00:20:17.246
Robin Dean: The question is whether consolidating the controls would improve the setup or

00:20:17.246 --> 00:20:19.356
Robin Dean: just bury a simple adjustment behind another screen.

00:20:19.815 --> 00:20:22.578
Robin Dean: I think it's not the way to go.

00:20:23.036 --> 00:20:23.263
Brian Wringer: Yeah.

00:20:23.826 --> 00:20:28.846
Robin Dean: I've arrived at the point where there are certain things that absolutely belong

00:20:28.846 --> 00:20:34.946
Robin Dean: on a physical knob or even more so a physical wire like action cams.

00:20:34.946 --> 00:20:38.606
Robin Dean: I'm getting more into the idea of having a front and rear action cam that is

00:20:38.606 --> 00:20:44.908
Robin Dean: a physical line and there are those that would be better in a wireless format,

00:20:45.367 --> 00:20:48.583
Robin Dean: the reason i was inspired by this question is there's a lot of people that,

00:20:49.047 --> 00:20:54.476
Robin Dean: buy gps units for their motorcycles or they have a motorcycle that came with

00:20:54.476 --> 00:21:00.326
Robin Dean: one they bend over backwards to move the gps up in their line of sight over

00:21:00.326 --> 00:21:02.155
Robin Dean: the windshield so they can see it more easily,

00:21:03.084 --> 00:21:06.400
Robin Dean: Personally, I want the opposite of that. I'd never want anything.

00:21:06.400 --> 00:21:08.900
Robin Dean: I want to see the horizon, the road.

00:21:09.121 --> 00:21:13.650
Robin Dean: I want to see as little of the tech in my bike as possible and let that be a

00:21:13.650 --> 00:21:18.264
Robin Dean: glance down. So for me, I know where everything's at. So I look down and back to it.

00:21:18.589 --> 00:21:23.500
Robin Dean: To have to look down and traverse a screen to find the temperature,

00:21:23.929 --> 00:21:26.337
Robin Dean: that's a moment where I got to pull over and stop.

00:21:26.790 --> 00:21:29.550
Robin Dean: Whereas a physical dial is something I can look at for a second,

00:21:29.550 --> 00:21:35.939
Robin Dean: find, feel, and twist to adjust to my liking before carrying on without needing to.

00:21:36.386 --> 00:21:42.719
Brian Wringer: Yeah, I agree with all that. And the other consideration is what happens in five years. Yeah.

00:21:43.189 --> 00:21:46.161
Brian Wringer: Is any of this crap going to work? Yeah. Right.

00:21:46.585 --> 00:21:49.940
Robin Dean: We've upgraded the software to where you need to sign up for it again.

00:21:50.132 --> 00:21:53.830
Brian Wringer: Yeah you're gonna have to subscribe to your heated grips you know or your heated

00:21:54.170 --> 00:21:55.258
Brian Wringer: socks or whatever the hell

00:21:55.722 --> 00:22:01.490
Brian Wringer: and it's also i don't it sounds like this app does not exist like he's he's

00:22:01.490 --> 00:22:05.180
Brian Wringer: kind of like wouldn't it be great if this existed where i could i would have

00:22:05.180 --> 00:22:08.122
Brian Wringer: to like tap and then use my finger

00:22:08.586 --> 00:22:11.355
Brian Wringer: pull my glove off and in it. No.

00:22:11.814 --> 00:22:12.400
Robin Dean: It's a pain in the ass.

00:22:12.870 --> 00:22:14.054
Brian Wringer: Bah humbug, you know.

00:22:14.513 --> 00:22:17.590
Robin Dean: You want it to be more complicated, just get a Raspberry Pi, figure it out.

00:22:18.037 --> 00:22:22.181
Brian Wringer: So if you'd like us to field your questions in such awesome style,

00:22:22.632 --> 00:22:29.418
Brian Wringer: visit email.tro.bike in your web browser and send us a message. All right.

00:22:29.534 --> 00:22:34.810
Robin Dean: Segment one. Now, normally we put our VIP segment here, but we've decided to

00:22:34.810 --> 00:22:36.721
Robin Dean: save the good stuff for segment two.

00:22:37.162 --> 00:22:39.379
Robin Dean: Stay tuned. We've got something special in store for you.

00:22:39.844 --> 00:22:43.900
Robin Dean: So this wrap for segment one, Ringer and I got to get some things out of our

00:22:43.900 --> 00:22:49.690
Robin Dean: system about the amazing, epically high bar riding roads that we attacked with

00:22:49.690 --> 00:22:52.028
Robin Dean: vengeful intent during the Kentucky rally.

00:22:52.662 --> 00:22:56.556
Robin Dean: Let's get to the blah, blah, blah. It was like an episode or two ago that we

00:22:56.556 --> 00:22:58.666
Robin Dean: were like, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to show up.

00:22:58.666 --> 00:22:59.966
Robin Dean: We're not going to plan anything.

00:23:00.853 --> 00:23:06.524
Robin Dean: We're going to try to just explore. And the morning of you at the desk,

00:23:06.989 --> 00:23:11.866
Robin Dean: no interest in improvisation. I mean, we sort of did, but the whole idea was

00:23:11.866 --> 00:23:13.258
Robin Dean: let's at least have a baseline.

00:23:14.146 --> 00:23:17.506
Robin Dean: And if I want to get you revved up to talk about it, the first thing I'm going

00:23:17.506 --> 00:23:21.336
Robin Dean: to say is that that was an awesome rally.

00:23:21.366 --> 00:23:25.355
Robin Dean: Like Berea is part of the last day of trip seven. So I just wrote it backwards,

00:23:25.813 --> 00:23:30.466
Robin Dean: and discovered, huh, I hope that we can find more exciting stuff in Berea than

00:23:30.466 --> 00:23:31.357
Robin Dean: what I just experienced.

00:23:31.752 --> 00:23:33.493
Robin Dean: And I knew we would. I knew we would.

00:23:33.946 --> 00:23:39.026
Robin Dean: I showed up, parked the bike, got everything situated, and it was time to like

00:23:39.026 --> 00:23:41.086
Robin Dean: sip drinks and talk to everyone. The next morning, there we were.

00:23:41.533 --> 00:23:44.066
Brian Wringer: That was one of the first points I was planning on making too,

00:23:44.066 --> 00:23:46.984
Brian Wringer: is like, we had talked about let's not play. And it's like, you know,

00:23:48.708 --> 00:23:55.646
Brian Wringer: we have X amount of time here planning needed to be done. And I'm really glad I did because.

00:23:55.646 --> 00:23:57.183
Robin Dean: It expedites the experience.

00:23:57.630 --> 00:24:02.042
Brian Wringer: Yeah, really glad. Like if I lived there and I was retired, I had nothing else to do.

00:24:02.419 --> 00:24:07.743
Brian Wringer: Yeah, I would spend two weeks poking around and learn a lot and have a, just have a blast.

00:24:09.019 --> 00:24:12.554
Brian Wringer: Yeah, we kind of planned things out, planned out a route.

00:24:13.018 --> 00:24:17.703
Brian Wringer: Some things went right. Some things went wrong. Everybody had a really good, safe weekend.

00:24:18.167 --> 00:24:21.053
Brian Wringer: One of the interesting things that happened is we had eight riders show up,

00:24:21.053 --> 00:24:22.938
Brian Wringer: which is like, that's a lot.

00:24:23.379 --> 00:24:27.158
Robin Dean: That's pretty good for an invite-only event. That was a private event.

00:24:27.622 --> 00:24:30.583
Brian Wringer: Yeah, just impromptu. Here's a couple of weeks beforehand. Here's where I'm

00:24:30.583 --> 00:24:33.364
Brian Wringer: going. You know, if you're there, great. If not, screw it. You know,

00:24:33.828 --> 00:24:35.543
Brian Wringer: very unorganized type of thing.

00:24:35.543 --> 00:24:36.968
Robin Dean: And everybody said, yeah.

00:24:37.653 --> 00:24:40.613
Brian Wringer: Everybody's like, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. So anyway,

00:24:40.613 --> 00:24:44.163
Brian Wringer: we moved, we kind of, this year we shifted further south to Berea.

00:24:44.163 --> 00:24:46.582
Brian Wringer: And I think that was, that was the move. It was excellent.

00:24:47.046 --> 00:24:51.864
Brian Wringer: No, no commuting to get to the good stuff. No city to get around, that kind of thing.

00:24:52.328 --> 00:24:55.185
Brian Wringer: But one of the first things that happened that was really interesting was the,

00:24:55.649 --> 00:25:02.412
Brian Wringer: the eight of us split into two groups, like very naturally and without even much discussion.

00:25:02.876 --> 00:25:07.932
Brian Wringer: So the retirees formed a group and then the working stiffs

00:25:08.391 --> 00:25:09.349
Robin Dean: We all know each other.

00:25:09.790 --> 00:25:12.036
Brian Wringer: Yeah we all know each other we've known each other for years

00:25:12.507 --> 00:25:15.943
Brian Wringer: And this is one of those rides, like I only, you know, like you,

00:25:16.402 --> 00:25:19.886
Brian Wringer: I really, you know, we all really have to feel like we know and trust people

00:25:19.886 --> 00:25:25.300
Brian Wringer: quite a lot in order to, because this is probably the hardest riding of the year, I think.

00:25:25.613 --> 00:25:26.072
Robin Dean: It is.

00:25:26.530 --> 00:25:30.006
Brian Wringer: Like maybe the mountain roads in New Mexico are a different kind of hard,

00:25:30.006 --> 00:25:35.236
Brian Wringer: but this is, it's not so much the operating the motorcycle part,

00:25:35.236 --> 00:25:38.709
Brian Wringer: it's the street craft and the road craft because it's so challenging.

00:25:39.168 --> 00:25:43.823
Brian Wringer: You know, a couple of these roads were so narrow, it was kind of a mistake.

00:25:44.206 --> 00:25:45.605
Brian Wringer: But we just, we did it anyway.

00:25:46.064 --> 00:25:50.386
Robin Dean: Well, so let's look at that. First off, I want you to hear me say that I think

00:25:50.386 --> 00:25:56.130
Robin Dean: you did a phenomenal job, not just organizing it, but taking action to at least make things happen.

00:25:56.583 --> 00:25:59.729
Robin Dean: I knew what you were doing. I understood what you were up to.

00:26:00.008 --> 00:26:03.246
Robin Dean: I just didn't want to be the one having to do it. You've seen me do it before.

00:26:03.246 --> 00:26:04.541
Robin Dean: You know I'm capable of it.

00:26:05.006 --> 00:26:10.306
Robin Dean: You know, you were getting locked into planning and people were just like,

00:26:10.306 --> 00:26:11.484
Robin Dean: what are we going to do, man?

00:26:11.803 --> 00:26:15.519
Robin Dean: And I really compliment the result of your efforts there.

00:26:15.975 --> 00:26:22.848
Robin Dean: I think that only two things went wrong. So let's get those right off the table real fast here.

00:26:23.307 --> 00:26:28.136
Robin Dean: First one is when you zoom out in your map planner,

00:26:28.596 --> 00:26:33.786
Robin Dean: make sure that you know that if you're looking at the earth from the moon every

00:26:33.786 --> 00:26:39.694
Robin Dean: road looks twisty but then you zoom in and realize you've selected a main truck route,

00:26:40.158 --> 00:26:43.896
Robin Dean: that is there's nothing to enjoy about it and you've selected like 20 miles

00:26:43.896 --> 00:26:47.618
Robin Dean: of that and then you look down so we were riding along this road together kind of realizing you know,

00:26:48.088 --> 00:26:52.056
Robin Dean: it was there was no harsh there was no negativity we just sort of realized like

00:26:52.056 --> 00:26:54.456
Robin Dean: yeah Yeah, no, this is, we know we're not doing the right thing here.

00:26:54.746 --> 00:26:58.416
Robin Dean: And we look down to the right and you see the road that's next to it.

00:26:58.416 --> 00:27:03.942
Robin Dean: That is like 20 times the curves for no reason. Yeah. We should be down there.

00:27:04.581 --> 00:27:08.301
Robin Dean: Acknowledged, observed. And it was only about, I think it was about 15 miles,

00:27:08.771 --> 00:27:12.023
Robin Dean: and then 15 miles out of 250 in an entire day.

00:27:12.487 --> 00:27:15.811
Robin Dean: We'd already had so much fun that it was just dusted off your shoulder to keep going.

00:27:16.264 --> 00:27:17.495
Brian Wringer: There was no rest.

00:27:17.721 --> 00:27:21.088
Robin Dean: There was no rest. Day two, the opposite happened.

00:27:21.437 --> 00:27:25.985
Robin Dean: So I kept on egging Brian on about a certain secret that I know about Kentucky,

00:27:25.985 --> 00:27:27.329
Robin Dean: that he also knows about Kentucky.

00:27:28.432 --> 00:27:31.903
Robin Dean: It's also risky. And that's the four-digit roads.

00:27:32.071 --> 00:27:36.564
Robin Dean: So the four-digit state roads in Kentucky are amazeballs.

00:27:37.029 --> 00:27:42.731
Robin Dean: They're the ones that are the most rural in Ridgeline and Country Bumpkin and

00:27:42.731 --> 00:27:47.623
Robin Dean: Hillbilly and Moonshine still. And as Brian said a couple episodes ago,

00:27:48.087 --> 00:27:51.541
Robin Dean: they followed the cow home and dropped pavement behind them.

00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:56.411
Robin Dean: The odds are good that if you get on a four-digit road in eastern Kentucky,

00:27:56.411 --> 00:28:02.141
Robin Dean: we're talking about a four-digit state road, you're going to have a damn good time, very likely.

00:28:02.141 --> 00:28:08.301
Robin Dean: However, the risk is there that some of those roads are like the lost highway.

00:28:08.301 --> 00:28:12.136
Robin Dean: They just begin to disintegrate and disappear before your very eyes,

00:28:12.310 --> 00:28:15.691
Robin Dean: and they get skinnier and skinnier and skinny.

00:28:15.691 --> 00:28:20.081
Robin Dean: And then all of a sudden, there's a massive beast of a car in front of you coming

00:28:20.081 --> 00:28:23.810
Robin Dean: over the hill, and they're confident in what they're doing. They know that road,

00:28:24.071 --> 00:28:26.541
Robin Dean: and they sure as shit don't care whether or not you're there or not.

00:28:26.541 --> 00:28:27.699
Robin Dean: It's not that they don't expect you.

00:28:27.920 --> 00:28:30.979
Robin Dean: It's that you don't matter because ain't nobody going to find you after you go off the cliff.

00:28:31.443 --> 00:28:37.211
Robin Dean: Yeah, that can happen. So scouting is one thing. Every four-digit road in eastern

00:28:37.211 --> 00:28:38.752
Robin Dean: Kentucky looks great on paper.

00:28:39.193 --> 00:28:45.137
Robin Dean: Not every road in eastern Kentucky is going to be a documented must-ride again.

00:28:45.584 --> 00:28:47.488
Robin Dean: Something to keep in mind. That also happened.

00:28:47.953 --> 00:28:50.661
Robin Dean: Those are the only two moments where we were like laughing it off and being

00:28:50.661 --> 00:28:54.118
Robin Dean: like, okay, well, we got that wrong. shift and it's off the desk.

00:28:54.588 --> 00:29:00.291
Brian Wringer: One of the things that was really challenging was to find a damn functioning

00:29:00.291 --> 00:29:07.051
Brian Wringer: gas station because we were remote i mean two words re and moat we were out there

00:29:07.516 --> 00:29:12.721
Brian Wringer: there was a point where we had to fill up with 87 octane in a tank and you know

00:29:12.721 --> 00:29:14.591
Brian Wringer: what it was fine didn't make any difference

00:29:15.055 --> 00:29:17.464
Robin Dean: Well we ran out the entire tank at the same day so it doesn't matter.

00:29:17.923 --> 00:29:18.196
Brian Wringer: Yeah

00:29:18.735 --> 00:29:24.237
Brian Wringer: And so that's one of the challenges of route planning is you do have to touch

00:29:24.237 --> 00:29:26.619
Brian Wringer: a town once every 100 miles or so.

00:29:27.066 --> 00:29:31.924
Brian Wringer: If you work at it in Kentucky, you can honestly not see a town.

00:29:32.717 --> 00:29:37.737
Brian Wringer: You can honestly not see a working gas pump, you know, and well over 100 miles.

00:29:37.737 --> 00:29:40.504
Brian Wringer: So it's fun and it's also very challenging.

00:29:40.963 --> 00:29:46.193
Brian Wringer: They're out on Saturday next to Squabble Creek. It's like 2022,

00:29:46.657 --> 00:29:49.949
Brian Wringer: a four-digit road, into a town called Buckhorn.

00:29:50.407 --> 00:29:56.549
Brian Wringer: Don't ride on that one, folks. People live there. People drive their F450 dually

00:29:56.729 --> 00:30:01.164
Brian Wringer: diesel coal roller machine in the opposite direction.

00:30:01.617 --> 00:30:05.622
Brian Wringer: That was the sketchiest bit of anything I've ever seen. It was fantastic.

00:30:06.040 --> 00:30:08.913
Brian Wringer: Also, I cannot really recommend the lunch there.

00:30:09.365 --> 00:30:14.183
Brian Wringer: I can also specifically from Friday, Pee Weasel's Grub.

00:30:14.636 --> 00:30:17.347
Robin Dean: Yeah, that place was great. I

00:30:17.347 --> 00:30:21.237
Robin Dean: remember getting some chicken wrap and some fries and some mac and cheese.

00:30:21.701 --> 00:30:25.337
Robin Dean: The donuts, man. I just, you weren't going to stop me. Knock,

00:30:25.337 --> 00:30:27.401
Robin Dean: knock. Who's there? Diabetes.

00:30:27.866 --> 00:30:32.387
Brian Wringer: Pee Weasel's Grub, and it's in Hazard, Kentucky, in case anybody is in Kentucky

00:30:32.387 --> 00:30:33.770
Brian Wringer: and wants some good grub.

00:30:34.216 --> 00:30:37.037
Brian Wringer: There are also some other roads. I'm not even going to try to figure out where

00:30:37.037 --> 00:30:41.377
Brian Wringer: they were, but the turn, you come up on the road and you see there's like a

00:30:41.377 --> 00:30:47.196
Brian Wringer: little, it's pavement sort of, and you see a sign that says public access.

00:30:47.655 --> 00:30:50.887
Brian Wringer: My route went through there, but I wasn't sure if it was going to just be a

00:30:50.887 --> 00:30:53.977
Brian Wringer: boat launch into water or if it's a, or what.

00:30:54.435 --> 00:30:56.967
Brian Wringer: But yeah, it turns out there's like a little bridge and that's where you can

00:30:56.967 --> 00:31:00.937
Brian Wringer: put your canoe and it's literally a creek. I don't know why you would put a canoe in there even.

00:31:02.661 --> 00:31:05.837
Brian Wringer: But stuff like that those little discoveries are just it's just delightful it's

00:31:05.837 --> 00:31:10.427
Brian Wringer: fun and you're like what the heck is down here you know oh okay I guess this

00:31:10.427 --> 00:31:12.277
Brian Wringer: is gonna work let's go gotta be

00:31:12.277 --> 00:31:16.486
Brian Wringer: on your loose surface game gotta be aware there's gonna be an F-350 with

00:31:16.956 --> 00:31:20.410
Brian Wringer: dual rear tires behind every corner, and they're going to be in the middle.

00:31:20.863 --> 00:31:22.669
Brian Wringer: They're just going to be there and you're going to have to deal with it.

00:31:23.133 --> 00:31:27.084
Robin Dean: Sure. I think the trick was this, is that if you're going to plot your route

00:31:27.084 --> 00:31:29.164
Robin Dean: first, go ahead and design the route you want.

00:31:29.644 --> 00:31:33.338
Robin Dean: Go ahead and build the exact route. Use all the wishful thinking in the world,

00:31:33.802 --> 00:31:38.504
Robin Dean: and then analyze and analyze some more and then make sure you have access to

00:31:38.504 --> 00:31:40.896
Robin Dean: fuel, food, society. Yeah.

00:31:41.349 --> 00:31:46.764
Robin Dean: Make sure you're going to be safe and then make sure that you are using extremely

00:31:46.764 --> 00:31:49.331
Robin Dean: defensive riding tactics at every turn.

00:31:49.784 --> 00:31:56.824
Robin Dean: But man, what an event. That really lit up the conclusion of my summer.

00:31:56.824 --> 00:31:58.886
Robin Dean: That was the way I wanted it to go.

00:31:59.275 --> 00:32:01.144
Robin Dean: Like, all right, we're doing this and I'm out of here.

00:32:01.603 --> 00:32:03.420
Robin Dean: Thank you for leading an excellent ride.

00:32:03.878 --> 00:32:07.424
Brian Wringer: And thank you for being there. And also one thing that was a lot of fun is we

00:32:07.424 --> 00:32:12.172
Brian Wringer: were able to switch off who was riding in front. And that's a lot of fun too.

00:32:12.631 --> 00:32:13.461
Robin Dean: Yeah, that was pretty good.

00:32:13.914 --> 00:32:18.464
Brian Wringer: You know, chasing your pals around is just a hoot. Following Robin around is

00:32:18.464 --> 00:32:20.648
Brian Wringer: always fun. Just had a blast.

00:32:21.100 --> 00:32:26.004
Robin Dean: I do like your new logic on the dual leadership role, which is whenever whoever's

00:32:26.004 --> 00:32:30.804
Robin Dean: in front looks back at everyone and flips in the bird, you are now leading because

00:32:30.804 --> 00:32:33.064
Robin Dean: they are no longer part of the group. Oh, wow.

00:32:33.610 --> 00:32:34.783
Robin Dean: They are gone, gone.

00:32:35.235 --> 00:32:40.108
Brian Wringer: That's true, yeah. We needed to sort that out. Like, where'd Robin go?

00:32:40.118 --> 00:32:43.478
Brian Wringer: And like, okay, well, he's seven miles ahead, and I guess he's his own thing

00:32:43.478 --> 00:32:44.924
Brian Wringer: now. All right, let's go.

00:32:45.168 --> 00:32:48.628
Robin Dean: Seven miles sounded like a lot to me. It made me laugh. I was like,

00:32:48.628 --> 00:32:52.186
Robin Dean: wow, okay, okay. I probably should have mellowed out on that one, but it was a good time.

00:32:52.639 --> 00:32:56.064
Brian Wringer: We weren't sure if we missed you at the turn, so we stopped and waited a while.

00:32:56.528 --> 00:32:56.998
Robin Dean: Oh, yeah.

00:32:57.114 --> 00:33:00.298
Brian Wringer: Just to make sure you didn't actually stop, and we missed it,

00:33:00.298 --> 00:33:01.358
Brian Wringer: because it was complicated.

00:33:01.358 --> 00:33:05.508
Robin Dean: Well, that was a little bit of an, there was a, yeah, that got complicated.

00:33:05.508 --> 00:33:09.594
Robin Dean: I think that when all the bikes were running and you didn't get the middle finger,

00:33:09.913 --> 00:33:13.129
Robin Dean: but we stopped in that gas station where we were getting ready to turn that left.

00:33:13.588 --> 00:33:18.615
Robin Dean: And then another rider decided to meander towards their bike slowly with,

00:33:19.073 --> 00:33:22.498
Robin Dean: they kind of did some soft shoe dancing while they were on their way to them.

00:33:22.498 --> 00:33:30.991
Robin Dean: And as they did this, then an entire parade of Zillow took our spot up front.

00:33:31.461 --> 00:33:37.522
Robin Dean: That's when I decided, okay, once I'm around these guys, I'm gone after that. I'm out and was.

00:33:37.980 --> 00:33:42.038
Robin Dean: That was my conclusion to day one of those two awesome, awesome days.

00:33:42.502 --> 00:33:45.213
Robin Dean: However, now it's time for segment two.

00:33:45.678 --> 00:33:50.178
Robin Dean: Like I said, normally we'd put our VIP segments up front, but we decided to

00:33:50.178 --> 00:33:51.552
Robin Dean: get some stuff out of our system about that.

00:33:51.982 --> 00:33:55.177
Robin Dean: Segment two, Cyber Recon.

00:33:55.630 --> 00:33:58.808
Robin Dean: Some of you may remember an episode where we sat down with Curtis Minder and

00:33:58.808 --> 00:34:03.617
Robin Dean: company to discuss vehicle hacking. That was back in 2017.

00:34:04.018 --> 00:34:06.920
Robin Dean: Well, since then, Curtis Mender has written a book.

00:34:07.344 --> 00:34:12.368
Robin Dean: So I sat down with Curtis, ransomware negotiator and fellow motorcyclist to

00:34:12.368 --> 00:34:16.528
Robin Dean: discuss his book, Cyber Recon and the less charming possibilities of putting

00:34:16.528 --> 00:34:18.374
Robin Dean: computers in everything we ride.

00:34:18.815 --> 00:34:22.019
Robin Dean: Curtis deals with actual cyber criminals for a living.

00:34:22.420 --> 00:34:24.922
Robin Dean: So I figured he could survive another round of my questions.

00:34:25.253 --> 00:34:26.907
Robin Dean: Here's how that episode went.

00:34:41.176 --> 00:34:41.872
Robin Dean: Thanks for being here.

00:34:42.325 --> 00:34:42.940
Kurtis Minder: Yeah, of course.

00:34:43.387 --> 00:34:44.624
Robin Dean: Been a while. Good to see you.

00:34:45.076 --> 00:34:45.605
Kurtis Minder: Likewise.

00:34:46.075 --> 00:34:50.916
Robin Dean: I'm going to say, quote, motorcycle a lot in these questions because, of course.

00:34:51.381 --> 00:34:55.420
Robin Dean: But in reality, we both know what I really mean is vehicle. And beyond that,

00:34:55.420 --> 00:34:57.459
Robin Dean: I think the word target would suffice.

00:34:57.795 --> 00:35:01.670
Robin Dean: But let's go with motorcycle for mutual entertainment, not just because we both

00:35:01.670 --> 00:35:06.160
Robin Dean: ride, but because every now and then, the exacting priorities of the individual

00:35:06.160 --> 00:35:10.119
Robin Dean: might demand all of what you've accomplished with this book and shine a light

00:35:10.241 --> 00:35:12.453
Robin Dean: strictly on their little world. Are you good with that?

00:35:12.917 --> 00:35:13.643
Kurtis Minder: Yeah, that's awesome.

00:35:14.101 --> 00:35:14.949
Robin Dean: Motorcycles all day.

00:35:15.408 --> 00:35:18.682
Kurtis Minder: All day. I don't know if you want to conclude this, but the motorcycle,

00:35:19.134 --> 00:35:21.810
Kurtis Minder: I don't remember if I talked about this on Wes Fleming's podcast or not,

00:35:21.810 --> 00:35:24.527
Kurtis Minder: but it played a big role in my career.

00:35:24.980 --> 00:35:28.810
Kurtis Minder: The very first customers we got, we won those customers because somebody at

00:35:28.810 --> 00:35:32.219
Kurtis Minder: the conference room table was wearing riding boots and so was I.

00:35:32.677 --> 00:35:33.949
Kurtis Minder: And we ended up talking about motorcycles.

00:35:34.442 --> 00:35:39.530
Kurtis Minder: The very first giant contract we got with FireEye to be an OEM to FireEye,

00:35:39.530 --> 00:35:42.470
Kurtis Minder: one of the major cybersecurity companies, that happened because the product

00:35:42.470 --> 00:35:45.510
Kurtis Minder: manager who was in charge of making the decision rode motorcycles.

00:35:45.510 --> 00:35:48.800
Kurtis Minder: And I showed up in the meeting on my GS. Just trust, right?

00:35:49.684 --> 00:35:53.080
Kurtis Minder: And this happens throughout my whole career, so much so that my business partners,

00:35:53.550 --> 00:35:57.950
Kurtis Minder: I made them make signs and hang them in their office that said motorcycles equals dollar sign.

00:35:58.409 --> 00:36:01.242
Robin Dean: Go get your license if you don't have one. Go learn to ride right now.

00:36:01.706 --> 00:36:05.235
Kurtis Minder: I had a bunch of video calls today. I show up today wearing a Bellstaff jacket

00:36:05.595 --> 00:36:08.197
Kurtis Minder: to every one of my video calls.

00:36:08.649 --> 00:36:12.010
Robin Dean: Anybody else ride? It's a little bit of outreach and a little bit in an invite, you know?

00:36:12.213 --> 00:36:12.532
Kurtis Minder: Yeah.

00:36:12.764 --> 00:36:16.460
Robin Dean: It's a bonding thing. Yeah, motorcycles, in the words of Melissa Holbrook Pearson,

00:36:16.460 --> 00:36:18.906
Robin Dean: shout out to Melissa, motorcycles are magic.

00:36:19.365 --> 00:36:19.760
Kurtis Minder: They are.

00:36:20.300 --> 00:36:25.519
Robin Dean: I love seeing the pile of Ducati photos that you now and then introduce to all things social.

00:36:25.978 --> 00:36:28.490
Robin Dean: Plenty of envy there. You've got two pentagales, right?

00:36:28.943 --> 00:36:31.457
Kurtis Minder: They're both limited edition. I've got a V2 and a V4.

00:36:32.137 --> 00:36:34.400
Kurtis Minder: Fantastic i have a sickness

00:36:34.870 --> 00:36:36.205
Robin Dean: Have you managed to track either of them.

00:36:36.670 --> 00:36:39.572
Kurtis Minder: No um and i don't know if i will because they're limited edition i don't want

00:36:39.572 --> 00:36:43.222
Kurtis Minder: to screw them up oh yeah you know honestly they don't they don't make a whole

00:36:43.222 --> 00:36:47.465
Kurtis Minder: lot of sense to own it all because you can't really ride them on the road much

00:36:47.959 --> 00:36:52.002
Kurtis Minder: the way i describe it to people they say they're both fun you feel like batman

00:36:52.002 --> 00:36:54.675
Kurtis Minder: for like 10 minutes and then you got to put them away

00:36:56.370 --> 00:36:57.769
Kurtis Minder: because they're miserable after that

00:36:57.942 --> 00:37:00.271
Robin Dean: That's not a commuter vehicle.

00:37:00.736 --> 00:37:01.084
Kurtis Minder: No.

00:37:01.635 --> 00:37:04.982
Robin Dean: Well, I've got 10 solid questions. I've been prepping for this.

00:37:04.982 --> 00:37:07.504
Robin Dean: You're a busy man. You do busy guy things.

00:37:07.748 --> 00:37:11.173
Robin Dean: So we got follow-ups if we want to take them. But in the meantime,

00:37:11.632 --> 00:37:12.764
Robin Dean: let's see if I can read through these.

00:37:13.216 --> 00:37:18.822
Robin Dean: My first question is, last time we talked, we stopped at OnStar tire pressure

00:37:18.822 --> 00:37:22.493
Robin Dean: sensors and plugging a GS911 into a BMW.

00:37:22.951 --> 00:37:29.242
Robin Dean: And now CISA, C-I-S-A, says somebody could pair with certain zero motorcycles

00:37:29.242 --> 00:37:31.897
Robin Dean: over Bluetooth and change the firmware.

00:37:32.367 --> 00:37:37.033
Robin Dean: Did reality finally catch up with our old conversation and how ugly and malicious,

00:37:37.503 --> 00:37:41.224
Robin Dean: can motorcycle firmware get prospectively? Flash take.

00:37:41.689 --> 00:37:45.632
Kurtis Minder: It's funny because thinking back to that, I was on a cross-country trip with

00:37:45.632 --> 00:37:48.202
Kurtis Minder: my friend Brandon when we saw each other next.

00:37:48.562 --> 00:37:52.562
Kurtis Minder: Last when we did this podcast interview, I was on my way to the hacker conference

00:37:52.562 --> 00:37:57.152
Kurtis Minder: DEF CON with our bikes, and they had a car hacking village which we were parking

00:37:57.152 --> 00:37:58.622
Kurtis Minder: the bikes in. That was...

00:37:59.144 --> 00:38:02.359
Kurtis Minder: The type of sort of proof of concept demonstrations they were doing where they

00:38:02.359 --> 00:38:08.711
Kurtis Minder: would use ZigDee or whatever that wireless protocol they use between the TPM and the actual ECU.

00:38:09.100 --> 00:38:11.749
Kurtis Minder: And they were able to jump in there and send commands to the ECU.

00:38:11.749 --> 00:38:15.639
Kurtis Minder: And the ECU is really stupid machines, right? They just, whatever they get the

00:38:15.639 --> 00:38:17.869
Kurtis Minder: most messages for, that's what they do. And so if you had a car,

00:38:17.869 --> 00:38:20.826
Kurtis Minder: for example, that had like the auto parking feature or self-driving features.

00:38:21.290 --> 00:38:23.844
Kurtis Minder: Back then they had it, I think there were two cars in the market back then.

00:38:24.309 --> 00:38:25.946
Kurtis Minder: I don't even remember what year this was, this is so long ago.

00:38:26.410 --> 00:38:30.169
Kurtis Minder: There was two cars that had the auto parallel parking feature.

00:38:30.669 --> 00:38:34.426
Kurtis Minder: It was a Prius and the Ford Escape, I think, were the two cars that had that.

00:38:34.884 --> 00:38:37.787
Kurtis Minder: At that conference that I was on my way to when you interviewed me last,

00:38:38.135 --> 00:38:42.609
Kurtis Minder: they demonstrated the ability to intercept that traffic between the tire pressure

00:38:42.969 --> 00:38:47.069
Kurtis Minder: monitor and the ECU and make it turn its wheel and turn on the windshield wipers.

00:38:47.533 --> 00:38:50.449
Kurtis Minder: That long ago, they proved that was the thing you could do.

00:38:50.449 --> 00:38:55.939
Kurtis Minder: You could sit across the parking lot and do that. And the idea of software and

00:38:55.939 --> 00:39:00.329
Kurtis Minder: embedded devices in our lives, starting with automotive, it expanded.

00:39:00.329 --> 00:39:03.828
Kurtis Minder: And so now at DEF CON, they don't just talk about the car hacking village,

00:39:04.170 --> 00:39:07.090
Kurtis Minder: but they also have the healthcare device village.

00:39:07.561 --> 00:39:08.292
Robin Dean: Oh man.

00:39:08.617 --> 00:39:11.649
Kurtis Minder: So the same thing applies for if you're a diabetic and you have a little pager

00:39:11.649 --> 00:39:14.469
Kurtis Minder: size thing that you put on your belt and it's permanently attached to you.

00:39:14.469 --> 00:39:16.529
Kurtis Minder: And it's like monitoring your blood level and inserting insulin.

00:39:16.988 --> 00:39:18.209
Kurtis Minder: It has Bluetooth and it's talking

00:39:18.209 --> 00:39:20.471
Kurtis Minder: to your phone and telling you about your insulin levels on your phone.

00:39:20.929 --> 00:39:24.139
Kurtis Minder: They proved that they could intercept that traffic and just dump somebody full

00:39:24.139 --> 00:39:25.875
Kurtis Minder: of insulin or, you know, mess it up.

00:39:26.345 --> 00:39:29.155
Kurtis Minder: And same thing with pacemakers. Pacemakers have Bluetooth signals as well.

00:39:29.614 --> 00:39:33.344
Kurtis Minder: It's a pervasive problem. It's been a decade, I guess, or more.

00:39:33.698 --> 00:39:38.209
Kurtis Minder: Since then, there's been some improvement from the manufacturers that recognize this problem.

00:39:38.442 --> 00:39:41.314
Kurtis Minder: There's even been some regulation. A friend of mine, Bo Woods,

00:39:41.693 --> 00:39:43.579
Kurtis Minder: became a senior fellow at the FDA.

00:39:44.043 --> 00:39:48.454
Kurtis Minder: He pioneered some of the laws that made these device manufacturers,

00:39:48.454 --> 00:39:53.134
Kurtis Minder: like the insulin manufacturers, test cybersecurity as part of their certification,

00:39:53.134 --> 00:39:54.504
Kurtis Minder: not just the drug administration.

00:39:54.968 --> 00:39:58.884
Kurtis Minder: And similar regulations for aviation and automotive are sort of coming into

00:39:58.884 --> 00:40:01.696
Kurtis Minder: place, but the manufacturers aren't really doing it on their own.

00:40:02.154 --> 00:40:04.864
Kurtis Minder: I think the newest thing, just kind of going back to your original question,

00:40:04.864 --> 00:40:09.975
Kurtis Minder: is they're finally encrypting the communications on the ECU.

00:40:10.293 --> 00:40:15.774
Robin Dean: I was about to randomly drop, let me see if I can involve myself and say, MD5, shot one.

00:40:15.774 --> 00:40:19.244
Kurtis Minder: Right, right, I know. It's basic stuff that we've been using in normal tech

00:40:19.244 --> 00:40:22.605
Kurtis Minder: forever, but these guys aren't, they're not tech people, they're just automotive manufacturers.

00:40:23.076 --> 00:40:26.384
Kurtis Minder: They're starting to do that, and a number of manufacturers are now encrypting

00:40:26.384 --> 00:40:29.932
Kurtis Minder: those messages. So you'd have to be able to intercept and decrypt,

00:40:30.394 --> 00:40:33.134
Kurtis Minder: do basically a men in the middle attack on that encryption.

00:40:33.604 --> 00:40:37.360
Kurtis Minder: That makes it more difficult, not impossible, but much more difficult to achieve.

00:40:37.587 --> 00:40:41.923
Robin Dean: Good. By the way, thanks for reminding me that it was 2017 when we did our last interview.

00:40:42.382 --> 00:40:43.827
Kurtis Minder: Yeah, it was almost 10 years ago. Yeah.

00:40:44.291 --> 00:40:49.464
Robin Dean: Here we go. So every state maintains vehicle title records, and those states

00:40:49.464 --> 00:40:53.103
Robin Dean: feed information into, what is it, NMVTIS? Does that sound familiar?

00:40:53.568 --> 00:40:55.054
Kurtis Minder: I'm not familiar with that database, but.

00:40:55.740 --> 00:41:00.027
Robin Dean: If somebody compromises one state system and creates a clean title for a stolen

00:41:00.027 --> 00:41:05.567
Robin Dean: motorcycle, how far do you think that could go to poison the record travel before

00:41:05.567 --> 00:41:07.489
Robin Dean: everybody else starts treating the lie as truth?

00:41:07.948 --> 00:41:11.670
Kurtis Minder: Interesting concept. I hadn't thought about that, but I suspect that's entirely plausible.

00:41:12.128 --> 00:41:16.516
Kurtis Minder: The only thing going against it is the interstate communication of these records is not great.

00:41:16.980 --> 00:41:21.157
Kurtis Minder: Maybe adjacent states sometimes would have a sharing, but like Virginia and

00:41:21.157 --> 00:41:24.266
Kurtis Minder: Washington state probably aren't sharing much of their DMV information.

00:41:24.730 --> 00:41:28.387
Kurtis Minder: And if they do, it's tactical. Like there's like a national warrant out for

00:41:28.387 --> 00:41:32.258
Kurtis Minder: somebody and it goes out to all the states and they know what to look for, that kind of thing.

00:41:33.017 --> 00:41:36.796
Kurtis Minder: I actually, you know, I do a lot of work on collection security and stuff like that.

00:41:37.261 --> 00:41:40.935
Kurtis Minder: And right now, I mentioned before the interview that we are working on this

00:41:40.935 --> 00:41:43.635
Kurtis Minder: Colorado River security project, what has to do with municipal water.

00:41:44.093 --> 00:41:47.105
Kurtis Minder: One of the things that is like the double-edged sword of the United States is

00:41:47.105 --> 00:41:50.188
Kurtis Minder: like a pro and a con is that it's very segmented.

00:41:50.641 --> 00:41:53.985
Kurtis Minder: So like right now you hear on the news, you hear about Iran's attacking water

00:41:53.985 --> 00:41:56.805
Kurtis Minder: systems, but you just like, it's this little town over here and this little town.

00:41:57.265 --> 00:42:01.465
Kurtis Minder: Because we're so segmented, it's extremely difficult to make a major impact

00:42:01.465 --> 00:42:05.130
Kurtis Minder: on the United States at scale because everybody's got different systems.

00:42:05.601 --> 00:42:09.925
Kurtis Minder: Every single municipality has a different system. And same thing with the vehicle

00:42:09.925 --> 00:42:12.091
Kurtis Minder: record stuff. It's just a podge podge.

00:42:12.555 --> 00:42:16.535
Robin Dean: I imagine that also the tech there is so old and so bad that anybody malicious

00:42:16.535 --> 00:42:20.711
Robin Dean: would think they can't possibly be that dumb. So I'll definitely go bigger and it just doesn't work.

00:42:21.048 --> 00:42:23.271
Robin Dean: But let's make that personal.

00:42:23.712 --> 00:42:27.775
Robin Dean: The paper title says I own the motorcycle. My lender and insurance company say

00:42:27.775 --> 00:42:30.572
Robin Dean: I own it. The DMV suddenly says somebody I've never met owns it.

00:42:30.938 --> 00:42:34.642
Robin Dean: Who owns the bike while everybody argues over which version of reality is real?

00:42:34.862 --> 00:42:36.377
Robin Dean: Now, that could be in-state.

00:42:36.836 --> 00:42:39.042
Robin Dean: That doesn't necessarily mean bridging from one to the other.

00:42:39.506 --> 00:42:42.645
Kurtis Minder: I would say that the title is the source of truth there, which is a problem.

00:42:43.265 --> 00:42:44.266
Robin Dean: It's on the paper, right?

00:42:44.603 --> 00:42:45.387
Kurtis Minder: Right, right.

00:42:45.596 --> 00:42:50.245
Robin Dean: Signed in, Cran, in my case. So, riders already flash ECUs. I mean,

00:42:50.625 --> 00:42:56.236
Robin Dean: nobody we know. I mean, But writers already flashed ECUs for more power,

00:42:56.509 --> 00:42:58.918
Robin Dean: different fueling, fewer electronic nannies.

00:42:59.394 --> 00:43:02.494
Robin Dean: Firmware modification is not necessarily science fiction.

00:43:03.138 --> 00:43:08.757
Robin Dean: Basically Tuesday. How does a motorcycle distinguish my authorized tune from

00:43:08.757 --> 00:43:15.619
Robin Dean: somebody else's weaponized firmware without using cybersecurity as an excuse to kill right to repair?

00:43:16.072 --> 00:43:20.707
Kurtis Minder: I don't think it does. That's one of the biggest risks in downloading firmware

00:43:20.707 --> 00:43:22.257
Kurtis Minder: that somebody put on the internet, right?

00:43:22.257 --> 00:43:26.637
Kurtis Minder: It's like, there is no checksum or source of truth for the firmware.

00:43:26.637 --> 00:43:30.087
Kurtis Minder: And if there were, it would be the firmware that came from the manufacturer

00:43:30.087 --> 00:43:32.917
Kurtis Minder: and it wouldn't let you flash it at all and that's what they do with there's

00:43:32.917 --> 00:43:36.406
Kurtis Minder: technology that's built into your laptops and stuff now like i don't know intel

00:43:36.731 --> 00:43:41.067
Kurtis Minder: started it with this concept of trusted execution i don't know if you're familiar with txt but

00:43:41.526 --> 00:43:45.200
Kurtis Minder: the firmware that went on all the little chips on the motherboard there was a there was a specific

00:43:45.665 --> 00:43:51.237
Kurtis Minder: fpga or a chip on the board that contained a database of md5 checksum of the

00:43:51.237 --> 00:43:54.097
Kurtis Minder: authorized firmware and all those chips and every time the machine boots up

00:43:54.097 --> 00:43:57.066
Kurtis Minder: txt would check all of them to make sure it matched

00:43:57.530 --> 00:44:00.867
Kurtis Minder: they've been doing that for years in normal computers yeah they should also

00:44:00.867 --> 00:44:03.358
Kurtis Minder: be doing it on cars probably yeah

00:44:03.828 --> 00:44:04.879
Robin Dean: It's good to be that time right.

00:44:05.343 --> 00:44:05.645
Kurtis Minder: Yeah

00:44:06.772 --> 00:44:10.556
Robin Dean: Ransomware is loud. Title fraud can remain quiet for years.

00:44:11.009 --> 00:44:15.695
Robin Dean: From the criminal side, is it more profitable to shut down a DMV and demand

00:44:15.695 --> 00:44:18.045
Robin Dean: money or quietly convert stolen

00:44:18.045 --> 00:44:22.474
Robin Dean: motorcycles into legally marketable motorcycles one title at a time?

00:44:22.930 --> 00:44:26.315
Kurtis Minder: The problem is they have to monetize those assets. I think, yes,

00:44:26.315 --> 00:44:27.702
Kurtis Minder: you're right. Ransomware gets a lot of press.

00:44:28.167 --> 00:44:30.955
Kurtis Minder: But if you're talking about titles, what brings to mind and what I see a lot

00:44:30.955 --> 00:44:33.356
Kurtis Minder: of is not vehicles, but homes.

00:44:33.815 --> 00:44:37.305
Kurtis Minder: What the bad guys have figured out is that all of these little title companies

00:44:37.305 --> 00:44:41.008
Kurtis Minder: that you transact with when you buy a home, they're bad at cybersecurity.

00:44:41.467 --> 00:44:46.232
Kurtis Minder: They break into their email and they just watch them communicate with clients.

00:44:46.500 --> 00:44:51.135
Kurtis Minder: And as soon as they send an email saying, wire money, they insert another path

00:44:51.135 --> 00:44:54.915
Kurtis Minder: in there and they basically redirect the money so that it goes to their account

00:44:54.915 --> 00:44:57.593
Kurtis Minder: instead of the bank's account or the buyer's or the seller's account.

00:44:58.056 --> 00:45:00.825
Kurtis Minder: And that's happening all the time. That's a cheaper thing because then they

00:45:00.825 --> 00:45:03.865
Kurtis Minder: don't have to monetize the asset, right? They just, they just take the money

00:45:03.865 --> 00:45:06.300
Kurtis Minder: in flight and they're doing that every day.

00:45:06.759 --> 00:45:08.563
Kurtis Minder: I still do a lot of pro bono cases.

00:45:09.035 --> 00:45:12.925
Kurtis Minder: Investigations and stuff. I just worked on a case, and I was working with the law enforcement folks.

00:45:13.394 --> 00:45:15.884
Kurtis Minder: They were kind of thinking this lady had been hacked, and I was like,

00:45:16.224 --> 00:45:20.557
Kurtis Minder: I will place money on the table that if she was not hacked at all,

00:45:21.021 --> 00:45:24.759
Kurtis Minder: I did some investigation on the title company, and they were just completely compromised.

00:45:25.223 --> 00:45:28.857
Robin Dean: I feel rude for not having done this. I didn't even mention the book yet.

00:45:29.310 --> 00:45:34.134
Robin Dean: You wrote Cyber Recon, which I read front to back, took notes,

00:45:34.599 --> 00:45:38.624
Robin Dean: tried to make some points of it was truly impressed with everything i read i'm

00:45:38.624 --> 00:45:41.774
Robin Dean: impressed with what you did i know the kindness of your heart now through the

00:45:41.774 --> 00:45:44.107
Robin Dean: pro bono work you made a point and you just mentioned it which,

00:45:44.572 --> 00:45:48.443
Robin Dean: it's a kind gesture just to know that if somebody needs it you were there,

00:45:48.908 --> 00:45:52.907
Robin Dean: i do remember one story was that you and a friend where,

00:45:53.372 --> 00:45:58.771
Robin Dean: you found your way into the cross communication of a,

00:45:59.235 --> 00:46:03.824
Robin Dean: tech support or maybe it's like a warranty company where you got them talking

00:46:03.824 --> 00:46:07.994
Robin Dean: to each other and you got them to basically speak to one another using all the

00:46:08.004 --> 00:46:09.678
Robin Dean: stuff they were trying to that you figured out the leak.

00:46:10.137 --> 00:46:14.344
Kurtis Minder: It was my colleague taylor banks who did this and what i was trying to show

00:46:14.344 --> 00:46:19.244
Kurtis Minder: in the book the human element is almost always the easiest thing to manipulate

00:46:19.244 --> 00:46:21.774
Kurtis Minder: it's much easier than the computers themselves and what they would do is

00:46:22.239 --> 00:46:25.404
Kurtis Minder: call a call center and then they would immediately call the call center the

00:46:25.404 --> 00:46:28.754
Kurtis Minder: three-way call and then call the call center again and then put the two call

00:46:28.754 --> 00:46:30.023
Kurtis Minder: center people on the phone with each other

00:46:31.399 --> 00:46:33.494
Kurtis Minder: but they would just do this over and over and they would say nothing they would

00:46:33.494 --> 00:46:36.304
Kurtis Minder: just sit there and listen and these people would talk and they'd mention people's

00:46:36.304 --> 00:46:39.314
Kurtis Minder: names and they'd talk about the systems and they'd write down all the system

00:46:39.314 --> 00:46:40.565
Kurtis Minder: names all the people's names all the

00:46:41.030 --> 00:46:43.624
Kurtis Minder: and they would do this over and over and over again they were the call center

00:46:43.624 --> 00:46:46.451
Kurtis Minder: people became convinced that the call center was broken

00:46:46.922 --> 00:46:50.964
Kurtis Minder: that this was happening by accident and so then they were able to pose as an

00:46:50.964 --> 00:46:55.084
Kurtis Minder: it person drop names system names people's names everything and say hey we're

00:46:55.084 --> 00:46:56.453
Kurtis Minder: working on this known problem

00:46:56.912 --> 00:46:59.854
Kurtis Minder: and then sent them a piece of software to load on their computer to troubleshoot

00:46:59.854 --> 00:47:02.357
Kurtis Minder: And that software basically gave him a backdoor into the network.

00:47:02.816 --> 00:47:03.495
Robin Dean: And then it was done.

00:47:03.953 --> 00:47:05.579
Kurtis Minder: Then it was done. Super clever.

00:47:06.032 --> 00:47:07.030
Robin Dean: All of a sudden you have a new gig.

00:47:07.483 --> 00:47:07.750
Kurtis Minder: Yeah.

00:47:08.284 --> 00:47:11.779
Robin Dean: Well, first off, again, great book. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

00:47:12.628 --> 00:47:15.592
Robin Dean: Fantastic work. I also like a lot of the mentions of the various people.

00:47:16.034 --> 00:47:19.318
Robin Dean: It was a lot of these are the people in your neighborhood going on with the

00:47:19.318 --> 00:47:25.663
Robin Dean: people that you work with to protect us from the end results that can sometimes be unavoidable.

00:47:26.116 --> 00:47:26.737
Kurtis Minder: That's the goal.

00:47:27.201 --> 00:47:31.387
Robin Dean: If an attacker encrypts a title database, you restore a backup.

00:47:31.851 --> 00:47:38.666
Robin Dean: If they subtly change owners, liens, and salvage brands, the backup may contain the lies, too.

00:47:39.119 --> 00:47:44.278
Robin Dean: How do you recover from an attack on the integrity of any records when nobody

00:47:44.278 --> 00:47:46.932
Robin Dean: knows exactly when the truth stopped being true?

00:47:47.385 --> 00:47:50.958
Kurtis Minder: That's challenging, but there's technologies that do this. There's technologies

00:47:50.958 --> 00:47:54.608
Kurtis Minder: that do the equivalent of checksums of the data sets inside the databases and

00:47:54.608 --> 00:47:56.366
Kurtis Minder: things like that and match them against known good.

00:47:56.818 --> 00:48:00.868
Kurtis Minder: Unfortunately, I don't know that the DMV is using these technologies,

00:48:00.868 --> 00:48:04.022
Kurtis Minder: right? And to your earlier point, well, they're expensive.

00:48:04.469 --> 00:48:06.858
Kurtis Minder: Like I said, we were just talking about how fragmented everything was.

00:48:06.858 --> 00:48:10.578
Kurtis Minder: They don't have huge budgets sometimes. So not just expensive to license,

00:48:10.578 --> 00:48:12.747
Kurtis Minder: but expensive to also operate.

00:48:13.194 --> 00:48:17.349
Kurtis Minder: There's not a whole lot of cybersecurity talent that's affordable to a DMP and that sort of thing.

00:48:17.808 --> 00:48:21.053
Kurtis Minder: But to your earlier point where like a database gets encrypted and they restore,

00:48:21.442 --> 00:48:24.198
Kurtis Minder: unfortunately, like the ransomware guys, they don't just do one system.

00:48:24.198 --> 00:48:27.467
Kurtis Minder: They do the whole thing, right? They do the whole thing.

00:48:27.932 --> 00:48:31.718
Kurtis Minder: And the problem with that is, and this is, I do a lot of sort of executive tabletop

00:48:31.718 --> 00:48:32.872
Kurtis Minder: exercises for companies.

00:48:33.348 --> 00:48:36.488
Kurtis Minder: This is one gotcha because I've experienced it in actual incidents.

00:48:36.488 --> 00:48:38.938
Kurtis Minder: I've done hundreds of ransomware incidents, response incidents.

00:48:38.938 --> 00:48:43.208
Kurtis Minder: And what I witnessed was, even if they have really good backups and the bad

00:48:43.208 --> 00:48:46.479
Kurtis Minder: guys didn't manage not to get to them, when we do business continuity,

00:48:46.943 --> 00:48:48.328
Kurtis Minder: we do them in kind of in a vacuum.

00:48:48.328 --> 00:48:52.468
Kurtis Minder: It's like, how do we restore that system if it goes offline or that office is

00:48:52.468 --> 00:48:53.978
Kurtis Minder: offline? How do we bring it back

00:48:53.978 --> 00:48:58.483
Kurtis Minder: up? What we don't test or what we don't practice is everything's gone.

00:48:59.099 --> 00:48:59.786
Robin Dean: Everything.

00:49:00.997 --> 00:49:06.126
Kurtis Minder: What I learned in the real world was that the dependencies on which order you

00:49:06.126 --> 00:49:07.911
Kurtis Minder: bring things up is super critical.

00:49:08.374 --> 00:49:11.289
Kurtis Minder: And people don't know what those dependencies are.

00:49:11.758 --> 00:49:14.991
Kurtis Minder: In their head, maybe, but like in the real life, they don't know.

00:49:15.449 --> 00:49:17.946
Kurtis Minder: They think, well, it might take us three days to bring everything online.

00:49:17.946 --> 00:49:22.456
Kurtis Minder: It ends up taking three months because they stumble and stumble and yeah, it's a mess.

00:49:22.926 --> 00:49:26.266
Robin Dean: It's sort of like the order of giving instructions, where some people who aren't

00:49:26.266 --> 00:49:30.286
Robin Dean: good at giving instructions, assume that you're going to know some gray area

00:49:30.286 --> 00:49:35.296
Robin Dean: in between details or the order of those details when actually it needs to be ornate.

00:49:35.662 --> 00:49:37.758
Robin Dean: It needs to be verbose in some cases.

00:49:38.211 --> 00:49:39.203
Kurtis Minder: Very quantitative. Yep.

00:49:39.668 --> 00:49:41.566
Robin Dean: Your first chapter. Now that draws

00:49:41.566 --> 00:49:45.124
Robin Dean: a hard line between collecting data and producing actual intelligence.

00:49:45.571 --> 00:49:50.016
Robin Dean: If cyber crime against motorcyclists, remember I'm singling out motorcycles

00:49:50.016 --> 00:49:51.887
Robin Dean: so much because that's what we do.

00:49:52.340 --> 00:49:55.876
Robin Dean: Let's just say cyber crime against anything, right? But if it became one of

00:49:55.876 --> 00:50:00.252
Robin Dean: your intelligence requirements tomorrow, what would you start watching?

00:50:00.846 --> 00:50:04.902
Robin Dean: Stolen DMV credentials, dealer access, VIN and title packages,

00:50:05.076 --> 00:50:07.810
Robin Dean: firmware keys. What would make you sit up a night?

00:50:08.269 --> 00:50:12.181
Kurtis Minder: The idea behind intelligence is that you would know that you were a target before it happened.

00:50:12.621 --> 00:50:16.156
Kurtis Minder: We would already be watching all of the forms where this type of data was being

00:50:16.156 --> 00:50:17.486
Kurtis Minder: discussed and monetized.

00:50:17.939 --> 00:50:21.066
Kurtis Minder: Dark Web and Telegram and things like that. So we would see it coming.

00:50:21.066 --> 00:50:24.806
Kurtis Minder: We would see them saying, hey, I'll pay X for this kind of data.

00:50:25.073 --> 00:50:26.449
Kurtis Minder: And this guy goes, I can get that.

00:50:26.913 --> 00:50:28.716
Kurtis Minder: Do you know their motivation? Do you know what they're looking for?

00:50:28.716 --> 00:50:33.450
Kurtis Minder: And if you're doing good cyber espionage work, you'll also know what their capabilities are.

00:50:33.908 --> 00:50:38.303
Kurtis Minder: You would then go back and adjust your defense mechanisms to support

00:50:38.848 --> 00:50:41.861
Kurtis Minder: defending against that. I'm not suggesting that they get on the dark web and

00:50:41.861 --> 00:50:43.800
Kurtis Minder: monitor bad guys' conversations.

00:50:44.264 --> 00:50:46.528
Robin Dean: You might want to get good at it first. Go talk to this guy.

00:50:46.987 --> 00:50:49.913
Robin Dean: You wrote an entire chapter about negotiating with the enemy.

00:50:51.230 --> 00:50:55.141
Robin Dean: If a state's title system is held hostage and nobody can legally buy,

00:50:55.141 --> 00:50:58.829
Robin Dean: sell, or register a vehicle, who really has the leverage?

00:50:59.148 --> 00:51:00.994
Robin Dean: I know that's question one, and it's a double-edged.

00:51:01.285 --> 00:51:01.552
Kurtis Minder: Yeah.

00:51:01.830 --> 00:51:05.511
Robin Dean: Is the criminal negotiating with the state, its technology vendor,

00:51:05.853 --> 00:51:07.983
Robin Dean: the insurers, or all of them at once?

00:51:08.430 --> 00:51:11.501
Kurtis Minder: I mean, I guess it depends on who was actually managing that system,

00:51:11.501 --> 00:51:14.107
Kurtis Minder: but it's likely the state that they would be dealing with.

00:51:14.577 --> 00:51:17.903
Kurtis Minder: But you wouldn't want anybody at the state actually handling the negotiation.

00:51:18.147 --> 00:51:19.611
Kurtis Minder: That's why people like me exist.

00:51:20.091 --> 00:51:23.641
Kurtis Minder: The insurance companies and the law firms involved bring people like me in because

00:51:23.641 --> 00:51:25.223
Kurtis Minder: we know how to negotiate with bad guys.

00:51:25.583 --> 00:51:30.163
Kurtis Minder: And of course, the bad guys have all the leverage. It's an extremely difficult situation.

00:51:30.628 --> 00:51:33.561
Kurtis Minder: If you think about chips on a table, they've got 90% of the chips,

00:51:33.561 --> 00:51:38.534
Kurtis Minder: right? You're kind of screwed. So it's a difficult endeavor to negotiate with these guys.

00:51:38.998 --> 00:51:42.401
Robin Dean: You mentioned that multiple times in the book. It's like spread very evenly

00:51:42.401 --> 00:51:45.291
Robin Dean: throughout that. Look, when this happens, you're going to pay.

00:51:45.430 --> 00:51:49.906
Robin Dean: It's not a matter of, well, we've got to stop this. It's already happened. It's already done.

00:51:50.208 --> 00:51:52.582
Robin Dean: And now it's just a matter of what keeps you afloat or, you know.

00:51:53.046 --> 00:51:55.717
Robin Dean: Now, question number nine, say it with me.

00:51:56.181 --> 00:52:00.494
Robin Dean: If malicious firmware can affect throttle response, regenerative braking,

00:52:00.959 --> 00:52:05.498
Robin Dean: contactors or battery safeguards, What does a trustworthy repair look like?

00:52:05.933 --> 00:52:09.601
Robin Dean: And is reflashing enough? Or do we start replacing controllers,

00:52:09.601 --> 00:52:12.759
Robin Dean: signing keys, and anything else the attacker might have touched?

00:52:13.206 --> 00:52:17.966
Kurtis Minder: That's hard without knowing the actual technical architecture of an ECU.

00:52:18.430 --> 00:52:23.109
Kurtis Minder: I assume it's very similar to a normal motherboard, and it's going to have multiple chips.

00:52:23.915 --> 00:52:28.518
Kurtis Minder: Have different sets of firmware on it. So I would think swapping out the actual

00:52:28.977 --> 00:52:30.933
Kurtis Minder: hardware would be the safest thing to do.

00:52:31.391 --> 00:52:34.406
Kurtis Minder: You can't really check every single one of those chips easily to make sure it

00:52:34.406 --> 00:52:35.310
Kurtis Minder: hasn't been messed with.

00:52:35.780 --> 00:52:38.050
Kurtis Minder: I would swap out the actual ECU itself.

00:52:38.496 --> 00:52:40.668
Robin Dean: Remind me to tell you what happened with the Triumph after this.

00:52:41.133 --> 00:52:41.771
Kurtis Minder: Okay.

00:52:42.230 --> 00:52:47.246
Robin Dean: Okay, your book gets into sock puppets. God, that was fun reading.

00:52:47.246 --> 00:52:50.061
Robin Dean: I'm sorry. It was just a mission impossible in my world.

00:52:50.525 --> 00:52:53.608
Robin Dean: Your book gets into sock puppets and building credible false identities.

00:52:54.037 --> 00:52:58.832
Robin Dean: Could someone spend two years becoming a trusted member of a motorcycle forum,

00:52:59.076 --> 00:53:03.736
Robin Dean: then release the quote-unquote perfect ECU map, diagnostic app,

00:53:03.736 --> 00:53:07.572
Robin Dean: or firmware tool with one extra surprise sort of built inside of it?

00:53:08.031 --> 00:53:12.239
Kurtis Minder: Yeah, 100%. In the book, I'm using it to spy on bad guys. I'm using it for good.

00:53:12.698 --> 00:53:15.600
Kurtis Minder: But you can also use those exact same tactics for evil.

00:53:16.071 --> 00:53:19.588
Kurtis Minder: You know, it's just building trust over time. And then nobody questions you.

00:53:20.047 --> 00:53:23.386
Kurtis Minder: If you're a regular active member of the forum and participating in the forum

00:53:23.386 --> 00:53:26.740
Kurtis Minder: and joking with the people and so on, that goes on for years.

00:53:27.048 --> 00:53:29.906
Kurtis Minder: When you post your firmware, they're not going to wonder if you put some bad

00:53:29.906 --> 00:53:32.412
Kurtis Minder: stuff in there. They're just going to be like, thank you, download it.

00:53:32.884 --> 00:53:37.394
Robin Dean: You hear that, Brian Ringer? You hear that? I know it was you. I know it was you.

00:53:37.731 --> 00:53:38.352
Kurtis Minder: Sorry, Brian.

00:53:39.333 --> 00:53:41.951
Robin Dean: Now, my closer question, and we can stretch it if you want to after.

00:53:42.409 --> 00:53:45.190
Robin Dean: If you could harden only one layer tomorrow,

00:53:45.643 --> 00:53:50.431
Robin Dean: DMV identities, dealer systems, connected bike apps, or firmware signing,

00:53:50.797 --> 00:53:54.901
Robin Dean: which one prevents the most motorcycle misery for the least money?

00:53:55.360 --> 00:54:00.282
Kurtis Minder: That's tough. All of those are plausible. The identity stuff is probably going

00:54:00.282 --> 00:54:01.543
Kurtis Minder: to have the most bang for the buck.

00:54:02.008 --> 00:54:04.162
Kurtis Minder: That's how they're getting in. That's how they're manipulating things.

00:54:04.162 --> 00:54:07.012
Kurtis Minder: That's, you know, so if you can take that chip away from them,

00:54:07.012 --> 00:54:08.971
Kurtis Minder: I think it would make their job a lot more difficult.

00:54:09.430 --> 00:54:14.178
Robin Dean: An answer of some kind has been presented. A reputable source has made a plausible answer.

00:54:14.643 --> 00:54:18.335
Robin Dean: That's all I got. Now, I do have my own personal notes here from reading the book.

00:54:18.793 --> 00:54:20.582
Robin Dean: We talked about this a little bit before we started recording.

00:54:20.582 --> 00:54:24.622
Robin Dean: Like the definition of intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

00:54:25.092 --> 00:54:27.622
Robin Dean: Did you say that in the book or did I make a note of it so I could tell you?

00:54:27.622 --> 00:54:28.682
Robin Dean: What kind of a jackass would I be?

00:54:28.682 --> 00:54:31.622
Kurtis Minder: I'm sure I defined it in the book. I don't remember if I used those exact words.

00:54:32.087 --> 00:54:32.432
Robin Dean: Yeah.

00:54:33.074 --> 00:54:37.221
Robin Dean: You mentioned the nonprofit stuff. I thought at one point GroupSense was a nonprofit,

00:54:37.221 --> 00:54:38.931
Robin Dean: but you were saying it's called GoodSense.

00:54:39.389 --> 00:54:44.571
Kurtis Minder: We started a good faith program where the employees, we would allocate their

00:54:44.571 --> 00:54:47.341
Kurtis Minder: time and they could use that to volunteer.

00:54:47.661 --> 00:54:50.378
Kurtis Minder: They could use that to do pro boner work like I'm currently doing.

00:54:50.848 --> 00:54:54.491
Kurtis Minder: Put a brander to that. We called it GoodSense. And then we spun that out as

00:54:54.491 --> 00:55:00.154
Kurtis Minder: an independent entity and a 501c3 nonprofit, which was later folded into another entity.

00:55:00.607 --> 00:55:04.131
Kurtis Minder: It originally just started as a mission inside the company to help others for

00:55:04.131 --> 00:55:06.927
Kurtis Minder: free. And then we turned it into a nonprofit.

00:55:08.204 --> 00:55:10.120
Kurtis Minder: Groupsets was always a for-profit company.

00:55:10.584 --> 00:55:13.961
Robin Dean: The most important question I've got. I need to know, are you running Ostefy

00:55:13.961 --> 00:55:15.161
Robin Dean: tests on my website, please?

00:55:15.481 --> 00:55:18.331
Kurtis Minder: No, I am not. Absolutely not. Okay. I don't have time,

00:55:18.331 --> 00:55:18.521
Robin Dean: Man.

00:55:20.743 --> 00:55:24.168
Robin Dean: He's Curtis Minder. The name of the book is Cyber Recon.

00:55:24.632 --> 00:55:27.442
Kurtis Minder: My life in cyber espionage and ransomware negotiation.

00:55:27.901 --> 00:55:28.870
Robin Dean: Via motorcycles.

00:55:29.323 --> 00:55:30.205
Kurtis Minder: Via motorcycles.

00:55:30.669 --> 00:55:34.661
Robin Dean: An amazing book, highly suggested. Check it out. If you're techie,

00:55:34.661 --> 00:55:39.998
Robin Dean: it's going to tell you a lot more about the direction that things might go per the dark web.

00:55:40.457 --> 00:55:45.989
Robin Dean: And if you're not techie, it will at least alert you to some very basic personalized fail-saves.

00:55:46.250 --> 00:55:48.801
Robin Dean: You might want to learn to go through just so you understand that the email

00:55:48.801 --> 00:55:51.254
Robin Dean: having a thing you can click doesn't mean you should.

00:55:51.695 --> 00:55:56.001
Robin Dean: You owe it to this guy right here for sort of making it clear that reading about

00:55:56.001 --> 00:55:59.351
Robin Dean: such things is in your best interest and that I cannot thank you enough for

00:55:59.351 --> 00:56:04.879
Robin Dean: that let alone mentioning me so many times throughout as a source of.

00:56:05.343 --> 00:56:05.843
Kurtis Minder: It's a bribe

00:56:06.337 --> 00:56:10.148
Robin Dean: I'm in the foreword I appreciate you being here man thank you my pleasure,

00:56:30.031 --> 00:56:34.072
Robin Dean: And that was Curtis Minder, author of Cyber Recon. The message?

00:56:34.443 --> 00:56:37.404
Robin Dean: Know what you're installing and who you're trusting.

00:56:38.922 --> 00:56:43.293
Robin Dean: I think I see a Joanne Don in the room.

00:56:43.746 --> 00:56:48.529
Robin Dean: It's time for segment three, The Armory with Joanne Don.

00:57:01.300 --> 00:57:05.493
Joanne Donn: Brian, I think you were asking me for updates on new products that have come

00:57:05.493 --> 00:57:07.421
Joanne Donn: out that people might want to know about.

00:57:07.880 --> 00:57:15.055
Brian Wringer: Yeah, especially people who are cool, people who are fashionable, people who are not me.

00:57:15.513 --> 00:57:16.308
Robin Dean: That's the key.

00:57:16.773 --> 00:57:20.651
Joanne Donn: Well, that could be you. It could. Oh, no. You just have to let me know.

00:57:21.103 --> 00:57:22.270
Brian Wringer: Observe my t-shirt.

00:57:23.745 --> 00:57:26.951
Joanne Donn: Well, you just have to ask and make it happen.

00:57:27.398 --> 00:57:31.765
Joanne Donn: You know, fall is always when less products come out, right?

00:57:31.765 --> 00:57:36.775
Joanne Donn: Because spring and summer are fighting season. So about maybe 40% of what comes

00:57:36.775 --> 00:57:38.914
Joanne Donn: out in spring is what you see in the fall.

00:57:39.332 --> 00:57:43.337
Joanne Donn: So you don't see as many new things, at least with clothing.

00:57:43.785 --> 00:57:53.503
Joanne Donn: So right now, I don't see anything particularly exciting except some kind of typical dark hoodies.

00:57:53.962 --> 00:57:58.615
Joanne Donn: But really, spring is when you'll see cool, fashionable products,

00:57:58.615 --> 00:58:03.207
Joanne Donn: you know, the more exciting, youthful things out there.

00:58:03.462 --> 00:58:08.460
Joanne Donn: But there's always, I mean, year-round, there's always casual riding gear around.

00:58:08.588 --> 00:58:12.181
Joanne Donn: Casual-styled but protective riding gear available.

00:58:12.628 --> 00:58:16.506
Joanne Donn: Unfortunately, I don't really see anything great. I do see some cool helmets, though.

00:58:16.959 --> 00:58:19.665
Joanne Donn: You know, Alpine Stars, they came out with helmets, I want to say,

00:58:19.665 --> 00:58:22.665
Joanne Donn: several years ago. I haven't been great at seeing on top of what they've been

00:58:22.665 --> 00:58:26.355
Joanne Donn: doing. But they have been coming out with really cool track helmets,

00:58:26.355 --> 00:58:28.760
Joanne Donn: street helmets, and even off-road.

00:58:29.201 --> 00:58:32.515
Joanne Donn: So if you're searching for a street helmet, certainly a sporty helmet,

00:58:32.515 --> 00:58:35.515
Joanne Donn: I would take a look at what Alpine Stars is offering. Because from what I've

00:58:35.515 --> 00:58:37.955
Joanne Donn: seen, people really like their helmets. I've never tried them,

00:58:38.408 --> 00:58:40.869
Joanne Donn: but they do seem like really good quality.

00:58:41.113 --> 00:58:46.245
Joanne Donn: You know they're trying to compete for your showy money and awry money because the prices are lower

00:58:46.686 --> 00:58:51.095
Brian Wringer: At Putnam Park we saw a guy had Alpinestars helmet and then had like a little

00:58:51.095 --> 00:58:56.189
Brian Wringer: custom stand that had a little fan in it he'd get off the bike he'd put the

00:58:56.653 --> 00:58:59.409
Brian Wringer: helmet on this little stand and it would like dry it out

00:59:00.588 --> 00:59:05.359
Brian Wringer: which was like okay that's another level of posh over here

00:59:05.812 --> 00:59:10.120
Joanne Donn: Well if it's really sweaty and you're sweating it's

00:59:10.654 --> 00:59:13.835
Joanne Donn: kind of gross so i could see why you'd want to be

00:59:14.697 --> 00:59:19.797
Joanne Donn: i mean that's what riders are getting at the pro level like moto america and

00:59:19.797 --> 00:59:27.937
Joanne Donn: gp they all have drying units and really fancy accessories to make sure their gear is clean and

00:59:28.504 --> 00:59:32.834
Joanne Donn: dry and comfortable and if you're a sweaty person yeah

00:59:33.356 --> 00:59:35.880
Joanne Donn: I don't think anyone wants to put on a wet helmet. But yeah,

00:59:37.089 --> 00:59:42.650
Joanne Donn: all I really see is very expensive helmets. And I feel so lucky that I still

00:59:42.650 --> 00:59:45.488
Joanne Donn: have a few that are still okay to wear.

00:59:45.871 --> 00:59:48.733
Joanne Donn: Because when I got my helmets, they were half the price of these,

00:59:49.018 --> 00:59:51.601
Joanne Donn: of what's happening today. And it sucks.

00:59:52.065 --> 00:59:56.679
Joanne Donn: Like I'm seeing graphics from Shoei at $1,000. And they used to be like $650

00:59:57.120 --> 00:59:59.860
Joanne Donn: when I was working at RevZilla. And it just, it's a bummer.

01:00:00.058 --> 01:00:03.850
Joanne Donn: And I really hope that changes in the next few years. But Alpine Stars,

01:00:03.850 --> 01:00:06.147
Joanne Donn: wherever they're manufacturing, their prices are lower.

01:00:06.606 --> 01:00:11.000
Joanne Donn: But I don't see, other than graphics releases, like Icon's got some fun graphics.

01:00:11.000 --> 01:00:14.489
Joanne Donn: Alpine Stars has new graphics for these existing models out.

01:00:14.907 --> 01:00:17.589
Joanne Donn: And then I see HGC also releasing graphics.

01:00:18.041 --> 01:00:23.173
Joanne Donn: But models tend to not drop except in spring for helmets.

01:00:23.614 --> 01:00:27.916
Joanne Donn: Other than that, I just see kind of the usual. Nothing particularly interesting.

01:00:28.252 --> 01:00:33.020
Brian Wringer: I've noticed a new helmet brand popping up called Kabuto. I guess they're a

01:00:33.020 --> 01:00:34.446
Brian Wringer: high-end Japanese helmet.

01:00:34.899 --> 01:00:39.433
Joanne Donn: Kabuto is actually not new. I used to sell those a long time ago.

01:00:39.868 --> 01:00:41.825
Joanne Donn: Are they coming back? Maybe they have a new distributor?

01:00:42.283 --> 01:00:47.960
Brian Wringer: Yeah, they're coming back. And I don't know, I got an email a few days ago from Rebzilla or somebody.

01:00:48.419 --> 01:00:53.660
Brian Wringer: But yeah, they've got a whole line of the Kabuto F17 and Arrowblade.

01:00:53.660 --> 01:00:56.051
Brian Wringer: I guess the F17 is kind of the race helmet.

01:00:56.510 --> 01:00:58.877
Brian Wringer: And it's like $900, $800.

01:00:59.331 --> 01:01:01.804
Joanne Donn: Yeah, the price points are painful.

01:01:02.262 --> 01:01:06.220
Brian Wringer: Yeah, $800 is the base price on a solid color. And then the Aeroblade F,

01:01:06.940 --> 01:01:11.429
Brian Wringer: MIPS helmet, is $550 in the base colors, and it goes up from there.

01:01:11.882 --> 01:01:19.428
Joanne Donn: Yeah, I remember selling Kabuto between 2010 through about 2017-ish.

01:01:19.909 --> 01:01:24.008
Joanne Donn: And then maybe 16, 17, and then we couldn't sell them.

01:01:24.438 --> 01:01:28.176
Joanne Donn: The problem was the shapes. The internal shapes were too round.

01:01:28.431 --> 01:01:33.671
Joanne Donn: So you have to remember that when European and Japanese and Asian brands come

01:01:33.671 --> 01:01:40.001
Joanne Donn: over, the most successful ones modify their internal shapes to fit the American population.

01:01:40.441 --> 01:01:44.871
Joanne Donn: So if the brand isn't doing anything but just bringing them over,

01:01:44.871 --> 01:01:49.212
Joanne Donn: they're not going to sell and they're not going to fit unless you have a nice round head shape.

01:01:49.684 --> 01:01:53.881
Joanne Donn: Which is the least common North American head shape. So hopefully they have

01:01:53.881 --> 01:01:56.752
Joanne Donn: a good intermediate, neutral fit.

01:01:57.205 --> 01:01:59.451
Joanne Donn: But I didn't even know they came back, so.

01:01:59.791 --> 01:02:05.041
Brian Wringer: Yeah, supposedly they have the usual intermediate oval. I've never seen one in person.

01:02:05.506 --> 01:02:08.310
Joanne Donn: They were nice. From what I remember, the quality was really good.

01:02:08.455 --> 01:02:10.997
Joanne Donn: It's just the comfort. It couldn't compete.

01:02:11.531 --> 01:02:14.904
Joanne Donn: It didn't fit anybody. So we ultimately had to stop selling them.

01:02:15.159 --> 01:02:17.081
Brian Wringer: Who actually has all these round heads?

01:02:17.540 --> 01:02:19.037
Robin Dean: Charlie Brown, man. Come on.

01:02:19.711 --> 01:02:22.944
Joanne Donn: Yeah well asian it's european and asian countries

01:02:23.408 --> 01:02:29.551
Joanne Donn: europe and asia mexico south america anywhere but north america like a north

01:02:29.551 --> 01:02:34.571
Joanne Donn: american average and i'm gonna say average because it's majority

01:02:35.030 --> 01:02:38.832
Joanne Donn: of people but not everybody is that intermediate oval

01:02:39.291 --> 01:02:40.701
Brian Wringer: What are we doing to our heads here

01:02:41.148 --> 01:02:46.891
Joanne Donn: I don't know i really don't but yeah head shapes are just different and that's

01:02:46.891 --> 01:02:50.790
Joanne Donn: the difference between successful helmet brands and not so successful.

01:02:51.074 --> 01:02:54.771
Joanne Donn: And the ones that you very rarely see in stores, those are the ones that don't

01:02:54.771 --> 01:02:56.850
Joanne Donn: do anything to modify the head shapes.

01:02:57.320 --> 01:03:00.797
Joanne Donn: To fit the population or their quality is not great.

01:03:01.221 --> 01:03:05.724
Joanne Donn: Yeah. So you always want to be careful. And the other thing to know is say you

01:03:05.724 --> 01:03:09.614
Joanne Donn: order a Shoei from Japan, like you're on eBay. You're like, oh,

01:03:09.614 --> 01:03:11.160
Joanne Donn: there's this cool graphic I like.

01:03:11.525 --> 01:03:13.307
Joanne Donn: And it comes from Japan.

01:03:13.765 --> 01:03:18.897
Joanne Donn: Just know that when you order a helmet like that or a product,

01:03:19.286 --> 01:03:23.756
Joanne Donn: the majority of manufacturers will not treat it like you bought it here.

01:03:24.214 --> 01:03:28.004
Joanne Donn: The majority of manufacturers will treat it as if you physically lived there

01:03:28.004 --> 01:03:29.956
Joanne Donn: and purchased it in that country.

01:03:30.414 --> 01:03:36.178
Joanne Donn: So that means no warranty support because every region is responsible for their customer base.

01:03:36.567 --> 01:03:41.954
Joanne Donn: So that's not fair if you buy a helmet in Japan and expect the U.S.

01:03:42.420 --> 01:03:47.804
Joanne Donn: Contingency to pay for your repairs or whatever or cover you because they're

01:03:47.804 --> 01:03:49.447
Joanne Donn: not liable because they didn't sold to you.

01:03:49.778 --> 01:03:53.704
Joanne Donn: So you always want to be really careful about where you buy your helmets online

01:03:53.704 --> 01:03:56.837
Joanne Donn: and that it's a model that is released here.

01:03:57.203 --> 01:04:02.242
Joanne Donn: And no, it doesn't count when the model is identical, but with different names,

01:04:02.677 --> 01:04:06.235
Joanne Donn: because all the big players will just have different names for the same helmet.

01:04:06.694 --> 01:04:13.463
Joanne Donn: Right here, the Shoei X-15 could be called the X-Strike or whatever in Japan,

01:04:13.590 --> 01:04:16.917
Joanne Donn: but be the exact same helmet aside from the fit. It doesn't matter.

01:04:17.387 --> 01:04:20.391
Joanne Donn: They still treat it as if you bought it there and as if you were a Japanese

01:04:20.391 --> 01:04:21.892
Joanne Donn: customer or Asian customer.

01:04:22.275 --> 01:04:24.475
Joanne Donn: So that's why you don't want to, you always want to buy from here,

01:04:24.649 --> 01:04:26.437
Joanne Donn: from like a reputable store.

01:04:26.895 --> 01:04:29.031
Robin Dean: So you talked last episode about SMK.

01:04:29.804 --> 01:04:34.421
Joanne Donn: Yeah, I mean, that's another, that's a global brand. They're the largest global

01:04:34.421 --> 01:04:39.311
Joanne Donn: manufacturer of motorcycle helmets in the world because they manufacture for

01:04:39.311 --> 01:04:42.238
Joanne Donn: so many other people. But the same rules apply.

01:04:42.697 --> 01:04:47.375
Robin Dean: Do they cater to all head shapes, that brand? because I'm considering looking at them a little harder.

01:04:47.827 --> 01:04:53.231
Joanne Donn: From what I've seen, they have a neutral shape for a lot of their models,

01:04:53.406 --> 01:04:56.861
Joanne Donn: but I can't speak to more than that because I haven't had enough experience.

01:04:56.861 --> 01:04:59.890
Joanne Donn: I've just briefly touched a few models.

01:05:00.354 --> 01:05:03.994
Joanne Donn: I don't know how every single one fits, so I can't say that for sure.

01:05:04.447 --> 01:05:07.488
Joanne Donn: Just make sure if you do get one, you can return it.

01:05:07.930 --> 01:05:12.141
Joanne Donn: But yeah, if you do buy a helmet or a gear product that you're like,

01:05:12.141 --> 01:05:15.494
Joanne Donn: oh, I've never tried this and I don't know what this is going to be like.

01:05:15.877 --> 01:05:23.321
Joanne Donn: Never, ever do that from a European or a non-US source because then you can't

01:05:23.321 --> 01:05:26.018
Joanne Donn: return it. There's no way you can exchange that.

01:05:26.477 --> 01:05:29.971
Joanne Donn: If you have to ship it back, it's going to cost you money. So that's why you

01:05:29.971 --> 01:05:34.971
Joanne Donn: also don't want to buy it from overseas unless you're 120% sure that's what

01:05:34.971 --> 01:05:37.843
Joanne Donn: you want and that's what works. Maybe because you already have one.

01:05:38.000 --> 01:05:39.857
Joanne Donn: So you're like, oh, I'm just going to order the identical.

01:05:40.310 --> 01:05:44.361
Joanne Donn: In general, research where you're buying your products from and verify that

01:05:44.361 --> 01:05:49.932
Joanne Donn: the manufacturer will help you with warranty support in the U.S. or repair.

01:05:50.252 --> 01:05:55.900
Joanne Donn: Whatever it is, if it's camping gear or technology or hardware or tools,

01:05:56.300 --> 01:05:58.884
Joanne Donn: you want to make sure that the manufacturer will support you.

01:05:59.348 --> 01:06:03.783
Joanne Donn: The reason is because different areas are going to be owned by different people

01:06:03.963 --> 01:06:10.991
Joanne Donn: Because maybe the French arm of York brand is not owned by the American arm

01:06:10.991 --> 01:06:13.366
Joanne Donn: of this brand. And that's just business.

01:06:13.773 --> 01:06:16.524
Joanne Donn: So you can't expect that it's going to be the same business.

01:06:30.433 --> 01:06:34.190
Robin Dean: Thank you, Joe Wayne. I didn't know that. Like, I didn't realize that I shouldn't

01:06:34.190 --> 01:06:37.210
Robin Dean: be ordering from Guam just because the price is low, because I don't know if

01:06:37.210 --> 01:06:38.417
Robin Dean: I'm going to get what I'm supposed to get.

01:06:38.876 --> 01:06:43.195
Robin Dean: I just learned something. That was ultimately the goal, and thank you for it.

01:06:43.653 --> 01:06:48.200
Robin Dean: Which brings us to the afterwards. Let's wind things down because I'm sure that

01:06:48.200 --> 01:06:52.744
Robin Dean: Brian has put in all kinds of details about what he wants to discuss next week.

01:06:53.191 --> 01:06:57.452
Brian Wringer: Let's face it. It's almost October. Like it'll be October tomorrow.

01:06:57.905 --> 01:07:01.492
Brian Wringer: I've got several winter projects on deck.

01:07:01.951 --> 01:07:06.879
Brian Wringer: There's going to be a whole entire brake system blow up and start over on my FJ.

01:07:07.326 --> 01:07:10.763
Brian Wringer: There's a possibility I may be dropping another engine into my GS.

01:07:11.210 --> 01:07:14.260
Brian Wringer: Nothing wrong with the old engine, but it's got a lot of cam walk,

01:07:14.260 --> 01:07:17.293
Brian Wringer: which makes a lot of noise as the camshafts bang back and forth.

01:07:18.750 --> 01:07:22.070
Brian Wringer: I've got three engines under the workbench. I'm like, what if I drop one of

01:07:22.070 --> 01:07:25.803
Brian Wringer: these in? What if I get so bored I pull the engine out?

01:07:26.274 --> 01:07:29.146
Robin Dean: So like, why not? Of course, it's there. You have the option.

01:07:29.604 --> 01:07:33.500
Robin Dean: So you want to talk about winter projects for next episode or preparing for

01:07:33.500 --> 01:07:34.893
Robin Dean: winter projects for next episode?

01:07:35.351 --> 01:07:39.792
Brian Wringer: Yeah. What winter projects do you have? And also coordinating all this.

01:07:40.233 --> 01:07:44.256
Brian Wringer: The overarching theme is how to get through winter with your sanity intact.

01:07:44.709 --> 01:07:50.293
Robin Dean: I've got rolling earthquake things to deal with and bike things to deal with.

01:07:50.647 --> 01:07:54.438
Robin Dean: You've got bike things to deal with. Joanne's going to have bike things to deal with.

01:07:54.908 --> 01:07:57.997
Robin Dean: Sounds like we have a plan for next week. Everybody ready to get out of here?

01:07:58.432 --> 01:07:58.954
Joanne Donn: Yes.

01:07:59.430 --> 01:08:00.168
Brian Wringer: I'm ready to go.