Ed March from C90 Adventures and ADV Cannonball News

Ed March's C90 Adventures on YouTube HERE

Ed March home page HERE

Chris's film about our trip to India HERE

This week's Ride Out motorcycle destination is Josie's Hideout Saloon - MAP HERE

Chapters

• 4:22 Upcoming Segments
• 19:00 Ed March C90 Adventures Interview
• 1:07:10 Recap with Taylor and Aaron
• 1:21:45 ADV Cannonball Rally News
• 1:37:16 MUSIC: Throttle Screams Through Death Valley - Aaron Pufal

Transcript

SPEAKER_07: 0:00

And a special thanks to Jethro from My Moto Adventure ADV Bike Rentals for buying us a case of sweet ass IPA.

SPEAKER_01: 0:10

Welcome to the ADV Cannonball Podcast. Where we discuss all things on two wheels: the adventure bike cannonball and other motorcycle-related nonsense.

SPEAKER_02: 0:36

Happy New Year. Welcome to Adventure Cannonball Podcast. I am your host, Taylor Lawson, and today I am joined by your favorite Umbrella Cocktail Sippin' Chase Lounge Sitting West Palm Beach Visiting Friend, better known to you as Aaron Puffall.

SPEAKER_07: 0:55

What's up, buddy? Welcome back. Welcome back to the studio.

SPEAKER_02: 0:59

Yeah, it's been it's been a while, man. It was fun chatting with you when I was traveling, but I have to say, I was like, we need to get some of this on air, but we didn't.

SPEAKER_07: 1:06

Yeah, it's always tough when everyone's traveling. But where are you today? I'm assuming uh by looking at the camera, I see you're in the in the Stockholm studio. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_02: 1:15

I am in the great white north, which is which is uh only a few deer a few degrees cooler than it was um when I was in s off the coast of Morocco. We had that wicked northerly coming through, which made it like I don't know, 45 degrees down there. It was cold. The last couple days were super cold.

SPEAKER_07: 1:33

Well, before we jump into that, what are you drinking, sir?

SPEAKER_02: 1:37

What I am drinking is a it's one of my favorites, and I like it because of the description. It is a hashtag Deepa double IPA, and it is the the mighty double IPA from uh beer city or uh city. Explosively aromatic, rich, and little bit fruity.

SPEAKER_07: 2:01

Dude, I want to live in the beer city. Like, what have I been doing wrong my whole life?

SPEAKER_02: 2:06

Sir, you have already been living in the beer city, you just didn't know it.

SPEAKER_07: 2:11

Nice, that sounded great. What are you drinking? Cheers. What are you drinking? Uh I'm in Seattle, and uh I am drinking some beer that I picked up on the way out of the the shoots brewing company in Oregon. So cheers.

SPEAKER_02: 2:27

Nice.

SPEAKER_07: 2:28

Cheers.

SPEAKER_02: 2:30

So before we jump in, I just want to say I have I have succumbed to your harassment, to your bullying, to your haranguing, and I bought some short levers from our favorite friends from China. I bought the short break and clutch levers. And um I also bought, thanks to Sven, I also bought the piece which increases the length of the um of the pull on the X Wall clutch. Actually attached to the mount to the it's a it's a lever arm.

SPEAKER_07: 3:03

Ah, that one that goes on the engine casing. I've actually seen that uh on the interwebs, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 3:10

Yeah, so it actually gives you better purchase, and then of course it reduces. I think it takes it down from on the T7, it takes it down from a 10-pound uh pull to a seven and a half pound pull or some seven-pound pull. It's you know, it's a 30% reduction. So I thought I'd try it.

SPEAKER_07: 3:26

Well, now that you got the shorter level, it's it's reversed that by 35%, so you have a net loss of five.

SPEAKER_02: 3:34

Great. So excited about that. Maybe I should have gotten maybe I should have gotten the one that sticks off the side of the bike 30 centimeters.

SPEAKER_07: 3:40

Right. There's some uh physics lessons there somewhere.

SPEAKER_02: 3:45

Yeah, okay. So I'm gonna net loss of five. Great, thanks.

SPEAKER_07: 3:49

All right. Well, hopefully you like the the shorter level uh levers because I can't live without them.

SPEAKER_02: 3:54

I'm keeping them. I'm gonna keep them on the bike with me. So when I come and see you and we meet in uh in Europe, I'm gonna have them there just in cases.

SPEAKER_07: 4:02

Just in cases. Awesome. So in this episode, this was supposed to be our self-employed Christmas party because when you're self-employed, you just sit in a sad room and pretend you have a Christmas party. But that that never happened because you were too busy having an actual Christmas with actual family. Um today we're gonna talk about um the root announcements for 2027 for Europe and the Americas. We have an interview from Ed March from C90 Adventures, a YouTube channel. Uh, I've been watching him for about 10, 11 years. Uh we have some new music. He's fun.

SPEAKER_02: 4:40

Yeah. He's really fun.

SPEAKER_07: 4:41

We have some new music at the end of the podcast, and I have a new segment that I'm starting called Aaron's Rideout. But first, let's hear about your Christmas vacation in a far-flung, exciting island.

SPEAKER_02: 4:55

So, the vacation. I went down to Grand Canaria, which um, for those of you who who don't know, it's it's a about 100 miles off the coast of northwestern Africa, it's sort of right off the border between Western Sahara and Morocco. It's a territory of Spain, it's a Spanish is a language down there. It's really funny, though, if you ask people from the Canaries called Canarians, if they're Spanish, they say no. If you ask people from Spain if the Canaries are Spanish, they say yes. So it's a really, really interesting conflict going on there. Um it's super cool because if you're gonna deliver a uh if you're gonna take a boat across the ocean, then you it's like the the gateway. I think Columbus stopped there in nine in uh in 1492, and they called it the gateway to the Americas, because you don't leave Europe or the UK for that matter and cross to the Atlantic without stopping there. So deep history in piracy, in uh in culture and in trade. And it's a really, really um it was really beautiful. This island was much more beautiful. I thought Grand Canary was much prettier than uh Tenerife, which where where I had spent some time previously. So went down there, got to do some scuba diving. Um it's kind of cool that the um the whole sort of eastern side of the island is a highway. It's like the the the outside of it is just a big round doughnut. It's an all-volcano. It's the right hand side of the island from the top to the bottom, is a there's like a freeway. But uh all the way off there, you can take these exits and you can go up and they're called Barrancos, and it means ravine. And you can take these ravines, which are basically valley roads with the most amazing motorcycle riding. I was I was just gutted. I was there in a car. Not everyone in the family has a motorcycle license, and um, so we we didn't rent four motorcycles, we rented a car, but it was just gutting me not to be on a bike out there. But anyway, the weather was chillier than I had uh had wanted. The water temperature was definitely cooler than I wanted, and I was cold on the dive, but I got to go diving.

SPEAKER_07: 7:02

What's your thought on diving, Aaron? No, I don't know. Humans belong on top of the water, and you're just asking for trouble for going under the water to stay on top of the water where we belong. We were never meant to go under the water.

SPEAKER_02: 7:14

You know, to that, sir, I have to say we were never meant to fly either, but we would have had a wing. So what do you say to that?

SPEAKER_07: 7:20

Well, listen, potato, potato, whatever.

SPEAKER_02: 7:26

Anyway, fun trip. It was good to be down there. See my 20-year-old who was uh spent the winter down there surfing, so got a chance to see him. That's really why we picked there. And um yeah, so he's uh he's on to the next island, and uh we left him at the airport two nights ago. And we returned to Sweden to uh two feet of freshly dropped snow. So that was kind of nice.

SPEAKER_07: 7:46

Nice right now. Yeah. You uh blessed me with some really cool uh FaceTime videos of of the places you stayed, and you you shared a really cool story, which was your wife grew up there, or when she was a kid, she was there, and you guys traveled to the home where she grew up or something, and you knocked on a door and the guy invited you in for a beer or something. It was a really cool story.

SPEAKER_02: 8:10

Yeah, exactly that. Um, yeah. So when my wife was um basically she's uh she's the daughter of uh two hippies, and they're still hippies, they live they live about a uh about a half an hour from us here in Sweden, and American dad and a Swedish mom, and they they just traveled the world and they were just you know, just did you know random work around the world, but they traveled the world, and one of the places they stayed for a year was in this um in this little town just up the hill from us. So yeah, we went up, she's like, Oh, there's the door. And I was like, there's the place. And I was like, Well, let's go knock on the door. And she's like, Oh, I don't know if we should do that. Anyway, we knocked on the door, and then the guy invited us in, and he had bought the place, and he it was his grandmother that her parents had rented from. Cool story, cool history. Um, it just made the whole thing feel very much like home. And we were staying just a few kilometers down the road, so it was really nice. But thanks for bringing that up.

SPEAKER_07: 9:01

Yeah, it was a really cool story. Well, I don't have anything that interesting, but um, you know, we have this dog and he's sitting here under underneath me. And what what's what's his name? His name is Taylor, but that's a story for another. Anyways, my wife calls him Bentley. I have to call him Taylor because I lost the pet. But so uh we were like, well, my wife needs to go to Florida because her her family's there and uh and they want to celebrate Christmas together. I'm like, well, you know, we don't have a private jet because we're not one of these freaking billionaires. So how do we do this? And we can't leave the dog because it's a goddamn menace, right? So, well, I guess we're driving. So we packed up the van again and we drove. It was 7,000 and change miles round trip over the course of three and a half weeks. And uh we drove all the way there. We had a successful Christmas, it was good, and then we came back. So basically, I was just the the driver, and you know, I was told to set up a Christmas tree and do whatever I can to make Christmas a success. So I will report that it was a success.

SPEAKER_02: 10:14

So it's kind of like the cannonball.

SPEAKER_07: 10:16

It was exactly like cannonball, but less beer involved. There were no cool friends. I was just uh I was just uh uh a truck driver, essentially. But uh I will say I was so fed up with the roads, dude. It was crazy. The roads were terrible. I'm never going, I think it was I-10 or I-40, I don't remember, but it was brutal. I don't understand how a country so rich can have such crappy roads, it was driving me freaking insane. But on the way back, we took the high, the higher route. I think it's I know it was I-10. I don't know. The winter crumbs comes across the roof, and it was so much better, and it was just glorious on the way back. But I need to make a map which shows the bad roads and the good roads in America. And uh, it was so bad. We pulled into a gas station in Oregon. How bad was it? It was bad. There was a pothole that was so deep that as I was walking a dog to use the bathroom, which was the pit stop protocol, right? Diesel, dog walk, food, take shifts, go and anyways, a car went through the pothole and then it blew a tire and it was like as it was going down the street. I'm like, holy shit, this guy just like nobody cared. Like, like, no like city worker came out and filled the pothole. No one, no one gave a shit. And then another person drove through it and it was another flat tire. I'm like, what is going on? And then later on, we were down in like Louisiana or somewhere, and there was a huge traffic accident, and the lady in the box diverted us around and it was dark, and I'm like, let's just get through this. And I was going along and I'm driving the big van. The van has a stupid lift that came with it because it's an all-wheel drive sprinter. And I went through the most massive pothole that I've ever been through in my life. And I'm like, holy crap, this just happened to me. And as I went through the pothole, everything went flying in the van. The dog went flying, everything came off the shelves. And there was a row of cars on the side of the road. I'm like, oh my God, all these cars are destroyed. And again, there's no police officer out there. There's nobody gives a crap. There's no one like coming with a bag of gravel or something like that to fill the hole temporarily. But thank goodness I will never make fun of this stupid lift on this van again. I went through that pothole. I thought for sure it's destroyed. At least there's a flat tire, at least there's a broken rim. It was unbelievable. We drove through this pothole, past all the people lined up on the side of the road, and nothing was wrong with the van. Unbelievable.

SPEAKER_02: 12:54

Wow. There's some testament to that.

SPEAKER_07: 12:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 12:57

Yeah. And these this is like highway stuff.

SPEAKER_07: 12:59

Like the these are on a it was a div, it was like on a diversion. It was like a side road or something. Yeah. But it was like, you know, the whatever service road, right? But anyways, enough of my complaining, but I was shocked of the the state of the highways and the roads. It was, it was really, really sad. Um, but on a positive note, on the way back, we stopped in Bend, Oregon. And this is an amazing place. There's gotta be 10 or 12 breweries there. And uh it was a little cold, but we sat outside with the dog, and uh we brought in the new year in Deschutes Brewery, and a rally has to go through there. I was checking out some roads, and uh there is some motorcycle territory there for sure, but we're definitely going back uh personally, and the rally will definitely go through there one day. It was fantastic. Nice.

SPEAKER_02: 13:48

Well, that's a good endorsement. Fantastic. Yeah. So one of the things that uh that came our way recently was a friend Chris Job who did the Himalayas trip with us. And he also has a YouTube channel called Sailing Aurora, where he talks about sailing. Hey oh, and yeah, hey, and uh anyway, but he's a really he's really good at producing, he does really great quality in terms of the production that he puts out, and um, he did uh like a 42-minute video of the trip that you and I did, uh, including him and four of our other friends through the Himalayas. So um we'll put that link in the show notes. And it's called A Journey Across the Himalayas. And if you can't wait to the show notes, you didn't have to scroll for it now. His YouTube channel is called Sailing Aurora. Yeah. And his name is Chris Job. I'm gonna go down and meet him in two weeks' time. Um, he and I are gonna drive down uh maybe three weeks at the end of January, yeah, three weeks' time, to see uh Robert Baldinger at the motorcycle uh massen, what's that called? Uh convention convention, motorcycle convention in uh down just about an hour away from Robert's place, about three hours from here.

SPEAKER_07: 15:01

Oh, that's awesome, man. That's really cool. Uh I'm jealous. Um again, if I was a billionaire, I'd fly over and see it, but you know. You know, soon.

SPEAKER_02: 15:10

A couple more rallies, a couple more rallies, buddy.

SPEAKER_07: 15:12

Sure, sure. Um so I was also watching some YouTube videos and I saw some scooter cannonball videos, and I'm like, I don't want to hear anyone complain about the danger of the cannonball, right? The ADV cannonball. Because there were a bunch of accidents in a scooter cannonball. And this one guy who's quite the famous YouTuber, he was taken away in an ambulance and his scooter cannonball was brought to an abrupt, an abrupt end. So if you want to see some scooter hijinks, there's a bunch of videos from the 2025 scooter cannonball. And uh, let's just say these guys are hardcore, and uh, I'm so proud of these guys for for going out there and doing these ridiculous things on you scooters. But yeah, this guy got taken away in an ambulance. It was insane. That's nuts.

SPEAKER_02: 15:57

Are these guys all doing, are these all still, it has to be a step-through scooter, right? You can't get one of these big high-powered 750s to throw your leg over the top of.

SPEAKER_07: 16:04

No, no, there's a bunch of rules. Uh, but I think the only exception to the step-through, I think like the Honda Monkey and like the cub is allowed or something, but they're just 50cc bikes. But it is, it is truly exactly as you say, uh, a step-through, low horsepower bike. Some of these guys have antique scooters. There's a bunch of math, uh, some black, you know, magic math to handicapping the different scooters, and they seem to have all that worked out. I'm not actually sure how you win the scooter cannonball. I'm I'm not entirely sure how that's done, but uh how the scoring is done. But I think their spirit is more just let's all just survive and not end up in an ambulance in our scooter.

SPEAKER_02: 16:45

Right. Let's try to get the service intervals up to speed so we can make it across the country. Because it those I thought that was funny. During the interview with him, you're like, you know, the duration of the actual event is longer than the service interval on most of these machines. So the people are stopping changing the oil, like like the Decart.

SPEAKER_07: 17:01

Yeah, and a scooter, you're you're dealing with the belt seems to be the weak point in that engineering experiment. But uh, speaking of uh small little motorcycles, everyone knows what a C90 is. It's it's the world's most popular uh motorcycle or two-wheeled you know vehicle. And Ed March is the hero from C90 Adventures. He's gone around the world basically on a C90 and he's doing some other fun stuff, and he's our interview. So if you have a chance to hop online and uh check out C90 Adventures, this guy is not just a little bike. He really shows that you can go do amazing, ridiculous, hardcore adventures on a C90, including riding through Canada and Alaska in the winter, camping with his girlfriend in you know, not negative 40 uh weather. This guy is hardcore, and he's our interview today.

SPEAKER_02: 17:57

And with that, let's roll the interview.

SPEAKER_05: 18:00

Adventure, endurance, glory. This isn't just a ride, it's the ultimate test of rider and machine. The ADV Cannonball Rally challenges you to ride from ghost to coast, navigating checkpoint to checkpoint by GPS and pushing past your limits. Take on every off-road stage, and you'll earn bragging rights and the coveted Rough Rider Trophy. Own the twisty tarmac and you'll claim the checkpoint crusher award. Every mile counts, every choice matters. Rack up the points, and your name could be etched forever on the winner's cup. This year the routes are harder, the mileage is longer, the glory is greater, the ADV Cannonball Rally is open for registration. Fortune favors the bold. Sign up today.

SPEAKER_07: 19:00

And March from C90 Adventures, welcome to the podcast. Hello. Nice to uh see you in the flesh. Unfortunately, the audience can't see your mug, but I can.

SPEAKER_03: 19:10

It's probably for the best. My hair is doing some interesting things today.

SPEAKER_07: 19:14

Listen, you've still got your hair, so I'm not going to uh smirch your hairstyle today. I'm in uh Seattle today. Where are you? I'm in Utah. Utah. And you've been there for a while, haven't you?

SPEAKER_03: 19:26

Yes. Yeah, been uh been bouncing around. I mean, I I don't know if I ever truly live anywhere. I've been quite nomadic for a long time, but yeah, I've been bouncing around Utah for quite a while now.

SPEAKER_07: 19:37

Yeah, I think we're both displaced. I'm originally from Canada and I've lived all around the world for my previous life, and I've lived in uh Florida for 10 years, uh, and now we live between Seattle and Victoria. So I'm quite like you, or maybe you feel the same way. Do you feel like a displaced person a little bit?

SPEAKER_03: 19:56

Um I d uh what do you mean by displaced?

SPEAKER_07: 20:00

Well, I don't really have an identity, right? Like you're obviously an Englishman and you're in Utah. How do you identify with the people around you?

SPEAKER_03: 20:06

Uh having sort of like blind patriotism and faith, you you know, and you like stand behind your country when a lot of it you had absolutely nothing to do with. Um, never sort of fully uh agreed with that. But I I do take pride that I believe to have the British sense of humor, the sort of the Monty Python, like red dwarf, black adder, just uh silliness. So I do I think of myself as British in that way. But other than that, through all of my travels around the world, um there just seems to be a certain type of person that I am, and I've found those everywhere, really. Some places they can be harder to find, mainly because those people don't come out of the woodwork as readily. Like if you're in the USA, people will invite you into their wagon circle, is what I call it, quite uh quite often. Um, whereas in the UK, they may be a bit more reserved. In other countries, maybe you need something to bring those people out, such as a really crap motorcycle that's worth less than the shirt they're wearing. But yeah, so I I find myself, yeah, as a I don't know, it's just just a sort of it's a certain type of person I am, really, other than my sense of humor. And I'm not sure if I really think of myself as like British per se.

SPEAKER_07: 21:16

I always find it interesting. I'm always a little jealous when someone has immediately something to kind of grab onto and wave their flag, whereas like, I don't really have a flag, but I'm here.

SPEAKER_03: 21:24

So yeah, I'm just a silly engineer type, I think is my flag that I wave.

SPEAKER_07: 21:29

I was going through your channel again. Uh I've I've been following your channel for years, and I stumbled across a video in 2011 where three of you guys rode these C90s into Europe in the snow. Do you remember what that rally was? We we run a rally, and I'm always interested in rallies. So can you tell me what that rally was and what the heck you were doing there on the C90s?

SPEAKER_03: 21:48

That was the Elephant Trepan, and I will never forget that. And I keep meaning to go back. That was the second time I'd been there. The first time was solo, and then the second time I dragged two of my best mates out there, they got C90s to do the same thing. Yes, it's held in the last weekend of January because statistically that's the coldest weekend of the year. It's basically on the border of Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic, and my numbers might slight might be slightly off, but there's about 7,000 bikers that all go camp in the snow, and it's in this big snow bowl, and so you have to cut a shelf in the snow to put your tent on. Otherwise, you've basically just made a sled and you will wake up at the bottom with all of the other drunk people that also sled down the hill. Do you know if that rally is still going on? I believe so, yes. Um, a little while ago, they they they decided to change it up a little bit, and it was called their their German uh phrase translated as like, was it looking forward to save the past? And basically, that event was getting so out of hand and so like uh like raucous. One of my funniest moments I've ever seen from that event was there were these guys who were stood on this snow mound with some beers in their hand, kind of waving from side to side, you know, as they're a bit drunk. And then their friend, I could tell he was up to something, didn't know quite what, so I was just watching. And he took a couple of steps back, took out a flare gun, loaded it, and then fired this flare underneath their feet into the snow, and it was one of those like exploding airborne flares. So it goes underneath them, they didn't know what's going on, the flare explodes, snow blasted everywhere, the beer goes higher than the snow somehow, and yeah, and they just turned around and basically just like lightheartedly kick the crap out of their friend nearly blowing them up, and then they were hugged and then carried on drinking, and there was a lot of that, and it was getting worse every I say worse, better from my perspective, every year I went, and so they uh I I believed they started implementing rules such as no air raid sirens, no explosives, like try and keep the drink driving down to a minimum, at least if it's off-road and you're on snow and there's no one around. Like just basically try and not have a massive headline that gets us shut down. So I believe it's still running, but it might be a bit more subdued. It seems the way you know these things go.

SPEAKER_07: 24:21

There was a great big event in America called the Wing Bull, and it was getting out of control so much that they canceled it. And I think it's moved to Las Vegas, which seems appropriate.

SPEAKER_03: 24:32

Yeah. Okay, yeah. So there is a pattern here.

SPEAKER_07: 24:36

Yeah, exactly. And it involves men and motor vehicles and and alcohol, which is fantastic. You know, your your channel's main focus is this mission to ride your C90 around the world. I I think it spans about 11 years and about 125,000 miles. Maybe you can introduce listeners to that idea, that concept, what you wanted to do, and maybe what you ended up actually doing.

SPEAKER_03: 24:59

Uh sure, yeah. So sorry, I've got a sniff. Uh I've got a slight cold. Um, yeah. Uh hi listeners, hope you enjoyed that. Or that's me. This is this is the real deal here. Um, I grew up watching Top Gear, uh, as did most uh British people. Same, yeah. And appears people around the world, actually. That might be one of our greatest ever exports. Absolutely. And also to fully try and convey what is wrong with the British people, uh, which I say fullheartedly, like as a term of endearment. Hammond, Clarkson, and May, uh, you know, that's the kind of like British like sort of banter, uh like sort of friendships that I enjoy. Yeah, and so I did one trip around Europe going to the Elephant Treffen. Then I because I just sort of, I don't know, I just I had a bike that was really good on fuel. I was an apprentice, didn't have much money. I think I saw a pop-up somewhere. There's this mental winter winter motorcycle rally, so okay, I'll go to that. Loved it. Like my first night in Belgium, just finding a random field to sleep in. And I was just like, oh my god, this is amazing. Then I dragged my two friends out the following year, and then uh then it was the Top Gear Vietnam special where they rode the motorcycles through. And long story short, somebody at work basically told me, no, you can't do that, it's impossible. And I'm like, everybody around the world rides a Honda 90. And they're like, Yeah. I'm like, so every road in the world by de by you know deduction is is suitable for a Honda 90. I commute to work about 30 miles a day on a Honda 90. So I'm doing 60 miles a day. All I need to do is just keep doing the 60 miles, but just not turn round. And they were like, No, don't be stupid, you can't do it. And I said, Okay, I'll tell you what, in two years' time, I'm gonna be sat on my bike in Southeast Asia, pointing towards this car park. I'm gonna ride to this car park and I'm gonna tell you that you're wrong. Uh, and I was friends with this guy, just to be clear. You know, it's this top gear, you know, taking the piss out of each other constantly. Um, the second you stop insulting somebody, that means that you're not actually their friend, um, is the rule. And yeah, and so I just I I was just doing the trip for me. Um, I'd seen a couple of films by Austin Vince, who's an amazing filmmaker. You need to watch Terra Circa and Mondo Enduro. He inspired me to pick up a camera. I was just gonna film with my iPhone and just make little videos. I don't know what I was doing. And then I I stayed with a guy who rode Malaysia to UK uh about a year previous, and he said, no, uh, he's like, buy a decent camera. There's like the world's largest camera festival in Kuala Lumpur at the moment. There's a big exp exhibition. Go down to the convention center, buy yourself one of these shockproof, waterproof, rugged cameras that is ed-proof, and it's got a little zoom on it, doesn't need much zoom, four times will do you. And he said, and use that, abandon the iPhone idea, that's stupid. And so I just I just started making videos. I didn't know what I was doing. The first bits of footage I got are awful, and I remember and the thing that was very useful for me is that I started editing while I was on the road. So I, after the first video of watching the footage, going, Oh my god, this is awful. I don't want to watch this. I want to make something that I would want to watch, like I want to watch Top Gear. So I had this very quick feedback loop where my filming improved and my talking to camera. Talking to camera was still awkward, and I I came up with a hack. And some people have wondered how I do what I do, and basically I couldn't talk to the camera. So what I did was I pretended that I was recording video messages or I was on video calls to my friends back home, and so what that meant was is that my style of recording just naturally became what I've been told is just very relatable because I'm recording a rather than these obnoxious influences that are like, right, I'm here at the Honda factory, and we're gonna go inside and we're gonna have a look at what bikes they're making. No, no, that's I can't. Yeah, some people can do that, I'll leave them to it. My style would be if I was talking to my friend, I was like, You're never gonna believe this. I'm at a Honda factory and they just invited me in, and so like they're gonna show me around. I've no idea what's gonna go on, but yeah, uh uh next clip will be of me inside. I don't know, you know, and you could imagine sending that to your friend just for him to sort of look at and go, what the hell is he up to?

SPEAKER_07: 29:43

No, I think your point that when Austin Vince filmed those, he did it like a classic TV producer where he filmed everything on that super eight and he got skills to pull up script. Yeah, he had the script, and then they all went back to someone's bedroom and they edit it all together. And I think in the modern version of you editing along the way, you were able to recognize where you could maybe improve or what was really good, and I should I should do more of that. That's uh that's a really interesting uh insight. But now your editing must take forever. Can you tell us how long you spend on these edits? Because they're really good. People need to watch some of your latest work, and it's it's it's properly produced. So how much time do you spend editing?

SPEAKER_03: 30:21

Oh, um if I think about it too long, I might jump off a bridge. But I think I mean to make a to make a 30-minute video, you're probably talking at least three weeks of full work days of just solid sat there editing. And while that while, yeah, okay, okay, Ed, why don't you produce a video every three weeks? The problem is is that because nothing is scripted, nothing is set up, it's it's just it was filmed on the spot. I don't even know what I've got filmed, I don't know how well I captured it. There was no, oh uh, you know, uh okay, you know, something went wrong with the audio, let's do another take of that. So when I'm watching it, um it's like, oh, the the audio was bad, or oh, my my GoPro just crapped out, it didn't record it. So my entire editing process is I I put every single clip on the timeline in order uh and like synced up. I think the last one had 21 hours of footage. I have to watch every single second of those 21 hours, paying full attention, see what I've got, and I need to be in the right headspace because and it's it's about what naturally occurs to me and what I'm seeing develop from it. Like, oh okay, I've got a lot of shots of me riding just through the open desert. Okay, right. Is this gonna be a gag about how it was just all open desert? You know, maybe there's a joke there about how it was all the same. I use comedy to try and make up for the the shortcomings in my content, and as long as you lean into the joke, but not too often, you know, can we go, oh you know, so I was going along and oh, you know, and I don't know, look at these bushes and the sand. Maybe there was a couple of different camera angles I've got. Yeah, then always going, well, oh no, my wheel fell off. And then that allows you to cut to that, but I can't make that call until I've watched it multiple, multiple times. And then you've just got to start compressing everything down from 21 hours, where is and then then you've got to manage the flow. Um, you know, you don't I hate uh like I've tried watching a Mr. Beast video a couple of times now, and I it feels like I'm getting PTSD because every single time he's talking to the camera is like, oh my god, look at this, that I'm like, I just I just want to watch a video stuff and so I've got to do the same with mine, you know, you don't want to be too boring, but I do want to show you what it's like going through a 10-mile-long valley with nobody to talk to, just looking at stuff. I don't want to cheapen the adventure by just throwing in jokes all over the place and just making it seem too lighthearted because no, I am I I could die, possibly, but I don't want to do this thing where people make a video and there's all this dramatic music and it feels like a you know Marvel's Avengers trailer, and there's all there's the whole brass band and the orchestra, and they're like, Yeah, we got to the top of the hill and we looked moody into the camera, and we kept our sunglasses on, so we looked tough, but you can't see our eyes, so you're not really engaged. And so it said the entire thing is this just balancing act of me just trying to compress it down so it's the shortest it can be while uh conveying the story and um making sure it's real as well. So yeah, it is a light-hearted journey, but yeah, I am at risk, but yeah, I I do I I am just having a laugh, but I do need to be careful, and it's making sure that I stay true to it without making it uh and also without accidentally making it fake by having some weird, I don't know, message I'm trying to push.

SPEAKER_07: 34:07

Yeah, you say that you don't want to lean too much into a joke, but I do remember a 15-minute monologue with a dildo attached to your forehead. But we will we will save that for the for the listeners to watch.

SPEAKER_03: 34:18

It's that wasn't a dildo, that was actually a prosthetic penis. Uh oh, I'm sorry, I apologize.

SPEAKER_07: 34:23

I apologize. It's very it's very highbrow. Yes and uh it wasn't it wasn't MarketPython at all.

SPEAKER_03: 34:28

Very highbrow. I literally super glued it above my eyebrows on my head. If you've ever super glued a prosthetic penis to your head and then wondered if it's going to come off, I can tell you the fear is quite real. The fear is real.

SPEAKER_07: 34:41

Some of your uh footage is actually quite famous. There's the the clip I saw on TV of the India truck falling over, which was a totally avoidable crash. And having just got back from riding in India, yeah uh this is this is normal every day. What did you think when you saw this truck just roll over in front of you? Like what the hell was going on there?

SPEAKER_03: 35:02

What was going on was that the I was I was just seeing endless fatal car accidents in India. Uh, some of them would still be smoking and the dust would be settling and whatnot. And so I was just trying to catch as much bad driving as I could because I really wanted to show how it actually is. Um, I had a rule where when I was talking about India, I would only say and make commentary on things that I filmed because, you know, some people might think I was being racist or whatnot. So I was like, no, tell you what, I'm I'm only gonna say what I see and show it to the audience. That way, there can't be any bias, can there? And so I was just following this propane tanker who was, I was like, this guy is nuts. And he was he he was playing chicken with oncoming traffic to to try and overtake. I don't know why, but anyway, and he pulled out so violently because he was getting so frustrated. He flipped himself over, slid off the road, then went through some power lines, brought down the power lines, and this was next to a petrol station. There was just this compounding thing. So I was riding one-handed, filming him just with my camera in my hand. There was no GoPro, there was nothing. That's why the framing's actually pretty good. I just thought I was going to catch some bad overtaking. I caught all of this on camera, and to answer your question, what I think was happening, you see it. I turned the camera around, I just go, I just got that on camera. And then I got mobbed by about 40 people who tried to kill me, which you can just hear at the end of that clip. So, yeah, there wasn't really much thought process, it just bit of Darwin bit of Darwinism on display, and I was just behind it.

SPEAKER_07: 36:42

That clip ended up getting you on the news, and I think that's what helped your Kickstarter project when you produced that feature film.

SPEAKER_03: 36:49

I uh yeah, I think it helped to a certain degree. Yeah. I mean, you know, everybody, you know, if you can have some footage to try and make a movie look good having something like that, but you know, that's something that Michael Bay would would make. Well, it didn't explode, but you know what I mean. Right. Um yeah, so to show that I just randomly caught that and other things, then yeah, I think that definitely helped her.

SPEAKER_07: 37:10

Yeah, you went on a bunch of adventures, and I encourage everyone to check out your your uh channel. But you know, you had to really have a love affair with this C90, you know, with its whopping six horsepower. It's been a while, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you made this great video. It's uh C90 Always on my mind. Is this a way of you paying homage to your to your most trusted travel companion?

SPEAKER_03: 37:35

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so it was set to Always on My Mind by the Pet Shop Boys, and I I I just like the song. Um, but I was listening to it on the adventure, and I've and this was when I was riding uh Malaysia to UK, and I thought, I think I'm gonna film a music video to this because I think this this fits. I I abused the living crap out of the abused, haven't ridden there for a while, abused the living crap out of that motorcycle, but I I do love her, and uh, you know, and and she's always on my mind. So one of the most ridiculous shots in that, I strapped a full-sized like musical keyboard to the handlebars, jammed the throttle wide open, and I was then riding no-handed while playing the keyboard while looking at a camera that was in the back of a tuk-tuk, which I hired for a day with a friend. And the only road we could find that was deserted enough to ride no-handed while playing a song multiple times. The only deserted road we found in Bangkok was past a police station. Because nobody wants to go past the police station because they'll get a ticket. So we're just driving about, I don't know, it must have taken 10 takes past this police station on that on that Honda 90 with the throttle jammed fully open. I'm regulating the speed with my rear brake, because I've got no hands, and I'm I'm playing the keyboard, and I'm looking into the camera the entire time. Uh, that was probably the most ridiculous shot. All the drums in Iran. That was that was a good one.

SPEAKER_07: 39:07

Yeah, it's really fantastic. And you know, this C90 and you do a bunch of crazy things. And I originally found uh found your channel when you were riding through Canada and Alaska in the snow with summer tires. Did you was it planned to be there in the winter? Did did you just end up being there? Did you end up changing those tires? What what was uh the you know the circumstances?

SPEAKER_03: 39:30

Uh so general rule of Alaska to Argentina is you land in Alaska in summer and you try and make your way to Mexico as fast as you can before the winter hits. That's the the general time scale. Sure. Um yeah, and you've only got six horsepower, but that doesn't really work. And uh Rachel and I, who were traveling together, um we were go we're going all over the place and whatnot and seeing different things. Um and yeah, and so we just ran out of time. So we came down the Alaska Highway. I was still The top of it pretty much in October because I made a Halloween costume. Yeah, so came down the Alaska Highway October, November, December. Got to Vancouver in December. And so it's like, well, what's the point in going to Mexico in the summer? Because it's not summer, it's December. Oh, let's do Canada coast to coast in the winter. No reason why not. Just after Vancouver, we did get sponsored some off-road tires with some studs on them. That made it a bit better, I'll admit. But yeah, so just accidental, just I don't know. That trip ended up being three years long riding Alaska to Argentina and yeah, just got just got stuck in winter, so might as well just embrace it rather than try and run away from it.

SPEAKER_07: 40:44

You know, I love the fact they did this on a C90, and the weather was, you know, minus 20, minus, minus 40. And, you know, you are a real romantic bringing your girlfriend to to camp at minus 20, Ed. I really, I really gotta say, you're you're you're a real sweet guy.

SPEAKER_03: 40:59

Uh yeah, I mean, she wanted to do the winter stuff. Uh you could never force Rachel to do something she doesn't want to do. So she wanted to be there. Um there was a couple of nights when chivalry wasn't dead. I think my I think the one that got me some really good brownie points was she was really cold. So I gave her my downfilled sleeping mat, because she had one already. Uh, I then put the mat on top of her, and then I then used some bungee cords, so she was like a she was basically like a burrito. A human burrito for one night. And I was cold, but I think I I just had some chocolate and just used the calories and my male metabolism that infuriated her, no end. One time we we stopped on the Alaska High, it must have been like minus 20 or whatever it was, and she over the intercoms was like, I I physically can't carry on, I need to stop and get some heat in me because I'm a and I've had hypothermia once, so I was like, okay, yeah, yeah, right, let's do this. And so, yeah, and so just uh knelt down on the on the ice in the middle of the Alaska Highway, and I just I I unzipped my oversuit, unzipped my jacket, and she then took off her gloves and put them like underneath my t-shirt, inside, you know, obviously, I'm still shivering now thinking about it, but the rule I said to her was as long as you keep your hands in one place, you can have as much heat as you want. It's all of this moving around and like suck it in there, and anyway. And um, and I remember she she said to me, She's like, I'm about to get a hypothermia, I'm freezing cold, I can't carry on. And you're here with your jacket unzipped, warming my hands up, you bastard. Exact words, and uh yeah, so she hated my typically male metabolism. Um, but she was a trooper. Jesus, is that woman tough?

SPEAKER_07: 42:51

Absolutely, and it really it really shows in the um in the video. You you guys went across the Trans-America Trail. There was all kinds of adventures. Um, but you know, you mentioned Halloween, and is that where you acquired Dave the Canadian safety spider?

SPEAKER_03: 43:05

Dave the Canadian safety spider, yes. Well researched, good works there.

SPEAKER_07: 43:09

Um it almost became this icebreaking tool as as you went to other places, and it immediately brought people over. Well, people always come over to a motorcycle anyways, but when you had Dave on the back, people were like, What is that? Is that a real spider? Yeah. So it ended up becoming this, this, this icebreaking tool.

SPEAKER_03: 43:26

Dave the Canadian safety spider, he was a spider that was a Halloween decoration. His body was maybe about, I don't know, 10 inches across, but he had these legs, which were they were like they were like four or five foot long. They were these enormous, like furry, gangly legs. So I stuck him on the top box on the back of my bike, and the legs were sticking out either side. You know, that's a big sort of gangly spider. And the reason he was the safety spider was cars stopped overtaking me as close on the ice and snow because they saw this big gangly thing and they were like, oh, well, well, now his bike is seven feet wide. So I will give him, you know, three feet plus the seven feet that he already takes up. Whereas before they would just try and pass at like three feet. And we're riding on sheet ice at this point, so it's like, you know, we're gonna wobble occasionally if you can give us some space. So yeah, Dave the Dave the Spider, that was where he came from. Um, but yes, he was an amazing uh icebreaker, but in the same vein as the as the C90 in in general, the you know, all the little cuddly toys that Rachel had in her basket and she had flowers on there and stuff. It's uh people would just come up to us, and people would say, I heard it multiple times. They're like, they're like, I've never come up and spoke to bikers before, but you guys seem a lot like you know, friendlier when looking at these bikes going, I don't know if you call us bikers, but yeah, fair enough. That was one of my favorite things about traveling on such a crap motorcycle, is you you just seem so much more approachable and uh down to earth because you're obviously not showing off, you're not part of a gang, you probably don't have an ego, you probably don't think of yourself as all high and mighty because you're riding, you know,$30,000 worth of motorcycle. I think that you're here just to have fun and to see my country. So I would like to come up and speak to you.

SPEAKER_07: 45:19

Yeah, it's really approachable. Um, in your current adventure, I don't know how to, you know, call, I don't know how to describe your current series, but you bought this uh this mini Jeep, then you rebuilt it to something more robust uh using that engineer brain of yours. Uh, maybe you can tell listeners what your current adventure is and maybe uh what your plans are for the future.

SPEAKER_03: 45:40

Alaska to Argentina on the Honda 90 took me three years. And during that trip, and I captured it and I on on camera and I tried to show people, I'd had enough of long-distance adventure. It wasn't really offering me anything new. Everything that was happening to me I'd kind of experienced before, and it wasn't exciting me that much anymore, but I also felt like I was cheapening the concept and I was kind of being a bit of a dick. Like, there's there's people that this is their life dream to ride a motorcycle around the world. And I'm just like, oh well, I guess I should probably get out of bed in this Bolivian hotel. Oh well, might as well do another hundred miles across here and whatnot. And I just felt like I was just, I don't know, like I I just wasn't I just wasn't as uh entertained by it as I should have been, and I uh so I thought it was good to stop there. But every time I did something new on that adventure, uh even towards the end, that was what really got my buzz. So I changed from doing ultra-long distance stuff to uh shorter trips, maybe two or three weeks long, but on a very ridiculous vehicle. So and I was sort of looking around and I saw this mini Jeep. It's like a child's sort of sit-on little types thing, except for some reason the Chinese decided to put a 125cc petrol engine in it, so it would do 30 miles an hour. Um, at 30 miles an hour is quite scary. It has no suspension, no handling, it is truly awful. And yeah, and so I saw that thing and I was like, oh, it'd be great to do an adventure on one of those. Oh, but it's an off-road vehicle. I'm in Utah. There is like actual freedom here to go off-road in anything that has a VIN number. Like literally anything. I'm pretty sure that you could stab one on an office chair and just drive it down the road. And so, yeah, I uh I bought one in Salt Lake City and decided to do a thousand miles to Moab, which is the kind of the off-road capital of the USA. No planning, didn't know what I was doing, the best kind of adventure. Engine blew up after like four days. It turns out it just overheated, uh, which is fair, it's not meant for what I was doing with it. Uh, I had a friend's wedding to go to had some downtime, so I used that time to engineer an amphibious conversion for it because the ferry wasn't running across Lake Powell, which is across the Colorado River. So I engineered an amphibious conversion and then drove 1.2 miles over the Colorado River, uh, which was quite nerve-wracking. And yeah, so I did that adventure, and that was cool. That was like three weeks of full-on, flat out I've never done this before. Then I converted him to be four-wheel drive with difflock, and I put four times the power in him. There was a snow pass that it's like a hundred-mile-long off-road trail that's up at 10,000, 11,000 feet. That kept defeating me in winter. Uh, surprise, surprise, 12 feet of snow will defeat a wheeled children's toy. So I then engineered a tank track conversion for it. So it was tank steer. I took the track units off of two snowmobiles in this completely unproved, literally, it I'd never driven it more than like, I don't know, a couple of hundred feet. So I just sent it up the mountain with me to do this hundred-mile-long mountain pass at 10,000 feet. Uh, danger to life snowstorm came in, got stuck on the mountain. I was there for five days, didn't see a human being. Like, just um, I didn't leave my tent for 24 hours at one point because the snow was so bad. Uh, yes, that was giving me the hit I wanted of okay, stuff I've never done before. I couldn't do the full hundred miles of the trail, actually, because of fuel. It only did, I think it was, I think it was like two miles per gallon or three miles per gallon. In its first version, I basically couldn't carry enough fuel. Uh, so I decided to end there. I put the wheels back on, and then I carried on to area 51, um, where the snow wasn't as bad, but I also converted it to be radio control. So when the snow started to get a bit too deep to support my weight, I just got out of it and I would then drive it using the radio control, because now it's got you know 180 pounds less weight in it, 80 kilos. Um, and that helped a lot. Uh also meant that I could put a sled behind the mini jeep, sit in the sled on the snow, and then drive the mini jeep radio control, and it could like tow me. And I still wonder what traffic laws that breaks. Because I don't think they're written. I think that I think if I get taken to court and I keep appealing, I think that just goes all the way up to the Supreme Court because they're like, I'm in control of it, I'm just not in it.

SPEAKER_07: 50:28

Listen, every child who's growing up in a snowy place has absolutely been towed behind a car on some sort of a sled. I think it is important for all of us that you get arrested and you take this all the way up. I think you'll do a service to all young men everywhere.

SPEAKER_03: 50:44

Yes. Uh radio control radio controlled full-size Jeep might start to be pushing the realms of like danger. But yeah, I was, you know, I've got a license plate, steering brakes, and everything. So just the fact that I'm not in it and I'm just being towed behind it is uh immaterial, Your Honor.

SPEAKER_07: 51:02

Do you plan on taking this uh this monstrous creation any anywhere further besides uh besides Utah?

SPEAKER_03: 51:09

Um, I think I'm done with the mini Jeep. Uh we rode uh so we did 700 miles off-road on ride-on lawnmowers from Reno to Vegas. That took three weeks, I think. Never drive a lawnmower off-road for 700 miles. Uh I'm not telling you you can't do it, I'm telling you you shouldn't. Suspension was invented in the 1800s for a reason. I think my back still hurts now, and I did that trip a year ago. Uh, but it was an amazing adventure. I think every wheel fell off mine at least once. By the time I finished it, I only had fifth gear. Uh reverse, first, second, third, and fourth gear all fucked off. I was only left with fifth. Uh, I try not to swear, but sometimes to truly convey what happened to that gearbox, those gears fucked off. And I don't know where they are. Yeah, so that was that was that adventure. And then my next adventure is with uh Robert from Aging Wheels. He's got a YouTube channel called Aging Wheels. He does they're kind of reviews, but they're more just critiques and light-hearted deep dives on the funny side of weird, quirky vehicles. Like, you know, he'll tell you all of the strange things about a trip hammer. Uh, and so him and I are going to be driving city cars. Uh these are 1970s electric vehicles that are shaped like wedges of cheese. And we're gonna be trying to do an off-road adventure on those. We're not quite sure how. I think we're gonna need some generators because electric vehicles on long distance off-road just doesn't really work. So yeah, we're planning to see how badly that goes, and hopefully it's it's awful, which means it'll be brilliant.

SPEAKER_07: 52:53

You know the filmmaker uh Claudio Van Planta, he filmed uh the long way series.

SPEAKER_03: 52:58

Yes, yes, yeah. I think we're Facebook friends, which counts, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 53:01

So so reach out because he just filmed a series where they took little electric vehicles, they took the Quasi-Vert route from Paris all the way down to South Africa, and they solely charged from their own solar panels or renewable um sources of energy along the way. So they would just drive these little cars, these ridiculous little cars, sound similar to what you have planned, and they would just stop and break out these solar panels, which took up the whole interior. But uh, you know, it is it is possible to do these wacky adventures with only being powered by the sun.

SPEAKER_03: 53:39

Okay. Yeah, I'll look that up.

SPEAKER_07: 53:42

Cheers. You're in Utah, and I think do you ever talk to people back in England and they're amazed by what you can actually do in your own backyard? Because, you know, there's really very little green landing they call it there. But you know, you're on you're on a playground that they just can't relate to. Do you ever get feedback from those people?

SPEAKER_03: 53:59

Yes. Yeah, uh, they can't really believe it. Uh the UK is it's I mean, it as much as I'm kind of bitter about it, it kind of makes sense. I get well, no, I can see why it happened. That's that the UK basically doesn't have any real trails left anymore. Anytime you go off-roading in the UK, we call it green laning, it will be, you know, one mile of trail here, half a mile of trail there, and then you you normally end up riding three times as much tarmac as you do off-road, probably a lot more. And because people come down from the city, buy a house that's next to one of these off-road trails, it's been a public right of way for 400 years, and maybe it's even in the Magna Carta, but no, I don't like the noise of somebody going past my house. So the trail gets closed down.

SPEAKER_07: 54:48

You know, everyone wants to know when you're going on your your your next far-flung adventure. Do you have something in the back of your mind? Do you have uh itched that needs to be scratched? Is there something that you wish you could have done?

SPEAKER_03: 55:00

I think I'm done with the real long-term stuff. I genuinely like it's like, oh no, another border guard casually pointing a machine gun at me. Oh no. Like, you know, you're either gonna shoot me or you're not. You're probably not because he doesn't want to lose his job. Yeah, you never get shy. And it's gonna make quite the headline. So it's like basically I I think I've got everything I can out of that for the moment. And so uh I don't think I'm gonna do it anytime soon. I'm the bug is slightly coming back, but I definitely want to make sure that the bug has come back enough for me to actually do it justice, for me to actually enjoy it, and for me to not accidentally cheapen other people's dream. Because if I'm doing somebody's bucket list trip and I'm just being blase about it, that's not good for anyone. Like I'm I'm not really enjoying it that much. They think I'm a dick and I'm I'm entitled or something. Um so yeah, I maybe one day Africa is kind of the only thing that I think is starting to appeal to me. But I definitely want to make sure that I've got the bug back properly so I can do it justice.

SPEAKER_07: 56:15

Yeah, I think uh there's a lesson in like Ted Simon's second book, you know. You know, he's a literary genius, but dreaming of Jupiter, you know, it was difficult for him to write because just as you say, we're doing this again, essentially, right? Whereas he did the exact same trip. I think that you must have something that you want to go accomplish that wasn't on your direct route. Is there something out there that besides Africa that you wish you wish you would have done differently, or something that is on your list that you simply must go do?

SPEAKER_03: 56:47

Uh, I often, when I try and work out these things, I I have an imaginary wizard, which if he popped up and went, right, I can do anything you want, right? You can redo that journey. Uh, unlimited money. Uh, you're not gonna get paid for it, you know. So there's no motivation to actually do this only if you want to. Would you want to? I've got my wand. I don't think there's anything that I would. There's the there's always those odd moments, you know, when you're having a shower and you just sort of stop and you think, oh, I shouldn't have said that to that person. I was a bit of a prick then, wasn't I? But you know, do you think again I, you know, we think about that, you know, we went down the pub last week and you're like, did I? Oh yeah, I probably could have worded that different. I can't believe I said that on that date. You know, that that that's the level of regret that I think I have. And it's like, well, if you're gonna start focusing on those little things you could have changed, you're probably gonna do a hundred other things worse. Sure. You know, like if you try and rerun it, you're probably gonna cock something else up in a slightly different way. But ultimately doesn't matter. As long as you were honest and you were kind, then you know, it doesn't really matter, does it? But no, I don't think there's anything I would do differently again.

SPEAKER_07: 57:58

Well, I think people take a lot away from from your around the world series. And one of the things that I took away, and I always try to convey to listeners who are thinking about doing something, is that generally people, the interactions you had with people were were positive. And you always have this habit of stopping and helping people on the side of the road.

SPEAKER_03: 58:18

The repairs I've done to people's visits.

SPEAKER_07: 58:20

Right. What's your conclusion um as far as the state of the world, not the state of the world, but the state of humanity, I guess, in your interactions with everyone? Everyone seems to have this negative view, and I don't think it's really that accurate. What is your conclusion?

SPEAKER_03: 58:35

Humans are it's funny saying humans. Uh I'm an engineer. I normally just talk in absolutes, uh, well, no, no, no, in like in like facts, basically. Uh so when I say humans, of course I know I am one. I sound a bit like a robot, but humans are awful at judging risk and uh judging the state of things. We are terrible at it from a modern world perspective. We are amazing at it from an evolutionary perspective. You know, there's there's all the standard things, you know, if somebody tried to make a good news channel, it didn't work. Nobody will ever tell you about a successful plane journey on the news. You'll only hear about the plane crash. Your next thing is people who are scared of flying will happily drive to the airport. But the drive to the airport is infinitely, not infinitely, stratospherically more dangerous. Humans are awful at judging risk, they're awful at quantifying whether a place is safe or it's not, because from an evolutionary perspective, you hear five stories about how dangerous it is to go into the other valley, uh yeah, don't go to the other valley. That's the good thing to do from an evolutionary perspective. But from a traveling the world perspective, um people are universally good. The percentage of people that are actually bad are actually bad. Is just so small that the riding of the motorcycle is way more dangerous than any person is. Yeah, there are some hotspots, you know, some parts of Mexico don't go camping in Detroit. As long as you've got some vague common sense, you will probably be okay and it's worth it. I was trying to work out the exact point. I've always been told that what I'm doing is dangerous and reckless, and it's not worth it. And I kept meaning to like save these comments so that I could reply to them like once a year after I've done another adventure going, is it worth it yet? Is it worth it yet? And after 40 years, go, can we say it was worth it yet? Yeah, if I died on day one. But then again, if you die on your commute to work, like was it worth going to work? Well, I don't know, just it's what I was doing. You know, I just they died in a random traffic accident, it's just what happened. And it's like, well, yeah, that's what it is when you're traveling. But no, yeah, people are friendly, the world's a good place, bad news spreads very well, and it is being weaponized massively. Um doesn't mean it's fake. Uh you know, for instance, I can tell you now, everyone that eats a banana dies. Right. This is a fact, categorical fact. Every single person that eats a banana will at some point die.

SPEAKER_07: 1:01:24

Yeah, teaching people uh correlation isn't causation is sometimes a bit difficult, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:28

Yes. What is it? Everyone that mistakes correlation for causation dies. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_07: 1:01:34

And I think your uh your travels around the world show that it's entirely possible. People are generally good, and most importantly, you can actually do it on a six horsepower C90. How much flack did you get when when people like your friend were telling you that you can't do that on your bike? When you finally went public and you were posting, were you getting a lot of that, you know, hate mail saying, What are you doing? You need a GS1200, uh, just like Charlie Borman and you know, you and McGregor?

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:01

Um, I I never really got that. I mean, most people who are so deep into the cult of consumerism and uh worshipping their local dealership like bike salesman, I don't think they're probably watching my stuff, or if they are, they think I'm so insane that it's obvious that I'm not trying to prove a point is maybe where they're coming from. I get some truly amazing comments that are so brain dead I don't even respond to them. But the amount of times on episode two of the mini of the first mini Jeep series, that's now at like 11 million views. The amount of comments I get from people going, I can't believe you weren't carrying zip ties. Why do you think I'm not carrying zip ties? They're like, Well, I didn't see you use any to fix anything. I was like, Yeah, you didn't see me take a shit, but I'm pretty sure I did one of those in three weeks. Like, what the ha? So that's basically most of the hate I get is of people who they're not really thinking about what they're saying. They've probably ended up with an accidental ego that they don't realize. They think that their viewpoint is correct, you know. Oh, can't believe you didn't fix that chain guard with zip ties. Uh zip ties in sheer, which is the way they would have been, wouldn't have lasted one hit. And the first time that a rock would have hit that, it would have thrown the chain guard into the chain, popped off the split link, and now I'm much worse. It's much better actually to just smash the chain into the rock than it is to do it the other way around. Most replies I get are like, oh yeah, I didn't think about that.

SPEAKER_07: 1:03:31

Yeah, well, most people aren't thinking about general engineering principles with their argument on YouTube, are they?

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:37

Yeah, and the same as with, oh, you know, can't believe you're not using a GS is like most people don't really think that. And I will, and I I make sure that I convey the terrible parts of riding an inappropriate, you know, air quotes inappropriate vehicle around the world is oh my god, there's a 10 mile-long strait through a flat desert. This is gonna kinda suck. But then I also go, well, actually, I was I was going slow enough that I was able to notice that the the cacti changed from I don't know, purple to green and like this, and then I don't I was going slow enough that a car, when they were going past me, flagged me over to chat to me. They probably wouldn't have done that, would you guess? So it is a terrible vehicle in some ways to ride around the world, a Honda 90, but only if you're trying to do a certain type of trip, if you're trying to do my trip, there's no better vehicle. Any other vehicle I would have taken would have resulted in a in less human interaction, less randomness. If it had rained and I was on a GS, I would have just put my electric windshield up a little bit more and just smashed through the rain and got to that next town. But I'm on a Honda 90, so I've got no choice. So I'm gonna endure the rain, and now I'm gonna have to stay in that town for another day to dry up my boots. And when I stayed there that day, I met, you know, dot dot dot, and then that was my kind of travel.

SPEAKER_07: 1:05:01

What other bike can you ride around on, you know, naked through the salt flats and blow up cactuses with TNT explosives that you bought from someone along with some cocoa leaves? There, there are a lot of great stories here, and I encourage everyone to uh check out the channel.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:15

I forgot about the dynamite, yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 1:05:16

That was an interesting day. Yeah, with the cocoa leaves, by the way, which is which is fantastic, which by the way, you gave away you should not have. You should have had, you should have chewed the leaves, then done the dynamite. Have you not learned anything from Hunter S. Thompson?

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:28

The uh the amount that I've been waffling on during this podcast, I I think everyone can agree that me on any form of uh amphetamine is uh a bad idea. Uh my brain is already running 10,000 miles an hour as it is. I don't think any uh slightly illicit substances are a good idea for that. It's fantastic.

SPEAKER_07: 1:05:50

Well, listen, thanks so much for uh taking some time very well telling us your story. And uh I'll put all your links uh down at the bottom. I encourage everyone to um support you by buying your awesome merch and uh checking out the Malaysia movie. It's uh definitely worth the uh I think it was 10 quid. Yeah. And uh well, we're we're heading over in May. We're expanding uh expanding our rally into uh into Europe in 2027. So I have to pretend that I fit it, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:19

Remember, bonnet instead of hood. Once you get those two things, you're fine.

SPEAKER_07: 1:06:23

And blend in like a chameleon, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, thanks so much for being here, and I'll put those links in the show notes. Cool, cheers.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:29

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_05: 1:06:45

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 ass craft IPA. Release it on patreon.com. Links are in the show notes. Now, back to the riveting podcast in progress.

SPEAKER_02: 1:07:10

And we're back. Nice. That was a good interview. You know, your um your style is super smooth. That was super conversational. I also want to say we got to give a big shout out to Ed here because like you just ask a question, he would just roll. And that is so easy to interview people who are good like that. Not to take anything away from your, you know, you had the next follow-up question, but I could hear you like in the beginning, you're like, I got two questions for you. And then he, you know, he took the first one and then he just went for like, you know, 10 minutes. And I was like, that's great. Second question, not needed, right?

SPEAKER_07: 1:07:43

Well, firstly, no one wants to hear me talk, right? But uh the problem is that when these guys are talking, like, I want to talk about this and I want to talk about that, and I want to bring this up. And it's just like you see the timer just you know, rolling away, and you can't bring up all those things. And sometimes I worry about people think I'm trying to like show off, like, oh, I did this and I did that. So I just kind of let it go, right? You know, I actually wanted to mention to him because he mentioned Austin Vince. Yeah. And I'm I'm working on another project right now, so I was just thinking about Austin. And those two guys are exactly the same. They're like, how do you put it politely? They're belligerently British and like they're like almost yeah, I guess belligerently every day. So uh they're both identical, and I just love those guys to bits. And uh hopefully we can have them back on uh in the future.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:38

One of the things I thought was really fun, and you you touched on it there, is that it's a lot like how we interact. If you look at the you know, the um the cannibal chat, it's like if you if you're not harassing somebody, if you're not just taking the piss out of somebody, it clearly means you just don't like them. But the the more the more the more shit they get, the obviously the more favored they are. So it's the same thing. He's like, Oh, yeah, if our friends aren't if you're not harassing your friends, where you just couldn't be bothered. Yeah, couldn't be bothered by it. Yeah, it's great. A couple things have stuck out for me. One is I love his self-proclaimed Monty Python-like sense of humor combined with a top gear inspired content. So it's a clearly it's a winning combination. That was one thing. Um, I did it towards the end, he said he just focused on being kind and being helpful. And I think those two things are are key to I think I use it a lot when I'm like, I'm in a situation where I'm like, oh, this is tough. And I go, what a what's how can I get out of this okay? And I'm like, if whatever comes out of my mouth is either kind or helpful, despite the outcome, at some point I will be forgiven for it.

SPEAKER_07: 1:09:39

So well, and you know, it works for him because it makes great content. So every time there's a hitchhiker in one of his videos or there's someone broken down on the side of the road, he immediately pulls over and it makes for great content, you know. And if you can improve the world a little bit, you know, that's awesome. And you know, it just goes to show you don't have to be a douchebag. The guy went around the world in a C90, did more hardcore things than we'll ever do. Right. Yeah. And, you know, he he just followed this ethos and it paid off in great content.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:08

You know, I did um after I listened to uh through the interview, I was like, I didn't know about the mini Jeep. And I went back and I was like, he's got amazing, amazing engineering prowess. I mean, he's like, so I made his, I made a remote control, and then I took a part of snowmobile and I put the snowmobile treads on either side. And he did so much to this thing, and I was like, this guy's like a he should be an engineer for NASA.

SPEAKER_07: 1:10:28

Yeah, and especially in today's world, like you go on to the GS Facebook thing, and there's a four-paragraph rant about I just bought my GS and now the yellow light is on, and I'm really pissed off about BMW. My dealer's a jerk because he won't do I'm like, dude, just fix the damn thing. I'm like, and this guy's building things and actually doing it, right? So uh yeah, it's really it's really cool to see something refreshing and people problem solving and doing it and you know, failing once in a while and doing it again and learning from that and applying actual engineering skill and education towards a project. It was really, really refreshing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:11:06

Yeah, that was it was evidence in all the things that he's put up. Um, and then one of the things that we that I do look forward to seeing in the future is I want to see his channel where he talks about the inappropriate cheese wedge-shaped electric cars that he and his buddies are messing with. So uh that should be interesting to follow that content as well.

SPEAKER_07: 1:11:24

You know, it's funny you mention uh that. And yes, I'm excited to uh see that as well. But we were talking about the awful trip we had with the sprinter van. And, you know, my wife's a teacher, and we'll have essentially spring breakoff. And she's got one of these brand new, hilarious uh VW ID Buzz minibuses. And we basically got it for the dog because the dog can sit in the in the back seat and they have like a little special window just for the dog so he can have his his head out. And we just go around the city. It never goes more than a mile from the house, that's like two miles from the house, right? And he just goes around spreading, you know, happiness to people because people are like, oh my God, look at that golden retriever out of that bus. So I think we may go on a long distance trip to like uh a wine country or something down in California in the electric car just to see how how difficult it is or if it's even doable. But it's so, it's such the opposite experience being in the ID bus. It's silent, it's smooth, it's beautiful inside. It's got, you know, it's her car. I don't know anything about it, right? And but I drove it the other day. I'm like, this is nice. It's got heated seats, it's got interior lighting, it's smooth, it's silent. It is everything opposite of the sprinter event. So I'm like, let's do it, let's try it, let's throw the dog in the in the bus and let's go on a on a multi uh multi-day adventure with it and see what happens.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:53

You know, I was just thinking about that. And our friends Mercedes and Andy took one of those and did the round Baltic rally, 15 countries around the Baltic in 15 days or something like that, 30 days. But they did it in the and they did it in the in the same car you just bought.

SPEAKER_07: 1:13:10

What's interesting, not to go off on a tangent like I always do, but Mercedes is actually in the car right now. She is doing special coverage of the Hold on, hold on, hold on.

SPEAKER_02: 1:13:22

Did you say she's in the car right now?

SPEAKER_07: 1:13:24

The car rally in Saudi's the car. Okay, gotcha. Didn't yeah, she's down there right now and she's doing special coverage of I think the Defender team. And I think they're coming on the podcast where they have a special uh group of like factory cars or close to factory cars. And I think they're gonna come on their podcast. Being fun watching her on her Facebook, sorry, her Instagram feed actually being down there, which is which is really awesome. But yes, they also did a long distance rally in the ID buzz. That didn't influence us, you know, to buy it in any way, but it just goes to show that you can actually do it. Now, can you do it in America? I'm not really sure, but I'm gonna find out. It's gonna be fun.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:08

Yeah, that'll be good to hear about that as well. All right. Um, we got a new segment here, Aaron, and I believe this segment is called Erin's Rideouts. And if I'm not mistaken, this is about the trips that you take, the destinations that you've been on, and you've got this uh this growing list, and you've got map and you've got all these things, and you're gonna add to this. But can you give us a bit more detail on that?

SPEAKER_07: 1:14:32

Yeah, so basically every week I'm gonna share a ride destination, an excuse to go for a rip somewhere, whether it's a long distance trip or somewhere from your, you know, from your house. This week it's uh Josie's hideout. It's a very popular destination. If you're in the San Diego area, it's uh one of America's best biker bars. It's in the foothills. Um, it's in the foothills there, and it was built in 1936, and it's the quintessential biker bar, but everyone's welcome. Uh it is neutral territory, but it's not an issue. But it's definitely a ride-out place. There's ADV bikes, there's there's baggers there, there's guys on sport bikes. The ride-in is fantastic. Uh, there's great pub, you know, pub food, is a full bar. There's pets are welcome, of course. And uh tell Amber that I sent you.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:22

Very nice. Hey, you know, your comment about the baggers there, that reminded me. It one of the places that we were in when we were in Grand Canaria, we had ridden all the way out down this amazingly windy road, and there's a uh a roadside cafe that has this killer view out to the ocean, like all the way through the valley, right to the ocean, about 10 mile view straight out. And I pulled up there, we had we uh came from a hike and we had lunch, and I sent you a picture of these guys, and there was a bunch of um, there's a whole table full of guys riding baggers, and out in the parking lot, there was Harley's and there was Honda Goldwings, there was everything out there that you could think of. And these guys were they had I don't know, three or four empty bottles of wine in front of them, and I was like, that's some brave stuff, man. They must know these roads really well.

SPEAKER_07: 1:16:08

You're damn right, man. So nothing, nothing wrong with uh adulting, you know? You're only you're only gonna hurt yourself on a motorcycle. So you do you, Bill.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:17

You do you. Well, these I mean, these guys have obviously, you know, their experience because they were probably they're probably all in their 60s or 70s, so you know.

SPEAKER_07: 1:16:23

Yeah, whatever. 60 to 70, you do whatever the hell you want, in my opinion. Um exactly. I just wanted to mention about the write-out segment, there is a permanent link in the show notes. So every week I'll add something to that. So in a couple of years, if if we're still alive and I haven't had a bottle of wine and ridden off the side of a uh a cliff, yeah, uh that that list will that list will grow for people.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:47

And maybe some, you know, some might take it over just in case that happens. Just you know, just put it out there. Share the share the link. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 1:16:53

Uh you know, before we do Cannibal News, I just want to mention about you know island riding because it sounds like an amazing place to ride. And I am uh just finishing the route for 2027 Americas and finishing the route for 2027 Europe. And it is on my list to do the UK main island and hop on a ferry and go across to Ireland and then rip around and do the uh cannonball finish line on Isle of Man. I was kind of talked out of it because there was too many ferries, but I had noticed some other rallies that take ferries and stuff. So yeah, at some point we will have more of these unique destinations that require ferry trips during the ADV cannonball rally. So I think I'm warming up to the idea because there's just they're amazing and they're worth it. And it's a little bit of effort to get there. I get it, it takes a day to get there on a ferry, but I think it's worth it. What's your opinion? You do you think it's worth hopping on a ferry during a cannonball to get to one of these places?

SPEAKER_02: 1:17:59

So, in terms of taking ferries, I think there's a couple of considerations. I think that it would depend on uh how long the ferry is, the sea state, the normal C state of the area that you're traveling, and um and the timing on it. You know, usually these ferries are doing uh two or three uh departures a day. Um, but if you could catch an evening departure, it's a great staging place. Just like a hotel is a great staging place for when you come in for the rally. Every night there's a place to meet, and it's it's it would really serve as that purpose. Everyone comes there, you sleep on the ferry, instead of sleeping in a hotel, you wake up, you're in a new spot. So I don't see it as a huge thing, hugely different than a hotel, assuming you're catching an overnight ferry.

SPEAKER_07: 1:18:43

Yeah, I just looked, and unfortunately, the ferry from England to Ireland is like an afternoon ferry. That's a that's a pain in the ass. And then if I recall, the ferries from England to Isle of Man were also journeyed days. So I understand the negative thing. You're burning, you're basically burning a day, right? To grab a ferry. So, anyways, something for me to to to mull over. But there's all these great riding destinations, and islands are inherently interesting. Most of them are, you know, mountainous and and they're they're interesting and they're they're rarefied. So maybe it's worth the effort. I'm not sure. But uh, let's see. If I if I create a rally that that goes on to some islands and no one shows up, I get I guess I'll be doing them by myself.

SPEAKER_02: 1:19:30

You'll be doing it by yourself. I did have another thought though. This is a bit of a a uh let's say that you did a you you timed it such that you made it so it was tight to catch a ferry, right? And then it and like the the the ferry from mainland, like Liverpool over to Isle of Man, I think it's two, two and a half hours, right? I mean you burn a day, set up, get there, get off, unload. But if you set it up so that you had to do quite good on your timing to get the earlier ferry, then that could be you could get the maximum amount of point. Available for that day, but if you didn't catch that fairy, the maximum amount of points you could get would be lower. So people would be trying to get to that. I mean, you could use it, you could use it as part of the puzzle.

SPEAKER_07: 1:20:10

Yeah. Now you got me thinking in my sadistic rally master kind of way. How can I really turn the screws on these guys on these wing nuts?

SPEAKER_02: 1:20:21

Oh yeah. Well anyway, just a thought. Just a thought. And what reminded me of that was so my dad was in school at this um at this place in Boston. And uh yeah, you had to back in the day, right? You had to write a paper and turn it in. And if you and you had to put it through a mail slot and it was due at five o'clock on a Friday night. So people would be driving in Cambridge and they would if they if it was a traffic jam and it was five minutes before, you would see people park in the street and get out and run with their papers. Because if you didn't get it in the slot by five o'clock, there was a there was somebody waiting on the other side of the slot with a cart that caught the papers. And if you got it in by five, it said any grades possible on that cart. And if you got it in at a second after five, then it said C was the maximum grade you could get on that. So it just reminded me, it's like there's the points you can get. If you can get the earlier ferry, you can get all the points. But if you only get the next ferry, then you're only subject, you can your max amount of points has just been reduced for that day.

SPEAKER_07: 1:21:29

I love it. It's kind of like the last rally where there was all these things where things were closed and things like that, and people were jumping over fences. I could see all kinds of hijinks happening. It's gonna, it's gonna be awesome. Maybe maybe I feel uh a little more, you know, renewed interest to uh renewed interest.

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_07: 1:21:45

Uh let's let's do some other cannonball news. So all right. I want to mention for the 2026 America's rally, if the Pacific Coast Highway opens uh about 30 days before the event starts, I will adjust the route. I've had a bunch of people ask me and say, I know, I know about it. Relax. I you know, I know about how awesome the road is. So, anyways, uh if if it opens, we will we will adjust uh the route and the checkpoints. And that's one of the reasons why the checkpoints don't get issued until about 30 days prior to the rally in case there is some sort of change that I can take advantage of. Um, I also want to mention, don't forget, we have the great partnership with Hallbikes. And uh Hallbikes is sending a tractor trailer to the end of every one of our America's rallies. So please book with them, uh, explain what you're doing. And they gave us an amazing rate, and we're there to help you. So please let's keep that relationship going. And it it depends on people using the service. So please, uh, please do that. And then speaking of shipping, I'm all full for bringing people to the start of the rally, but Mark, Iron Man Turner, uh, is offering shipping. He owns a trucking company, so he's got this giant truck and he's formed a route from the west coast to the start line. So his information is on the rally notice page, uh, that password protected page for rally goers. So if you are looking for shipping to the start line, contact the Iron Man. And then uh what else I got here? Uh yeah, rally jerseys. Uh the Waz kicked my ass. Thank you, Waz. And I finally found some time to make some rally jerk jerseys. So these are exclusively for rally goers, and they're available on the website, and they will be delivered when you do rally check-in. So you can't buy one. I'm not shipping them to people. There's no money in it, there's no profit. Uh it covers the shirt, it covers the artwork, it covers credit card fees, you know, all kinds of stuff like that. Most of the guys are ordering them. I just wanted to mention, in case you haven't seen the newsletter, that uh the rally jerseys are available.

SPEAKER_02: 1:24:06

Really good job on those. And um, and to the waz, great job at uh at motivating Aaron. And we did get some, we did get a comment on the uh the kind of motorcycle on the front there. Some really good banter I saw about that. You're gonna put a um you're gonna put a T7 on the next one, right?

SPEAKER_07: 1:24:23

I love it. Everyone has a freaking idea for me to do. No one's doing it. Hey, you should do this, you should do that. Yeah, I'll just pull you know the time machine out of my butt, right? But yes, listen, I I ride a the world's perfect bike, which is a GS, and that's what's on it. But I will rotate through other lesser bikes and put it on the artwork.

SPEAKER_02: 1:24:46

Carrie, I'm thinking we may have to come after him for this one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 1:24:49

Uh, so I want to explain why I limited so the 2025, no, 26 route uh uh rally, sorry, is uh is sold out essentially. So I limit it to 70, even though I'm kind of leaving you know$30,000 on the table. It's it's just because I want to prove to people it's not a money grab. I'm not doing this, you know, you know, to make a bunch of money, uh although it would be nice to have health insurance one day. But don't rush that though. Yeah, whatever, right? You know, I just it's just basically me, right? So there's no staff here. You know, Taylor may or may not even show up to the rally, you know, who knows, right? You haven't committed to anything. You're bringing the dog? Yeah. Uh Brian is nice and he shows up, but you know, he's a dad, right? And so if one of his kids breaks a nail, he'll just bail on us, right? This is the, you know, the nature of family people, right? So I kind of had this moment where I'm like, oh shoot, what if, you know, I'm by myself, right? Like, so and people are really demanding these days, right? So people send me an email and they're like, yeah, bop, bop, bop, bah, you know, you said this, you said, holy man, I'm just one dude over here, right? So there was like a lot of this demanding kind of language coming my way. And then I'm like, well, let's avoid having a catastrophe or something go wrong, and let's just stop entries for now. So, yes, uh I would like to hire some people, but you know, I like I say, I'm not a billionaire, I'm just a dude, right? And I gotta pay the rent too, right? So, anyways, that's why it was limited. I wanted to give you my heartfelt explanation, but there is a wait list open. And uh, if you want to sign up for the wait list, if people cancel, we will we will reach out to you.

SPEAKER_02: 1:26:32

I just want to say this is a good time to put this in here. So, of the people, of the 40 participants that you had in your first rally, we now have 38% recidivism. So we got 38% repeats, which is fantastic. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_07: 1:26:48

Yeah. And it was interesting, we talked to a couple of the guys, and some of them are like, well, I physically can't. I only have, you know, especially in in like North America, we have two weeks off, right? So to for people to give us two weeks their time is really, really amazing. And that's huge. And that's why we just want to deliver a good product and not just have you know something go really wrong. Because we understand that you're giving us your two weeks vacation, essentially. And you know, I I don't want to screw that up. Uh, speaking of awesome routes, I'm really, really excited about 2027. So in 2027, I've basically got the broad strokes of the route. It will start in Tarifa, which is next to Gibraltar uh in Spain, and it's gonna rip essentially straight north all the way to is it Skagen, Skagen, at the very tip of Denmark. So that's essentially the route. It's gonna take a, I think eight days, that's what it's gonna take. There'll be a lot of off-road through the interesting places, like in Spain, nice, uh, and parts, parts of France. Uh, there's some awesome beach off-roading in Denmark that I discovered. So uh I wanted to announce the the broad strokes of that. And I also wanted to announce the 2027 Americas Road. I know that I was promised people to do a northern route across the US, but I felt, you know, I felt like uh we've done this a few times now, we've gone across the country. So uh I reached out to a bunch of friends and partners that I have down in Baja, and I did a little Facebook survey, and I was a little worried that people were, you know, a little bit of weenies about going into Baja. So we will start in Cabo. I'm not sure if the four or five days that we'll rip up the Baja and then across that mountain pass on to Mexico too, and then smash into Arizona. But essentially, that's what the route will be. It'll be starting Cabo, go up Baja, visiting all those cool places, some awesome Baja 1000 routes that we're gonna uh uh visit. Nice. We're gonna visit our friends in Tijuana and have a great big party there. And then uh we'll go across the rest of rest of Mexico, go into Arizona and finish on the coast in Texas. I will mention that the cost will be a little bit higher, but what I'll do, because I understand people's trepidation, is we will do a convoy starting in Tijuana, just on the other side of the border. We'll all meet there and we will go in a convoy for who wants to do it down to the start line. And we will have an actual sweep vehicle only for the Mexico portion, just because you can't call AAA. Uh, and I don't want to leave someone stranded out in the Baja. So that's what we're gonna do. That's the broad strokes. It will go from Baja to Texas. We'll have a convoy on the way down, we'll obviously come as a group all the way back, and we will have a sweep vehicle uh for that that portion of the 2027 America's ADV Cannonball Rally.

SPEAKER_02: 1:30:01

And just to be clear, there will be a prize for the one who comes up first.

SPEAKER_07: 1:30:06

That's right. Absolutely. Welcome back. Okay, welcome back. Here we go. And let's do new signups. Sorry for all the ranting, guys. Uh Taylor, can you take away new signups because my alliteration is as good as the dogs?

SPEAKER_02: 1:30:20

Yeah, fair enough. Well, Taylors. Here we go. Number 42 is back with 956 points. Jay, welcome. Happy that you signed up. Jay from Kansas City on the legendary on the legendary Indian Challenger Bagger that he took last year. Fantastic. Good to see you. CNN Luke. In Swedish, you would pronounce that Lucke from North Salt Lake City, North Salt Lake, Utah. And that is on a 1250 GSA. Frank from Thinkesburg, Maryland, on a Moto Goosey riding with Tony De Luca, who is also from Maryland. 2025 alumni Don Skelza, welcome back. 925 total points from Valencia PA on the RT 1250. Welcome back, Don. Chris Pernie from Gibsonia. Gibsonia. I haven't heard of that before. I thought I said it wrong, but here we go. Gibsonia PA hasn't decided on a bike quite yet, but he's riding with Team Coverufo Skybob from Brooklyn, New York, on a Pan America. Number four from 2025 with 1,016 total points. Lou Halsey from Central Texas to be determined on what machine he will take. Sir Timothy of Mandeville, KTM 1290 Super Adventure R, riding two up. Andy Mackey from Concord PA on a 1200 GSA. Big D from Westover, Maryland, on his Can and Red Rock. Mr. Dion is returning from the 2025 Americas rally. Thank you, Dion. We're happy to see you. Brian Arnold from Hendersonville, North Carolina, on his BMW. Hasn't fully decided which one, but you know, seems like most of the fleets running out on BMWs. Vince from Tampa, Florida, on his 1250 GSA. Number 25, Andy Daughty from Torrance, California, with 995 points total returning for 2026 on his R 1200 RT. Welcome back. Christopher Sukhil from Grafton, Ohio, two up on the Yamaha Royal Star Bagger. Get some more baggers out there. That's awesome. Getting a whole whole diverse fleet.

SPEAKER_07: 1:32:42

There's an Indian, there's a Harley, and now I've never heard of this before, the Royal Star Bagger. So it's awesome to see uh see these guys tear up the pavement.

SPEAKER_02: 1:32:53

That's nice. And because it's a Yamaha, they won't have any mechanical issues. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Did I did I sound like a proud owner of a T7?

SPEAKER_07: 1:33:04

Yeah, but it makes for good stories, right? Like Jay pulled over, I think it was somewhere in New Mexico, and like went into a dealership and they helped him. And then he stopped on the way back and he didn't get into like you know midnight or something that night. So uh yeah, they're prone to a few issues, but uh nevertheless, it makes for good stories.

SPEAKER_02: 1:33:24

Yeah, absolutely. Bradley Martin from Avon, Indiana on Motagozy V85TT and Mark Ironman Turner and his two brothers, they have signed up. Curtis Turner from Jerome, Idaho on the 1300 GSA. Let's hope that he didn't give him his old GSA. I'm just saying. And we got Tree Dave from Corlaine, Idaho on a Suzuki V-strong. And here we go. We got the whole Chaos family, Captain Chaos with total points of 1,096. I believe he was the first to get steak knives. Has entered on the 2026 ADBC, but he has changed his moniker from Captain Chaos to take it away. The Stig. Very nice. And he'll be on his 1200 GS. He is also bringing with him the father of chaos from Campbell Hall, New York. He hasn't decided on what bike, but there are options out there. And Mrs. Chaos from Harris, New York joins the Chaos team.

SPEAKER_07: 1:34:33

That's awesome. Yeah. That's so great. I love it.

SPEAKER_02: 1:34:36

Yeah, it's like a it's turning into a um I mean, we already had a sense of a family before, but now there truly is like families coming because everyone saw how much fun it was and what a great sense of camaraderie and team. Like there's just such I mean, right now, like my phone went off. I think I woke up this morning to like 30 or 40 new messages of these friendships that are developing, and people have, you know, this this this fun banter that is still going on from this rally four months later.

SPEAKER_07: 1:35:03

What I'm doing with people when they're like Mark and Captain Chaos, when they're starting, even Captain Kiss, by the way, he's entitled to have number two and start second, right? He's like, I'll just start later in the field because he wants to start with his family, right? So I'm making the effort of of grouping people together, even though it's a bit of a logistics nightmare. But, you know, there's these groups of people, and I would say about 50% of the field are riding at two or more in their group. It's actually really fascinating to watch the spreadsheet come together with these groups. So it's really, it's really awesome that the second year is far different than the first year of the rally. It's really awesome.

unknown: 1:35:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:35:42

I mean, it shows you that you built a family in the first year and now they're bringing the rest of their family in. So it's uh it's fantastic just to see this grow. I love how it's so organic and it's so authentic. It's really nice.

SPEAKER_07: 1:35:51

Or there's just a bunch of jerks and they're like, this was really crappy and insane. I want to bring more people to share in this disaster with me, which is equally as good.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:00

But they're like, I I can't stand my family, and I think I just should just punish them and make sure they endure this as well.

SPEAKER_07: 1:36:06

Right, exactly. This is that type two kind of fun, I guess.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:09

Exactly. And uh you did you did hint at this earlier. You said you were gonna have a wait list, and we do have one on the wait list now. We've got Barry Crawford from Plymouth, Massachusetts, and he is on a Honda Trans Alp.

SPEAKER_07: 1:36:22

And if he doesn't get on, I hope that he comes to the start and has some IPAs with us. We'll have an informal kind of get together. Someone I'm sure will volunteer to arrange that. And uh, even if people don't get off the wait list and get on to the uh starting grid, hopefully you still come by and have a few beers with us. Is there anything else you'd like to cover? I think we have said it all.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:45

I have a funny feeling that next week there'll be more to say.

SPEAKER_07: 1:36:47

I always have something, some verbal diarrhea to spread across 10,000 downloads.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:56

Hold on. You know where we're number two, number two as the podcast. You know where we've just recently reported as number two.

SPEAKER_07: 1:37:02

Uh I almost don't even want to hear anymore. It's always, it's always something non-it's definitely not Manhattan, so please tell us. South Florida. South that's pretty good, actually.

SPEAKER_02: 1:37:13

South Florida. Just gotta say it. South Florida, baby. And with that, sir, I thank you for your time. That was fun.

SPEAKER_07: 1:37:19

Yeah, thanks for sharing a beer with me, and thanks for you guys for listening and cracking a beer with us.

SPEAKER_02: 1:37:24

Roll the outro.

SPEAKER_04: 1:40:01

The ghost beside you with your dead Yeah, the ghost beside you and forever along through the mother road till the light is gone The ghost beside you always here The ghost beside you always near Smashing a five-star review really helps the podcast and satisfies the algorithm gods all hell the algorithm gods a special thanks to our Patreon supporters you're keeping this sinking ship afloat thanks for listening to the ADV Cannonball Podcast. Keep your right hand cranked and your feet on the pegs.