Gear up for an unforgettable ride as Tom and Todd share their expert insights on planning your 2024 motorcycle riding season in Episode 009 of the Best Motorcycle Roads Podcast. From essential gear to creating memorable experiences, this episode is your roadmap to a year of adventure.

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Listen Next: Art of the Group Ride

Featured Gear & Tips:

• Highway Pegs: A must-have for long rides. More info ➡️

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Question for You: How do you plan your motorcycle trips, and what's the one piece of advice you'd share with fellow riders?

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About Best Motorcycle Roads Podcast:

Tom and Todd bring decades of riding experience to the table, offering advice, laughs, and stories that resonate with every level of rider. Whether you're planning an eclipse ride or mapping out the Great Lakes, they've got you covered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veakeYJ7UC0

Transcript:

(00:42) and other tips and everything in between from essential prep to Unforgettable Roots we've got you covered before we Kickstart today's Journey we ask you to sign up for our BMR Rider alerts it's our way of keeping you in the loop with the latest rides tips and stories we promise no spam only the essentials to enhance your motorcycle Adventures join the BMR crew today we'll put a link in the show notes this segment about motorcycle gear reviews and tips we call the toolkit today's toolkit is kind of for that long

(01:50) of the biggest ones I think of it um you know and there's so many different variations and it depends on the type of bike and how you like to have your legs um out there there I mean I know there's some for the gold wings that have you know when you push them then they fold down and then you can kind of have your feet they go kind of close to Road and then they're sprung spring activated and so yeah I mean you have some out on your I yeah I have a Gold Wing and I I have Koken um and mine just fold down yep or

(02:52) bike yeah because like mine have like what I would call like a switchblade style and they've got a little nub on them and I can hook them with my feet and then they open out but they're also really narrow and thin and like I don't think I could do I don't think I could put my calf on them if I did I feel like I'd be like cut my leg kind of flat yeah and I think a lot of them have rubber which is nice grip um and then you know based on the type of bike we're talking about Gold Wing right here but other bikes very

(03:50) cramping up and yeah I've got to get my leg stretched out it's horrible I know we've talked about pre pre-trip like getting you know the the checklist for people to use we probably should add in there like stretching the week before do a little stretching yeah exactly um and then one thing that I always fail to do is really give your your Highway pigs a good good test beforehand oh yeah it just seems like you put more pressure on them um when you're out there like I know that when I borrowed Brad's Gold

(04:49) tools always so just be something to think about there well and that's a good point maybe before you leave look to see what types of tools are needed to adjust your yeah your foot pegs because you might have to you know along the way yeah and then it was I know I rotated his and it was kind of slipping away but um yeah so yeah so that's the the tool tip for today is highway pegs just or or at least like sometimes on some of the different bikes I've had I've actually been able to put my feet on the

(05:43) make sure that we pick some dates that everyone can do um and it it takes a while for people to look at their calendars and all that kind of stuff so I've what I've gotten in the habit of um I'll I'll go into a a program U it's an online program called Survey Monkey and and I'll just load up Survey Monkey with a whole list of dates you know starting from maybe June 1st and then running it all the way through the end of September and I'll send that out and you just put your name each person puts

(06:41) then we design the trip and the stops all you know around because it's hard to you know know every you can't know everybody's schedule um so like this we're doing the eclipse ride that we're planning now and then um yeah it just works out great cuz then we have a nice anytime during the season then people can get blocked their time blocked ahead of time which is good yeah that's great the next segment is what we call the mile marker it's our story segment it's kind of the Open chat I think is what

(07:39) of the Great Lakes but when I re researched that I don't know if I told you but it's 2400 miles from like point a to come back to point a we average on the a about 400 miles is what we've kind of talked about yeah so that puts you at six days and that's if you don't do anything at all and it's just I think we've done this before where we've we've tried to put a high num a high mile um number out there and just it it doesn't it's not as fun right like to not see some stuff so so I think what we'll end

(08:46) yeah for sure what kind of underwear do you wear during the eclipse yeah what is it to it's clearly fruit of the Moon that's a bad dad joke so I mean I think our biggest thing is you guys were in carbon Dale last year it was good not last year I'm sorry 2017 the last Eclipse trip yeah solar eclipse we're talking about complete solar eclipse right which now is happening in 2024 April 8th and you know we're trying to figure out you know a little bit more about you guys enjoyed it so much and I know that

(09:53) also sounds like they're having a big event that's quite a place I mean that's like the highest point I think yeah like a F feet above sea level yeah when you're talking about southern Illinois Missouri Kentucky that's that's High I mean yeah um so and it's it's cleared off so there's you know no trees in your so you can really and youy how long what was the story did you remember the story on them it's been around a while well the they started having like um Easter Sunrise Services they like in the 30s

(11:01) at some there's a bunch of small towns a little bit more south and west of there the one I was looking at was that Wolf Lake it looked like there's a cool motorcycl is bar um called the duck in oh yeah the duck in that's kind of that's a good name but one of my goals for this trip and and we always have some goals is I'd like to just get like a video of motorcycles preferably ours and the eclips you know in the background um so that's like one of the things I'm trying to figure out I guess

(12:03) it's still light never Chang yeah it didn't really change so so we got to do a little research you could hear the Crickets and all the you know the the night creatures that come out you could hear them in the video but because the cameras keep adjusting to the light it made it look light you know and it just didn't it didn't capture it the way I wanted it to capture it so I'm hoping maybe we work on some manual mode maybe huh so it doesn't do I I'm sure that there's a way so so that's one thing we

(13:02) trip that we just mentioned too is the you know the Great Lakes we've went around Lake Michigan independently we went around Lake Superior independently M but we kind of were talking about going around all all the Lakes but that was where we're saying there a little little too many miles so yeah I think we need to cut it down so I think we'll cut it down a little bit um I think I did a just a brief line where if we went I think up the Upper Peninsula and then around not the far to but then like um

(14:09) that yeah no it was you know I don't want to do what we did with that trip was we grabbed the first Highway round and that's what we did um we want to find some roads because we just rode down a two-lane Highway with really tall pine trees and looked looked out for moose oh cuz they said don't hit a moose so I mean it was cool to be up up there Thunder Bay Area like that but we definitely I think want to do a little more digging you know like uh finding a little more roads so when I looked at it like I said P when you kind

(15:13) road or the river of the river sorry uh no I think it's Redwing Minnesota somewhere around there I don't know yeah it's up there that'd be fun to see that um but in Iowa there's I think it's the official start of the Great River Road in Iowa is in that El Dorado Iowa that I was telling you about so so it would be good to um to dig around in there a little bit um both on the you know the Great River Road is kind of cool because it it runs Minnesota it also runs Iowa Wisconsin Illinois and then all the way down to

(16:15) a little June May May or June May or June that's early well it's early we go down and see the trees turn colors yeah South cool well hopefully by getting those block of times we'll be able to figure out some good times that everyone can go the podcast can be found on best motorcycl roads.com podcast all the information you need will be there uh but you can subscribe on Spotify Amazon music apple pocketcast and YouTube this is the interactive segment we will be looking for input from you uh we want you to send us your

(17:20) because you know you see this question come up a lot on the like Facebook forums and Reddit and things and so what we use just to be super clear is we pretty much just use Google Maps and it's gotten easier over time it's not really too hard to take a Google map convert it to a GPX which then goes into a Garmin which we did for a number of years and now you know we're all kind of using devices that are Apple uh Apple carplay or Android auto so they either play on a screen or our phone and that's

(18:20) had to do is we deleted the very first yeah we kind of like stumbled into it right yeah we would delete the very first Waypoint or stop and then it would say want to start where you're at y there it works so I would say that's our tip for today I know you and I've talked about I think it would be fun because man there's a bunch of new ones just continue to come out and you don't get time to use them so I think what you and I talked about doing is maybe even with this trip or at least repeat planning

(19:13) track um and then there's also um the Harley-Davidson one has a lot of cool um roads kind of identified and so does um not as many roads but destinational spots is motorcycle map that's another good one but it's a lot of like places to stop you know like like like single destinations than specific roads to take it's here's things to see on the way so that'll be something fun to go through but for now Google Maps is really a friend I mean it's pretty Universal and and what's the trick to because I

(20:14) allows you to drag it over and it looks like you have it but when you save it and then it recalculates it based on that moment in time because it's checking traffic is checking um you know different things so you have to add you have to right click on the spot you want to set you add destination and then the super trick is it always adds it as the last one so then you got to drag it up above the because what I'll generally do when I start it up I'll put the start point and the end point and then I'll

(21:11) one a day one b day 2 a b sometimes C gotta yeah so you have multiple links like so you could have 40 and what I generally do groups of 10 I see okay so generally you're looking at that from that device then I'll I'll save it as a draft in my email and I'll just have every day laid out each link for every day laid out in the email um and then then it's easy to get to too that makes sense and then the one other trick while we're talking about we've talked about this before but when you're in Google

(22:12) Lakes um I I just know that whatever it is that's going to be great we have a a great group of friends we've been riding together for years we always have a fabulous time um you know we kind of look out for each other we make each other laugh we enjoy each other's company and along the way we're always seeking adventures and experiences and you know talking with people and you know I'm just really looking forward to it you know it's always so much fun and um you know a big part of it is just the

(23:11) Canadian quarters out of the vending machine the other day so I figure if we do we I could spend them you know like in the native land um no that and then also we've kind of we're going to talk about this in our next episode tips and tricks for documenting your trips but like I think we're being a little more um you know with the podcast we're trying a little harder to document video audio I'm really excited to try out the the video with the with our headset Communications some of the stuff is

(24:11) revved up your day please don't keep it to yourself like subscribe and share it with your crew we're all about the thrill of the ride and the bond it creates keep the spirit of Adventure alive and remember bikes friends and endless roads the stories ride forever take care