Moto Events For May 2025 with FÉROCE - Join Us!

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The episode of Féroce Moto Walk n Talk features host Annick discussing her recent travels and upcoming motorcycle events in May and June. Americade in Lake George, New York, will include her hosting a women's breakfast and being a featured speaker. She also plans to attend a MotoVermont training and ride class on a Honda motorcycle and will join fellow YouTubers at Laconia Motorcycle Week in New Hampshire, where she will test ride Harleys. Annick also recounts her observations of the Midwest riding scene and a positive visit to Janus Motorcycles in Indiana, where she met another moto YouTuber. Finally, she provides a brief update on a potential future group ride for her audience.

Join us at Americade! We will be there Wednesday - Friday May 28th - 30th
Women's Coffee Hour - Thursday May 29th 7am to 8am
Featured Speaker Talk - Thursday May 29th 1pm
Americade - https://americade.com/

We will be doing the MotoVermont : Intro To Adventure
https://www.motovermont.com/intro-to-adventure

Janus Motorcycles @janusmotorcycles
https://janusmotorcycles.com/

Check out  @DoodleOnAMotorcycle   for her upcoming video on Janus Motorcycles.

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Transcript

Ep. 27 Féroce Moto Walk n Talk

Annick: Today we're gonna do a little moto walk and talk, and I have to take you on some exercise with me because I have been traveling a lot over the past couple of weeks and I just have not gotten in enough exercise. And today the weather is actually really nice. I don't know where you guys are, but let me tell you, for April, it's been bonkers.

It's been super hot, and then really, really, really cold, snowing. It's been a little bit of everything, so. Oh gosh. It just feels good to have a good day out today and to just get in a few steps in between a bunch of other things that I need to do. Part of this walk and talk is that I want to fill you guys in about what's gonna be going on in May. Now that plans are starting to solidify, there's uh, some moto events that I'm going to be attending and I wanna share them with you because if you are interested, you might wanna join me. Hello, my beautiful Motorheads.

Welcome to FÉROCE, where we inspire you to live fiercely. I'm your host, Annick Magac.

* INTRO *

May is quickly approaching and at the end of May, I am going to be attending a Americade which is in Lake George, New York. And the really good news about this is that I'm going to be doing two events there. The first event is that I'm going to be hosting a women's breakfast, like coffee hour, basically.

if you know any female that, uh, is interested in that, whether they ride, they ride on the back, they don't ride, they're interested in riding any of that. All the women are welcome to attend, and I think it's gonna be super fun. I know that Americade been doing this for a bunch of years. I've actually never been to one, but I'm really excited that they am flattered that they asked me to host it.

I need to figure out whether or not we're going to do a topic for that morning coffee hour, or it'll be just more about. just be more about talking about riding in general. So I need to figure that out.

That's still to, there's details in all this that still need to be ironed out, it's going to be Wednesday, May 28th. From 7:00 AM to 8:00 AM I don't know the location, but for Americade, most of the events happen in the central hub in the building right next to where they do all the um, test rides.

So it won't be hard to find, the information will definitely be on their website. Now, the second part to this, which was one of my New Year's goals, was to. Be a featured speaker and Americade asked me to be a featured speaker. So again, I'm hashing out what the topic is going to be. Uh, there's two that we have in in mind, one of which is to talk about podcasting and to try to do a live interview.

That might be one or the other topic might be, uh, how to find people to ride with. So again, that's a little bit up in the air and I just need to continue talking to the Americade people to figure that out. So that's super exciting and I always like a Americade. It's a little bit of an odd. Rally. I find that it has changed over the years and it used to be like much older people, but now there is, more of a balance between young and older.

And it also has mostly been a concentration of like touring people who tour. But again, I'm starting to see like a lot more people on sport bikes. And you know, basically any type of motorcycle. But I would say that like sport touring is more what you see, like gold wings and all the Harley baggers and stuff like that.

another great thing about Americade is that they have demo rides from the manufacturers. So typically Honda's there, BMW, Kawasaki, oh wait, is Kawasaki there? No, Yama has been there. KTMI don't know if they'll be there this year. Uh, the Piaggio Group. So a bunch of bikes from moto Guzzi and I don't know, I don't know what fleet that they're actually gonna be bringing.

But anyway, it's becoming harder and harder to test ride a lot of these motorcycles at shows. So it's cool that they still do that at Americade and the manufacturers come out and they bring 'em. You just need to make sure that you get there early and sign up, because if you don't, you're not gonna get to ride anything.

By the way, that featured talk that I'm going to do is going to be on Thursday, either 11:00 AM or 12:00 PM like right somewhere, right in there. So it'll be smack dab, middle of the day. The only bad thing that always happens with the Americade is that it rains every year. There's Lake effect there in Lake George, but be prepared.

Bring a rain suit and, uh, a couple of layers. 'cause again, the weather in the northeast, one day it can be super warm and perfect, and then the next day it can be super cold and definitely the nights tend to be chilly up there. So those are my 2 cents, but I, I'm gonna be there so you guys should come and why not?

There's always a lot to do there. And the riding is spectacular. There's really some beautiful, uh, roads and they tend to have a lot of maps around with different routes. Although there's a lot of people there, and it's very chaotic in the center of the town, once you get out of the main area, the riding is just great.

Right after Americade, I'm going to hit the road and head up to Vermont because I am going to be taking one of Moto Vermont's classes and it's their training and ride. Uh, I don't remember the specific name, but I'll put that on the screen. I'm super pumped about this. I, we had Eric Milano as one of the guests and he's the founder of MotoVermont and we talked about, you know, off-road touring I think this is gonna be really great again in my, um, this, this is gonna knock off my second, goal that I had for 2025, so this is great.

I wanted to take a class and they said that it was probably gonna be mo over Vermont It is going to be Mode of Vermont. I am pumped about this because

although I know how to ADV ride, I feel like I just, I don't do it consistently. So, you know, I'm, I'm, I would say I'm a moderate off-road rider. I'm nothing. Fancy. You know, a lot of people have a lot of experience offroad riding, and I started later in life doing that. So I'm not, I have to just be honest, I'm not willing to take the risks that, uh, some people who just have the natural muscle reactions to be able to do offroad riding would take.

And I definitely feel I can learn a lot. I was going to take it on my personal bike, which is a Yamaha XT 250, however. Honda offered me a motorcycle and I'm going to be doing it on the CRF LS which is their low seat dual sport. And I've ridden it before. I'm not sure if this is gonna be a newer model or not.

I still need to work that out. But the really funny thing about this was that Honda was like, don't worry if you drop it Annick. Don't worry. And I started giggling 'cause I was like, whew. 'cause I did get a little nervous about. When you ride a manufacturer's bike, like the last thing you wanna do is drop it or break anything.

It's like the worst. I have to make that call. But it's inevitable if you're taking an off-road class that you're probably gonna dump the bike and, you know, it happens to all of us, but it's different when it's not your bike. So I feel really cool, like, I feel really good that, uh, Honda's like, yeah, don't worry about it.

We'll, we'll deal with it later, so that's great. so that's the last week in May, uh, that weekend, the same weekend as Americade. So if anyone's going there, let me know in the comments. I know they have limited, uh, availability for their classes and they tend to fill up really quick. I don't know if the class is sold out or not, but you can take a look at their website and I will put that in the show notes.

the other thing that's gonna happen is that in June, and I think the weekend is the 14th, there's Laconia. I've never been to Laconia and I have only been to Loudon up there in New Hampshire, uh, when I was racing, and that was a number of years ago. Some fellow YouTubers invited me to go to Laconia with them, and I think that'll be really fun. I don't really know them. So not only will I get to meet some new fellow YouTubers who do moto based content, but. We are going to test ride Harley's and only once in my life did I ride a [00:08:00] Harley and it was in, um, McDonald's parking lot.

So, which somehow just seems very, very, very appropriate. Uh, I don't know why, but it just does. that'll be a new experience for me. And honda's gonna gimme a motorcycle to ride up to Laconia. So I think that'll be fun. I don't know exactly what bike that's going to be, it probably will be something that suits the Laconia vibe.

So that'll be fun. And then in this traveling, I know I'm talking like kind of quick, but again, trying to get these steps in so you know. Bear with me. This week's gonna be a very short episode. Just so you know, over the, the past couple weeks I said that I've been traveling and it took me from the northeast across to Toledo, Ohio, Chicago, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, back to Chicago, and down to Goshen, Indiana.

recently we had on Mark Long, who is the host of Driven To Ride, which is another Moto podcast. And we talked a little bit about the Chicago vibe, Midwest vibe of riding. And I asked him, you know, like, what's it like? And he said, well, you know, the seasons are so, I'm paraphrasing. The seasons are so concentrated that when there's like one good day, like everybody comes out and boy was he right.

The weather was mostly cold the whole time that I was in Chicago and Milwaukee We're talking. Hats, winter jackets, gloves, the whole nine yards. there was one day that, uh, it said it was 60 degrees, but I can assure you it did not feel like 60 degrees outside.

It was sunny and that made it feel like warmish, but it was still pretty cold. And uh, man, did those motorcycles come out of the woodwork. He was not kidding about that. Everybody was out and. One of the things I observed in witnessing, like the people riding in the city were the plethora of small displacement motorcycles.

I saw a bunch of groms. I saw a, uh, 4 0 1 VP line, I think it's called by Husqvarna. I can never say the the, the model correctly, so forgive me for that. [00:10:00] And the funniest thing I probably saw was that on Route 94 coming back into the city, there was this lady she was hauling. I'm telling you, hauling. In all complete motorcycle gear.

So I gave her, you know, gave her major brownie points for that. And she was on this major four lane highway riding one of those, uh, Chinese knockoff Vespas. And I was like, you go girl. Like you go and, uh. Maybe you should think about getting a motorcycle, but you know, if you love that Vespa knockoff, whatever it is, good for you.

I'm telling you, she was hauling, I was really impressed by her riding. So if anybody knows her in the Chicago land area, uh, high five to whoever was on that scooter, uh, she had a tan and black jacket on.

Speaking of small displacement motorcycles, I became aware, or I was told about Janus Motorcycles in Goshen, Indiana. I had never heard of them before. They weren't on my radar, and I always think that that's funny. You know, I talk about [00:11:00] how motorcycling is such a small community and like we all like know each other or there's like a degree of separation or whatnot, and.

Mark Long again. We were talking about the Midwest riding. He mentioned Janus and he had gone to Sturgis with them. So I reached out to Richard Worsham and I said, Hey, if, uh, if you have time, can I come by your shop and see your manufacturing and see all of it? I, I wanna know about Janus. And he said, okay.

 I had to change my travel arrangements, so I ended up going out there, uh, a day earlier. So he goes to me, he's like, Hey, uh, you can come, I don't know how much time I'm gonna have with you, but just wanna let you know there's this, uh, female YouTuber that's gonna be there all day.

And I was like, Hmm. I had an idea, like it was funny, you know, not that many people I wouldn't say, you know, collectively in the US YouTubeing on motorcycles, there's a lot, but like it's also not a lot. So I go there and I was right. I had an idea. I was like, I wonder if it's going to be doodle on a motorcycle.

And sure enough she was there filming.

It is always fun to meet people in person. miss Doodle and I have a lot of people in common. I know that, but I've actually never met her in person. So like that, that was super fun to just chat with her and, uh, see what she was up to. So I'm not going to give any spoilers on why she was there, but keep an eye on her channel in the next couple of months, I'm assuming.

I don't know how quickly they do any of their editing and, See what she comes up with and what she films. I'm also going to be putting out a video about my visit there. However, I have to be honest, I don't know that the audio did well, and I'm gonna see, I have, I actually have not looked at the video yet.

Um, so we'll see. We'll see. We make, do we do what we can? We do what we can. The great thing was in going there, you know, in the. In a lot of these shops, it's hard to tell what you're gonna get when you actually go to the manufacturer of the site. I have done a bunch of interviews on builders and custom bike building because I love it. I love the custom building. My background is in design. It's really what I'm interested in and just what I love. So. I show up. First off, my interaction with Richard was really easy and fantastic, so props off to that.

But I showed up and sometimes you can go to these places and you're like, ah. They're a little bit obnoxious. Right? Or you're, you're like, uh, they're too cool for school. You know, they think they need to represent in a, you know, certain way. Especially it's like some of like the chop shops or something like that, where they're just like rough and cool and like, you know, don't really wanna talk and you're kind of bothering 'em, that kind of vibe.

Or people are just too busy to really talk and you feel like you are bothering them, which is never a good feeling. And then. Having gone to a lot of businesses over the years, you find out as soon as you walk in, you get the vibe, whether or not people actually enjoy working there or not. And that's something that nobody really talks about, but you can tell when people are really stressed or the management isn't good, or, you know, things aren't being run efficiently.

Things like that, like it, it's kind of hard for employees to cover that or to cover their disdain for their employers.

And I have to say I was so pleasantly surprised. Not that I had any preconceived idea of like what I was walking into, uh, but they definitely have A very cool, retro, hipster vibe, and as soon as I walked in, it was that Midwestern warmth. Oh my goodness. It was so lovely and refreshing. Everybody who worked there was just so nice. And after I met with. The owner and got a tour and, you know, talked to some of the other employees and different things.

They're like, Hey, we're taking doodle out to dinner. Do you wanna join? And I was like, yeah. Because I'm always like, yes, yes, you're gonna ask me to go do something? Yes, let's go. So I, uh, I joined them and then more than the employees came, not everybody but a, a nice healthy group of the employees came out and I probably hung out with, let's just say I hung out with them for like an hour.

They were awesome. everyone there is so sweet and just so nice and so excited about motorcycling. They love their product. Janus has a very unique viewpoint on motorcycles, which I hope comes across when I do the editing, but they're typically, mostly, well, they're not, typically, they are small displacement motorcycles and they build two 50 to four 50 bikes, which are small.

And you know, you're like, well, why would they build small displacement motorcycles? Well, one, they tend to be a little bit more simple. That's fine. But the original idea of it came that the owners, both of them were really into 50 cc. Mopeds, you know, you gotta gotta pedal to get 'em started and stuff.

We're talking mopeds and they were just super into this niche. And then from that interest it developed into this motorcycle company called Janus. And it's super cool. Like their story's great, and like I said, really lovely people. And I always have to just go back like our community's the best, right?

There's good and bad people everywhere, but the majority of the motorcyclists are like. On the good side. So that's all the cool stuff coming up. Um, have a couple of interviews that I'm going to put out, but this week I just had to, I just had to catch up. 

Oh, the other thing was that people have been asking in the comments is, have I planned out that, group ride? And I have to be honest I've been really busy with work right now. It's just been like an incredibly busy season, and I haven't gotten around to it, so I've been trying to do, you know, the, the regular content of like the interviews and videos, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

So don't give up on me. We'll make that happen. Just not sure when yet, and, uh, now that it's getting to be late spring, it'll probably be late summer, early fall, somewhere around there.

and this is a good reason why if you are not subscribed, that you should subscribe. Because if you subscribe to whatever platform you're watching or listening to on this, you'll know when that's going to happen. And then you can also join in you, even if you aren't able to make Americade or to do any of the Moto Vermont, uh, events.

And as you guys know, we have merchandise hats. The sweatshirt might be a little overkill to wear 'em both together, but you know what I'm representing, representing FÉROCE, so I'm gonna go at it. It's gonna be FÉROCE everything, you know, go big or go home. So just wanted to give you guys this update for this week, and we will be back next week with our regular programming.

And as always. Ride smart. Ciao.

and PS thank you for going out for a walk with me. I have to say that I feel a million times better now that I'm getting fresh air and some vitamin D uh, after sitting in a car for two full days. So thanks guys. I appreciate you coming on a moto walk and talk. Ciao.

* OUTRO *