Nick Adams, Talking Canadian Adventure and ADV Cannonball Rally News

We're happy to welcome Nick Adams to the Motorcycle Book Club. 

Audible 

Home page and Books

Chapters

• 21:41 Field Notes
• 30:55 Nick Adams talks Canadian ADV
• 1:00:37 ADV Cannonball News
• 1:11:36 2025 Rally New Sign-ups
• 1:16:38 Music - The Hard Way Home
• 1:21:16 Music - Broken Border Road
• 1:26:38 Music - No Law, No Friends
• 1:31:46 Music - Blood on the Throttle
• 1:36:28 Music - High Road to the Sky (Desert Rose Version) (Remastered)

Transcript

SPEAKER_11: 0:00

And a special thanks to our new Patreon members, Frank and Carrie.

SPEAKER_10: 0:07

Welcome to the ADV Cannonball Podcast, where we discuss all things on two wheels, the adventure by cannonball, and other motorcycle-related nonsense.

SPEAKER_14: 0:28

Season four, episode three. Welcome to Adventure Cannonball Podcast. I am your host, Taylor Lawson. And today I am joined by the model and likeness for the newest red tuxedo jacket wearing Rally Master action figure, better known to you as Aaron Puffall.

SPEAKER_11: 0:49

What's happening, big dog? You're dropping some inside baseball there with the action figure from our uh group chat.

SPEAKER_14: 0:54

Yeah, you know, I thought that was pretty cool. Robert, Robert's like, I was ordering 500 of these, and I looked and I was like, is that AI? It really was. It's an action figure of you in your red tuxedo jacket from the awards banquet.

SPEAKER_11: 1:06

And what's great is he's put a little trophy in it and a bottle of beer. So that was uh very apropos indeed. Not just any bottle of beer. That's right. IPA. Speaking of IPA, I have one in my hand here. I've been saving this. Uh Captain Chaos gave it to me when I dropped off his motorcycle in the freezing cold of upstate New York. So here is a uh Juice Force Imperial IPA. Thank you, Captain Chaos. Ooh, that sounded good.

SPEAKER_14: 1:34

That's a good one. I have a dilemma I need you to help me with, Aaron. What's that? Oh so I'm uh I'm a little torn here. I'm not sure um whether I should where I should start. So should I start with the uh the big Labruski by Naked City Brewing, or should I go with Palo Alto Brewing's happy ending?

SPEAKER_11: 1:54

Ah, hoppy ending. Everyone likes a hoppy ending, bro.

SPEAKER_13: 1:58

That's what I that's kind of what I figured. All right, here's to that.

SPEAKER_11: 2:02

Cheers. And uh you listeners at home, I you know, I don't know why I've never mentioned this, but y'all should open your your can of IPAs also. And if you're less of a man, you can open something else. But no judgment.

SPEAKER_13: 2:15

Yeah. So then there's the guy who just screased the cap off a bottle of jack. And what does that make us?

SPEAKER_11: 2:21

Well, listen, no comment. No comment. Um, I want to mention after the Nick Adams interview and all this uh nonsense, there's some big cannonball news. So uh I've inserted a chapter marker. If you just um, you know, get bored with rambling and uh in our interview, be sure to check out the cannonball news.

SPEAKER_14: 2:44

Speaking of being bored with the rambling, I just wanted to let you know that despite the fact that I am ill, I have had the request to record anyway. And the reason was, quote unquote, because my people need me. So I'm here for you.

SPEAKER_11: 2:57

That's right. We are behind schedule, like no one's business. You know, it's okay. But you've uh you've you've canceled your trip to Amsterdam not to do work, but you are here having a beer recording this uh this award-winning second place podcast.

SPEAKER_14: 3:11

You know, you don't you can't hang on to number two if you don't record, that's all I gotta say.

SPEAKER_11: 3:15

That's right. That's right. Uh, I want to mention that the guys in the rally and some of the listeners have been patient as we work through our terrible suppliers with swag. So uh, anyways, uh we've set up a swag shop. It's on the main site. Uh, we don't make any money off of it, you know, because it's such low volume. They're making each piece one by one. So if you do buy something, please don't return it because I'll just get back built for it. And you know, if you are an ex or someone that I've uh I've offended uh and you do return it, that is a way to hurt me financially. So feel free to uh to do that.

SPEAKER_13: 3:52

I don't know. I think you're probably gonna have to edit that out. Is it gonna be like a ton of it's like I got 20 returns today? What happened?

SPEAKER_11: 4:01

Yeah, I get a bill for 650 bucks. It's like, Jesus, what happened today? But it's all good. Speaking of printing, I want to mention that rider number one from last year, this guy is a legend. Not only was he the first person to sign up when it was just a website and you know, a couple of Muppets talking on a podcast, he just got a tattoo, this amazing bit of art tattooed on him of him riding across the country in the 2025 cannonball. So I salute you. I'm impressed. And you know, the gauntlet has been laid down. So he has the first tattoo, first person to sign up, and the gauntlet has been laid down for everybody else.

SPEAKER_14: 4:42

Yeah. I also want to say, you know, the art was really cool. The artist who did that, so it was a uh him standing on his GSA on the like where the engine is and where like his leg would be, and maybe the the front of the back wheel and the back of the front wheel. Down there was a map of the United States, and then in red was the route across. That was all just open space, and then the right, the red line across. So it was really well done art.

SPEAKER_11: 5:09

Yeah, and they put ADV in a stack of three cannonballs. It was like really super smart. Yeah.

SPEAKER_14: 5:15

And then, of course, he was writer number one, and then on the on the panier, I know it says number one.

SPEAKER_11: 5:20

It's like really great. A legend is born. Um, I also wanted to mention that uh if you send us a text with the app, if you go down to the description and send us a text, I actually can't text you back. I'm not being a douche. Believe me, I have known a text, right? This is one of the one of the few times. Normally I am a douche, but in this case, I'm not not texting you back. It the system kind of blocks. So if you want to have correspondence and dialogue, um, send us an email. But if you're just sending us a text, like, hey, you guys are douches, and that's cool, go ahead and do that. I just can't reply. That's all. Just so you know.

SPEAKER_14: 5:56

Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Then it's not it's it's it's not so much fun because then we you you know, because we have a lot to say back.

SPEAKER_11: 6:01

Yeah, really.

SPEAKER_14: 6:02

Yeah, clearly.

SPEAKER_11: 6:03

I have all the time in the world after six IPA is to tell you what I think you all right.

SPEAKER_14: 6:09

So you're talking about the late trip. Yeah, it was interesting. So right after we left, we and I think we may have mentioned this previously, but right after we left, so the window was amazing that we had picked, and we had picked it like 14 months in advance, and we had a perfect weather window. Actually, that's not true. I did get a perfect weather window of riding. When I ride there early, it was raining, but then we got on the bikes and it didn't rain. But I we I did get one the last day, I did get one raindrop on my on my visor, but we outran the cloud and that was it.

SPEAKER_11: 6:40

But not even the rain. Uh, when you do high altitude stuff, it's really difficult because especially that extreme altitude, almost 20,000 feet, you're either in monsoon season or there's snow, and there was snow, but the roads were dry. So you literally have this one or two weeks of ideal riding in those extreme altitudes. And I made a note here in our in our notes because soon after we left, there was all kinds of violence and shootings uh between protesters and the government in lay, which was amazing. And then last week there was this massive explosion in the police station in Srinagar. And we went past that police station like, I don't know, a hundred times and tuk-tucks going back and forth to get to get beer for our boo cruises, right? And yes, talking about luck, we missed the violence in Leh just by days, and then we missed the massive explosion in Srinagar, which by the way, which is kind of you know gallows humor, but the explosion in the police station was because they found an explosive device, they did their job as you know, police officers do, and then I guess they were tinkering with it and then it exploded in the police station. I'm like, those poor bastards were just doing their job, and uh and they yeah, they blew themselves up. Oh man.

SPEAKER_14: 7:54

Yeah, crazy, right? Yeah, and that happened last week. So that was that's like two and a half months, three months ago now. Um, but two and a half months since we got back. Um, and then a couple of days, I mentioned this on the podcast, but a couple of days after we left, when we were up in the mountains of Leigh, we had one guy who was with us, Dave, and he went back or he stayed there. And then he said he went back, and um, and there was political like internal strife, like political parties fighting. And the police shot five people, four of them died, the vehicles were bombed, uh burned, houses were blown up. I think it was grenades or military uh explosives. But the whole town that we were in, we were just walking through, walking down by the restaurants, looking at the, you know, the the wool products for sale. That's all cordoned off. Like you can't get through there. It's like a police zone now.

SPEAKER_11: 8:41

Yeah, we have that funny video on Instagram of me and you in the tuck tuck, and we're going through that police checkpoint, and this guy's trying to show us his cool, his cool plate carrier, which had was just it's just Kevlar, like it would never stop any, you know, long gun round. It wouldn't stop 556 or anything like that, right? But he's like, look at my new body armor. I'm like, dude, that's not gonna help you. Like it's only Kevlar, right? But, anyways, it was it was a bizarre scenario. And I also want to mention that we were talking with uh Robert Bollinger, and he was considering doing a trip to Pakistan. And I was joking. Well, I wasn't joking, I was dead serious. I'm like, if you need a camera, man, like I'm down, like, let's go. And uh, because it'd be cool to do the other side of the Himalayan mountain range from the other side. And then that evening, there was some sort of attack or bombing or something uh in that area. So I never heard back from Robert, but I'm sure his wife was like, Yeah, you're not going to Pakistan because there was uh, you know, some violence that happened there. I'm like, you know, the timing has been has been, you know, fortuitous to be sure that we've missed all these things. And but anyways, the offer's there, Robert. If you want, if you need a cameraman for your uh trip to Pakistan, look me up. I'm I'm down.

SPEAKER_14: 9:55

Hey, but I just gotta say, if you recall back to the interview with Robert, his wife was the reason that they have motorcycle licenses, right? So his life's like, we're gonna do this.

SPEAKER_11: 10:03

That's right.

SPEAKER_14: 10:03

So I don't know, I I don't know that that would be her take on it. I think she's pretty adventurous.

SPEAKER_11: 10:07

That's true. That's pretty awesome. Listen, the odds are if you look at things, you know, mathematically as I do in life, the you know, your odds are are pretty good. What better way to go out on the back of a motorcycle in a in a in a terrorist bombing that you know, if you can choose a way, like people will tell stories about you at least, right? Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

SPEAKER_14: 10:24

Speaking of traveling, are you looking for some motorcycle-friendly accommodations?

SPEAKER_11: 10:29

Yeah, so I remember when we did that last trip in Europe and I was by myself heading, I took the ferry, the it's called the color ferry from Norway down to uh is it Belgium? Yeah, it must be Belgium. Anyways, and I was on that peninsula. I remember some signs for motorcycle accommodations. And what in my mind, what these places are, whether it's in Belgium or Spain or Germany or France, in my mind, in that area, those flatlands, they're like someone who has like a farm or something and they've converted it into like villas and biker-friendly accommodations. So, everyone in Europe, if you know of places like this, if you draw a line from, you know, the coast of Norway down to Gibraltar, all the way to the French coast, anywhere in that area, if you know of motorcycle-friendly accommodations for like 25 to 50 riders, please drop me an email. We're planning the 2027 route, and I guess that gives uh a bit of insight information of where we're thinking for the first cannonball. I'm not definite on it. I have another concept. Anyways, if someone could give me help, just email me at podcast at advcannonball.com.

SPEAKER_14: 11:41

That reminds me of when I um when I interviewed El Sbeth Beard, and she talked about when she was looking for accommodations when she was traveling through the Middle East, where they had a spot where she could take the motorcycle into sometimes through the through the entrance of the hotel entrance into a courtyard. And she always had a piece of string that was the exact length of the width of her panniers. So she'd go up and measure doors with a piece of string as opposed to getting the bike up the steps and going, Well, not gonna fit through here.

SPEAKER_11: 12:07

See, that's women using their heads, and we'd be hams and just you know, full throttle through the doors. Well, I hope this fits.

SPEAKER_14: 12:13

You can get it, you can always get it in, it's just a matter of velocity.

SPEAKER_11: 12:16

Yeah, yeah, that's why. And uh, I think you had uh a request for listeners.

SPEAKER_14: 12:21

Yeah, so um Aaron bikes, as you well know, Aaron's bike is on the way over to London, and I'm debating whether I should ride my T7 over. Uh time is a challenge for me, and I would probably lose at least if I ride like Aaron, if I just do if I bomb 13-hour days, um, then I can get there from here to London in two days and then come back in two days. But that's four days, so that's four days of time. But I want to ride and be there. So if anyone in the London area or anywhere in in the UK has a bike or a good lead on either bike to rent or to borrow, um, I would absolutely love uh to have an email at podcast at advcannonball.com and um and let us know so that we can reach out to you and um make some arrangements.

SPEAKER_11: 13:11

Uh and I also wanted to uh ask you to do the shout out to some of our friends who have not signed up for the 2026 Cannonball. And who would those uh guys be?

SPEAKER_14: 13:22

Oh, you know, if I had to just reach back into my mind, I would say Carrie. Where's Carrie? Carrie's in Virginia, outside of DC, just rode India with us. We got Conrad, who's Swedish. I interviewed him early days of the podcast season one. He's sitting in Florida. We got Steve Dovell. Dovell is in he's outside of he's in Panama. Yeah, but they make airplanes, so well, you know, there you go. And Stuart. Stuart in uh Join Lapin, South of France. It is time to come ride motorcycles with us.

SPEAKER_11: 13:56

Yeah, absolutely. So, guys, come on, we need some of our our inner circle to to come to these rallies or fun. And I want to thank some listeners who forwarded the episode last week. We could tell there was a small spike in um in our downloads. We appreciate that. And there's a funny thing that's happening in Apple. And I promise we'll we'll move on from this in a second. But there's this weird algorithm thing that's happened in Apple. If you go look for a motorcycle podcast in Apple, you can't find us in the last month. I don't know why. So if you guys could take two seconds, I will buy you all the IPA that you want in the next rally. But if you could just take a second and give us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, we don't need it on Spotify. There's like 200 of them. But on Apple, if you could give us a five-star review, I will I will bribe you with with uh beer. There's something happened with the algorithm, and it's it's really causing us a problem. But anyways, that's the end of that. All right.

SPEAKER_14: 14:51

Five star to that. Thank you very much for those who who did again. We don't ask for anything. We're actually offering beer in this case for the uh for the bribe for doing that. But thanks for also forwarding it to someone. So just if you can, if you find this one interesting, just forward it to somebody you think might find it interesting. And um, and I think you have an interesting story about your cleam cleam uh climb? Cleam? I I've heard it pronounced both ways. I I don't know.

SPEAKER_11: 15:16

Yes, if you're snobby, you're if you're snobby European, you say cleam. If you're if you're red-blooded American, you say you say climb. This is these are the rules in life.

SPEAKER_14: 15:26

What if you're a red-blooded European?

SPEAKER_11: 15:28

Yeah, I don't know. You think you say clean. Yeah, clean. So I had this Badlands jacket. You know, this thing was worth a fortune. So I gave it to my buddy Rob. And rally goers know Rob. Rob was was hanging out in the last rally doing some pictures and stuff. And he sends me a picture yesterday, and it's a picture of a 380 bullet around. And he goes, This is what I found in my pocket. You know, Rob's like a nice, super nice Canadian dude, right? He crosses the border all the time. I could just hear the disdain in the text. He's like, Oh my god, I could have gone to jail because I was smuggling, you know, ammunition across the border unwittingly. You know, he's like, What else is in here?

SPEAKER_13: 16:09

Like uh without declaring it.

SPEAKER_11: 16:10

Yeah, was there like a dime bag in here somewhere, right? So I must have taken a round out of a chamber round out of or something like that. And I it was in a pocket. I didn't know. So the poor guy was going across the border with ammunition in his jacket and had no idea. I could see his Canadian sensibilities going right out the window.

SPEAKER_14: 16:28

Yeah, a little bit delicate there. I can totally see this. So you were like, yeah, you you know, you're taking the like you take you're trying to balance the weight in your pocket. So you you empty the climps out and um and you've got still one in the pipe, you know, as you do. And then you you empty that when you're like, I don't have time to, I don't have time to put that back in them in the mag. So you just drop it in your pocket and then it just stays there for years.

SPEAKER_11: 16:48

Well, if you're taking the one out of the chamber, there's no room in the mag, right? So what do you do with it? I think I just threw it in my pocket or something.

SPEAKER_13: 16:53

I just throw it in your pocket.

SPEAKER_11: 16:55

I have no recollection of why it's there, but anyways, I I had I had one other story that I was driving the van back across, and this is important tip pro tip riders. Pro tip riders. I was going next to uh livestock transport, which is a bit, you know, morbid in itself. But I was going next to it, and it was I was in the Trans-Candada Highway. Were you on a bike or were you in the van? I was in the van, I was in the van. All right, and I was coming back from dropping off uh bikes, and I wanted to do the Trans-Candada Highway because I I had never done it, right? So, anyways, and all of a sudden, I guess there's a cow in there, and he starts taking a piss, and it just fire hoses all over the side of the van and it like froze instantly. So I'm driving down and the van is just covered in piss. I'm like, fair enough. Like you're, you know, the cow's on its way to get slaughtered. So I'm like, listen, fair, fair enough, right? Like, you know, this is your last Hera, right? But I thought to myself, oh my God, like riders need to know about this. So if you roll up next to one of those livestock carriers, which are obvious because they have the gate in the back, the ramp that comes down in the back, they have the the holes in the side, like power through, man. Like, watch out. Like, you could get hit with uh with a shotgun of piss if you're not careful.

SPEAKER_14: 18:11

That reminds me, you know the story about, you know, like if you're drinking or not drinking, they say, Are you on the wagon? Do you know what the you know what the history is behind that? No. So like you get you're you know, you're like that, you're saying this cow's on his way to get slaughtered, right? So if you're on you're on the way to the gallows and you're in the wagon, they're taking you through the town, they're throwing, you know, rotten fruit at you, tomatoes, and then they stop you outside the bar. So you're on the wagon, and they stop you outside the bar and they say, Do you want to go and have a last drink at the bar before you go and get hung? And then if you say no, that means you're not drinking and you're on the wagon.

SPEAKER_11: 18:44

Wow, that's uh even more morbid than uh the cow's gonna slaughter. So this is a happy podcast, you know.

SPEAKER_13: 18:54

Oh, it's the first time I've laughed in three days. Oh my god. Well, I'm decidedly off the wagon.

SPEAKER_11: 18:59

Uh and I'm just the not going to the gat to the gallows, you know.

SPEAKER_13: 19:05

Here's the not getting pissed on as you're riding down on your own. Can you imagine?

SPEAKER_11: 19:09

Right, yeah. Pro tip riders. Oh my god. So anyways, I also want to share, uh, I'm gonna roll a field note here in a second. It's it's the craziest thing. So I'm on this Trans-Canada Highway, and I'm on the Trans-Canada Highway because you know, everyone knows I was born in Ontario, but you know, I'd never gone across Canada, uh, which is cool, actually. Uh, Western Ontario, it's actually really interesting. Uh, lots of little lakes. Uh, it's they call it the Canadian Shield, it's a lot of exposed rock. It's cool. Their prairies are exactly the same as, you know, Iowa and Kansas, so you're not missing anything there. Really, really windy, by the way. And then through the Rockies was just really gorgeous. And I gotta say that, you know, the Canadians really maintain that road well. The uh wildlife mitigation through the national park is rock solid. Tons of uh wildlife crossings. I guess they every X amount of miles, there was a beautiful wildlife crossing. So they really, it's a really nice road to drive. And you can just zip off and go to uh Banff and all these great places, and then you can take the Ice Fields Parkway up to I think it's Jasper, which is on my list of things to do. It is most definitely on the top 10 roads in the world, that Ice Fields Parkway. But, anyways, I digress. So while I was on this road and it was snowing, I was up at high altitude, and there's this guy on a bicycle, like on a push bike. So I'm like, what is this guy doing? It's snowing. It's yeah, it's it's it's outrageous. So I pull over at a safe spot, and as I'm pulling over, there's a guy on a Can Am pulled over and it's snowing. So I pull over next to the guy at the Canam and go, what are these two Muppets doing? Right. So I roll up to this guy, and it's this Chinese guy from Shenzhen, and he's like, Yeah, me and my friend, we're we're riding bicycles around the world. So I whip out the microphone, of course. I do the worst interview because it's absolutely freezing. But the story is these two guys from Shenzhen, they're riding around the world on bicycles. The one guy I talked to, he had gotten to it in an accident and broke his leg or something. So rather than giving up, he buys uh a Can Am, which turns out to be the right thing to get because it was snowing. Yeah. And the two of them were plugging along and they were camping and they were staying in Airbnbs and motels, and they're going around the world. And he just finished doing Iceland in the winter and he showed me some amazing pictures. And so, anyways, I'm gonna roll this uh short field note from the from three guys standing on the side of the highway in the snow.

SPEAKER_10: 21:41

It's time for field notes. A collection of voice notes recorded on location while we're on wildly exciting motorcycle adventures hacked together for your amusement and our public shaming.

SPEAKER_11: 21:56

I'm on the side of the highway with a man on a Can Am. What is your name? My name is Acho. Nice to meet you, and what are you doing on a Can Am in the snow in the winter in Canada?

SPEAKER_12: 22:09

Uh I just travel. Yeah, I like uh winter. I want to try Canada winter travel by motor. Yes. And where did you start on your journey? Um this year start uh from California, yeah, Los Angeles, and uh go New York, New Yorker go uh Toronto, Toronto go here. Now go Vancouver.

SPEAKER_11: 22:33

Okay, but you know there's easier ways to see Canada in the snow, besides it is well below zero Celsius, and it's actively snowing, and we're two idiots on the side of the highway. You understand it's easier to do other to see it another way.

SPEAKER_12: 22:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I want to try. I think this um months is okay.

SPEAKER_11: 22:54

Yeah. Yeah, I can't even speak because it's so cold, but I'm only in my t-shirt. But I I wish you luck in your journey. Where are you going to tonight?

SPEAKER_12: 23:02

Tonight, maybe 100 kilometer. Yeah, yeah. Me and my friend, you see one bicycle?

SPEAKER_11: 23:09

Well, actually, that's why I pulled over because I saw that guy with the bicycle.

SPEAKER_12: 23:13

Yeah, yeah. Yes, he's my friend. Together travel. Every day, uh, I want maybe 100 kilometer uh wait, and my friend comes here and uh sleepy after tomorrow, yeah. Together go.

SPEAKER_11: 23:27

And then I see you have lots of gear on here. So are you camping? Yeah, yeah, I have a camping and uh sleeping bag. And that sound is the traffic passing us at 100 kilometers an hour, which uh which is ridiculous. But uh I don't know what else to say, but uh, I think I think you're crazy. How long do you plan on having on taking to do this journey?

SPEAKER_12: 23:49

Uh uh I want uh two months, yeah. Canada travel, yeah. And uh two months finish, uh come back China, yeah. 2022, yeah, I buy bicycle, uh winter Iceland. Yeah, yeah. I can show you some picture, yeah. So this I think it's good. Yeah, this uh winter.

SPEAKER_14: 24:12

And we are back.

SPEAKER_09: 24:14

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_14: 24:15

You can you can you can tell that your face was we're like you sounded funny because your face was frozen when you were saying that.

SPEAKER_11: 24:21

I couldn't talk because we were standing out there, anyways. I didn't really have a jacket. As a matter of fact, I had to buy a jacket when I was dropping off a bike to Captain Chaos, and you know, it's like a$30 jacket from winners or something. So I was so ill prepared. But anyway, super cool guys, and if they make it to the West Coast, I will definitely rip up from Seattle and uh and share some sake with them and uh and get their story because I can't wait to hear more about them. But yeah, there's always someone out there doing these these crazy things. And it's actually those guys reminded me of someone else who's on my wish like wish list to uh interview, which is the C90 Adventures guy, which also went across the Trans-Canada Highway on little C90s, him and his girlfriend at the time. Uh, so another real adventure, and that stretch of highway lends itself to these adventures because it's the only corridor to go across the country. So you always, I guess, see these adventurers doing something strange out there.

SPEAKER_14: 25:18

That's pretty cool. Uh, two comments. One, I was gonna say, I know you can get a if you're in that situation again, I know where you can get a clean badland jacket with a nine millimeter round in the pocket. Two. I wanted to ask you, um, seriously, the the wildlife crossings crossings, are they like overpasses where they've directed them that the animals can cross over the highway?

SPEAKER_11: 25:38

Yeah, so you know, because Canada, and you know, they have lots of tax money, they have massive fences that are well set back. So, first of all that's the first thing. And then, yes, the fences direct them to essentially bridges that are shaped like a hill and they're covered in, you know, natural grass and trees and things like that. But they're done a lot, like they're done often. So there's a famous one that was built in Washington, I think near Stevens Pass or something. It was like a big deal because like everyone says you can't waste all this money, yada, yada, yada. I think there's webcams on and stuff, but it was really cool to see this thoughtfulness of keeping wildlife off the road and having them, you know, for a way to migrate because it's a major migration point. Yeah. So I don't know if it's being like wildlife tree huggers or just stopping people from running into deer and moose and and caribou and bear. There are a lot of bear up there. Uh so, but you could tell there were no dead animals on the side of the road when they implemented this system. But yeah, it was really, really impressive.

SPEAKER_14: 26:43

Yeah, and and animals quite often they get killed, but you know, so do the people who hit them because they're hitting them at high speeds.

SPEAKER_11: 26:49

Yeah, and as a biker, you're like, yeah, let's do what we can to keep keep the wildlife off the road, you know what I mean? Plus they got places to go, also, right? So we're we're right, we're the assholes putting these major highways directly through their corridors, right? As humans always do. So, you know, if you're gonna spend billions of dollars on the highway, at least put these wildlife crossings so we're not smashing into, you know, you run into a moose at 100 kilometers an hour, you know, it's game over. You your head's coming off.

SPEAKER_14: 27:14

You run into a moose at 10 kilometers an hour, your head's coming off.

SPEAKER_09: 27:17

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_14: 27:18

I rode, I rode by a moose here recently. I rode out to my uh my in-laws, uh, about they live just uh just up the road here. And I was driving along and I was like, there's this thing the size of the car pacing me and in the field at a trot. Clip, clip, clip, clip. And I looked and I was like, that moose is bigger than this SUV I'm in.

SPEAKER_11: 27:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_14: 27:38

It was it was I was just it's massive, it's massive.

SPEAKER_11: 27:40

They're huge. Yeah, you know, and nothing, nothing sadder than passing a bear on a side of the road that's been hit. Yeah. And speaking of Trans-Canada Highway, the guy who has done the Trans-Canada Highway more than anyone, which rounds out our Canadiana list of authors, is Nick Adams. And I think you have some data on some of the books he's written, but you know, in his books, nothing makes me happier than enumerating in a little notepad how many times he complains about like ADV riders and their stickers on their bikes or the straight pipes on Harley Davidson. He is decidedly a curmudgeon motorcycle rider, but his books are delightful. His audio books are fantastic. And mark my words, it'll be a short order till he is on a giant GS with stickers all over the outside of it, stopping at Starbucks. I guarantee you.

SPEAKER_14: 28:29

You know, you th you threatened him with that at the end of the interview. And I think he was, he was very polite and he said, I don't think so yet. But one of the things, one of the things I thought was really interesting is uh in the interview, he was I was listening to him and I I didn't know who Nick Adams was and before this, and I was listening and then I I got into the I don't know the first 10 minutes of the interview, and then I I stopped and did a bunch of research on him. He's got like 13 books. And I was like, wow, I mean, I and then later in the interview he says, I'm 70, and I went, what? He sounds much younger than that. And no wonder he narrates his own books. Anyway, super nice guy, delightful. Um, and he's quite like a a curmudgeon gentleman, I would say, is what you know. He's he's he's such a gentleman.

SPEAKER_11: 29:11

He's a passive aggressive English curmudgeon, which is great. You know, you you can't just write, I went to the Starbucks on my motorcycle. You gotta have something in there, some color in there, right? And we talk about the Dempster Highway a bit, and that brings us around to uh Carrie. Carrie's one of our uh competitors, and he's really super helpful. He's been uh he's become a friend. And he did a massive trip up there, and and I it dawned on me that we have never really unpacked that that you know cliche trip, that thing that is on the top of everyone's list of going up the dempster to the Arctic Ocean. So in the next few episodes, uh we'll have a comprehensive uh episode about going up to uh the Dempster Highway and beyond. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_14: 29:55

And with that, should we roll the interview?

SPEAKER_15: 29:58

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SPEAKER_11: 30:58

Nice to meet you, Aaron. Thanks for inviting me. Pleasure's mine. We just added you to the motorcycle book club. And today we're going to talk about a couple of your books. First is Riding Around on the Breeze. And uh you grew up in the UK. And did you ride motorcycles back home?

SPEAKER_01: 31:15

I did. I uh got my license when I was 16 and had a whole mess of small powered, underpowered scooters and things. I think the first one was a oh a 1950s Lambretta LD. And then when I when I passed my motorcycle test, I uh I seemed to like big old, ugly British singles. I had uh two different Panther motorcycles, uh 600 and 650cc uh sl sidecar sloggers. Nice.

SPEAKER_11: 31:46

And they they were they were a lot of fun at the time. And I remember your father was quite supportive of riding motorcycles when you were a youngster, and that's sometimes a bit unusual.

SPEAKER_01: 31:55

Can you maybe tell us about that? Well, actually, my dad was usually pretty quiet. My, you know, I had the normal teenager struggles with my mother. Um, you're never bringing a motorcycle to this house, that kind of stuff. And uh my father just stayed out of it. And I only learned subsequently that he'd um when he'd been stationed in the Far East at the end of the Second World War, he'd spend a lot of time riding around on, you know, military AJSs and such like, and really had a soft spot for motorbikes. So uh while he he wasn't directly supportive, he certainly wasn't uh antagonistic towards my ambitions.

SPEAKER_11: 32:35

Perhaps he had a little friction from the misses at that point. And perhaps uh perhaps, well, not perhaps. I'm sure he would be very proud of your riding and work today. That's uh that's for certain. Oh, that's nice. And what's in your garage today?

SPEAKER_01: 32:49

Uh I have three Motor Gutsies and a Suzuki Bergman 650 scooter. And actually, my son has a couple of bikes in there at the moment. He has uh an Africa twin and uh uh I think it's a 2000 Moto Goodsi V11 sport. So there's six bikes and not a lot else in the garage.

SPEAKER_11: 33:11

I think that goes to your your trait, your self-uh described trait as being an optimist. Uh I'm definitely not an optimist. Uh and you know that's that's uh listeners will definitely agree with that. But how does that translate into your writing?

SPEAKER_01: 33:26

I guess Moto Goodsea have got a bit of a reputation of being uh quirky in many respects. I kind of like that. Um the older bikes sometimes uh can be a little temperamental, and uh but as far as I'm concerned, that just provides a few little challenges along the way. Um simple things, especially with the older bike that I ride the most, the 1972 uh Motoguzi El Dorado. You know, it has points and carbs, and sometimes those things can throw up a few little issues, but uh it's rarely something that can't be fixed along the way.

SPEAKER_11: 34:04

And in your book, Riding Around on the Breeze, um, you start off by saying that you're 73 years old when you wrote that book, and you're not exactly, you know, riding down Route 66, where there's a lot of services and a lot of other riders. In that particular book, you're riding in a very remote area, and it's this seems to be a recurring theme uh with uh motorcycle men, you know, electing to do the hard things. Why do you think we keep doing the hard things the hardest way?

SPEAKER_01: 34:31

I am not sure I can speak for anybody else, but uh when I came to Canada in 1976 or seven, um, I was working for the provincial government and I ended up doing a lot of canoe survey in northern Ontario. So I got accustomed to being in that kind of environment and enjoyed it. And uh I guess when I started riding in Canada, uh it was those places that attracted me. So, you know, going up to northern Quebec, over to Newfoundland, over across Labrador, that kind of thing, um, didn't seem like great expeditions to me. They just seemed like places I was interested in riding. And uh I guess I'm comfortable in that environment. And that's what gives me pleasure to be riding in.

SPEAKER_11: 35:16

It's funny that um you say canoeing. So when I was reading your book, I I wrote down an amazing amount of notes. I'm never gonna get to them, and some of them seem, you know, self-righteous. But my first job in Ontario, I grew up in Ontario, was a canoe instructor. It was an outward bound program. Oh, lovely. You also talk about hiking a lot in your book. There, I mean, trying to make a really big Venn diagram of all of our common interests with it seems to be common traits with guys who ride motorcycles. Yeah. Why do you think we share so many common traits as motorcyclists?

SPEAKER_01: 35:49

I mean, you mentioned outward bound. I did an outward bound course when I was 16 uh in Wales. That was one of the, I guess, fairly early on in the history of outward bound. Again, that comes back to the sort of general feeling of uh being comfortable and enjoying uh being in wilder places, uh experiencing a little discomfort, not not putting oneself out in order to be deliberately uncomfortable, but not avoiding things just because there's a potential for some discomfort. You know, I still throw up a tent every now and again, despite my uh advanced years. I have no trouble sleeping on the ground. It's just it's just become part of the thing that I that I've always done and always enjoy. And I think as you're suggesting, a lot of other people have a similar sense of enjoyment from um doing things in the natural world. And a motorcycle is one of the ways in which we can do that.

SPEAKER_11: 36:50

Keep on that Venn diagram topic. I just shipped my motorcycle to uh London Heathrow, and I'll be seeing that in May, which is not exactly the best time of year to be riding around Great Britain, as as you know. Uh but you know, we will continue to do those difficult things. Um in your writing, you know, you talk about motorcycles are inherently, you know, a risky business, and a modern, safe, reliable motorcycle wasn't fulfilling enough for you. So you've chosen to do these more challenging rides on these difficult bikes. What's in your future plans in these uh uh in these goals of doing difficult things with difficult bikes?

SPEAKER_01: 37:29

Uh I would I would sort of dispute that. I'm not sure that I um I've deliberately chosen older or more difficult bikes to do these things. The the 72 Motor Goodsi that I ride usually or or mostly on these longer trips. Uh after a big hiatus of not riding in Canada, I I was just looking for a bike. I'd I I decided it was time to get back on two wheels, and that was the first one that caught my eye. It just looked like a bike I was interested in, not I didn't really sort of consider its um characteristics or quirks. Um but I guess yeah, there's a certain I get a certain pleasure out of riding things that perhaps are not as uh perceived as as reliable and comfortable as most people these days seem to seem to go towards. But for me, it it it just it's all part of the package. I I enjoy it.

SPEAKER_11: 38:28

Well, I have to take issue with it because you're constantly an optimist. But in in this book, Riding Around on the breeze, the book starts off with before you go on your trip, you had to replace the cylinder heads. Maybe you can tell us why that was necessary.

SPEAKER_01: 38:42

Well, it's an older bike, you know, it's 50 something years old now. And and in that that generation of motor goods, the um the exhaust are held on with a screw-on uh clamp that screws into an internal, an external thread on the cylinder heads. And through time, those threads have just through vibration and wear and you know, aluminum decay, they've just those threads are given up. So the alternative was, well, there were two alternatives. One, I could uh get somebody to put some bronze inserts in there and then, you know, you use new threaded uh clamps to hold them on. But I also had a couple of older cylinder heads lying around from a slightly later machine which used a more traditional manner of holding the pipes onto the cylinder head. So I got the cylinder heads cleaned up a little bit and slapped them on the bike, and away we went.

SPEAKER_11: 39:36

Yeah, I think there's a lot of joy of knowing every quirk and noise and personality trait of a motorcycle before you go on a long ride. I've never understood people who don't do just basic maintenance on their bike, and inevitably something will happen. Uh admittedly, it's less often these days with these uh modern bikes, especially these modern ADV bikes. And you know, you take a few polite jabs at ADV riders in all of your books, and at some point you're just gonna come to the dark side. So when is that? When are you gonna get your big ADV bike and come join us?

SPEAKER_01: 40:13

I have joined the dark side, actually. I have a 2000 Motogutsi quota, which was Motogsi's big ugly enduro bike. Uh their first stab at uh at a really large Enduro bike. The uh the rumors, the rumors have it, and I've never been able to trace this down, that Gaddafi and some of the other North African uh leaders wanted something for the military and police that would be able to do, you know, 100 miles an hour over rough desert roads. So Motor Goodzi came up with this thing with a 21-inch front wheel and uh uh big lazy gearing and big soft springs. And well, I have one. So it may not, you know, to me, to others, 25 years may not seem very uh modern, but to me it's it's got electronic ignition and and uh fuel injection, so that's about as modern as as I need.

SPEAKER_11: 41:10

Yeah, once you make that big leap away from points in carburetors, it is a it is a whole new world. So welcome to it, welcome to dark side. So when are you gonna start putting the stickers on your saddlebags like everyone else?

SPEAKER_01: 41:25

I I've never found that uh uh that necessary. I don't know.

SPEAKER_11: 41:29

Uh yeah, I uh I mention it because about every second chapter in your book, I'm like, yep, that's me, guilty as charged. Um but halfway through your first book there, you switched to uh you switched to a great big gold wing. Uh do you still have that bike? No, I sold it uh towards the end of last year. Right. It was a great bike. My next bike for North America will be a great big bagger. It'll be a K1600 B or, you know, uh something like that for sure. And you know, at some point you just gotta you gotta throw in the towel and go, there's not much more adventure left in me. Uh, even though I run an adventure rally, I tend to check out those off-road trails with a small little dirt bike, and I just don't have it anymore to throw around a great big GSA in in the dirt anymore. But I am quite um I'm quite proud of the guys in our rallies that can do it. But you know, that's just not something that uh that I can do anymore. Your journey begins in Ontario, and and I grew up in Ontario, and I never figured out for some reason that my motorcycle could actually leave the province. Did you figure out quite quickly that these bikes were made to do great big journeys?

SPEAKER_01: 42:46

Uh I think, yeah. I I mean I think the first the first decent trip I took in Canada on a motorbike was um was over to the Gas Bay Peninsula on the uh the El Dorado. That was my first uh and that part of the reason for that was so that I could go hiking in the Chick Chalk Mountains. And you know, getting on the bike and riding over there just seemed like uh an interesting way of doing that. But then once I'd uh I'd let that genie out of the bottle, uh, then you know Labrador City seemed a good place to be and and across to the coast and you know. Yeah, but I I guess I got uh I got the incentive or the nerve or the desire from those early days.

SPEAKER_11: 43:28

Yeah, it's definitely uh inspirational to know that, well, if you did it on this bike with points and you've done it on scooters, and uh, you know, you've done it on all these, you know, some of us would shake our head at these choices with uh with uh motorcycles that really you're empowering the reader to say, well, if he can do it, I can do it. Maybe you can tell us about uh making the decision to do part of one of those trips on a scooter.

SPEAKER_01: 43:53

Well, that was an easy one. Um I was looking for something that was comfortable uh for two up riding. And the big scooters, the big um scooters like the Bergman are amazingly comfortable and good uh uh for two people. When my wife's sitting on the back of the the Bergman, I can't even feel she's there. Literally, there's no body contact. So um And we wanted to go and explore the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland. So as as my wife would be the first to say, I've no interest in looking at the back of your head for hours and hours on end on the highway. So she flew to St. John from uh Ottawa. St. John's, I beg your pardon. St. John's in New Brunswick, isn't it? And I rode the uh the scooter out to uh to meet her. And then we spent a couple of weeks riding around on the Avalon Peninsula looking at all the historic sites and coastal, you know, bird sanctuaries and that kind of thing. And uh she flew back from uh St. John's and I thought, well, you know, I can either beat it down the Transcanda Highway all the way home, or go the northern route and go up the side of Newfoundland and then across at uh to the ferry at Blanc Sablan and back across Labrador. So that's what I did. And amazingly the the Bergman was perfectly fine, even I mean, at by that point most of the uh Trans Labrador Highway was paved. There was some short sections between the coast and uh Happy Valley. And then on uh uh the road south from Labrador City there was still some unpaved, you know, couple of hundred kilometres. But the Bergman was fine, I just take it easy. I've I've no uh I have no off-road skills whatsoever, but I can basically keep a motorcycle upright when the when the road's a little bit slippery. So that's you know, I didn't really think about whether it was suitable to the task. It was just what I had at the time and uh it it did the job.

SPEAKER_11: 45:53

You know, it's kind of a double-edged sword. The that road being paved, you know, obviously makes it more accessible, but at the same time, I I think it loses a bit of its charm. One of these years, we we will plan our rally to go from the Canadian East Coast uh over to the West Coast. We just we just haven't got there as yet. But speaking of your wife, she probably would roll her eyes a little bit because as men, we think riding motorcycles and all these unique rides would attract all these women to throw themselves at us because you know we pull up to the gas station. But that's really the opposite thing. We usually attract uh, you know, men just like us who want to come up and talk to us about our motorcycles. Isn't that more the fact?

SPEAKER_01: 46:34

Oh, absolutely. Especially when I'm riding the old El Dorado. If I if I go to a Tim Hortons or park anywhere, I'm at a gas station, it's a total guy magnet.

SPEAKER_11: 46:45

Whether I want it to be or not. It's it backfires every time. But listen, one of these days, uh there's going to be a writer for a scooter magazine that's gonna come up and ask you some piercing questions. One of the things uh I like about your books is you keep on talking about uh geology and geography. There's some lessons in there peppered into your stories. Is this a passion or was it a profession?

SPEAKER_01: 47:08

Um Well, I was uh an archaeologist in my my working life until a few years ago when I decided to retire. And as part of archaeology, you know, there's no point just looking at rocks and pottery and uh arrowheads and such like and not being able to put it in some kind of context. So inevitably you acquire uh some interest in geography and geomorphology and the variousologies that help describe uh the broader picture of what you've been finding or what you're studying. And anyway, I I have a natural uh a natural interest in in the formation of the world. You know, I I like to look at a hill and go, well, why is why is that there? And and at least be able to find out something about, you know, why is Manitoba farmland completely flat? You know, well, once upon a time there was a whacking big lake there. Things like that just uh make the world seem a little more interesting to me.

SPEAKER_11: 48:08

Well, it's definitely interesting to uh to read about it, and I definitely appreciate the little little lessons that I've uh haven't clued on to. Um, and then the second book I read was El Dorado to the Klondike. And of course, you did this on this ridiculous motorcycle, and the picture on the front of it has uh a spare worn-out tire. And I'm I'm assuming that's a used tire because you know we are Canadians and you're probably just as cheap as I am. Absolutely. And I write a Motor Gotzi, so we're notoriously cheap. That's right. That's right. Maybe you could tell us the route in this book because it is really impressive.

SPEAKER_01: 48:44

Well, that was a strange that that journey started off rather strangely. I just uh I can't remember I I can't remember which time the motorbike had been apart, but one of the many times it had been apart, I was just getting back to you to using it again. So it was sort of I started out on a, you know, I said to my wife a three or four-day just testing spin in northern Ontario to see if the bike was performing well. I met up with some people in a at a Tim Hortons in uh is it Deep River or no, Mattawa. And they said, Oh, we're going to ride the Icefields Parkway. They were riding a couple of big cruisers, uh, you know, guys there with their partners on their way out there. I thought, oh yeah, mountains. That sounds like a really good idea. So I just kept heading west. Um and I'd there was a gentleman in one on one of the Motoguzzi forums in Edmonton that I'd been in contact with. So I dropped in at his place. The bike was running a little rough, so uh we did some actually we we stole the carbs off his Motor Goodsy, El Dorado, and swapped them onto mine. He said, I'll I'll sort these out. You know, just bolt these on and go. So that's the kind of thing that happens in this older bike world. He and then we got talking and he said, Well, you know, yeah, you're in Edmonton. It's not that far up to the Yukon. You should you should go up to the Yukon. So I said at that point I, you know, I looked at the map and I thought, from home to Edmonton was a certain distance, I can't remember, but it was an equal distance from Edmonton up to Dawson City. But I thought, oh well, I'm halfway there, I may as well go. So I just started rolling north and uh ended up in Dawson City and then up the Dempster Highway, and it was a lot of fun. And how far did you actually make it north on that trip? I went as far as Fort McPherson. There were a couple of reasons for that. Uh firstly, I was on an old road bike, and uh while the weather conditions while I was riding on a Dempster Highway were perfectly good, you know, they that notoriously sticky patch where everything's made of that horrible sticky clay was rock hard, so that was easy riding. But the weather report were for some you know significant rains. I thought if I get uh too far up the Dempster Highway on this bike with its you know metal mud guards and not a lot of clearance between the uh the top of the tyres and the mudguards, and that mud starts to start adhering, I'm gonna be really stuck. So Fort McPherson was fine. I could, you know, I'd been able I'd seen the Mackenzie Delta, which had been one of the things I'd been hoping to do. I didn't really feel the need to uh to go up to a Nuvik or Tuktayuktuk. So Fort McPherson was good enough.

SPEAKER_11: 51:39

Do you ever have any plans of uh finishing that task and reaching the Arctic Ocean?

SPEAKER_01: 51:44

Uh no, not really. I uh it's it's not one of those bucket list things for me. I I you know I I w it was a sort of bucket list thing to ride on the Dempster Highway. Um but going through the mountains was really what I you know it was that terrain that I was interested in and seeing. Uh you know, once you get beyond Fort McPherson, it's basically just, you know, swamp and river valleys and and well, the the big river valley, obviously. Um and it didn't really I didn't really feel the need to complete the journey.

SPEAKER_11: 52:18

And I find it is exactly anticlimactic. However, like most difficult things, I think people appreciate and revel in the accomplishment afterwards, uh, after the pain has gone away and all those miles have gone away. There's some there's some satisfaction in it, in it after. But while you're doing it, it's like, what am I doing here? I'm not really sure. Um, in that journey, I spoke to you now, and I've recently spoke to Mark Richardson, and I've never done the Trans-Canada Highway because I've lived all around the world and I've lived in the US most of my life. And next week I'm actually doing the Trans-Canada Highway from Ontario back to BC. Do you have any advice for someone tackling the Trans-Canada Highway for the first time?

SPEAKER_01: 53:03

I think I would find it less engaging on a less engaging bike. You know, with a with an older bike, you're always listening and thinking about what's going on and and paying attention to the machine and and that particular bike uh speaks to me very clearly. Uh uh I think a more modern more modern bike, it might just the journey might be just a little tedious. Except around Ontario, of course. Yeah, I mean the the Transcanda Highway, as long as you don't take the northern route on Highway 11. If you stick to 17 once you go north from the Sioux, up to Wawa, and then around, you know, sort of around the Pocasa Peninsula and and on to Thunder Bay and Kenora, it's a much more, you know, that's an enjoyable section of the road. For sure.

SPEAKER_11: 53:51

Yeah, I think you have to pick your your route accordingly. You don't have always have to be on the Trans-Canada Highway. Perhaps I'm just using it as a euphemism for going across the country as opposed to tackling that highway specifically. In the defense of modern boring motorcycles, a lot of us that are not, you know, retired yet and we have obligations, there is some comfort into the fact that we only have two weeks to do this European trip and the bike just has to work. And we have um a list of goals that we want to achieve or places we want to see, and it's and it's more about the destination rather than the journey. But um, I think you've given us some inspiration that when we have more time, it would be nice to concentrate more on the journey and not have, you know, the next hotel booked necessarily. And uh if the bike makes it, it makes it. And if it doesn't, well, we have a we have a tent on the back. Is that the message you're trying to convey in your book?

SPEAKER_01: 54:46

Uh to a certain extent, but you know, I should also qualify that by saying it's not that I don't like modern if uh you know efficient machinery. I'm scarily enjoying uh the 2010 uh Suzuki Bergman 650 I've got in the garage right now. There's something incredibly seductive of just being able to open the throttle and have the power that you need all the time at that moment. You know, no bothering about which gear I'm in or whether I have to change down to pass that transport truck. It's just like squeeze and go, brakes that work, handling that's good, push buttons start in the morning with no thinking about chokes and where your throttle position is and whether the clutch is sticking. Yeah, yeah. So there is it's not that I I I don't have an appreciation for uh more sophisticated vehicles. And I I fully understand your motivations for your trip to the UK. That that makes perfect sense to me. Um you're not there to sit at the side of the road fussing around with machinery. You want to go where you want to go and and enjoy the things that you know you hope to be able to see and do.

SPEAKER_11: 55:58

All the important authors that I've spoken to will always hit the point home that all of the interesting stories are from when they were on the side of the road, and someone inevitably always comes. Maybe all these lessons will will find their way into me one of these days, and I'll actually uh I'll actually be broken down on the side road, and something interesting will will happen to me, maybe. Are you working on any uh books right now?

SPEAKER_01: 56:22

Uh I've just finished one um called Searching for Moments. It's uh uh basically the same thing. It's uh some travel stories, some descriptions of uh breakdowns, or at least mechanic mechanical issues that needed to be addressed for one reason or another. The the first part of it's a I talk a lot about how I get through the winter, uh with sort of trying to, at my age, trying to stay basically healthy so that when the spring comes I can ride. Yeah, it's it's normal sort of grab bag of Nick does stuff on bikes.

SPEAKER_11: 56:59

It's really inspiring. And uh it's definitely inspired me a little bit more to get out there and ride and not necessarily have a have a mission-focused ride. So thank you for that. And where can people find your books?

SPEAKER_01: 57:12

Uh they're all available through Amazon. Um and all but one. One's currently in process, but basically they're all available on Audible as well. Uh and as I always say in my snotty Brit accent, uh, there's no AI narration here. It's all done by me, Watts and all. So, yeah, uh the easiest way is just search for Nick Adams motorcycle, and that inevitably finds me.

SPEAKER_11: 57:40

We've had a few of our listeners say that they listen to our podcast while they're riding, and it it kind of makes me uh cringe a little bit. But uh you narrate your books yourself and they sound great. So thank you for the hours of enjoyment, whether it's in the car or on the motorcycle. And folks can go to our motorcycle book club and see copies of your book there. And I think we have some links as well. But thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I know uh I know you're very busy in the fall season, winterizing motorcycles. Uh uh, any of your bikes still on the road today?

SPEAKER_01: 58:12

They're all on the road. I never take them off the road. Um, if the roads are bare and dry in the winter, I don't care about snowbanks, I'll be out riding. I it one of the one of the things I get the biggest kick out of is riding when there's you know three foot snowbanks on either side. But the roads have to be clear. Yeah, people definitely give you the big eye look.

SPEAKER_11: 58:31

What is that guy thinking?

SPEAKER_01: 58:32

But listen, if the ro if the pavement's clear, you're uh you're good to go, right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, and the places I like to go, there's nobody watching anyway. So maybe that's good sometimes, right?

SPEAKER_11: 58:44

Yeah. Well, listen, thanks so much for the time, and uh and I will put the links in the show notes to your books. Thank you very much, Aaron. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, sir.

SPEAKER_00: 58:53

Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention? I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. And I need all of you to stop what you're doing and listen. Cannonball!

SPEAKER_15: 59:08

Hey, Cannonballers, thanks for subscribing to our podcast. We appreciate it. If you're not a cheap Canadian and want to buy us a coffee, head on over to buymeacoffee.com. Or better yet, buy us a case of sweet asscraft IPA. Release it on patreon.com. Links are in the show notes. Now, back to the riveting podcast in progress.

SPEAKER_14: 59:34

And we are back.

SPEAKER_11: 59:36

Yes, sir. It was kind of cool to talk to the man that I've listened to a bunch of times uh on an audiobook. That's that's happened a few times, and it's uh it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_14: 59:44

Yeah, it's nice to have that ability. And um, and then when you listen to the next book, you're like, oh, right, we've got to get him back on to talk about that. But the list just keeps getting bigger. In the beginning, you know, we had this wish list to begin the beginning about. These are people we'd like to talk to, and it's just gotten massive. I don't know that we'll ever get through it.

SPEAKER_11: 59:58

I'm actually working on a project. I'm no, I don't know if I'll ever finish it, but there's a lot of times where you do an interview, you edit the interview, and then you listen to the interview and proof it, or later, and you're like, oh, I sh sh forgot to ask him about this, or I forgot to mention that, or I was so concerned about making the interview go well, I should have responded in this way. I'm like, uh, there's just so much more, right? So I guess that's a difference between a guy drinking an IPA who rides a motorcycle trying to interview people and someone who's a professional. But there's a lot of uh, I don't want to say regrets, but there's a lot of missed opportunities uh there. And I'm I'm trying to figure out a way to uh to address that. But anyways, can we get to some cannibal news?

SPEAKER_14: 1:00:37

Cannibal news. I think it's probably an appropriate thing we should jump into. There's I know there's a lot of inquiries about trophies before. What's the story on those? Yeah, they're all made.

SPEAKER_11: 1:00:46

It's there's just it's a process. There's like a bunch of them. So they're in the mail to me, and as soon as I get them, I'm gonna mail them out to you. So if in 2025 your address was wrong or it's changed, you better get out to me and uh sorry, reach out to me and change that address because it's going to whatever address you had in your registration form. And let that be a lesson to everyone in the future. Whatever is your billing address is where your awards are gonna go to. So uh anyways, I will I will get to it. Uh they're in the mail. I haven't forgotten about it.

SPEAKER_14: 1:01:17

Maybe maybe in your future sign in just to create more work for you, you should have a where you like your trophy sent address.

SPEAKER_11: 1:01:24

Yeah, there's so much. You know what's funny, because there's a lot in there and I'm constantly changing it, trying to refine the process. Uh but you're right. Um one of the biggest challenges we have actually is I just noticed today, is that our newsletter goes out and it if you have Gmail, for instance, it gets put into a, I don't know, a folder called Promotions or something or news. And then in some places it goes right to spam. So I think moving forward, I'll rely less on we're talking about rally here, uh less on newsletters that go out, and we'll centralize everything uh and put it, put all notifications on the notice page, even before rally. So I'm gonna constant I'm gonna put more of that information for a rally entry uh entrance in the notice page, is what I think I should do moving forward.

SPEAKER_14: 1:02:12

Okay, good call. With that, let me ask you uh about rally information. The GPX files for 2026. What's the story on those?

SPEAKER_11: 1:02:21

I fine-tune them. We had some hotel changes, and that's all settled. I have all the hotels booked. I have the links, I just gotta put it together for everyone who signed up. And it's been fine-tuned. So the GPX files I know officially are not official until 30 days prior, but I can't see those changing unless there's, you know, an avalanche that closes a pass or something like that. But anyways, the the GPX files for 2026 are up there and can be downloaded for anyone who wants to uh take them for a rip or start working on them. Cool.

SPEAKER_14: 1:02:52

So so we had some feedback, and uh can you explain what you've changed about how you're providing a GPX file for like a full day? Talk to me about that.

SPEAKER_11: 1:03:02

Last year you had the primary route, which was a paved route. So that's for people who are not taking the off-road sections, or if weather doesn't permit, like we had crazy weather last year, uh if weather doesn't permit, you have that backbone. But one of the issues was it was a good day and you're starting your day, what if you wanted to go do the off-road route? It was it was hard to transition into the optional off-road sections. So based on feedback, the GPX routes for days that there are optional off-road sections, there is an entire GPX track. So in the morning you can decide, okay, I'm gonna follow this GPX track and uh I'm gonna follow the off-road one. So it's each day where there is off-road optional, you have the GPX track for the whole day.

SPEAKER_14: 1:03:49

So will that off-road be start to finish able to get you to the hotel at the end, or is it just the off-road section?

SPEAKER_11: 1:03:54

No, it's that's the change, is that you can leave your hotel and then you can make it to the next hotel, including all of the off-road sections, as opposed to remembering to switch over to it. So it um that's the that's the major change. And actually, I also made another fine-tuning is that the GPX file leaving the hotel is outside of the hotel because people were complaining that the start of it, now we're getting real menu here, but the start of it was inside the parking lot and GPS's were having a problem picking it up. So, anyways, the start of each day is actually outside of the parking lot, so it will take you to uh to the start of the GPX file on your GPS. And uh it just uh it's just a little more clean and less less messing around with your with your GPS.

SPEAKER_14: 1:04:39

Yeah, that's good. All right, so um the number of people we have signing up already for 2026 looks like it's gonna well exceed uh 60 participants. So are you gonna set up something differently for if we have more than 60?

SPEAKER_11: 1:04:53

The way we do starting is is everyone starts on the minute that their starting number is. So let's say your number 32, you would start at 32 minutes past the start time. So let's say start time is eight, your number is 32, so you would start at 832. But if there's more than 60 people, what do you do? Well, I've been thinking about it, and we find that most of the rally goers are not interested in, you know, competing for the overall winner. There's no need to try to get the first to arrive bonus. And the mathematics behind the first to arrive bonus uh depends on your starting number. So it is the shortest elapsed time. So the short answer is if you're not interested in going for the first to arrive and there's more than 60 participants, I will make the starting grid. Those folks who want to try for the first to arrive, they will be, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, whatever. And then everyone can leave after the last one of those competitors have left. So we'll have like a tier two-tier starting system if there's more than 60 people that show up. I don't think there will be, but if there is, that's the that's the solution to that dilemma because some people were asking.

SPEAKER_14: 1:06:06

I did see on I guess every social media feed that the perpetual trophy has been updated. Hunter, eh?

SPEAKER_11: 1:06:14

That's right. Hunter's name has been emboldened on the on the perpetual on the perpetual trophy. I know it's a bit of a hokey trophy, but it's what we're gonna have for the next few years. And uh, if we have enough competitors, we'll get like a huge, you know, a giant one that looks like the Stanley Cup or something eventually. But for now, anyways, it's been emboldened on there, and I think it's super cool.

SPEAKER_14: 1:06:35

I think we should endeavor to get the Stanley Cup and start putting those on top.

SPEAKER_11: 1:06:39

That's right. So I should start a little mission. I actually DJ'd once, believe it or not, when I was a kid at New Year's Eve in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, and the Stanley Cup was right behind me for that gig. It was pretty cool. Pretty fun.

unknown: 1:06:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_14: 1:06:55

What is the hat trick award?

SPEAKER_11: 1:06:56

So I was thinking about what do people do who come back year after year, right? Like what's the what's the goal there? So speaking of uh the hockey thread, so competitors that come back each year, you can try to go for a hat trick. The hat trick is you must get an overall winner, you must get a Rough Rider Award, and you must get a checkpoint crusher award. You can only get one award per rally. That's uh rule number eight F. But if you achieve those in any one of our ADV cannonball rallies, you will be awarded the Hat Trick trophy.

SPEAKER_14: 1:07:35

And it looks like we got a few teams forming as well.

SPEAKER_11: 1:07:38

Yeah, that's super cool. So I've noticed that people were signing up in groups or people were saying, Oh, I'm with, you know, I'm with, you know, big Gus, right? So there's a couple of things that when you sign up, if one of your friends have signed up in the past, or if you're signing, I've noticed some people will sign up like literally at the same minute. Um, there is a field now in the registration form that you can say that you're you're riding with so-and-so. And we've noticed that that's important because you want to leave together, whether it's one minute apart, or if you want to leave in the in the tranche afterwards. You know, you want to be numbered together so you can ride together. Otherwise, it gets awkward. So that has been addressed. Uh, if you have missed that opportunity, just email me uh through the contact page and I'll remedy that for you. But uh rest assured, if you're riding with a friend or you're forming a team uh of irresponsible adults, rest assured we will we will group you together. And so I have a giant announcement. I hope people are still listening, uh, but a giant announcement for shipping. So actually, this was the brainchild of uh of of Captain Chaos. This guy also you know buys beer and is a genius. So one of the challenges with shipping has always been how do you get the bikes picked up? Well, it was very hard for me to contact a company like Hallbikes and go, Well, I got this idea, it's a website and it's gonna be a rally. Well, now it's a thing. So the owner who I talk to of Hallbikes is genuinely a nice guy, and he is uh genuinely into motorcycles and being part of the community. So I know he's losing money here, but I want to say thank you and appreciate it. So the big announcement is Hallbikes will do a custom pickup the day after the awards banquet at the end of the rally. You're on your own for the beginning, but for the end of the rally, uh, he will do a custom pickup. So, and it's super cheap. It's 585 bucks. That includes$15,000 of insurance. You can buy additional insurance from them, I don't know, for 10 bucks or something. Uh, but that has to be done at the time of uh of booking. The only thing that's uh asterisk for adventure bikes, which is easily solved, the maximum height is 58 inches. So I know there's some old guys with some, you know, full giant windshields. I'm happy to help you take those windshields off and we'll steal a hotel towel and we'll strap it down to your bike. Uh, I will help you do that. I will also be there with your bikes. So when you leave, I will meet the truck, I will load the bikes for you, and I will help you take your windshields off. And the only other asterisk here is no loose luggage. So if you have something that wants to go back with your bike, make sure it is attached to your bike in a you know, reasonable manner. But he's not gonna let you put a suitcase next next to your bike. But that's really big news. It's cheap, it's reliable, it's safe. Uh, it may take a little time to get home, but they'll ship anywhere in America in the contiguous 48, the lower 48 for 585 bucks. It's a huge deal.

SPEAKER_14: 1:10:47

That's great. Well organized, and and great shout out there to Cap and Chaos. Great thinking.

SPEAKER_11: 1:10:51

Yeah, so just go to Hallbikes.com or you can call them directly at 1888 at Hallbikes. And Taylor, you're gonna save me from my attempting to read things because my my fluency is uh is at a grade one level. So could you please read the backlog of new signups because we've been off the air for so long for 20 to 26 US event, please.

SPEAKER_14: 1:11:14

Absolutely. Yeah, this is cool. This list is this is the longest list I have seen. I wonder if this has anything to do with the um popularity of the last rally.

SPEAKER_11: 1:11:24

Absolutely. And the fact that we've been, you know, not uh doing podcasts on time as we should be, so we apologize for that.

SPEAKER_14: 1:11:31

Yeah, we need to get back to a normal schedule. Anyway, let's let's not let's just let's just get into the list here. 2026 US event. Taz from London, England on a 1300 GSA, who is our first UK entry. Welcome to Taz. Stu Grimm from Squeamish. Some Squamish. He may be Squeamish. He might we're not sure.

SPEAKER_13: 1:11:52

Let me let me just let me start with that one again.

SPEAKER_14: 1:11:55

Stu Grimm from Squamish on a sorry.

SPEAKER_13: 1:12:02

I need I need uh I'm almost finished. I'm almost finished with my happy ending.

SPEAKER_14: 1:12:07

Here we go. Happy ending on a 1300 GS, the first Canadian entry. Welcome. Number 26 from the 2025, Eric Smith from Richards, North Carolina, on his 1250 GSA named Heron. First two-up entry. Welcome, both of you. A three-man team is forming in Washington. As we mentioned earlier, uh Aaron's gonna do his best to make sure that those numbers stay close to each other so you can run at the same time, leave at the same time, or similarly. And we have Morgan Webb and Rick Klaus, who were previously signed up, previously announced, and now they have Stephen Cakebread, who is joining them on his F-850 GSA. Next, we've got Tattoo Dan from LA on his F800 GS, riding with CJ Harris from Benell, Florida. And uh CJ hasn't decided quite yet what he's gonna ride. I just want to say it's nice to have options and get something with a comfortable seat. Just saying. Um here we go. Scott Reno, Morganton, North Carolina, on his 1250 GS. We've got, and I apologize in advance, I will do my very best here. Grant Tay Ronell from Frederick, Maryland on his Triumph Tiger 1200 Rally Pro. And uh Grant, we are we are probably not so far from each other. I I um well not right now, I'm in Stockholm, but I did grow up in Annapolis, Maryland, so not so far from you. A couple hours anyway. Brian Lamb from Bose, Montana on his Honda Africa twin. Tony De Luca, Tony DeLuca from Winfield, Maryland, another Maryland boy on his F 800 GS. Richard, I'm gonna apologize in advance. Richard Ridley Huber. Ridley Huber, Ridley Ridley Huber, Ridley Huber from Spartanburg, South Carolina on his 1200 GSA. The GSAs are really just rocking it here. Goodbye for this. Tom reading from Sergeant Texas on his 1300 GSA. I was number seven in last year's rally, and Todd, we are certain that we can get your uh number back for you. 2025 alum get pretty much whatever they want. Jan from Norway on his F800GS. Norway's first entry and second Scandinavian. Welcome. Shiv from Boston, Massachusetts. Shiv Shiv from Boston, Massachusetts on a F-900 GS is riding with Bombsi. Also from Boston. He hasn't decided what bike to ride. Ed from Apex, North Carolina on his 1200 GSA, and Bobby B from uh Mount Prospect, Illinois on his Motoguzi Stanley View 1200.

SPEAKER_11: 1:14:55

Nice. I gotta tell you my story one day of we're on an Alps road trip. This is when we used to go to Oktoberfest every year and then go down to the Nuremberg Ring. And I'm like, we gotta go to the Stelvio Pass, man. It's like one of the best roads in the world. I think it was soon after the top gear episode. Anyways, we go there with these rented sports cars after the Nuremberg, after illegally bringing them on the Nuremberg Ring. And we make it all the way to the Stelvio Pass, and the pass was closed for the season. I was so freaking pissed off. I was so embarrassed. I drugged these guys all the way.

SPEAKER_14: 1:15:29

How far out of the way? How many hours?

SPEAKER_11: 1:15:32

Hours. It was days. I think we stayed in Liechtenstein and you know, it was a it was an epic. And anyways, that was before I learned how to plan things uh better. So rest assured, I don't make those mistakes now. But yeah, whenever I hear Stelvio, I it it brings up that terrible memory. But I think we went back and we finally did uh we did the Stelvio pass uh appropriately.

SPEAKER_14: 1:15:53

And just to be clear, when you said they was illegal, it's because they were rentals and they said specifically in the contract, do not take them on the track.

SPEAKER_11: 1:15:59

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. This is before they had the trackers. So you could just rent a car. I think I had like a TT or something. I'd beat the crap out of it.

SPEAKER_14: 1:16:07

You had a bouty TT. Yeah, I remember that.

SPEAKER_11: 1:16:09

No, it was terrible. What a pig that thing was. But anyways, but it was fast enough for for for the Nurberg Rain. You didn't kill you didn't kill yourself, right? So but that was when we used to go every year. But I don't know whatever happened to that. I don't know what happened to go into Oktoberfest. I guess I don't know, we got old and responsible, but we should put an end to being responsible immediately. But anyways, uh do you have anything else?

SPEAKER_14: 1:16:29

I think that's it. I think it was a really long episode. So thank you. Um thank you all very much for hanging in there with us. And um, I think you know, I've got to finish off here with a happy ending.

SPEAKER_11: 1:16:38

Happy ending, my dear sir. And uh, I'm going to play four terrible songs from our India trip. That was from the music video we made, and then we will roll the outro. So thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_05: 1:17:08

Too early to just sit still. The city don't need strong backs no more. It's all cold and pills. So we pack up those legs of our reasons Heading off till the mouth runs dry. Find the truth and a cold and a bleeding Where the silence all we take the Hollywood So you still and the Halloween We take the Hollywood We take the Hollywood We take the Highway Home No Map, no mercy show.

SPEAKER_04: 1:19:57

There's no place for Melaca. So we make a home. No no, we take the hallway home.

unknown: 1:21:19

Is that is that the I and D? Does that think the thing I and D is the thing the I D? Is that is that oh is that do there?

SPEAKER_05: 1:21:47

Uh oh The engine screams through the Jagger Dare Dirt and poverty, I don't even care Live my past in the city grind Failures and goals claw out my mind Cold Winds Sunbirds Every mile I write I leave the wall But in the shadows of this and before the world is a bear The fire still Snow end us makes another week I know it's real No friends, baby Wind cuts deep through glowing High Desert Silence Echoes of fear Everett skies and rivers wide Riding so low at the mountains as my guy No Friends Yeah do the Switzerland No no no friends one more pass, one more try. I ride in the home where the lost bones lie. Oh God, single road enfin lesign.

SPEAKER_08: 1:32:27

Concrete in billboards, choke stars from my eyes. Cocaine's my spark sets my chest to a blaze. Kickstart the beast led the desert erase.

SPEAKER_03: 1:33:17

Don't get brothers the way We'll never fall as long. Crack the thunder's eye. Ghost of whole smugglers go spark in a fly. My brothers beside me on creep with a fist in the wind built on hunger.

SPEAKER_05: 1:34:06

Don't do my rush, then burn through my face. The desert, don't judge, it's just why don't I take our blood on the front?

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:19

We ride through the flame. No feel, no day.

SPEAKER_05: 1:34:28

Bitches ain't got shit on this budget.

SPEAKER_04: 1:34:37

We'll never fall. Sands our cathedral speeds all that we need. The city's a ghost just a stain in our way. This bond's forging iron, nothing left to break.

unknown: 1:35:16

Blood on the brothers.

SPEAKER_05: 1:37:13

Chase the sun across the borderline. Breathing thin humalay and air. Whispered prayers hang frozen there. High roll to the sky. Where the wind remembers every cry. No law, no rules, no rescue sigh. Only dust and the divine.

SPEAKER_16: 1:37:51

Tracks of fire through the salt and snow. Every turn attest.

SPEAKER_05: 1:37:57

Every mile I vow to lose myself to find me now. High road to the sky. Through the silence where the law still rise No mercy, no reason why Just me and the sky. If I fall at the mountain snow, I rode as far as the spirit would go. I rode to the sky. No past, no fear, no alibi. Where the gods don't speak, they just watch you treat to the sky. From dust to From fire to snow. The road remember.

SPEAKER_14: 1:39:28

Roll the outro.

SPEAKER_10: 1:39:32

Thanks for listening to the ADV Cannonball Podcast. Please give us a five-star review on your preferred podcast platform. That really helps us with the algorithm gods. All hail the algorithm gods. You can buy us a coffee on buymecoffee.com slash advcannonball. Or directly help save this sinking ship for the price of a pint at patreon.com slash advcannonball. Follow us on all the socials with the handle at advcannonball. If you'd like to send us a question or comment for the air, or if you are a musical artist and want your royalty-free music played on our podcast, or if you'd like to contact us for advertising opportunities, email us at podcast at advcannonball.com. Thanks for listening. And remember, don't be an ADV weenie. Keep your right hand cranked and your feet on the fence.