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Ride hard, pack snacks, and let’s not try to lose Brad at the gas station again.

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The bottom line is, it’s never too early to start next year’s planning,~ uh,~ like syncing calendars, right, Todd? Yes, lesson learned, yes. So, yeah, I mean, that’s one thing that,~ uh,~ we gotta do soon here is get a hold of everyone’s calendars. We tried last year and it was a valiant attempt,~ um,~ but,~ uh,~ you made changes late and my calendar was already set.

I don’t know about that.

Yeah. So I think what we’re looking to do is maybe just pencil in some things. We’ll need to send out the calendar stuff again. But,~ uh,~ I think we’re hoping to maybe start things off early May. Last year we started in April because of the eclipse thing. We don’t have an early start.~ Uh, ~so we were thinking maybe day ride.

You haven’t been to the Slimy Crud Run. It’s a great start to the season, I think so. It’s usually a little cool, but it’ll work. Yeah, first Sunday in May, right? Right, so May 4th, Slimy Crud Run. And then I’ve got kind of an idea of a spring ride. ~Um, ~so we have some options. We planned out a couple of rides last year that we didn’t do.

We talked about that one a lot. We’ve also talked about,~ um,~ Turk loves the stormy Cromer hat company and that’s up in Michigan. So we’ve talked about that as another option in spring. ~Um, ~and then I had one more thought and actually it was,~ uh,~ in episode 29 where we talked about the top five roads in Missouri.

So all the way down at the bottom of Missouri,~ um,~ is highway 90. And it is literally like in the furthest southern western corner of Missouri in an appropriately named town,~ uh,~ Southwest City, Missouri. Oh, of course. ~Um, ~and I mean it is five miles from,~ um,~ Arkansas, five miles from Oklahoma. Would it be Oklahoma?

Very hilly and very curvy. It’s like, that is like, in the, that’s perfect, right? That’s perfect. We need AI to go out and find all the roads like that. So, so that’s another option. And one of the reasons why I was leaning on that is,~ uh,~ there’s another guy that does a lot of broadcasting, especially in the Goldwing crowd, it’s called the Cruise Man.

He’s down in Dallas, so the other thought I had was,~ uh,~ Turk and I are generally up for a little more writing. I was thinking maybe a hit in Dallas before, and then maybe meet you guys in the southwest corner of Missouri. Or anyone that wants to go, of course. Yeah, I’ve got a brother in Dallas, so I might as well head down there too.

Yeah, right on. So that’d be kind of cool. ~Um, ~I’ve always wanted to connect with Cruise Man. He’s kind of a, he’s a fun guy, goof, and has a YouTube channel as well. So I think that’s the other thing,~ um,~ that we’ll talk about later, but it’s fun to try to meet some of these people that are in some of these areas.

Yeah I know cruise man is a is a gold wing rider He talks about gold wings and we both ride gold wings as well as brad And ~uh, ~so yeah, it’d be fun to meet up with him for sure. We’ve watched a lot of his episodes for sure We have so that’s kind of the spring thought. ~Um, ~and then for a day ride. ~Um, ~We also had a episode.

I think it was 28 27 or 8 it’s that The top five roads of Iowa,~ uh,~ historic Hill scenic byway, which is,~ um,~ loosely there’s a highway to, and in the Southern part of Iowa that runs from Arabia to Donaldson. And if you remember this one definitely fits the no chains,~ uh,~ mantra, there is no fast food restaurants in any of those towns.

~Um, ~but then you throw in getting there and getting back and that’s probably,~ um,~ that, that wouldn’t be bad a day ride as well. So, yeah.~ Um, ~The big ride of the year probably is going to be a fall, fall ride. ~Um, ~and that is another trip down to the tale of dragon. ~Um, ~for me, I think it’s gonna, it would be my fifth.

I think it’s my fifth trip. ~Um, ~and this one’s kind of going to be fun, special, and a little bit,~ um,~ interesting. ~Uh, ~I have another friend, Mitch, who hasn’t been on any rides with us yet. But,~ uh,~ he’s getting a little older and kind of, I think he’s thinking about retiring his road bike. ~Um, ~so, but him and I have talked for the last few years.

So that’s going to be interesting. I mean, I’d know the last time when you and I went,~ uh,~ that was one of my favorite trips and it was only the two of us and had the rest of the people been there, I think it’d have been even a little more fun, but we did some writing then. ~Um, ~so we rode all the way down and saw my friend Mike that had that funky old tobacco barn.

If you remember,~ um,~ that was cool. ~Um, ~and then we rode. I think the only road that we didn’t ride that’s like one of our favorite roads is the Devil’s Triangle. We rode literally every road down there. ~Um, ~I know that was episode four. ~Um, ~our Tale of the Dragon episode, which was what we talked a lot about that.

It was a gravel road that was very steep. ~Um, ~I just remember that as being one of the things like, oh my. ~Um. ~Yeah, that would be truck tough, tough. And maybe if you got up there writing it down, , it might be even worse. Yeah. Because you came out onto a flat road. I mean, it was like the, that’s, yeah. That’s 12 feet wide.

Yeah. You know, maybe I’m exaggerating, but, so I don’t know. I mean, I’m, I’m excited to ride that ride at the same time. It’s gonna be a little bit,~ uh,~ you know, I don’t wanna say sad, but interesting from the perspective of. He’s kind of being done riding after that big rides. And he’s wrote some, he’s wrote a lot.

That guy puts on miles, like he’s written a Dallas before and he just kind of just drives from where? Iowa. Oh, okay. Yeah. So. And like one day he’ll just hammer it out. So, yeah. So yeah. So that’d be kind of interesting. I mean, I’m, I’m excited. I think we’re going to, I think the plan on that one is to take a little longer.

And I think that’s way too, that’s what I’m saying. It’s minimum. That’s minimum. You can’t even, yeah, for us, you can’t even get there and back. I mean, you’re going there and getting back in five days. Yeah, it’s tough. So I think that’ll be a seven or eight day or maybe,~ um,~ and you know, maybe not everyone can, maybe some will have to figure out a way to kind of get some loops in that people could maybe jet if they needed to.

But I think that there are opportunities to slow down. Yeah, we’ve passed some things that probably were worth seeing and stuff Yeah, I’m getting some pictures of and things we didn’t even know we passed Sometimes, you know, we talked a lot about the Bristol stop. That was kind of a Winget moment and that was cool.

It was great. Yeah, in fact Mitch, I think, actually also has a Corvette. He’s a Chevy guy, so we could talk about the Corvette Museum. That was neat. That was very cool. That was a really cool stop. I remember it was god awful hot that day, if you remember. And that was the best part of that stop. It was all air conditioned.

I continue to do that. So, you know, that’s back in one of our,~ um,~ We have, you know, all these are our podcast episodes, right? And then we also post the same podcast on YouTube as a video podcast. And then we’ve been doing a few and I think I’ve done most of them, but I know that’s something that you’re going to do as well.

But so we have video extras or, you know, interview extras. So one of them,~ uh,~ we interviewed,~ uh,~ John Delvecchio, who has a really good writing book out there and, and we can put a link in the show notes to that. But,~ uh,~ So he’s the one that brought up the no chain. He got me on the no chains mantra if you want to call it that.

Yeah. What are you talking about? And then maybe I thought it was like, you know, no writing the end of the mountains where you have to put chains on the top, but It’s a great idea, right? I mean, and we’ve talked about it before, but I mean, you brought up the idea of it’s just a good thing for the local, right?

I mean, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, not only restaurants, but hotels, you know, find the mom and pop hotels. ~Uh, ~sometimes they, they, they just have the best stories too. ~Uh, ~just great people that know their local area. ~Uh, ~they’re passionate about their local area. They want to tell you about it. And then there’s They keep a lot of history sometimes in those little motels and hotels.

Like you need, it’s cool because they’re these little cabins, right? That’s one cool thing. But they also have covered parking which we it’s cool. I mean like so you park your bikes underneath the awning or whatever And then they have little places we were playing cards out there like they had picnic tables a fire pit.

Yeah I don’t know. Like I think you’re right on the money when you say the stories, you know The more we’ve done this kind of thing and talk to more people That’s the parts that we always enjoy the most. So like I think You Finding a way to really embrace the no chains piece on all these rides whether it’s a day ride or if it’s a multi day ride That’s gonna be good for us because it’s just more stories.

Sure. Cause you just mentioned the name of it. Yeah. Great. It’s from,~ um,~ I always have to think about this. It’s in Leland. It’s, it’s in Leland, Wisconsin is where, where you go. ~Uh, ~Pine Bluff, Wisconsin to Leland, Wisconsin. And it, and it’s just this thing that started in the seventies and it was,~ um,~ started by some guys that would just like to ride.

They didn’t want to. get advertisers. They didn’t want to get sponsors. They were this guy and I should know his name and I don’t remember it. But he was, he was an author of motorcycle,~ um,~ magazines because motorcycle magazines were the big thing back then. And he, he thinks that Wisconsin is the best pound for pound riding in the U.

And,~ uh,~ so, and it just no advertising, they don’t send anything out. They have a bad Facebook page and a bad website and it just shows up. And my favorite part about it is, is that there are so many. I always say whatever bike you want to look at they will be there and it’s everything so somebody will bought the brand new whatever the newest thing out is and it’s dual sports to sport bikes to cruisers to harleys to everything under the sun and old bikes every old bike triumphs and all that stuff it’s just insane so ~uh ~yeah I mean it’s just a fun thing if you find your if you find yourself able to get to Wisconsin the first weekend of May.

There’s no routes. There’s no plans, no routes. Yeah. Nothing. People just get together. Yeah. And then, and it, and it’s a bookend on the, the writing season, right? I mean, that’s how they more or less, yeah. Like they celebrate the start of the writing season in Mace and the end of the writing season of October.

Yeah. More or less. Yeah. I mean there’s some ld, long distance riders that have a little bit wider thing that they ride, but this is really kind of your. Just kind of says, Hey, let’s season started. Hey, the season’s ended. There’s so many plates. It’s unbelievable. And it is fun to have the,~ uh,~ the,~ uh,~ mesh intercoms on that day.

Cause you’ll run into more people. Sometimes they know you’re listening and sometimes they don’t. So that’s kind of fun too. I remember last year when we were there, there was, there was a boyfriend, girlfriend that we’re writing and clearly they were not enjoying the day. They were really arguing about like, just slow down.

This is a section we call the toolkit. We share motorcycle gear, gear review, and other riding tips.

So with the toolkit, I thought of three things, I think, or I had one and you had a couple, I guess, of things that kind of go along with this.

And,~ um,~ I want to really work harder on, you know, camera mounts. We use a lot of RAM mounts. And one of the things I’m trying to do is kind of get a little bit better experience on that. So hopefully I’ll work harder on getting the cameras mounted and recorded. You know, trying to make this easy is the thing.

I mean, like when you get off the bike, you don’t want to have to be maintenance mode. Right. So, I mean, ~um, ~I do have the permanent mounted cameras on that run all the time. Those are handy, but they’re just not as good as like the GoPro quality. So trying to find that balance for me, this, this year is a, is a good place, but Ram mounts is what we use now.

I mean, we’re admittedly old And that does suck. I mean like I remember one of the last trips like You, I mean, for me, I pretty much am not going to be able to get down and squat and find by the time we have all the gear on for sure. So I end up on the ground, which is fine. I don’t mind that part, but,~ um,~ you know, more than one time we’ve seen where we’ve been low pressure and you didn’t know it and that’s just bad.

I mean, it’s not safe,~ um,~ to the point of, you know, ruining a tire. ~Um, ~so like it’s a good thing to keep those pressures up and it varies so much. I mean. I know when we rode out west and in Montana, both my tires changed overnight with just I don’t, it was altitude and,~ um,~ you know, temperature, temperature, a big difference.

The foam isn’t where it should be. And for long trips, I. I’m feeling, feeling some pain. So, ~uh, ~I don’t know if I want to spend 1, 500 on a 22 year old bike, you know, buying a really high end seat, but I’m probably going to look around on the internet, see if anybody has something,~ uh,~ a high end seat maybe that’s used, or the bike got totaled, or, you know, the And you’ve never been uncomfortable in the stock seat, have you?

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