In Episode 005, Tom and Todd from 'Best Motorcycle Roads' share their extensive motorcycling experience, focusing on the art of group riding. They discuss the importance of advanced cruise control, rear and front lighting for safety, and the value of planning and flexibility in group travel. The episode highlights the significance of pre-ride meetings, managing group dynamics, and ensuring everyone's comfort. Personal stories from their rides, including navigating night roads and managing unforeseen challenges, add depth to their insights.

Episode 005 - Art of the Group Ride

Transcript:

(00:41) 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 um I picked one a few things like just having cruise control um big one like I

(01:41) faster they're just for temporary relief of that um throttle hand right right yeah shake your hand out you know stretch your ear your side whatever you got to do yeah but I would say that most high I didn't want to say highend but I mean the top touring style motorcycles now have literally cruise control like you you could imagine on your car yeah and that is really the ticket I mean that's when we if we ever go on a trip somebody with actual cruise control has to be the one leading the group I would

(02:42) rear um this is for rear safety purposes I guess um your bike when you bought that Gold Wing uh was littered almost littered with lights everywhere so many lights you know what you don't at first you're like oh my gosh is a gimmick this is funny oh you know Todd's got all these lights but you have extra lights I mean you have probably five sets of extra lights just on the back I would say and and I'd say three out of five are vanity and look just for looks but the two that I think are really

(03:44) extra turn signal that also blink yeah they're up high and they're out a little bit wider yeah yep um man I just can't say enough for you don't have to go crazy and put every light Under the Sun on it I mean if that's what you're into that's fine but like really those eye-catching like rapid blinking it really catched your attention um yeah I haven't seen those before I don't know where the person that put my motorcycle together found those but they're very small and inconspicuous when I would

(04:43) highly recommend just you can get a really simple add-on for a brake light that just pulsates it's an eye-catcher and it's I'd say it's worth it yeah absolutely and then lastly front light add-ons we we've talked about this a little bit before um the top shelf brand is called Clear Water M that's that's what I have on the current bike I mean these are they're expensive but they're also amazing um I think they're high output LEDs they make two different versions the one I have has the person

(05:43) they also so they have a cover on them that's clear and then there's another cover that you can put on that's yellow and I'll tell you I rode that bike home in the rain and I never in my life had people pulling over when I'm coming you know passing them on the interstate because you you just can I had those yellows on and they were just right in people's face yeah not to over brighten them all but my goodness I mean it's nice to be seen yeah um you know that's the big one of the biggest things

(06:35) was writing behind you guys at night you'd want me to turn them down um but like if you're in front you could turn them up and I mean if you're the leader oh my gosh on right yeah I mean they don't everyone doesn't like the look of them because they don't I don't think they make the bike look great but boy oh boy do they they they do their job so that's what you want I want to be able to see I would agree and there's smaller versions there's there's more in you know conspicuous um on one of my

(07:29) planning and safy tips how to deal with instant changes or challenges uh know who will decide early you know if if it's a lead Rider and you're making Road changes that's the person to just make the decision and everyone just goes with it you know if if it if it comes up you know we I think the points here is having pre-ride meetings kind of getting a good idea what's going on but you have to be flexible when things come along on on the way right and speaking of PRI uh pre-ride meetings we've we've talked

(08:29) we usually allow you you just take and make the plan the road plan and then someone else will kind of take over and um you know make all the reservations you know and kind of divide up the the work that way yep I think it's good to have that second person sometimes it's just um it's helpful it's it's also nice you know like when you make all the plans and something goes wrong you just feel bad because and it's nobody's fault like right we I know one I think in Kentucky and I stayed in questionable

(09:24) you see that in all kinds of planning but I think but some of that help that's kind of what makes it fun too is the pre-planning getting ready hoping thinking looking um so yeah I think you've said it before but I think just kind of being AG green you know agreeable is the best way we always talk about setting some ground rules you know kind of beforehand you know and we like to talk about no whiners on the trip you know if you're a whiner just stay home that's okay uh but yeah we just want to

(10:18) right like whoever is going to take the lead you kind of got to let them lead you got to know that they're going to make mistakes GPS is really hard if you're pre-planning routs sometimes you'll drag to the center of a city and you'll it'll be like oh we're a right and then it's like oh turn around we're going right back you know those things happen I try really hard to pull those out but they happen right so you just got to give them slack because right leading isn't always the most fun

(11:04) yeah that's kind of the the EB and flow of the whole thing I guess yeah that and that lead person is always thinking about obstacles in the road you know watching for you know traffic maybe that's coming across center line or pulling out from a side driveway or a blind driveway right gravel on the road you know those sorts of things so uh yeah as as the lead writer you really you're hoping people will give you some Grace because there's going to be some M turns along the way and just everybody

(12:02) used to the way that people ride you know we're used to each other now more than since we've been doing it for so long but it takes time to get to get used to it right yeah absolutely and when you have large groups you have to remember too that when you get to uh a fuel stop it's not going to be a 10-minute fuel up your bike and take off because there's 10 people that need to get fuel and 10 people that need to go to the bathroom and 10 people that need to get something to drink or eat and you

(12:57) your leg stretched out and your back stretched out again and um just put that in your pre-plan put that in your plan that uh each stop you're going to be is is you know at least a half hour no problem 30 minutes you can burn pretty quick and I would also then just say too like plan that too like we had mentioned you just don't things get dark at 6 7 o'clock at night you want to be I like to push to get done at 5 5:00 p.m.

(13:53) you know some technical riding areas that they're not you know ready for and um just make everybody feel comfortable slow down a bit make sure those uh those new writers are feeling good and comfortable and and I I know that the very first time I took a a group ride even though i' had been riding motorcycle for quite a long time um your mind is starts thinking about things that really don't matter that much but they matter but you know I was thinking about the Stagger am I in the right side of the lane or the left

(14:49) what we call the mile marker it's our story segment um we l into it with the night riding on closed roads and one of our biggest group rides was a ride to a place called boscabel Wisconsin not too far from us you know 5 hour drive four hours lots of inexperienced people with us that time I mean we had probably three people that hadn't been on a group ride before Y which meant three people that were almost not prepared gear this that I just remember we rode into the night it was dark um you could see the

(15:57) river right a river um mosquitoes everywhere I just remember bugs everywhere yeah so um just one of those things again where it was really good it worked out well we ended up going a pretty big detour but we ended up parked before the rain came and it was good yeah but one of my enjoyable things about that ride was the first time that I think we had stayed in the one hotel multiple nights and clover leafed around Wisconsin yeah um and that was that was a fun thing to do I think um you know if you want to get not too

(16:58) know one thing I remember about that ride too is um I had a different bike back then and in Wisconsin the ABC roads we call them lots of twisties and I remember really being fatigued cuz I was fighting the bike a lot because it was kind of topheavy it had a the Royal Star right it was the Royal Star yeah and it had kind of a big front end on it big front tire and it just always felt like the handlebars wanted to flop on me so uh that bike kind of tired me out on that r remember I mean just really kind of feeling tense all the time because I

(18:05) go all the way through and boy you really cannot make a mistake if you're in Wisconsin and you write the alphabet so check it out look it on the maps it's pretty cool um if you ever get a chance to get in that area so and I don't think they have gravel roads in Wisconsin do they they technically do but there's not many okay yeah like in Iowa we have them all over the place yeah they're ridiculous yeah but uh yeah so it's you can't go wrong right yeah um in another group ride we took we did a split up if

(19:08) Come the Mummies Here Come the Mummies yeah thanks we went to see the eclipse well right the mummies happen to be playing there afterwards but we found that you know you guys like to go do that and then you know we figure it out sometimes everyone will go and go to the show and sometimes we'll do something different yeah and that's okay too I mean it was it was good I mean our ride to Arkansas was wild I mean um cool and you guys had a heck of an experience tell us about that well yeah maybe the roads oh the

(20:04) writing down around Mark Twain yeah um Park and that was fun and then then we rode home but I don't know I I thought that was good um um that was fun it was just different experience Y and uh yeah I have some other ideas on things like that we should talk about in the future but maybe it'll be work well if we get more people riding with us from this podcast because it's kind of like a shotgun start idea like golf I'm thinking like meat some place you know oh good idea yeah so we'll talk more

(21:03) curious about you know their kids and their their jobs and lives and just have a great time and pretty soon you know you become good friends with people you just met it's fantastic well and I think about we've went through a couple divorces one person that lost their job like decided to come on the ride you know like those are life things that I I won't forget though those are great stories and just it was nice to be around people for everyone I think on on those things you know just a oh yeah yeah group absolutely yeah the podcast

(22:06) about it and read through it absolutely so we have some emergency and repair tools things like Tire kits and plug kits for tire punctures uh portable air pump um like cycle pump Expedition the bike Master compressors Air Moto tile uh tire inflator we'll have those in the show notes uh have a flashlight or a headlamp uh some extra fuse es um some jumper cables or a jump start uh pack and then a few towels and Rags um for like some Essentials make sure you take a spare key for your motorcycle that's important it's

(23:20) yourself some medical gloves or the food preparation gloves to slide inside your gloves to make them waterproof if they're not um a hoodie or a sweater um and then some people will bring out like a canvas like a 6x8 canvas for emergencies you know like a little tarp lay it down on the road it's true I mean great laying on the ground and then they mentioned even above if it's raining you can kind of yeah so I love that that's good stuff uh waterproof boots um you know make sure you've got some clothes

(24:17) communicators in it makes it so much easier to hear it cuts down on the wind noise is what it does yeah for sure all right that's it well now we have the last mile it's our way to close the episode with reflection so uh the importance of unity and and kind of watching out for other I've mentioned before um ask each other how how you're doing throughout the day um you know find out if they're tired they' got pains uh check on fuel levels as you're riding how's everybody doing yeah uh

(25:13) before anything else get yourself some head headset communicators because sometimes that person in the back needs something and there's no way to communicate to the front of the group um plus they help with boredom you know if you have to change plans uh just you know you chitchat along the way and it tells some stories and it it you know kind of uh makes the ride go a lot faster uh those communicators you can point out things along the way that you see um front person can always talk about dangers they see and uh well and

(26:09) cruise control um without that cruise control it really it can get Troublesome um maybe not Troublesome but it just gets to be where you're kind of doing that Surge and slow and Surge and slow and it just it's annoying at best so yeah and our next episode is called the people and experiences of our motorcycle trips so we hope you join us for that if this episode revved up your day don't just keep it to yourself like subscribe and share with your crew we're all about the thrill of the ride and the bond it