Kerry Rides to the Arctic Ocean on a T7 - Tech Talk and ADV Cannonball News

In this episode of the ADV Cannonball Podcast, the conversation kicks off with a wildly improbable real estate saga that ends in a perfectly timed disaster and a very lucky escape. From there, the talk flows naturally into motorcycles, gear, and the realities of adventure riding, including jackets, boots, helmets, navigation tech, and what actually works when conditions turn ugly.

The episode builds toward a feature interview with Kerry Lebel, who rode all the way to the Arctic Ocean, sharing first-hand insight into fuel planning, weather extremes, camping in remote regions, wildlife encounters, and lessons learned the hard way. Equal parts storytelling, practical advice, and unapologetic rambling, this episode delivers the kind of experience-based wisdom and humor that defines life on two wheels.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

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

SPEAKER_05 0:29

Season four, episode 11. Welcome to Adventure Cannonball Podcast. I'm your host, Taylor Lawson, and today I am joined by a man who dodged a real estate bullet, or possibly we should call it dodging an RPG, better known to you as Aaron Puffal. Aaron, welcome to the show. What's up, buddy? What an intro. I love it. Yeah, I'm just, you know, we're super excited to hear what the latest of that saga was. But first of all, before we go there, where are you sitting? What are you drinking?

SPEAKER_03 1:01

I'm in Seattle, and I was inspired by one of your last episodes. And I have me uh dark and stormy. Cheers, brother. What are you drinking? Very nice.

SPEAKER_05 1:12

You got a goblet like I had last time?

SPEAKER_03 1:14

No, it's uh it's an IKEA regular glass. It's uh, you know, it's a highball glass, not a goblet.

SPEAKER_05 1:22

All right, we'll let it we'll let it slide this time, but I'm glad you got a dark and stomach roll in there.

SPEAKER_07 1:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:27

Um here we go. I am the uh it's kind of one of my favorites. It's it's 44 centimeters, so it's almost a half a liter. And it'll uh it'll get me through the better part of a podcast. And it is the hashtag Deepa double IPA. And you're gonna have to help me out here. It is a muddy double IPA from the beer city, explosively aromatic, fresh, and a little bit fruit. And it's a fruit. Here we go.

SPEAKER_03 1:58

Actually, we have a proper Scotsman coming on in uh in about a month. So we're gonna have to get him to do some b-roll and say fruit properly.

SPEAKER_05 2:07

Yeah, definitely, definitely have to do that. Yeah, we may he may have to reference maybe yeah, maybe, yeah. I was gonna I was gonna drop some bombs or that aside, just let it roll. Just gonna say I'm gonna save that for later. Save your fruit comments for later. Save it, save it for later. Here we go. So um give us a give us the updated into the the continuation of this is the saga with the real estate. Oh my god. The where we left off last time was that they wouldn't take your money.

SPEAKER_03 2:38

Yeah, they wouldn't take my money, they wouldn't accept the offer. Uh, and by the way, dear listener, you open a drink because you're gonna need this for this for this story, also.

SPEAKER_05 2:47

You're gonna need maybe maybe two, get it, get a backup.

SPEAKER_03 2:49

Yeah, it's so much that I can't even get my words out. So these arrogant sons of bitches wouldn't take our offer because we had to have we had a condition that we had to sell our other property.

SPEAKER_05 3:02

Just so you know, we didn't we just lost our clean rating, you know, first 10 seconds in.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

Yeah, no, no, we're good. SOB is allowed, you know. You just can't drop F bombs right away.

SPEAKER_05 3:11

Okay, good to hear that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 3:12

Yeah. We're like, okay, we have an offer on this. I was gonna say uh this apartment, this nice apartment with the terrorists above us. And we're okay, let's go back. You know, my wife being level-headed, she goes, let's go back and just see it one more time. And we'll bring our neighbor friend and we'll just see if this is worth it, right? So we make an appointment, we drive downtown, the real estate agent, I'm assuming, tells the owners that we're coming, so they must run to the pub or something because their car was still in the spot. We open the door, and there is water coming from the ceiling. No. I'm like, what the actual F is going on? And then I didn't walk in. I'm like, I'm out, right? I want no part of this, right? But my wife goes in with the real estate agent, he's like, what is going on? And it wasn't just the one light fixture, it was the whole apartment was raining from the ceiling. And I'm like, holy shit, what is happening? So we had thought about it for a little while. So we're leaving this apartment because we have the terrorist that lives upstairs, right? That little girl. Yeah, domestic terrorism at its best. At its best. Later, we had digested what had just happened, and we're like, my wife had seen a little bit of staining on the roof and kind of dismissed it because it's kind of an older apartment. I'm just gonna leave that alone. The guy. Yeah, yeah. Sound like whatever. It's a wild night, I guess. I don't know. I'm like, it's all good, right? So that's so wrong. Whatever. We listen, we have to do a black light inspection once in a while. And so we had come to the conclusion that they're probably selling because they have a problem neighbor, also. And the hubris of these sons of bitches to not just take our offer, shut your mouth, paint the ceiling, do whatever it takes to get out of that disaster, is just so freaking amazing. What are the odds? It's so improbable down to the minute that we walked into that apartment and the water was coming out of the ceiling, and the owners had must have just left moments ago. I'm like, for a guy who has the worst luck in the world to walk into there and see their water coming out of the ceiling was like, holy crap, we dodged that bullet.

SPEAKER_05 5:58

Interesting that had they accepted your offer, it would have been your problem. That you'd have been walking into your own problem.

SPEAKER_03 6:05

Well, we never would have saw it because we would have put the offer in and it wouldn't have closed for months. So they just would have they'd have been like, oh, dry it up, dry it up. Yeah, dry it up, yeah, whatever, and then it's their problem.

SPEAKER_05 6:16

So tell me, tell me or tell the listeners what you told me about when you so I my first thought was what did you figure out what the source was? Did you go do that when you actually you went upstairs and you had to walk across a private bridge to get to the building? Tell me about what happened when you knocked on the upstairs neighbor door.

SPEAKER_03 6:33

Yeah, so it's a super cool condo, right? It's like from 20 years ago, it was like a real architecture in it. So each apartment has an open-air entrance. And we have a dock, so we were really excited about that. And so I go up to the second level and they all have little bridges that go to each little apartment. Cool. So I knock on this guy's door, and the shades are drawn, which is really weird because it's pure privacy, right? And then this guy comes to the door and he's like in bare feet, and he's like, I'm like, dude, there's water coming down the apartment below. I'm like, it's crazy. He's like, Oh yeah, we had a bit of an overflow. I'm thinking to myself, I'd be mortified. I'd be losing my mind if I had an overflow in my apartment. And then the neighbor came up and said, Holy crap, it's raining in the apartment below. I'd be losing my mind. He's like, Yeah, I guess. I'm like, so these things happen. So, like, we had to come to the conclusion that this was not the first time. And we had to come to the conclusion that this guy is an alcoholic or he's got narcolepsy, or I don't know, maybe there's someone else in the apartment with some sort of issue. Who knows? But whatever the issue is, it's not mine. It's not your issue.

SPEAKER_05 7:48

I mean, he could have been trying to off himself in the bathtub and you interrupted him, you know.

SPEAKER_03 7:51

Listen, go for it. I'm all for like whatever you want to do, just don't inconvenience other people. That's my rule in life, right?

SPEAKER_05 7:58

That's just dear listener. If you ever decide, do not inconvenience other people.

SPEAKER_03 8:03

And I apply that same rule to riding a motorcycle. You can go as fast as you want, you do whatever you want. I believe in doing whatever you want, just don't inconvenience other people.

SPEAKER_05 8:11

Was that the hashtag? Hashtag D B-A-C.

SPEAKER_03 8:14

That's right. Exactly. So, anyways, so bullet dodged. We went, we would have gone from one problem neighbor and with incredible financial hardship gone into another place with a worse neighbor. So, anyways, such an improbable story that it sounds like fiction, but unbelievable. So, anyways, we're just done with that place.

SPEAKER_05 8:35

Nice, very nice. But to just to just to bring it full circle, now you have found a place or settled on a place, and you actually won't be living out of the blue whale.

SPEAKER_03 8:44

Yeah, it's just a normal little concrete place with that's not so inspiring, but it doesn't have bad neighbors, I guess.

SPEAKER_05 8:51

And it doesn't have a waterfall, a water feature from the ceiling.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

Yeah, so, anyways, I will get my little studio. That's what I really wanted, you know, because I work from home now. So the new place, if that happens, I don't know. There's a bunch of conditions, but it will be a journey that is not fraught with landmines, anyways.

SPEAKER_05 9:08

And um, what are the upstairs neighbors like? Since that seems to be the challenge in these last two properties.

SPEAKER_03 9:12

Yeah, so the renters were there and they said that you can't hear anything because it's a concrete building. Yeah. And they said they're just old retired people, which is like, these are my people, like old retired people, you know, sign me up, right?

SPEAKER_05 9:25

Sign me up. Here we go. Do they ride motorcycles?

SPEAKER_03 9:29

No, but I did notice in the underground parking that there are a few spots where they have motorcycles in front of their car. Uh so that was a positive thing that the strata or HOA, whatever you call the group, isn't, you know, motorcycle Nazis. So we're we're we're happy about that.

SPEAKER_05 9:47

Cool. Very cool. Very nice. All right. Well, thanks for sharing that. I'm glad we're um I'm glad you dodged that uh RPG.

SPEAKER_07 9:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 9:53

All right. And um somebody asked me about um our positioning in the in the uh in the global ranking of ADV podcasting really uh recently. And I um it's it's just too hard to keep track of. I can't treat uh, you know, I it's I just can't keep track of all the regions where we're sitting there. So um it's just it's just too much, just too big, too big of an ask.

SPEAKER_03 10:14

Too much of an ask to see where you're number two in the world. Exactly. It's very hard to uh the truth of the matter is it's actually really hard to dig into the data and find the one little glimmer of hope. So we just haven't had the time to dig through the data.

SPEAKER_05 10:30

And with that, is there anything you'd like to talk about? Maybe you you got some fancy new um clean gear. Cleam climb. God, can anyone just tell us how to say that?

SPEAKER_03 10:39

Yeah, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_05 10:40

So climb, climb in Sweden, you would make it the the uh the it would make it climb. Climb. The I would be.

SPEAKER_03 10:47

Yeah, we just say climb, yeah. That's what I say. But I figured I don't know. It's all good. So I uh I was talking to Mark. Mark is a um like an employee, so he was nice enough to give me a uh a discount code. I was kind of hoping for a sponsorship deal, but he says, listen, number two podcasts don't get anything but a discount code. They don't get jack all, right? What I'm doing is I bought a Badlands Pro jacket and I bought some adventure rally pants, both in black. I'm going to take that jacket because it's kind of a heavier jacket.

SPEAKER_05 11:23

Yeah, so it's got it's got armor in it.

SPEAKER_03 11:25

Yeah, but I'm not worried about the armor. I'm more worried about the it's it's warmer, right? It's more, it's a heavier jacket, right? Right. So I'm gonna take that jacket after I remove the chest armor, and then I will bring that with me to Europe. And in Europe, I put in the bike my Carlsbad climb jacket, and I will bring that back. And my theory is that because in Europe, I'm just riding the the couch, the the GSA, and I'm leaving the off-roading to the experts. Yeah. So I'll have the heavier, warmer jacket. And over there I have my old, I guess it was a Badlands Pro pants, but there was like size 44 from when I was like fat.

SPEAKER_05 12:06

When it used to be size 44.

SPEAKER_03 12:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 12:08

So back in the day.

SPEAKER_03 12:09

So they're massive. They're like balloon pants, like like uh, who is that guy? Uh Hammertime guy, like MC Hammer. You got MC Hammer motorcycle pants. But I'm just basically stationary, right? So they still work. So for here in North America, I'll have the Carlsbad jacket with the new adventure rally pants. And then I also upgraded my boots because I don't have boots here either, because I'll just left them with the bike in Europe because their boots are one of the hardest things to bring back and forth. So I finally invested in some Alpine Stars Tech Seven. Ooh, those are nice. Yeah. So everyone said I should I should do that because I'll be doing more off-roading and I'll have the the cove, you know, I'll be posing as a as a rally rider. So, you know, that's the that's that's generous.

SPEAKER_05 13:00

That was only generous.

SPEAKER_03 13:01

So that's the theory. And I also have for here, I have a carbon fiber helmet, just an ADV carbon fiber helmet. And it's not very good. I'll tell you what it is.

SPEAKER_05 13:11

It's a um you do the magic of that. And I'll talk about my tech seven. So I've got the tech seven alpine star, the waterproof ones, and these are the same ones that I wore in India that I did my my sheep edging with. Uh, or just gently mean sheep nudging.

SPEAKER_03 13:32

Sheep nudging. That's what I meant. Some sheep nudging. Sheep edging is something for another podcast.

SPEAKER_05 13:40

Oh my god. Thanks for getting me. Thanks for bringing me back on track there.

SPEAKER_03 13:45

Bring it back.

SPEAKER_04 13:46

Bring it back here. Almost gone off the rails. Sheep edging? Really?

SPEAKER_05 13:54

I knew it was one of those I couldn't couldn't quite get the words to come out right. All right. Anyway, Alpine Stars. The um there's a lot of conversation about once the water gets in the boot, it doesn't come out. And I've said this before, I'll say it again. Two ways to solve that. If you're traveling and you have electricity and you're gonna have electricity where you're staying the night, I actually brought these with us when we were in in India. Um, I brought US as well, and they are these little, very small, they look like uh little bullets, little, little torpedoes. And they're maybe uh three inches long and an inch across in diameter, and they're shaped like a like a yeah, a little torpedo. And you just drop them in, plug them in the wall, and then there are the heaters for your boots. So uh if you're traveling with your electricity, uh then you can drop heat uh these heaters in and they dry your boots overnight.

unknown 14:47

Uh uh.

SPEAKER_05 14:47

And pro tip, leave them in, pull them out, and then your boots are warm when you start the next day if you're in a cold environment. And if you're camping, then take hand warmers and crunch them up, shake them really, really well, and throw them in the boots, and um and then the same thing will happen. You'll wake up. I mean, the hand warmers need to be moved to keep the uh the the uh the stones um activating one another. But if you drop them in, you can usually get enough out of them so that they heat the boot or they dry the boot overnight. So that um these are two ways to avoid that. The other thing I do is I wear um seal skin waterproof socks, even if it's I'm not expecting it to get wet. And there it's it's kind of like a a neoprene, a very thin neoprene, maybe one or two mil, if that. And um and that just keeps whatever moisture that's gonna come off my foot in my sock, so the boots don't get wet.

SPEAKER_03 15:38

My theory of not getting water in your boots is stay out of the river and don't fall.

SPEAKER_05 15:42

Well, that's you know, it's it's always a great plan, and right until you swing your leg over a bike.

SPEAKER_03 15:48

Exactly.

Journey Bandit Helmet - Carbon XL

SPEAKER_03 15:49

So I found the helmet. It's a Simpson Journey Bandit helmet, and it's quite expensive. And I was just disappointed in the fit and finish. I was disappointed in the mechanism that flips up the internal glasses. Yeah, it wasn't, you know, a refined piece of German engineering. It was like clunky, and when I lowered it, it would touch the bridge of my nose as opposed to the uh Toritech helmet I have, the old one that I have, it just pro bam, it just drops perfectly. Yeah. Uh, I was also disappointed with the opening mechanism. When it opens, the whole helmet kind of shifts a lot. I know I'm really splitting hairs here, but when you're used to something that's perfect, uh it was disappointing that this helmet. And then the the padding inside wasn't as nice. I had mentioned one time, a long time ago, that yeah, I finally bought myself a really nice, really nice helmet about four or five years ago. And I was like, oh, I get it. This is a nice, comfortable helmet from you know, having crappy helmets. And the Simpson helmet didn't feel that way. I didn't get that, oh, I get it. This is an amazing helmet. It's like I'm a little disappointed in this helmet, if I'm honest, right?

SPEAKER_05 17:04

So it sounds to me like you should have put it back in the box and sent it back with all of that hate you have towards that helmet.

SPEAKER_03 17:11

No, I I'm not that person. I I I I hate, you know, when we owned Expedition Research, the biggest issue I had with people, especially with low profit margin, low cost items, is yeah, people returning it. So I don't want to be a hypocrite. I bought it, it's fine, it works, it didn't misrepresent itself in any way. But uh, I will say that I was slightly disappointed in the high cost of it and the low refinement of it.

SPEAKER_05 17:39

But anyways, I think you've I think you've really well established that point, sir.

unknown 17:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

I don't hate it. I just think for that much money, there are better options out there. That's all I'm saying.

SPEAKER_05 17:50

Did it cost you the same as your clean? You had a clean or you had you had a No, I have a Tora Tech. A Tora Tech. Did it cost you the same amount of money as that one? It's the same, if not more. Yeah. Oh my god. Okay. Yeah. I I would be sending that steak back, just saying. Anyway, tell me. Um,

Lithium batteries in your bike

SPEAKER_05 18:08

you have a little bike right now, don't you? You have like a little farm bike, right?

SPEAKER_03 18:11

Yeah, I had it just for people who who visited. We had a leftover from our property. We had a TW200, and my wife was going to learn how to ride on it. And we know how that journey goes usually.

SPEAKER_05 18:21

Unless you're Robert's wife, in which case she begins the journey and then you follow. You just go get the license.

SPEAKER_03 18:27

Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's so awesome, right? So I finally get around to selling it. Okay. Uh, because we sold our property, and I'm like, what am I doing with this thing, right? So it's a little TW200. You know, there's a million people asking to buy it. I kind of underpriced it on a Facebook marketplace. But I wanted to give you guys a review. So I had it sitting in the back of the trailer over the winter. And just the other day, I backed it out of the trailer and I'm like, oh, this is gonna be tough. And I have like a cheap lithium Amazon battery in it. And I've never once put a charger on this battery. Okay. I pulled it out, it was in the snow. There's like six inches of snow, and I just hit start and the damn thing started right up. Wow. That lithium battery is the best thing I've ever done for a bike that is used infrequently and weight is an issue. It's just the best damn thing I've ever done. And I just, for every bike I will ever replace a battery, and I'm not gonna go do it. You know, it's like I'm not gonna go throw my good battery away. But if I ever need to replace a battery ever again, I will always just put a top-of-the-line brand name lithium. Don't go to Amazon and buy the cheapest one. You're asking for trouble. Buy an established, compatible lithium battery. Be careful with it. Don't, don't short it out because I've also had one blow up on me. Uh, but buy a highly reviewed, reputable brand lithium battery, and you will you will thank me for it.

SPEAKER_05 19:54

Okay. It's funny you mentioned that because um my buddy Sven, Sven, I met uh at Scoob last year, means forest in Swedish. Um, he's actually doing all kinds of crazy stuff that he's like building. He's like, I there he sends me pictures of the stuff he's developing. He's like, I'm gonna put these double heated hand grip foils on your bike. We'll get rid of that factory stuff that doesn't heat because you hear me complaining about it on the podcast. And he's like, we'll just tear that out and fix it. I'll just build it. And he he's building a um switching mechanism, a box that mounts on the side of my uh my display to run the buttons that you know. I got a um a uh seat warmer, all kinds of crazy stuff. He's like, Oh, I just built the switching. I was like, you know, I think they're hiring at um SpaceX. But uh anyway, one of the things that we talked about was getting uh lithium batteries to trade out because I need a new battery for my T7, and we talked about that. Yeah. Good plan.

SPEAKER_03 20:49

Yeah, so in your environment, you don't ride in the winter, anyways, but when it's very, very cold, like below zero, there is a bit of a procedure. If you especially have a high compression bike, which is you need to turn on the bike and let it sit for a second and kind of warm up the chemistry in the battery. However, I will say, that being said, when I just took the the TW out, obviously it's a low compression farm bike, but I I pulled it out of the trailer, it hadn't been touched in six months and it was below freezing. And I just pressed start and you know, it worked. So um, you know, but if but if you're one of these crazy, crazy bastards that ride in the Arctic in the winter, you know, you may want to not get a get a lithium battery.

SPEAKER_05 21:34

Yeah, I was thinking about um the guy that we uh the guy that I that uh rises T7. The other day we had a white out snowstorm. It was kind of like imagine, like in the Caribbean, there's these passing horrential downpour at certain times in the afternoon, right? Just comes over, you bring everything in, boom, it's done. And then two minutes later, it's sunny and gorgeous out. And then five minutes later, the decks are dry. So when I went out for lunch, I walked by this guy's T set. The guy that we talked to, uh Daniel. Um, and I the day before I had dropped some uh when I went by the bike, I dropped some cannonball stickers on his bike. And um I went by the other day and during the snowstorm, and you could barely tell it was a black motorcycle because it was so covered in snow, but he rode it that day.

SPEAKER_03 22:17

Wow, that's impressive. I just, I'm just not like I'm over the you know, freezing and uh, you know, when I first started riding, you know, I was riding in Toronto, and I remember like one Halloween, there was flying snow, and I just remember always being cold, but we had really crap gear. We'd have hand warmers, we didn't have anything, we didn't know any better, right? But I'm just you know, I don't know. Maybe I'll find my my spirit one day and do some crazy trip and put a sidecar on a GS and ride to the Arctic Ocean in the in the middle of winter one day. Maybe I'll maybe I'll find my uh my spirit again. Find your joy there.

SPEAKER_05 22:56

Talk to uh talk to Helgay about putting the sidecar on, right?

SPEAKER_03 22:59

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 23:00

Helga Peterson, yeah. All right.

SPEAKER_03 23:02

Um Well, listen, we forgot to tell people this isn't a cruise show. We have an interview, but we're just rambling here.

SPEAKER_05 23:08

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_03 23:08

So if you want to just skip the BS, you can go to chapter and and go to the interview.

SPEAKER_05 23:12

Wait a minute. This is we're rambling?

SPEAKER_03 23:14

No, this isn't important informative motorcycle highbrow material.

SPEAKER_05 23:18

Yeah, okay, good. Thank you for clarifying that. I thought for a minute I was being downgraded.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

Well, I'm gonna have a drink and think about it, but there we go.

SPEAKER_05 23:26

Um, it's interesting. The um the interview that's coming up, I um there were some comments about electronics that were on there. I think Kerry made some really good points. He made some really bad points, just to clarify that. He made some very, very bad points. Well, we'll get to that later. Talk to me a bit about Garmin.

SPEAKER_03 23:45

Yeah, I side a note here because I'm gonna build this little cove. I'm putting a rally tower on it. And we were talking about how to just get simple maps up, and you know, I don't have any money, right? So I have two Garmin XT units. I have an old, old one, and I have a newer one.

SPEAKER_05 24:02

Oh, I'm sorry, what'd you say? Did you did you did you did you mean to call your dog a different name?

SPEAKER_03 24:09

Oh, I gotta get them out of here. All right, I'm back. I had to kick the dog. We're back. He was starting to eat a cushion, so I'm like, you gotta go, buddy. You gotta go. Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming. Take it take your. I don't know how I'm gonna edit that, but anyways.

SPEAKER_05 24:25

I think you're just gonna have to cut all that out.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

So I went to update the maps on the XT, and it's like, no, like we cannot do this. I had issues with it connecting to the computer. I have another XT, it's the newer one that Hunter gave me. Yeah, and that updated just fine. So I think they're not supporting the older XT. And it's a shame because you know, you spend like a thousand bucks on this thing, this device, and then it just stops being supported. Whereas we were talking the other week, and in the interview, we talk about just getting an older phone. Right. And those don't fail. The app updates, the maps update, but the hardware itself is just so rock solid. So I'm more and more getting on the bandwagon of tablet-based, phone-based navigation systems because the the experience has just been so disappointing.

SPEAKER_05 25:20

Yeah, interesting. Okay, well, fair enough. But um, I'm uh when I see you in May when we meet in Denmark, then um we can do a I know you mentioned that in the uh actually at the end of the at the interview, but um we'll set up my bike to have that second phone just to run navigation.

SPEAKER_03 25:39

When you're building your bike this spring, just make sure you have whatever charging system ready to go, so you just pop the phone in and you know, Bob's your uncle.

SPEAKER_05 25:49

Excellent. I'm all about that. All right. Um so I realize this is a lot of highbrow motorcycle chat, but I just want to say that um if I'm not mistaken, you did do an interview.

SPEAKER_03 26:02

Yeah. So we talked to Carrie about his trip to the Arctic Ocean, and we get off topic a little bit, as you should. And uh there's proper advice in there. And it's interesting because when I used to go to the rallies to promote the cannonball rally, almost everyone would come up and they would talk about their big ride or their bucket list items. And everyone would either tell me they wanted to go to the Arctic Ocean or they had done it and it was their biggest ride of their life.

SPEAKER_05 26:35

To the right place in the Arctic Ocean, you met.

SPEAKER_03 26:37

Yeah. Well, listen, we'll make mistakes, you know. And you know, now that I think about it, you know, I think that the reason why Carrie's buddy and Carrie keep going to Prudhoe Bay is because it's easier.

unknown 26:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

I think it's Yeah, that would make sense. That would make sense. Yeah, because the Dalton, the all-season road is dirt the whole way. And I think, you know, having they need it, having chosen the easier path, I think is going to Prudhoe Bay.

SPEAKER_05 27:07

So you want they wanted to have fresh lines, let fresh paint on the road.

SPEAKER_03 27:11

That's right.

SPEAKER_05 27:11

Less i less less frost heaves.

SPEAKER_03 27:13

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 27:15

All right, fair enough. Anyway, I think that's enough abuse. And with that, so that's enough of enough abuse for the tee up. Hey. And uh for those of you who who uh who don't who don't know, Carrie did ride the the cannonball, the 2025 cannonball in America.

SPEAKER_03 27:33

Yeah, like a boss, too.

SPEAKER_05 27:35

Yeah, like a boss, absolutely. And you start the interview with his um with his rating as point total. So with that, I say we should roll the interview.

SPEAKER_08 27:44

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T7 Kerry and the Arctic Ocean Part 1

SPEAKER_03 28:46

Welcome to the podcast. Well, thank you, sir. Thanks for so much for taking uh the time out of your day. I know you're an important businessman running that uh that awesome shop, Scissors and Scotch. Maybe you can tell me about that.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

So about uh two years ago, um I decided to do a complete and utter career change, not much different than what you're going through. And decided that I was getting out of technology all up and went for a barbershop with a full bar, about as far from technology as I could get.

SPEAKER_03 29:20

Now that's something I can get behind. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Yeah, it's a it's a rough gig I got. Uh, you know, I get to hang out, it's a little bit like cheers, and uh, I've got a full bar behind me as I'm chatting with clients.

SPEAKER_03 29:33

So every day is a good day. I've seen the place and it it's super cool. And uh I used to go to a place called Mankind in Fort Lauderdale, and it's kind of the kind of the same idea. I am in Seattle. Where are you today? I am in the Charlotte, North Carolina area, just a little bit north of the city. Nice. And uh I have talked you in to having a beer with me today. So what are you having?

SPEAKER_02 29:55

Oh it is brutal, but in in the the spirit of your wonderful podcast, I am going to put down an IPA against all of my being. I'm gonna drink this beer with you. It is a nice, frosty, cold uh beer IPA called the Big O, and it's from Sugar Creek Brewing, uh, right here in Charlotte. I always like to uh support the local guys. Nice. Cheers.

SPEAKER_03 30:24

I'm having a uh backcountry brewing widowmaker, hazy IPA. Cheers, bud. Nice. Oh, you're gonna love it by the end of this podcast. You're gonna be like, IPAs are nothing, baby. I'm gonna need it to get to the end of the podcast. Before we get to your uh ridiculous uh Alaska Arctic Ocean story, Carrie has 976 points and is currently number four on the 2026 starting grid for the America's Rally. So no stranger to long distance adventure travel. What are you planning to ride in this year's rally?

SPEAKER_02 31:04

So I'm actually swapping it up this year. So last year I rode my 23 Triumph Tiger 1200 Rally Pro, and that was a great bike. Uh, but as you know, we had a lot of rain last year and uh a lot of mud, and my tires did not last as long as I had hoped they would. So I spent a lot of time slipping and sliding and picking that beast up, which was uh not a lot of fun. So this year I've decided to swap to the same bike that I used for Alaska, and I'm swapping to my pretty heavily modified T7 for this year. Nice. And um, what tires are you gonna run this year? I'm actually running more than one set of tires this year.

SPEAKER_03 31:51

Pro tip listener.

SPEAKER_02 31:52

Yeah, so one of my lessons learned was the spirited approach that everybody takes, especially at the beginning of the rally when adrenaline's high, will burn through tires, especially if you want to be competitive for first place. So um I burnt through my tires before we actually got to the got to the off-road section. So I'm I'm actually gonna be doing a swap um from one set of like less aggressive, more street-oriented tires for the first few days. And then as we get closer to the dirt, I'm gonna swap and go with a more aggressive off-road tire.

SPEAKER_03 32:32

Yeah, we could dissect us for hours and days, but uh so it's in the rules that you can use any resource that is available to everyone. So if you went on, I don't know, Amazon and and shipped some tires to a hotel and went in the parking lot with the tools that that you brought, uh, you're more than welcome to change your tires. Uh, what wouldn't be cool is if uh you had, I don't know, your brother in the parking lot waiting with his trunk open and a new set of tires. That's that's not cool. So um it's it's an exercise in self-reliance and and and creativity. But let's talk about Alaska because that's what you came all the way here for. And that's what the listeners want to hear about. So this was uh a ridiculous trip that everyone wants to do because we're all a bunch of uh nutjobs here. So maybe in broad strokes, you can tell me. I know your friend went with you, yeah, and that's someone who's in the rally this year. So maybe tell me the broad strokes, where you both started, where you wanted to end up, and what breaks you took.

SPEAKER_02 33:29

Okay. So the the trip was interesting. So it was a couple of years ago now, um, and it was right before I was getting ready to open the shop. And my buddy Matt, who lives down in the Miami area, uh, was talking about, you know, he's retiring, he wants to go on another big trip. He wanted to get up to Alaska. And I'm looking at the calendar and thinking to myself, all right, I better do this because I'm not gonna get an opportunity to take a real vacation for quite a while, you know, starting up a new small business. I'm just no I'm gonna be there a lot of hours. So I talked to Matt and asked if it was all right to go along. And he loved the idea of having some company instead of just going solo. So that was the plan. So he actually left about a week before I did, um, just because of the timing of what we both had going on. He had more time available to do it as well. So he actually left from Miami and then went across the southern U.S. and then went up through California, up the PCH, up into Oregon. Um, and then what I did is I met him in Oregon a little bit later. So I basically powered through doing the super slab days because you know most of the those sections of the US I've done before. So um I powered down Interstate 40. I had to race a storm, which was super interesting, uh, just west of Kansas City. I got to pull my bike into the hotel lobby because they are hitting 80 mile-an-hour winds and there were threats of tornadoes. Anyway, so we ended up meeting up in Oregon. Um, his wife's father lives out there, and we stayed overnight at their place, and it was amazing, you know, getting fresh mussels off the beach. And Matt and I went to a place that had just pulled oysters off the beach and we had fresh oysters and stuff. And you know, I spent 20 years out in the Pacific Northwest and I I loved it out there. But uh yeah, so we we met up from Oregon and then we followed along the uh coast up into Washington, and then once we were in Washington, uh we followed all the way out to the northwest corner. Uh what's that area called again? Neah Bay. I was just out there last year, as a matter of fact. Yeah, it's Nea Bay. It's it's it's out on the Indian Reservation, out on the far northwest corner of the state. Then we followed across the northern edge. Um, then we caught the Port Townsend Ferry, took the ferry across over to Whitby Island, and then you know, just kept going from Whidby Island north. We spent a night in the Burlington area, which is kind of the Cedro Woolley Valley area of Washington, up north. Saw some of my old friends from the Seattle area. They drove up to see us, which was really cool. Uh, then we just kept heading north. So we head up through Bellingham, uh into BC, through the Vancouver area. That whole area is just absolutely beautiful. So I really love that.

SPEAKER_03 36:52

Yeah, I had moved up here uh with my wife from Florida. So we lived in Florida for 10 years, and uh, we just wanted a change from you know that rat race and you know living in cars all the time and getting outside. And uh, you know, it's definitely it's definitely a big been a big change. And I think this is the last, you know, major move. What bikes did you guys have? I know that you both had T7s, but maybe you can tell us how those bikes were set up.

SPEAKER_02 37:18

Yeah, so we both had T7s. So for a while now, I have had the bug to head down the southern part of the Pan American Highway. So this is my this was my second time up to the Arctic Ocean. And so I've I've wanted to go south to Ushuaia, and um, I'm still dying to go. I can't tell you how many videos and articles and everything else and trips that I've followed people on just to get tips and tricks of how they're doing everything. Um, but yeah, so I had we both had T7s because Matt um is interested in doing the trip south with me as well. And the whole idea was stupid simple bike, extremely reliable, um, not a lot of electronics to go bad. We both are running the same thing so that we don't have to carry a ton of spare parts, um, separate parts for different bikes. Um the big difference between his bike and my bike was is um he has a little shorter inseam than I do. So he did the lowering links on his. Um, and he uh the dealership made him buy the bike with the hardbags. So he's got the hard pan ears on his, and I've got the Moscow soft pan ears on mine. So that was that was the big difference. Uh we we both had the uh the old Garmin's, but Matt's Matt had a brand new Garmin, what is it, the Zumo XT2, and the thing died. It basically bricked in like the first week that we were on our trip. So he was did all of his navigation off the phone after that.

SPEAKER_03 39:01

Yeah, you can't win, right? Because you can get the cheapest tablet and you got to learn how to use it and spend days setting it up, and then it may not be rugged or weatherproof. You can go that route, which is I'll buy the thing and just plug it in. A damn thing should work. You know, I've had nothing but bad luck with the screens, but I believe in simplicity. And then at the end of the day, I just went through this with Taylor, as a matter of fact. Um I have a stack of old phones here because I do all the app development and I said, listen, don't buy anything. I'm gonna just give you one of these old phones. Yeah. Because you already know how to run the OS. You can just download uh offline mic maps, sorry. Right. And I think we're just so used to using phones now. Maybe uh pro tip is just keep your old phone, don't trade it in, and boom, you got yourself one of the best navigation units around.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

Yeah, you've talked about it on the podcast a couple times before for like uh running the rally app and stuff like that. Having the wireless charging is definitely key. I did not have that at the time when I was doing the Alaska trip. And what I kept running into was the iPhone, you know, because I don't care who you are, when what time of the year you go, if you're going to Alaska, you're gonna get rained on and you're gonna get rained on hard. It just doesn't matter. It's gonna happen at least a couple days on a trip like that. And so I had my cable plugged into my phone, and lo and behold, my iPhone uh fritzes out and says, Hey, we can't charge. Um, so then after a while, you know, you start when you're doing navigation and you're recording your GPS tracks and everything else like that, you know, you start running, running out of juice real fast. So the that tip that you give everybody about wireless charging uh is totally key. I don't care if it's a quad lock or SP Connect or any of the other various setups that are out there, it just doesn't matter. But just trying to do wireless is is definitely super important.

SPEAKER_03 40:55

And not to get any like Facebook hate here, but I will preface all that by saying, for instance, I have the really old Gen 1 uh RAM mount, MagSafe wireless charging units. They're like the worst. Yeah. But don't think that they're going to charge your phone super quick. I'm saying that the MagSafe wireless charging with quad lock or ram mount or any other reputable motorcycle specific type will keep your phone on all day and may charge it slowly. So before you all come on Facebook and yell at me, which I'm gonna stop giving advice on. Uh, but you know, it is my advice is so it won't go into that failure mode, that self-protection mode, that limb mode, whatever you call it, but it will just stay on all day. And that seems to be for now, if you're listening to this 10 years in the future, I'm sure they have some sort of solar charging with wireless laser technology. And I'm wrong. But today, as of today, uh, that's that's that's my advice.

SPEAKER_02 42:00

Well, it's well, it's funny since we're talking tech, I'm gonna do this for like two more minutes and then I'll keep talking about the trip. So, like for the for the cannonball on the tiger, I've got a chiggy CarPlay display, which is like 2,000 nits and brightness. It's you know just as bright, if not brighter, than any other display. It is incredibly weather hardened, like it's like it has no problem. But everybody gets concerned because it's like, oh, well, then you still need your phone. Well, I didn't have a problem with that at all. And the nice thing about it is that when you have a CarPlay display or an Android Auto display, whatever your your flavor of choice is, is that you can run any app that you want. You have no vendor lock-in at all, right? So when we were on the road and in hardcore areas with no cell phone service, I was using Osmond, which I love because it's got an off uh offline routing engine that just can't be beat. You know, we were using Google Maps at times uh during the cannonball and things like that. Modern apps for navigation are so powerful and the offline mapping features are so good. You just don't need a dedicated device like that anymore. And then, based on what's going on at the time, like I'll give you an example. Like I may have all of my waypoints set up the way that I wanted it on that route for the cannonball. But then I realized I needed gas. Instead of messing with my main navigation tools, I would open up a second one and say, find me gas along my route. I know I've got about, let's say, 50 miles left before I need fuel. So I could keep the main one going, but then throw up on the screen the one that I had. That would take me to the gas. Then when I get to the gas, I flip it back to their to my primary navigation. And then I don't have to play with anything. I'm not modifying routes to throw in gas stations. I'm not doing anything. There were times during the cannonball, I had three different navigation systems running at once. Anyway, I didn't have that during the Alaska trip. Right. So I didn't have that. It wasn't a thing for me back then at that point.

SPEAKER_03 44:28

Well, I think there's actually a good lesson in there because I think you told me a story about uh relying on an offline aged POI database and going to try to find gas when you were outside of cell phone coverage. So maybe you can tell us that lesson that you learned, which I think we can all learn from.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

Yeah, that was a big one. I would say that when people are going into an area that they're unfamiliar with, and when you're when you get far enough north, it may be 30, 40, 50 miles between each one of the gas stops. Um one, I always stop for gas every time. If I had, if I saw gas and I was like way up in Alaska, I stopped and filled up. I don't care if I had half a tank because what I found was, and I'm gonna toss a Zumo under the bus on this one again, their POI database, their point of interest database was woefully out of date. There was one gas station that I had been planning on hitting, and it turned out that it had been closed for over eight years, right? And then there was another one two miles down the road that wasn't even in the database, which saved my bacon, right? Because I was down to like my last 10, 12 miles. So I was being totally dumb about it. And we were able to get gas at another point. You cannot count on those POI databases and those devices to be 100% accurate. One of the things that I did, which I'm really, really glad that I did, is I invested in an armadillo fuel bladder. Giant loop makes them. I'm not sure if you're familiar with those. Yeah, it's it's awesome. I bought the middle size one, it was about a three-gallon. And I would just fill that sucker up uh when we were up north. If I needed it, great. If I didn't need it, okay. I would just fill my tank with the stuff out of the fuel bladder first and then and then top off the tank afterwards. But the nice thing about those things is that since it's not hard-sided, you can just basically roll it up and I'd stuff it into the back pocket on my on my Moscow bags. That worked fantastic. Like I will do that with every every long trip I do, I will have that thing with me.

SPEAKER_03 46:43

The timing is so apropos. I just watched a Instagram post from Stewie MK. He's someone that we're going to interview soon. Yeah. And he is riding his bike. This this crazy son of a bitch. So he's riding his bike from the end of the Africa Eco Race. Yeah. And I think he's going through Mauritania right now, somewhere like that. And he films a piece of the camera, and he's holding up his giant loop bag, and he goes, Yeah, well, I'm so glad I brought my fuel bladder, but however, I haven't put any fuel in it. And now I'm on the side of the road and I have and I have no fuel. So poor. So pro tip, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and you're absolutely right is fill the damn thing up. And then when you finally get to a threshold in your trip where, you know, you know there's a fuel stop every 10 miles. Go ahead and just dump in your tank, roll it up, and ignore it, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:37

All right. So we kept we kept heading north uh through BC. And you know, we we took the obligatory cutoff and you know, we went into Stuart. Um, that's that's always fun.

SPEAKER_03 47:49

Did you get hiderized? You gotta tell us you did that. Come on.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

We got hiderized. Yes, we did. Nice. Yes, we got hydroized. Well done. So I take it you've been there too. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 47:59

Yeah. I went uh the last time I was there was at the end of the last Alcan rally. Taylor had left me. He he flew home from from uh somewhere in Alaska, and then my flight instructor wanted to come for a ride. And thank goodness, because I actually had pneumonia. I had uh I had walking pneumonia and I was not feeling well. And he one of the greatest things that you're just about to describe is the Cassiar Highway. If you're coming from the north, you run down the Cassiar Highway, an amazing road, just full of fun police. Watch out for fun police. Yeah. Uh, and then you turn down towards the west and you go into Stewart, and then you go into Hyder, Alaska. Yeah, and uh I didn't care that I was sleeping half the day. I said, we are gonna get hiderized, and we went in there just like the good old days of my flight instructor, and and we got hiderized. That was fun.

SPEAKER_02 48:50

Yeah. So yeah, so we did go up the cast here, and uh, you know, that whole road is just gorgeous. Like I can't even describe how beautiful it is. Like it is uh, I think I described it to you at one point. Like that whole road is kind of like Zen time for me. The road is beautiful, the the sweepers through there are gorgeous. I'll tell you what, I saw 10 times more bear and wildlife in BC than I actually did in Alaska. Wow. BC was so full of wildlife, it was crazy. Those black bear are just hilarious. They're they're like they're like puppies. They like they hear the bikes coming and they'll pop their heads out from between the bushes because they're super curious, and they'll like check you out as you go by, and then poof, and then they're they're gone again. Ah, so great. It was pretty funny. Yeah, they're they were cool. Now it's the brown bears that you uh you don't want to mess with, but uh yeah, the grizzly bears.

SPEAKER_03 49:53

Yeah, anything that is uh above the scale of brown, like if it's not black, and if it's a brown bear, just just uh give them a wide berth and don't stop for pictures. Or listen, or stop for pictures as long as someone else is taking the video of you getting mauled so we can all laugh at you and call you a Muppet. Uh that's the only prerequisite.

SPEAKER_02 50:16

Like the woman recently that was trying to take a selfie with a snow leopard. Did you hear about that?

SPEAKER_03 50:20

Uh makes me so happy to hear those stories. It just removes people from the gene pool.

SPEAKER_02 50:25

Exactly. It's so shallow these days, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 50:29

I love it. I love it. Um, so what time of year did you head north? Just to give us some context.

SPEAKER_02 50:34

Uh this was July. So this was July when we were headed north. Busy season. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, there's there is an optimal window for doing that trip, right? And so we wanted to hit that optimal window as much as possible. There were times that I was like, oh my God, if we had done this trip any earlier, we would have been screwed because we ran into some nasty, nasty weather along the way. We had talked a little bit in the past about Homer. After we went up the Cassier, we ducked into Southeast Alaska and that was gorgeous, right? We just kind of popped here and there and went to different areas. And when we were in Homer, it was cool because uh Matt had found a very cool B that was up at the top of the cliff overlooking the Homer Spit. We were coming through, following along the water on the inlet, coming into Homer, and I can't remember what the name of that road is, but I think it's the A1. We probably had 40 mile an hour crosswinds easily coming in off the water, and I could barely see. So, you know, I've got a nice helmet with a pinlock system, but I wear glasses. It doesn't matter how good your helmet is if you wear glasses, you're kind of screwed. So I should have just taken them off. I would have seen better without them. The wind was coming from the side, we were literally get blown. We were either getting blown off the road in one direction or blown into oncoming traffic. The temperatures were in the 40s, it was just brutal. We were we both had high-end climb cortex gear on, and we were soaked to the bone by the time that we got to that B. But the hosts were amazing. There were there were several other people that were staying there. Um, and they let us throw all our gear in the dryer to dry everything off, which was awesome of them to do. So the first time ever in my life having moose was there in Homer at that BNB. Right. I've never had I've never had moose. I've eaten a lot of things before, including monkey brains. I'd never had moose before. But she in the morning for breakfast, she had made a moose quiche. It was pretty awesome. But in the in the middle of the night, we ran into some craziness where the tsunami sirens started going off. So everybody's getting up and everybody's worried. I think there's like eight people in the house, nine people in the house, and we're all walking around, and she's got this big, beautiful picture window in the living room overlooking it, and you can see all the headlights because the there's a bunch of hotels out on the Homer Spit where the fishing docks are, because a lot of people go there for commercial fishing and sport fishing. The hotels were just being emptied and evacuated because you know you got to take that stuff seriously. But we were okay, thankfully, because we were up high enough on the ridgeline uh above the spit that we didn't have to deal with that. So that was okay.

SPEAKER_03 53:42

But there were some serious lessons learned around the world after the tsunami in Japan. Yeah. Those advanced warning systems are important. And I realize in today's world, we get jaded very quickly. Ah, nothing really happened. But listen, don't mess with it. And especially when you're on motorcycles and you're camping, uh, you were in an Airbnb, thankfully, uh, you can't always be prepared to know what elevation you're at. Right. Uh, but at the same time, if you hear any kind of uh people's alerts on their phones in the middle of the night or you see people driving away, you know, just head for high ground, man. It's not gonna, it's gonna make for a good story.

SPEAKER_02 54:18

You know, it's it's one of those things it's like unlike the fire alarms and the fire drills at your office that everybody wants to ignore, I would not screw around with a tsunami warning. That's not something I do. I'm just like, yeah, it's just not worth it. There, yeah, I'm like, I've seen the movies. Yeah. Like I see what happens when that when that stuff hits.

SPEAKER_03 54:36

So in all the interesting places, uh, Homer's an amazing side trip to go on. It's worth the miles, it's worth the effort. And I know when your target fixated, you don't want to do it. That's one of my I'm I am the worst tourist. It is worth going to Homer. It's worth going to Valdez, uh, it's worth going to the other place where you go through the the tunnel thing. All those places are worth it, but all those places are susceptible to to tsunamis. Right. So you just you have to be really, really um aware of that. So you didn't only stay in Airbnb's and hotels. I understand you you did some camping.

SPEAKER_02 55:10

Oh, yeah. We we camped a lot as as much as we could. So our rule was basically we were tent camping the entire way, unless one of two things was happening. It was pouring when we were ready to quit, because neither one of us wanted to be able to set up a tent in the rain, because that kind of sucks. And the other was if there just wasn't any camping available. So there was probably three days, because you know, it was we were up there during peak season where we couldn't even find a campsite. One of the areas that we were looking at, I can't remember whether it was Anchorage or Fairbanks, but the the biggest camp sites uh in town were completely closed because they had lost funding for it and there was nobody there to man it and and take care of them. So they was totally overgrown and everything else. And like, well, we could try and pretend we should be here, but you know, someone's somebody's probably gonna come kick us out. We ended up finding a different spot to camp that night in a RV park, which uh tent camping in an RV park isn't exactly the most fun, but we made it work.

SPEAKER_03 56:26

No, the whole southern swath of America, all the cool places you want to go rip through on a motorcycle in the winter, yeah, Arizona, all those places. It's the worst. I don't know why they don't in all these RV parks, just have little squares of sand or grass or something and just, you know, charge me 25 bucks just to pop up the tent for a few hours. I just, I just don't get it. But, anyways, I we we will we will have a whole separate podcast on how RV site owners don't don't seem to care about motorcycle schemes. What kind of tent did you have? And did you have any issues with it? Is there any recommendations that you can give to um to people doing this trip?

SPEAKER_02 57:12

You know, packing is an interesting thing, it's a very personal thing as to what people consider must-haves, as in like I'm a guy that likes to be comfortable. I will pack good camping gear. So I have a super thick air pad, um, I have a I have a big eggness tent tent now. Uh, I had a for that trip, I actually had a mountain hardware tent. It was the last trip that I used that tent. I've had had that mountain hardware tent since the last time I went up to Alaska. And I learned the hard way that even though I had re-waterproofed this tent like three times and seam sealed it and everything else, I I practically floated away one night in the in the rain. So I was like, all right, well, this is gonna be the last time I use this tent. So I picked up a big Agnes tent that has a big vestibule uh now that I use, and that thing is awesome because I can take off my boots and my panniers and everything, leave them outside of the tent, but they're still out of the elements, which is awesome. I'm a big fan of jet boils, so I've got a jet boil. Um, one thing that I would not do again is I had packed a boatload of the mountain home meals. Mountain house, yeah. Mountain house, yeah. So they were decent, but they take up so much space, and you get so sick of them so fast. And that's one thing that I would like to tell everybody is like you can always find stuff to buy along the way, right? You're not the just because you're out and about, there are people that live locally that need the same stuff that you do. They all need food, they need all need restaurants, they all need gas, everything else, right? So don't overdo it. Don't take everything in the kitchen sink because it's just not worth it.

SPEAKER_03 59:09

I think uh I want to give a quick tip because I've made this mistake. So in the big blue whale, the rally van, I keep a ton of hiking meals just for emergency food. So if we're ever somewhere, come to the van, I have I have emergency food. I always keep it. However, when I'm in the bike, I always keep a couple of mountain house, I think they're called pro or something, because they are vacuum sealed. So after like two and a half thousand miles on gravel roads, the normal hiking ones, they kind of from shaking around and moving, they kind of turn into powder and it just turns into slop when you rehydrate it. So, pro tip, if you can find the vacuum sealed ones, they take a little bit less space and they last for years and years and years in the bottom of your of your um of your saddlebags. Whether or not you've made a mistake like uh like Carrie did, and he has the soft bags, you know, he's a little bit backwards. Don't don't hold it out. Oh, I'm just kidding. Uh, but if you have a set of especially hard bags like on a big GSA, you can just throw a couple in the bottom and they'll just last forever. So, what's your conclusion after I made, you know, friendly prodding about the uh the Moscow Moto? I think you had the ones that slid on and off. Yeah, yeah. They're the soft bags. Would you change that?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:28

No, I like it. You know, there's a lot of people that don't like that style because they don't want the weight of the rack on the back. I don't care. And I know it adds like 18, 20 pounds or whatever ridiculous amount of weight it is. I can slide them on, slide them off. Um, they're easy to bring into the hotel. Uh it's it's just a completely different experience, and I liked it. Matt had his hard bags, he had the OEM hardbags on his T7, and they worked well for him for the most part, uh, except for the one time that he lost one on the way north. We got we were in a section where there was a lot of what are they like the ice heaves or the frost heaves, whatever they're called, and we were just bouncing the whole way down the the highway for probably 25, 30 miles. And at one point I get him over the comms. He's like, Carrie, I lost the bag. So we had to double back, double back and go find that bag. Thank God Matt was the guy that packed everything in the kitchen sink because he had extra ratchet straps and stuff too. So um, to make sure that his hard bags didn't pop out of the locking mechanism again, he actually used uh ratchet straps to strap them down to the mounts.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:44

Yeah, there's no ideal solution, but I think for that specific mission we're talking about now, which is going to the Arctic Ocean the back, I think you really hit the median of all the solutions. The only downside is when you go into a nice hotel, they can sometimes be a little bit dirty, right? And that can be a little embarrassing. Or you just walk in with some swagger and like a badass, like, yeah, I'm all dirty from the road. This is awesome, right? But for instance, I'm building a little, a little rally bike right now, and I'll have totally frameless where just a couple of soft bags. Actually, I got them from uh from Hunter, send them to me. Thank you. And uh it'll be 100% frameless. Whereas you're talking about framed where you can slide them off. And then on my GSA, I have the factory tour tech bags with the liners. So when I go to hotels, no matter how bad of a day, I can pick those liners out and I can go right into hotel check-in and they're perfectly clean. I might be a mess, but my bags aren't a mess. I'm not gonna make make a mess of a nice hotel room with white duvet covers and things like that. But, anyways, we could talk for five hours about how to pack and how not to pack, but there's a bunch of philosophies, and I think they're all right. But I actually lost the hard pennier once. I used to have a KLR 650, and I had the Pelican case adapters. I don't remember what they're called, but I remember losing an entire bag. I was totally inappropriately abusing this bike, and I lost an entire pelican case somewhere and had to go back and get it. So, yeah, there is no perfect solution for sure. Well, it's funny.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:19

I'm gonna I'm gonna throw Matt under the bus for a second here. So, one of the things early on I totally forgot to mention was is that before I even left my house, he lost his wallet. So at a it turned into a running joke. It was hilarious. Um, so he lost his wallet early on at a gas station where you know you're sliding your card at the pump and everything else. I think all of us have had some sort of similar experience, but he didn't put the wallet back in his pocket. I don't know where he had placed it on his bike or whatever, but he took off, the wallet fell off his bike and ended up in the street, and he didn't know for miles. So he goes back and he's looking for it, can't find it, can't find it, has no idea how long it actually how long it actually sat on the bike before it fell off. None of that. Well, Carrie, who is his his wife, so my name but with an eye. I don't know how she knows people in every state and every major city in the country, but she does. She's one of those. And she called up a friend who happened to live somewhat in the area who packed her kids into the car and they all went on a scavenger hunt looking for Matt's wallet and found his wallet. No, yes, they found his wallet, and then they were able to ship it ahead to him so that he'd have his wallet. I think it was to Oregon, but I I could be remembering wrong. So he was living off uh pinned with um, what is it, Apple Pay, right? So using the wallet and his iPhone to pay for everything until he could get his wallet back.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:03

But holy cow! You know what's funny because I just told a story to Taylor on the bumpers for this about a story that was so outrageously improbable that in a fiction novel you couldn't write it. And that story is so improbable that you couldn't put it in a story. I had to teach myself how to become a writer recently, right? And they tell you that sometimes stories are so authentic, you can't put them in a book because people won't believe you. And for our European and Canadian listeners, I know like 25% are outside of the US, they're all shaking their head for the other side of that story, which is wallet. What wallet? I haven't cared my wallet ever. I have to remember to bring my wallet because the whole world runs off Apple Pay or Google Pay or all these pay systems. You can't even even, I was just in Tokyo, and you just put your phone near the turnstile and it works, right? So our project. Problem is that, you know, we have to remember to bring our wallet. So, and then when you go to the US and you go to the Walmart, you know, the glorious Walmart, they don't have Apple Pay yet as of the recording of this. So it's like it's very difficult to sometimes to remember to bring your wallet. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:17

So so as another lesson learned on that trip, I I went the other direction and went total overkill. So I now have an air tag on my wallet, an air tag, an air tag hidden in my bike, and I have an air tag.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:32

You should have two air tags hidden in your bike. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:35

And I've got one in each panier. So that if I were to use the panier too along the way somewhere, I would be able to uh go back and find it a lot easier. But uh thankfully that's not a thing. But I was um taking lots of pictures along the way at every gas stop as I was trying to catch up with Matt of my wallet propped on top of my helmet, and I'd take a selfie, the the wallet propped up on top of the gas pump and take a picture of that. And I was sending them to uh our little group chat with the wives uh the whole way up. Uh that was fun. We hit Watson Lake, you know, the signpost for us. That's uh a good tourist trap, but it is pretty cool because I liked walking around and paying attention to the signs of where the signs were from. Matt had actually carried a sign up with him from Florida to be able to uh I can't remember what the number was, but it's a highway, uh Florida Highway with his actual Hokahe number. So Matt had done multiple Hokaha's. So he had taken that sign and we screwed it into one of the posts up there. I'll tell you what, it was hard finding a spot. Man, that place is full of signs. There was almost no space left.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:56

I'm actually looking forward to meeting Matt because the last time I went up, I did the same thing. I got a professionally made reflective sign for the last time we went up. The last time we went up was in the winter for the Alcan. And I had brought one up as well. So we were both planning ahead. That's really cool. And you're absolutely right. You can't find space. I think that they should, you know, not to criticize, but have a little more available real estate because there's not many tourist traps to go see. So it's really a destination. It is, it is super cool, and it is it is interesting watching where everyone came from. And that whole story is that when they were building the road, there was a soldier that was homesick and he put up a sign with with his hometowns, and I think he said how far it was away. And everyone who just came wanted to add to this. So there was nothing there, and now it's this great big tourist trap. And I, you know, I think it's great. Listen, uh, I love a good cheesy tourist trap, and there's nothing wrong with contributing to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:53

It was worth it. Uh, we we had a lot of fun. There was a the hotel that we stayed at in uh Watson Lake overnight there was very cheesy. It felt like one of those hotels that you should rent by the hour. I wouldn't know. You wouldn't know. I'm sure you wouldn't know. But it had like vinyl stickers of dragons on the wall. Yeah, we we won't go into what stains we found where, but yeah, it was a it was an interesting place. It was fun. Yeah, so you know, we hit Haynes Junction, we we bounced all over the place. Uh, we went into Anchorage and stayed there. Um, we got to Denali. Denali was absolutely beautiful. The mountain was out. I'll say the last time that I was up that way, Denali was not out. It was totally socked in with the clouds and stuff like that. Um, we rode in as far as they let you go. I don't know if you know this, but like uh they they make you take a bus after a while. Uh you can go in about, I think it's about 18 or 20 miles on surface roads into the park, and then the rest of it past that, you have to uh take the tour bus if you if you want to go deeper into the park. But we saw lots of mooses, which was which was cool. We saw lots of bear, uh, the brown ones that look at you like you're a meal, not just something interesting like black bears do.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:21

I want to know about chicken. I want to know about your last fuel stop, I want to know about how you accidentally or purposely chose to go to the wrong place in the Arctic Ocean. Let's take a commercial, and I need another beer, is really my motivation here. So let me go grab another beer.

SPEAKER_08 1:10:36

All right. 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. We'll list it on patreon.com. Links are in the show notes. Now, back to the riveting podcast in progress.

T7 Kerry and the Arctic Ocean Part 2

SPEAKER_02 1:11:04

Oh, look at that. And we're back. This is the most IPA I've had to drink in a decade.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:13

And it's all in one day. We all have to grow up at some point, so welcome. I'm doing this just for you. Thanks, buddy. So we have to preface this by a friendly reminder that the proper place to go to the Arctic Ocean is Tuck to Yuktuk. It's not tuk. Tuck is a place along the way, but you went to Prudhoe Bay. So, what was that decision making? And uh, do you have plans to rectify that in the future?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:38

You're such a punk. So Prudhoe Bay um was just the destination we hit. I know that it is not the preferred place to go. Technically, it is further north, just so you know. Agreed. I agreed. Right? So you're at 69 degrees, and then you got 70 point something for Prudhoe Bay, whatever it is. I can't remember the numbers.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:06

Yeah, but 69 is way better. I know, yes. Hey, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:10

All right, that's what she said. So, yeah, so we had uh, I don't know how we ended up on Prudhoe Bay. I think it was just the bucket list item for Matt. Um, and it's a spot I'd already been and was familiar with. I totally understand that the oil companies own all that land and the water rights, so you're forced to take a tour bus. It's not cheap. They have spotter planes that they have out there on the water for the polar bears and everything else like that. But uh yeah, we ended up going to Prudhoe. As we were headed north, we made the obligatory stop at uh what is it, Coldfoot Camp? Basically the gas station. Oh my god, dude. $250 for a double wide trailer that has uh plywood siding in the in each room. It was brutal. Wow. If I could have pitched a tent, I probably would have, but there just wasn't an option for that.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:05

I 100% agree. I would rather pitch a tent than sleep in a freaking crappy super eight. I would rather sit on a train for three days than fly coach if I can avoid it. I swear to God, I'd rather just take the long road. I'd rather rough, I'd rather poop in the woods than stay in a double wide that is full of bed bugs or whatever. Yeah. Couldn't agree more.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:29

It wasn't the greatest. The people were nice, but I mean, it was a bed and a shower, and that's really all we needed because the next day we were up and out early and back on the road. That whole length on the way north, you're following the pipeline, uh, which is really cool. So that's beautiful. We got to Addigan Pass, we're getting up to the mountains, and I'm looking at the weather in front of me. It looked like there was a pretty big storm front uh coming in. And I was telling Matt, I'm like, hey man, we we need to bundle up. I said, I'm I'm gonna pull over and put on my electric gear. He's like, ah, we can make it. Matt, not my first rodeo. The last time I went through Attic and Pass, I was doing about 45 miles an hour. I came around a bend and I was on a GS. You'd be proud. I was on a GS at the time. And uh we came through a spot where the sun hadn't hit the road yet, and it was clear ice. Uh I went straight down. Thank God my hard panniers survived that fall. And I actually ended up having to push the bike on its side for about 50, 60 feet because there was not enough traction on the ice to be able to get the bike to stand back up again. So I had to push it to where there was some sun so I could get the bike back up. Wow. So I'm watching this weather come through. I'm like, no, we're not gonna chance this. So we pulled over, and it's actually the the picture on uh my wallpaper on my laptop now is where I pulled over, where you can see the storm front coming into the the mountains and stuff. And it got it got pretty nasty. Uh the temperatures dropped, the rain was coming down sideways and spot, it got it got super sloppy. I gotta give Matt props for a second. Matt is a guy that has been riding Harleys and cruisers for the vast majority of his life. I have zero problem with that, but it totally makes sense because he's in Miami, right? And the roads are straight and the roads are flat, and a cruiser makes a lot of sense, and it's just the culture down there. Getting him to go from a Harley in Miami to throwing a leg over a T7 and heading into the mountains in Alaska. I'm like, you go boy, here we go, right? So um yeah, that was a big adventure for him. We had a great time with it, and the dude was an absolute hoot. And so I would say the other thing that I would really encourage people to think about is who they're doing trips with like this with. My first time to Alaska did not go as smoothly, nearly as smoothly as it did when I went up the second time with Matt. The guy I went with was awesome. Um, he was the first time around was great. He was a he was a medic in the Coast Guard, and you know, he was doing um deep sea recoveries and sinking boats and stuff like that and taking care of people. And the first time that I had done the Alaska trip was right after I had heart surgery. Save my life and everything, right? So having this guy along was great, but we had very different ideas and expectations about what we wanted that trip to be. He wanted it to be high mileage, go, go, go, go. And I'm like, hey, I'm alive. I would like to stop and smell the roses a little bit, you know? Right. So it was it was very different expectations of what we wanted out of that trap trip. Um Matt is super laid back, go with the flow, and I'm a type A planner, right? He just basically sat back and said, Where are we going?

unknown 1:17:14

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:15

So it it worked out well because I collaborated with him and talked to him about what I thought we should stop and look at. He gave his feedback on things that were important for him to see. So, you know, I had those lessons learned from the first trip. So I was like, I'm gonna make sure that this is good for both of us. And I think that that's super important because you can ruin a multi-month trip that's super expensive with time away from your families and everything else like that, if you don't properly plan it right, not just from the aspect of what route you're taking, but how you're gonna do it with the person you're doing it with. You know what I mean? Yeah, this is an important lesson. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a big deal.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:59

So the most important thing is when you were in chicken, did you do the famous drink? Uh yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:06

Tell us all about it. There was a tour bus full of people, and there was several other vehicles that were doing like round-the-world trips and stuff like that that were all in chicken to do the drink, right? It was crazy, and that bar is hilarious. I don't know if you remember the inside of that bar, but every wall is covered with crap inside that bar. There is so much going on in there, and there was one bartender taking care of the entire place.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:35

Yeah, because who's gonna work there? No one's gonna live there, right? So there's one guy, and thank goodness for him, right? Tip that guy well. What a contrast in travelers, right? You have the tour bus of quintessential, you know, Japanese tourists, and then you've got the round-the-world uni mug with super cheap German tourists in there. And then you've got you showing up covered in dirt. Uh, there must be a, I call it the special access pass, the we're real travelers card. When you walk through the road, you're covered in the road, you're not there for all the pictures. Yeah, we'll take one picture, have the drink. Do you find that when you show up in your road beaten T7 covered in your covered in dirt that you are treated differently? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:22

Um, I think when people see you out on a bike, you know, what's funny is the the smaller the bike, the more they want to talk to you. Right. Which is an interesting psychological breakdown, but we could go into that another time. But it was really cool because like everybody wanted to hear who you were, where you were coming from, where you're going to, what bike are you riding, how's your gear holding up? Oh, I I used to ride a motorcycle. Well, dude, get back on it. What are you doing? I don't want to hear about use too. I want to hear about your motorcycle from 20 years ago. Get back, get back on that beast. But yeah, it was it was it was a great way to meet people. It's one of the things that I really enjoy the most about long-distance motorcycle travel is that it really breaks down the barriers. It's not the same at all as going somewhere in a car.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:20

Yeah, I think it gives you credibility. I think it gives you gravitas, it makes you interesting. You didn't go online and book a seat on a tour bus. You know, we got here. The journey is the story. And when you go into a place like chicken, you're there for that quick little experience, but your story is how you got there. So when you walk in that into that bar, you immediately have credibility with everyone there. The room separates for you as you as you walk by. Yeah. So the trip was a success. We've rambled for an hour. Did the motorcycles break down? Did your tent fall apart? Did you have 40 flat tires?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:00

No, those bikes were bulletproof. We did oil changes in the backlot of some dealerships along the way. They let us take care of that. I think we we went through tires, and you know, some of the worst stuff that we had to do was just, you know, Matt's bike was brand new. So he needed a clutch cable adjustment because his clutch cable stretched a little bit for being new, and then all of a sudden he's on a you know 16,000 mile trip. We took care of all that little stuff along the way, but the the rest of it was awesome. The bikes did fantastic. We got up to the water. We did the I know, you know, we had to deal with the oil companies and you know, to get out to the water in their school buses. But Matt did the dip in the water. I'd done it before, so I wasn't gonna do it. I did a we did a Facebook live stream for him, so his whole family could see him jumping into the Arctic Ocean. Nice. He collects the water from every ocean he's been to. So he's got the Atlantic, the Pacific, and now the Arctic and stuff. So he's got these little cool containers with each one of them labeled, which is neat.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:09

That's awesome. I I've been upon every ocean and many of the seas, and I've swam in all of them at a principle. And uh I've collected nothing. So uh thank you, Matt, for not telling me about this beforehand because I would have had the most awesome collection of working as a yacht captain.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:29

Yeah, it was really cool. Like I, you know, he's got these little jars from each little ocean that he's collected them from because he's done so much traveling like that. So then we we came back down, uh headed across Canada uh on the way back. So we stayed in Canada after we got back from Alaska. Uh we went to uh Jasper. Jasper Jasper's beautiful, like that is a an amazing, amazing park. So we we went down the avenue of the glaciers or something like that. I can't remember the name of Ice Fields Parkway. That's what it is. Incredible. It was cold. Like it was down into the 30s, and this is July at this point, right? So it was crazy cold. Then we went to Angles Inlet. So that was cool because uh, you know, we both Oh, the angle. Yeah. So Matt and I had both been down to the southernmost point of the contiguous US. So we had to hit the Matt suggested we hit the northernmost. And the interesting part about that is it's to get to it, you actually have to cut through Canada because of the mistake, which, if I remember right, you know the whole story.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:43

Well, it was a surveying mistake, and it's not the only one. I believe there are two or three of them. And around here, we're based out of Seattle and we spend time in uh Victoria. There's also a place here called Point Roberts. Both of those stories, the angle and Point Roberts, really came into focus during the pandemic because the Canadians, you know, being you know super safe and you know, error on a side of caution, maybe too much. They weren't letting people cross the border just willy-nilly. So both those places were kind of cut off from the homeland. Yeah, they were mathematical or surveying errors, but it is it is a fascinating story for both those places. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:22

So that was neat. We we hung out there for a little bit. The weather was beautiful. Then we were originally going to go over the top of the Great Lakes and come back through Sault Ste. Marie, um, but we started running out of time. Um, so we kind of cut the corner, headed down through Wisconsin, Minnesota and stuff, and then down through Cincinnati and visited Matt's dad, and then just headed straight home from there.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:45

We can't let that pass. So you didn't go across the top of the Great Lakes. I did that not last summer, but the summer before. I had gone to Dirt Days. And if you take a ruler and you draw a line between Seattle and where Dirt Days is, I think it's in Vermont or Maine, whatever, wherever it is, you actually go across the top of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. So I actually did it, and it is nice. And I grew up in that area. One of my first jobs was a uh canoe instructor for outward bound, and that area is called uh the Canadian Shield. It is quite nice. So maybe one of these days I will do a cannonball route from the end of Cape Breton Island, because you have talked me out of doing ferry. So the end of Cape Breton Island over to somewhere in Alaska. So we'll cross the border a couple of times. So as we become more ambitious with the routing, maybe we can check that missed opportunity off your list with going across the top of the Great Lakes.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:47

Well, I am all for it. And I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to sign up for the 2027 in Europe.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:54

It's it's easy. You just stick one of your bikes in easy. Yeah. It is that easy. At the end of this riding season, you ride down to LA. It's an awesome ride down the Pacific Coast Highway, right? And or actually after the rally, there you go. Even easier. That's what I did last year. After the rally, you go down a little further to LA, you contact Kathy at Moto Freight, you drop off your bike at the port. It's that it's at Schumacher Logistics. And then when the rally starts, you just go early and you get off the airplane at London Heathrow, you take an Uber or a black cab, it's five minutes away, and she has your bike ready for you. It is literally that easy. There's no discussion.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:37

So, you know what I might do is uh instead of shipping a bike, I'll just buy Taylor's T7 because I know it's only got like 12 or 13 miles on it. So ow! You guys were digging on me the other on the last podcast. So I just figured it's time to for me to get Taylor back a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:59

No, but uh fair enough. But there's actually uh logistically, that was funny, but logistically, you can't do that. Uh you can't really, it's hard with insurance and all the red tape. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there is this awesome loophole. So I'm never shipping a bike. I just ship the GSU over there, it's gonna die there because there's this massive loop loophole with Brexit and all that is that Kathy will just keep your bike in the warehouse and it comes in on a temporary import bond. It costs nothing or like 1% or something like that. And there's nothing to it, it's as easy as that. And plus, you know, being a cannonballer, you have a foreign license plate, which A is cool for starting conversation, and B, the speed cameras don't get you, baby. So you just ride like a like a heathen through all the speed cameras and nobody cares, or the parking lot cameras. I'm not condoning it. Remember that this podcast is AI and doesn't really exist. But uh, but yeah, there's a bunch of positivity to having your own bike there. I I just I just want everyone to come do it, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:09

I just I would love to because I I want I want to see Robert again in the 2027. Yeah. Because watching him in the last one go, oh, I can do that as we're all flying by him at Mob 2. Uh Robert's just the nicest guy, right? Like it was hilarious. He had he was having so much fun, he's just the sweetest guy, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:28:34

Yeah, it was awesome. Uh he's actually, I haven't told anyone yet, but Taylor and Robert and a few other people are coming um in May when I go to the end of the 2027 European route. We have some amazing stuff. We have an official after party, we have anyways, it's out of control. So he's actually coming down from Sweden and hanging out for a couple of days. We have some beach riding in Denmark. Nice. Do it while you can because it won't last forever. Yeah, it's not gonna happen for long. Like the tree huggers will get a hold of it, and like the old lady who's on the board who walks her dog on the beach is gonna stop it eventually. So let's do all these things, you know, while while we can. So Robert is coming down for that um for that trip when Taylor takes a break from his real job and family to come to come join us in Denmark. And then we're gonna continue on our way to uh Great Britain and we're gonna do some podcasting. Uh, we have a special on um on the uh Islam anti tea. But anyways, I won't I won't bore you with all that. So at the end of the day, well, let's let's digress and go back to the Alaskan trip because we're way over schedule here. What's your lesson for people? This is an amazing undertaking. And part of me is like, don't research, just go do it. Part of me is go research and don't get into the trouble. But what's your takeaway from your time?

SPEAKER_02 1:29:57

I think that there's a middle ground. The middle ground is know what your must-sees are. Like, I want to see this, I want to see this, and I want to see this. Don't plan what day you're gonna see it. Don't worry about what day you're gonna hit a specific road. Don't make any reservations for any hotels unless you absolutely have to. Like Coldfoot Camp, we had to, right? Because that fills up. It's the it's the only game in town. You don't have any other options. If you want to do the trip out to the ocean, go book that because it books up. And who wants to ride all the way to the ocean, specifically in Prudhoe Bay? Uh and then and then not be able to get to the water, right? Because that would suck. But any plan that you put together is gonna blow up within the first two days. So just have a plan of the things that are important to you, and then just be flexible with everything else. Because if you can be flexible, but know where you want to be, you're you're going on the trip educated, but you're having flexibility in route and timing and the weather and the traffic. And you know, if you pop a flat and it takes you, you know, four hours to get on the road, well, your day's screwed, right? You're not gonna necessarily get as far as you thought. Just be flexible. And it's like, all right, I'm gonna use booking.com and I'm gonna find a hotel 50 miles from here. A lot of it is just everything gets planned in the last four hours.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:33

You make an important lesson. So coming up, we have I'm preparing for an interview with a gentleman called Bruce Bruce. He's a Scottish uh badass, and he runs a YouTube channel called Teapot One. He went around the world on a GSXR, and which is ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm really looking forward to having him on. Uh, he'll be part of the next book, which I'm never writing. His lesson at the end of his documentary was what he would do differently, which you just reinforce was I would just take my credit card and I would just choose a direction and I would just go.

SPEAKER_07 1:32:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:13

Your advice is run out right in those lines. Now let's talk about equipment because we're all geeks. Yeah. What would you change with the bike, with the gear? What would you do differently?

SPEAKER_02 1:32:23

I wouldn't change a lot. We we actually got it down to a science. So my left panier was everything that I would want to bring into a hotel, right? So it was clothing, my toiletry bag, and all that fun stuff. On the right side panier was everything for the bike, tools and spare parts and everything like that. And my 30-liter dry bag that I had strapped down with rock straps across the back was all my camping gear. So when we got to a campsite, I'd unsnap the straps, pop open the bag, and I could have camp up and running in about 15 minutes. And if I didn't need that, you know, you just slide the one panier off the side of the bike and head into the hotel with it. One thing point I want to make is like with those soft bags, it's not that much different than what you were talking about with the hard bags with the liner. So the the Moscow soft bags have a liner too. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, it's velcroed in. Peel off the velcro from the inner one. The difference is that you don't have handles. You're carrying a liner bag, waterproof liner, into the hotel, and you can do that without all the dirty crap. The big thing that I would do is pack less food. Always pack less. I would just food was the one thing that I that I went overboard on. I also brought two inner tubes because the T7's a two pipe, right? I wouldn't bring two again. I'd bring just the 21 inch for the front tire. Um in uh in the heat of the moment, if I was having a real problem with the rear, you can throw the 21 in the rear and it works just fine. It'll it'll get you to the next major town. But you had a patch kit, right? Yeah, I had a patch kit. Yeah. Yeah, I had a patch, I had a patch kit and two tubes. When you're at home, it's nice if you got a tire machine or whatever else, right? But if you're just going to be using tire levels, levers, and doing that uh when you're on the road, do it exactly like you would if you broke down the middle of the high trundra in the middle of northern Alaska, where there's not a tree to um lean your bike up against or anything else like that, and then be able to practice changing that tube, lining everything else up, making sure that your brake rotor is lined up with the rear brake, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It gets complicated fast and you get tired fast. It sucks, but practice it a few times because it's gonna suck a lot more if it's 40 degrees and pouring on you and you're having to try to change that tire and you've never done it before.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:11

I think that was also dovetails into your theory of don't make a lot of reservations or any reservations, because you know, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to get to that reservation or keep to the schedule. But if you don't have a schedule, you know, just like Ted Simon says, you know, sit against the tree and we'll be sure that help will be along the way, right? Right. And, you know, interruptions are the journey, right? I think that's what you're trying to say is practice to be sure, but when something goes wrong, there's gonna be a great story, and that next adventure is gonna come across the horizon when someone lends you a hand. If you think about, we just had Ed March on and he did that same trip on a 50cc scooter. Yeah, you know, so it doesn't matter the equipment that you have. I don't want to hear that excuse either. But to quote another author, like we all build prisons around ourselves, right? So if you can carve out the time to go do the journey, Carrie's lesson is it worked, everything worked just fine, and he's here to talk about it and he has a fantastic story.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:11

Don't get into the analysis paralysis, right? I mean, honestly, that's that's a thing now, right? There's there's so many videos and so many blogs, and there's so many experts, and I'm doing my air quotes right now, right? Um, that want to tell you the best way to do this, that or the other thing. You'll make it.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:33

I was amazed at the last hour going into Prudhoe Bay is paved now. Yeah, right. It's it's crazy, right? So just go and do it. I don't care if you've got a little 400 scrambler, um, you're gonna make it just fine. Just go do it. Set a date and do it. Um, you don't need a $40,000 motorcycle, you don't need, you know, $1,500 riding gear. Like none of that stuff is necessary. Will it make you more comfortable on the trip? Absolutely. That doesn't make it any more fun, meeting the people, talking to them. Those are the memories that that I came home with that what Matt and I are still talking about.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:17

Yeah, and that you're sharing with us today. And then, you know, we were talking about your goal of going town to Ishwaya. Yeah. Uh, that route is like a super highway of adventurers, and it is just as easy. Whether you're Charlie Borman on electric motorcycles or you are Danny McGee and his two buddies with their DR650s on one of our previous episodes, it is rather easy. So, when are you gonna take that T7 ahead south?

SPEAKER_02 1:37:49

Probably about two years. Because I've I've got a few more personal goals professionally that I need to get done. I need to beat uh Hunter to the hat trick. So once I spank Hunter on the hat trick and sabotage his motorcycle so that he can't beat me, then I can do the trip south. But even that, right? Like I'm the things that I'm researching for that trip south to Ushuaia is like the border crossings. What paperwork do I need? Stuff like that. I already know, like I have a list of places I want to see and roads I want to do, but I don't want to do Route 40 the entire way south because a lot of that's paved and a lot of it's boring. I want to head up into the mountains and just go get lost and just keep heading south and then eventually find my way to all the way down there. Right. So I'm not going to overplan that trip at all. And I'm not setting a timeline on that either. I'm just gonna go.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:54

Well, we have to have you back. We need to know about all your planning, how you deal with uh the family obligations, you know, we're both married, uh happily married. And uh, how do we deal with that? That we explain to the people in our lives that I'm not sure where I'll be tonight. You know, how do we deal with that? How do we deal with business with saying that we're okay to just walk away from whether it's a job or in your case, a small business, or in my case, you know, a podcast and uh in a in a rally. There are a lot of little prisons that we build around ourselves. So listen, thanks so much for coming on the podcast, for sharing this story. Thanks so much for being a supporter of the podcast and the book and the rally and all those things that that you help with in the background. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:36

It's awesome, Aaron. And like 2025 like exceeded expectations. I'm super excited to see what 2026 brings for the rally, too.

SPEAKER_08 1:39:47

So we'll see you soon. Adventure, endurance, glory. This isn't just a ride, it's the ultimate test of rider in machine. The ADV Cannonball Rally challenges you to ride from coast 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 a 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 bolt. Sign up today.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:44

And we are back. Welcome back. I hope Carrie didn't take too much of a beating.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:49

I don't know. I think I think he I think he did some he did some bit of fair dishing out there.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:54

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:55

Um, before

Drinking in Alaska

SPEAKER_05 1:40:56

we get to that, I would just like to ask the question. You guys did this big tee up about hydro rising and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then when it came down to it, you never even discussed it. So what is that?

SPEAKER_03 1:41:10

There's not a lot to do in Alaska. You know what I mean? I know what you mean. Or the whole Arctic region, you know? A lot of kids. So, yeah. So in Hyder, Alaska, which is a fantastic place. If you go in the summer, you can actually take this little back road and see a glacier. Well, it's kind of receding, so you see less and less of it. But but in Hyder, again, there's not a lot to do. So you get Hiderized. So essentially what it is, is you pay an exorbitant amount of money. Great. And of course, get the bumper sticker, and you basically do a shot, what is essentially ever clear of some sort of high-proof, clear alcohol. And uh, it's tough. Uh, I've done a lot of moonshine in various parts of the world. It seems like wherever you go somewhere, people want to give you their moonshine. And this is essentially that. Uh, so you do a shot of this everclear, and then you they give you a glass of water immediately to chase it because it's going to be tough.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:06

It's gonna be it's gonna be a tough one.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:09

Yeah, and that same tradition, which we didn't explain in in the interview, in chicken, they put little plastic chickens or something like that. I think it keeps changing, but I think the current version is you do a shot with, you know, little chickens in there. Okay. And then and then in Dawson City, there's the famous drink with the toe. We did that. Yeah. And you drink, and you're the trick is not to put the toe into your mouth unless you have some sort of was it like somebody lost their toe to frostbite or something like that? Or yeah, so you should go online. So the first toe was donated because someone had donated. Maybe they lost it to frostbite. That's right. And then they have to be. Yeah, that's right. And then subsequently they have more toes. You know, there's stories behind the backup toe and the replacement toe.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:00

Oh, someone actually ate that one. We better get a new one. Keep up.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:03

Yeah, whatever kind of necrophilia you're into, leave it at the door, you know. Whatever floats your boat, you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:12

We're not we're not judging here.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:14

Yeah, this is a judgment-free zone. But uh, but yeah, so it seems everywhere you go in in the north, there's some sort of traditional drink. And I recommend you do them all because there's nothing else to do.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:25

All right. There's another thing that came up in the interview for me that I started laughing at. It's like you said,

How to room with Taylor Lawson

SPEAKER_05 1:43:30

because we've done a lot of a lot of motor trips together and and and and also the the other rallies in cars. And so sharing hotel rooms, and you in there you were like, you know, I'm you know, I know how I know how to keep a hotel, you know, nice and neat. And I just started laughing because I remember when we were at a hotel somewhere in the world, and I came out of the bathroom and it was soaking wet. And I said, What have you done in here? And you're like, have you ever seen a St. Bernard get out of the water, Jake? The entire place gets soaking wet. And I was like, that totally makes sense. Every towel, every surface, everything covered in water.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:09

Listen, I'm gonna, I'm gonna this is the nature of the beast. What are you gonna do, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:44:14

Can't change something you just can't change. Yeah. So anyway, I thought about that. I started cracking up when I listened to the interview.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:21

Yeah, it's a lot of stress sharing a hotel room with Taylor. You have to be quiet, you have to let him choose the bed, you have to be very careful how you close doors. You can't leave the bathroom disorganized or wet, apparently.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:37

New information for you, but add that to the list.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:39

Right. He puts on noise-canceling headphones because he's like, these heathens are snoring around me. So it's it's a lot of stress, but hey, we saved 10 bucks, so it's all good.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:49

Yeah, you can just add that extra thing to the list and you're all good then. That's right. That's right. Nice. The panier conversation was fun. And um, I have to say that I totally side with Carrie on this. Soft panniers are the way to go. We have the same setup on our on our bikes, on our T7s. For the riding that you're doing on your bike, it totally makes sense. For the riding that you do on a T7, because it's obviously different, then the softer better because it's also safer. So if you get your foot in the ground underneath that panier and it doesn't give a little bit, your your ankle's gonna give. So I think it's uh for a safety aspect as well. I think that's great. But anyway, that was a fun conversation. And then the idea that as buddy's riding out on the ice heaves, he's ripping down the road in the and he lost his panier on the T7. That was the um the uh OEM Yamaha of pannier.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:40

Like I said in the interview, I I've lost a hard bag as well. But this is, you know, you just ride whatever you have. Like who cares? You know what I mean? That's okay. You know, it's just remember the also the the hard pennier bashing. You look at Helgay Peterson and Elspeth Beard and Ted Simon. These guys went around the world with handmade luggage that were made of aluminum and they did just fine. So, you know, we're in a Elsbeth made her own.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:06

She built her own setup. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:09

Yeah, I was just texting with her because I sent her a copy of my book with a little thank you note. You wrote a book? Yeah. And uh we were talking about being dyslexic and how and how it's those challenges come into play when you're trying to compile something. You know, we underestimate that you know, she built her own bags with her buddy and went around the world with them and nothing bad happened. I'm like, just go, whatever you got, just go.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:34

So I just wanted to uh you know, Carrie made a comment about the fact that my bike only has, I think, 12 miles on it. Thirteen. Thirteen. And I just wanted to say Kerry that you know, I know you've ridden to Alaska, but I wanted to let you know that before I put it away for the winter, I did do a grocery run.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:58

You're gonna crush some miles uh this spring in May. So yeah, we're you're gonna ride down Sweden to Denmark, we're gonna rip around Denmark, you're gonna go on the beach, that's gonna be awesome.

SPEAKER_05 1:47:09

Oh, that'll be fun. That'll be a lot of fun before the before the um before that all goes away, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:14

Yeah, and then you're gonna go to uh down through Germany or Autobahn. You're gonna have to try to keep up. Oh, I think that was we're gonna take that ferry from Rotterdam to Hall, and then we're gonna spend four or five days ripping around meeting people in the UK. And as a matter of fact, you know who reached out was um the chair of the blood bikers reached out, and we are gonna go do some runs with some bona fide blood bikers. How cool is that that the T7 and the GSA is going to flank an actual mission with a blood biker in the UK. I'm really looking forward to that.

SPEAKER_05 1:47:53

Oh man, that sounds great. I just hope it's not one of those lightweight bags because then you know it's for a kid. That that would that was uh that was that was really sad for me to hear. Wow, the reality. But that sounds cool. That's awesome. That I'm looking forward to that.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:06

Yeah, that's uh Alex, Alex uh Chalmers. Cool. Yeah, he's the chair.

Aaron's Ride Outs - The Riders' Spot in TJ

SPEAKER_05 1:48:12

Shall we talk a little bit about Aaron's rideouts?

SPEAKER_03 1:48:16

Yeah, we have an easy one this week. We've updated the Google map, which is in the show notes. Nice. This is an easy one. It's the rider spot in TJ. That is also the Baja ADV garage. And if you want to go have some decent food, there's a hotel across the street. Your bike is nice and safe in there, but it's a great cool biker hangout. There's always other bikers there, especially on the weekend. And like I said, the food is good, the drinks are good. They do not have any IPAs.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:48

But Tijuana does not have IPA, you're kidding.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:50

No, it's uh, you know, it's the classic Corona and uh El Presidente and those things. But anyways, yeah, it's just south of the border, so it's a good day run, even you can cross the border super easy. It's one straight road essentially to get to the rider spot. Uh it's in uh Tijuana Beach area, and there's a few places to ride there for a day trip. You can go to the border by the beach, it's kind of a cool spot. You can always uh see the wall and see the sign, and it's kind of it's kind of cool being on the the other side of the wall. And uh yeah, it's a good safe spot to go.

The Book

SPEAKER_05 1:49:30

All right, let's uh let's talk a bit about your book, Chasing Legends Motorcycle Stories from the Podcast Trail.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:38

Nice, you got it right this time. Thanks. It's funny that I forgot the title because you don't think about the title, right? Um yeah, so it's now live globally on Amazon, and it in about a week or so you can order it from bookstores and things like that. I'm sure there's no bookstore gonna carry it, but you could theoretically go into a bookstore and and order it.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:00

I know that you've got um an audiobook coming out because I do recall spending a bit of time in a recording studio last Wednesday recording a bit for you the forward.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:11

Yeah, that'll be about May 1st. But please don't wait for the audio book. If you can get one of the print or electronic versions and then give a five-star review, that would be a big help. If you're not a Patreon supporter and if you're not, you know, sharing the podcast like we always ask, if you're inclined to get the book, please just get it. And then it would mean a lot to leave a five-star review because that just you know appeases the algorithm gods. And we're not fighting against like a, you know, when you and McGregor releases a book, it immediately goes to number one on the bestsellers list and immediately has 50,000 five-star reviews. And then, you know, my book is at the bottom because you know, I know you guys.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:54

So not not put to anybody down, but you know, there's there's not a lot of you guys.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:02

And it's weird because you see like 10,000 downloads in an episode. I'm like, I'm like, can you not, you know, give me a five-star review, like five of you? Like, come on, guys. Come on, get on it, get on it.

SPEAKER_05 1:51:14

Yeah, but hey, look, I just want to say here for the cost of eight thousand dollars a month, you too can hire a PR book, a PR company, and make sure that your book makes it to the top bestsellers list.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:25

It's true. So, you know, there was a few like contests that said, Hey, we submitted your book for a contest, and they're like, Oh, well, that's real interesting. But the truth of the matter is that they also send you an email the next day, an AI generated email saying, Oh, our PR firm can can take you on and we guarantee you to be a bestseller, but it's going to be $8,000 a month. And like, you know, someone who's a bestseller already, or like, you know, like a like a Charlie Borman, that's just what their agents do. They just buy that, right? Like it's such a rigged freaking system. It's like, unless you have the pockets to do it, you will just be at the bottom. But, anyways, I'm not complaining. I am finding it interesting. Like, I carpet bombed everyone yesterday that we know. Nice. And it is interesting to see who normally replies to a text message who blatantly ignored my text message. And it's interesting that people like on my social media, for instance, like Instagram or Facebook, who traditionally like a story or like a post, who all of a sudden didn't like that post, as if your like is some sort of golden seal on my book that you haven't read yet. It's like, like you don't want to give me your, you don't want to adorn my post with your like because it might get shared on your social media. It's like you're such a fake friend. It's like so very interesting.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:52

Hang on, can you hold on a second? I need to, I need to just like something on my It's like you're so full of crap.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:01

And by the way, you're not that important.

SPEAKER_05 1:53:02

It's like you're not so special after all.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:04

It's like, thank you for clarifying our relationship and we're good, right? But there are other people like Robert, the nicest guy in the world, who didn't even read the book yet and then put it on his social media. It's like such faith in in your fellow peers, such faith in the community and recognition that you realize, you know, I may be a disaster, but I'm not that much of a disaster that by taking that leap of faith, I'm not going to insult your like, or in his case, a repost, which was you know fantastic.

SPEAKER_05 1:53:35

Yeah. Um, my I did I did write a review for the Swedish market in Amazon. And as you said, sometimes they don't they don't go in. Like I've never done a review for a book in Amazon. And I did it and I was like, great. And it says, you know, send it, enter it, whatever, register it. And I did, and then I was like, well, where is it?

SPEAKER_03 1:53:57

So when you do a review, it will sometimes post instantly, or sometimes it'll go into the algorithm to make sure it's not, you know, super AI generated, right?

SPEAKER_07 1:54:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:06

And then sometimes it'll take up to 10 days to post. But as long as you try, that's the best that you can do. Uh, and I also noticed that buying the book in your traditional market is important. So if someone sends you a link to the uh Spanish market and you purchase it in the UK market, and then you try to make a review, it will say you can't leave a review here because you don't traditionally buy in this market. Okay, got it. Right. So we've noticed a bunch of a bunch of weird things that go on. And I've also noticed something speaking of review, I belong to this group of sad authors.

SPEAKER_05 1:54:40

And there's like sad authors. Is that the name of the group?

SPEAKER_03 1:54:45

Yeah, it's a sad author group. We meet on Wednesdays, we have donuts and drink coffee. And drink scotch. Yeah. If you're really sad, if you're really sad, drink scotch. Bring scotch. But it's a group that you know, you review each other's books. You have to buy the book. You it's a very careful, like it's a support group. It's a support group for reviews. And I'm going through this list of books, and you know, I get it. There is so much AI garbage, slop out there. 95% of these books, Taylor, are self-help bullshit that you can tell is just AI generated. They're all topics like yoga for beginners. Or it's like uh find your spirituality, or like uh why God should be in classrooms. And I'm like, and then you you take the author name and you do your own due diligence. I'm like, this person doesn't exist. And I went through this when trying to find authors to interview about the Isle of Man TT, and they didn't exist. So there's a whole farm industry of people generating crap and publishing it, and it's clogging it up. It's really hurting people like me who's trying to publish something and you're caught in the noise of all that crap. And then there's like hackers and stuff that you can hire to give you a bunch of BS reviews. Reviews, right? So it's very hard to break through the noise, and there's only so much time someone has like me to generate authentic reviews, and that's why we end up badgering people. And it's like I said, it's interesting that people just ignore you all of a sudden as if you're dead or something, right? But uh, but that's why. That's another reason why you beg for reviews. It's not just for vanity, it's to appease the algorithm.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:40

So, since mine didn't get uh, or maybe it'll show up in 10 days, but I thought I would just give you the first part of it while it's so fresh in my head because I did it before we came on air here. So, first of all, the title of my review is second best motorcycle book in the world.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:54

That's so awesome.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:57

And then I said, and then if I'm gonna look at your intro, it says the you know, the intro is your your introduction, your introduction said um, I didn't write this book because the world needs another motorcycle book. So I so I said my intro started with indeed the world does not need another motorcycle book, but it does need this one.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:17

That's hilarious. See, not AI generated. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:21

AI generated. Someone actually read the book. And uh yeah, exactly. So anyway, that's uh that's just that's just that's as far as I'm willing to reveal on air.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:30

Otherwise, you're gonna cry and it's gonna be upsetting, and you know, you're gonna have to go back to your sad your sad authors group and talk about this.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:40

My AI uh authors group that I'm probably the only human there. That's it if we're honest.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:45

Everybody else is AI generated, and they're just trying to, they're like, and for $8,000, we can take you from this group and lift you up. Yeah, you just gotta pay, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:52

You gotta be the famous, you gotta be born into money, you gotta be, you know, whatever. You just gotta be able to pay the piper, whether it's with fame or dollars. Yeah.

Rally News

SPEAKER_05 1:58:04

Um, speaking of not getting paid, um let's let's talk about volunteers.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:10

Yeah, but this is fun stuff. This is awesome, you know. This is awesome, man fun stuff, right? This is it. Hold on.

SPEAKER_05 1:58:16

Yeah, you know, there are there are all girls playing this game too, you know. Not just a boy for that.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:22

For some reason, not raising their hands and uh getting involved with in our shenanigans. I wonder why. I wonder, I wonder. Let me wonder that. We should fix that. Go ahead. Take away. Fix that.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:35

Take it away with the uh with the volunteers.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:38

Yeah, so because the Pacific Coast Highway opened up, I've had to regenerate. What are you laughing at?

unknown 1:58:47

Sorry.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:48

Oh my god, he's lost it.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:52

Sorry. This is why we're number two. Get it together, bro. Get it together. Go ahead. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:58

Pick it up where you left off. Pretend. Pretend I'm not laughing, just go.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:04

So because we had to change the route, it's kind of like last minute.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:12

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You can just edit this out.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:16

Not happening, it's staying. People love it. Really go. Number two. Um, because I had to change it, I've had the last minute go into areas where I'm not familiar with. So if you live in California or you're going to California to that whole Monterey Big Sur kind of area.

SPEAKER_05 1:59:39

Great area.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:40

Uh, yeah, I have a bunch of checkpoints that need checking out, and I have some routes that need checking out. Either I haven't been there in years and years and years, or someone's told me about a great spot to throw a checkpoint. I'm not exactly sure. So if you're in that area and if you uh can handle some dirt roads, they're not difficult, it's not technical. It's a classic cannonball road. I would really like some help, uh, especially in the California area. And I would also like in the spring help in Colorado and help in Utah, just to really double check the route. Those routes I know really well. But just like last year, you know, if you remember, people went and checked the route and there was an avalanche and there was a permanent closure to one of the best spots in that route from 2025 was a real shame. So uh I understand that's part of Canonball. Things happen, uh, you know, uh, and that's part of the fun, is when things are closed. But I would like to have the routes checked. So uh if anyone is available, Colorado, Moab kind of area, and California, please reach out.

SPEAKER_05 2:00:44

Yeah, and these aren't bad areas to have to go ride. Exactly. They're gonna be awesome. They're gonna be awesome. All right. Do you have any cannonball news you'd like to share?

SPEAKER_03 2:00:54

Yeah, so on that same thread, you know, I've been kind of inspired a bit by the selling out, and people are starting to do some shit talking. So gotta love that. I have a response to your talking big, which is I'm gonna add some additional extreme off-road checkpoints. And these are not for everyone. Do not attempt these if you're not sure. The paved extreme checkpoints, if you're doing uh you know, a paved only route, you should go and try those if you have the time. They're not for everyone, but do not attempt the extreme off-road checkpoints if you do not have the riding skill, if you don't have the pace, most importantly, and if you don't need it, uh, however, they all have a big payoff. So they're gonna be awesome. And yeah, we've cranked up the difficulty. So you can optionally choose a little bit of sadistic uh adventure if you want to coming in 2026. But you've been warned and thank you for shit talking because it's the result.

SPEAKER_05 2:02:06

There you there you go. See, which look at all of you who've been shit talking, this is what you get. Um, like our like our buddy Steve Dovell says, go big or go home.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:16

Yeah. And I was trying to figure out how to accomplish all the extra miles, and I have some surprises on some days. There's so make sure you watch that notice board every single day because I was finding it difficult to accommodate, you know, the extra level of optional difficulty. But I've come up with a few mechanisms and it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be really, really memorable.

SPEAKER_05 2:02:39

Cool. And since there'll be two of us driving across, we will definitely have the manpower to um get the vehicle there at the same time. Also, you're gonna have a Starlink on the roof, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:02:50

I need to get that. You know, I'm not made of money here. Again, thank you for coming with great ideas and uh more work for me. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_05 2:02:58

Yeah, hey, I'm here to help. You know, what can I say?

SPEAKER_03 2:03:01

Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_05 2:03:03

There will be speaking of workload, it will be a shared workload as we drive across the country. So these types of things like the notice board will get updated, most importantly, restaurants, bars, things like that.

unknown 2:03:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:03:14

Notice board about checkpoints and bars.

SPEAKER_03 2:03:17

So, and also uh, I have the samples here there. Here, I'm holding for you. I have the samples of the rally numbers.

SPEAKER_05 2:03:24

666. Oh. That's my number.

SPEAKER_03 2:03:26

That's my number.

SPEAKER_05 2:03:27

That's gonna be your number. You've got that in the back of your head, don't you?

SPEAKER_03 2:03:31

Yeah, yeah. It's like uh QR code. So this is actually gonna be one of your jobs. Is this comes in a huge, huge sheet, 24 inches wide, and we have to cut them up when riders come to the rally check-in? They sign the waiver, says you're not gonna assume me if you kill yourself, you're on your own. And then you get handed a big prize, which is your rally number, which you put all over the bike. And there is a Facebook video and a TikTok video of how to apply rally numbers. So please uh watch those videos before you do it incorrectly.

SPEAKER_05 2:04:03

Are you um are you dancing as you put the numbers on? Because I understand you have to dance to put things on TikTok.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:09

Yeah, I'm a big social media influencer. I do a lot of original dancing.

SPEAKER_05 2:04:14

You know, you did make an MC hammer reference earlier. I did. I did.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:18

Oh, and look, I got something else. I got something else here to show you. I have the new starters flag. It's uh an awesome, very cannonball starters flag. That's for Brian. I hope Brian shows up. And uh he's got not only the biggest bullhorn we can buy so he can yell at everyone, and then he will also have a starter flag. So I'm not sure he's gonna juggle the the bullhorn and the starter flag, but uh we're he's gonna be well equipped and uh the flag looks awesome. I really like it.

SPEAKER_05 2:04:50

Does he um are you gonna like upgrade him from the Fisher Price uh bullhorn he had last time?

SPEAKER_03 2:04:55

Yes, we're gonna get him a giant maniacal bullhorn.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:01

Nice, very so the flag is it is it is that the original size I'm looking at right now? How big is it?

SPEAKER_03 2:05:07

It's huge. It's uh two uh three by five or something like that. It's you know, it's huge, yeah. Nice.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:11

I like it. I like it. All right. Um let's talk about the lack of response from what I have to say was a little insulting. You referred to as non-responsive Europeans.

SPEAKER_03 2:05:28

Absolutely. These snobby sons of bitches. No, I'm kidding. So it's a different, it's a different culture, I guess, right? So here we have Hilton as a partner, and it's run like a big proper corporation. This is essentially your world, Taylor. Oh, thanks. Great. I just visit it once in a while. Now I understand. Now I understand. Yeah. So you use a portal and you send a message to the Hilton places. This is what's going on, this is my references. We're we're co-sponsored, and instantly five people get back to you. Their bidding war happens. Nice. Now in Europe, I've contacted these hotels through their portals, right? And no one gets back to you. Or they're like, we don't have any group bookings. I'm like, you're full of it because we're talking about a year and a half in the future. I'm like, you're full of crap. You're just being lazy, right? Or they're like, who is this guy or whatever, however accent you have, right? So it's been really, really difficult. And I think I might have to change the way the European rally is kind of run a little bit if I don't get responses. However, I'm physically going to each hotel in May. That's that's in a couple of months. So we'll see how that goes. However, I'll qualify all that by saying I had a 20-minute conversation with the loveliest person in Tarifa, Spain. Nice. And the start hotel in Tarifa, which really is the only important one, including the awards bank. The first hotel and the last hotel are the important ones. For sure. It's gonna be awesome. So she's gonna meet me when I go down in May. She understands the rally, she's coordinating with the city, with the government. Wow. We're gonna do some, you know, uh tarifa promotion. It's gonna be awesome. It's gonna be the best start we've ever had, to be honest. So I'm really, really excited about that relationship. And because of where it's situated, we will be back to that would make sense. That would make a stepping stone into Morocco. It's gonna be something we use in the future.

SPEAKER_05 2:07:33

I'll be in Morocco in um for Easter. I'll be I'll spend a week in Morocco. I'll go visit my 20-year-old son who's down there, actually leaves in a couple days to go down there for a month and uh travel around. So it'll be fun to go catch up with him and then actually come back to Sweden with him.

SPEAKER_03 2:07:49

Oh, dude, you gotta arrange a motorcycle or something. Go for a rip. It's it's motorcycle heaven, Morocco.

SPEAKER_05 2:07:55

I know it's amazing down there. We'll talk about that. Um, I can just see, I was just thinking about the um, I mean, you talked about the arranging with the government. It's like how cool would that be if she did like a she arranged like a ride through town with the bikes all all uh with liverly liv uh liverly say it. Livered livereed, thank you. Liveried up, uh riding through town, sort of set the tone the day before. How cool would that be?

SPEAKER_03 2:08:23

Yeah, I don't know if we're gonna get to that. Let's let's lower the bar a bit. But it's it's cool that it's cool that we're having.

SPEAKER_05 2:08:28

If they could just call the police off and make sure no there's no police to start. That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:33

Good point. Actually, you know what? Let's uh let's see if make me make that happen. Actually, the ride out of Tarifa for the first like 20 miles is a little bit flat, but immediately we make a left and we climb up this amazing paved, well, roughly paved road into uh a really famous little town. I'm not gonna give it all away, but there's a bridge there, an old, you know, ancient bridge spanning a gap. It's it's just gonna be amazing. It's gonna be freaking amazing. And then a day two, we rip into uh Andorra that borders Spain and France, and the off-road guys are gonna rip up the old smugglers road. It's just gonna be nice, freaking amazing, man. I'm so excited about that.

SPEAKER_05 2:09:18

That's fantastic. So maybe there could be some police escorts through town anyway.

SPEAKER_03 2:09:22

I don't know. I hope so. We'll see what they they come up with. So yeah, we won't talk about the Baja stuff. So I'm also simultaneously working on Baja. And the last rally I did down there, the policies was quite positive about the event because they want tourists. So hopefully we can have that same relationship with our 2027 Baja event as well.

SPEAKER_05 2:09:44

Yeah, very nice, very cool. Um, I just wanted to, you're talking about the European in the hotels, they're like, uh yeah, it reminded me well. The first time I went to um in Sweden here to buy a car, I learned about um buying a car here. So you go into the dealership and there's a sticker price in the window and it says whatever, you know, $70,000. And then in America, you'd be like, I think maybe I'll come in and I'll my first bid for this car will be $60,000.

SPEAKER_07 2:10:12

Right.

SPEAKER_05 2:10:13

In Sweden you do that, and they say, excuse me, did you want the car or not? Right. It's very simple. Because if you don't want the car, the person behind you, right, you're like, you got here first, you pulled your you pulled your your ticket, and you have because you're you have you're holding that number, you have the possibility of buying that car.

SPEAKER_03 2:10:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:10:37

It's not like you have the possibility to negotiate to buy that car because the guy or the guy or the girl behind you is going to buy the car. So the moment you try to negotiate, they go, your ticket is no longer void. The next next buyer, please. And you come in and they sign the contract and you watch them walk out and you go, What happened? And you go, they wanted the car. Yeah, that's how it works here.

SPEAKER_03 2:10:57

I suppose the same thing is still happening with these hotels. But I also think that's right. I also think that if like Honeywell LLC showed up to one of these big resort hotels, they would probably respond more quickly to their emails because they do say we have event spaces, we have like I'm you know carefully choosing hotels. I'm not just looking, you know, randomly picking Ramada. I'm like really qualifying my contacts, right? Yeah, and there's a lot of work that goes into that. So uh yeah, so I also think there's some of that going on. I also think there's like this guy's writing in English, you know, the global politics are not what they are. So I think there's some of that also going on. So hopefully we can break through that. But I have a plan B and it's it's it's gonna be just fine.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:40

I think you just rock up with um the bullhorn and go into the lobby and just start letting them know that because if they don't understand, you just have to say it louder.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:47

That's right. We're here, we're the greatest, you know. You should pay attention to you know, we're number two, and if you don't like it, we're gonna charge you. That's that's exactly what I should do. We're billing you. We're gonna bill you from Micro Room.

SPEAKER_05 2:12:00

I'll give you an invoice.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:02

This is how you should handle things in the done now.

SPEAKER_05 2:12:06

Exactly. Alright. Um anything else you want to cover in Cannibal News before we talk about what's happening next?

SPEAKER_03 2:12:13

So coming up, I'm gonna have an interview in a few hours with Ride through Japan. And a few episodes in the future with Harry Warner and additionally the guy from the motorcycle relief project who are really uh excited about those interviews.

SPEAKER_05 2:12:32

Very cool. And um we got some music here. I do believe.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:38

Yeah, we have some more angry music than a murder band. You gotta get some therapists.

SPEAKER_05 2:12:52

You know what? I think I think when you go to your next AI sad author with your bunch of anybody, you should play this music in the world.

SPEAKER_03 2:13:02

I will put that on my therapist. Yeah, it's called the Crossback story about Crossback and MC. And what goes on in the non-profit? So enjoy the angry uh crossback.

SPEAKER_05 2:13:25

Very nice. And I just wanted to say one last thing before we roll out of here. There's a lot of banter and a lot of shit to talk, and I just want to say that where I'm from, the more people do that, and the more I guess it's not that it's it's playful banter, but the more that people can do that with each other, the uh the better the friendship. So I just want to say uh thanks for all of you out there who have uh abused me recently. It is greatly appreciated, and I know that from the bottom of your hearts you care.

MUSIC - "The Prospect"

SPEAKER_06 2:13:56

And with that, let's roll the outro Little Vence with nothing on it Empty bag like empty promise Yes, sir, falling from my teeth Swallow pride, taste like concrete Scrubbing chrome on banded knees Oil and mud, they watch and breathe Laughing low behind their beers I've been proving myself for fucking years They said Gotta earn your place, son Gotta bleed before you ride Everybody crawl before they walk Swallow hard and kill your pride All the trees and off the floor Wash the blood and ask for more I'm the double beneath the bag em for a bad wear never wear neverware 3 a.m. they call me in Bows destroy my ship begins Broken glass beneath my hands Faster prospect Yes I can Fetch the parts clean the guts Just scroll the wide them back for hours Hold their jackets Hold their secrets Hold it all in Hold my friends It's the most time now brother Just hold it a lot more than you'll be one of the One last job and you'll be holding to the night What's crazy Still walking I do care The door was already open The lights were already off the bike stop the shot Pour their drinks and mop the floor Wash their bikes and beg for more I want to go beneath the table Open the bullet Not the bow Let us go in someone's kitchen No colours, no colors, no name They won't be for the books that bother Smashing a five-star review really helps the podcast and satisfies the algorithm gods.

SPEAKER_00 2:19:03

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.