A Million Miles and More Smiles with Iron Butt Champ, Wendy Crockett

Wendy, it's so great to have you here. And even though I told you before, I feel a little bit of
guilt and shame because of what you've done and what I have not done. I'm really happy to have you
on the show today. Thanks, Len. I'm happy to be here. You're welcome. I think I've heard that
before. You ever see the movie Groundhog's Day? We're living it right now.
It really is. I love when Andy McDowell says to Bill Murray, do you believe in deja vu?
And Bill Murray looks at her and he says, Didn't you just ask me that?
For those at home, we had a little bit of technical difficulties, but it's so cool to have you
here. And I want to talk a lot about a few different things. I know we're a little bit short on
time, but as somebody who's ridden thousands, over a thousand miles a day,
many times, 80,000 miles, 12,000 miles, 13,000 miles. You know, here in New York City and other
cities where people are riding, most of the time we're looking out for what's ahead of us. Traffic,
cars, highways, signs, potholes. We got potholes. But I'm wondering if when you're doing 1,000
miles a day, is what's inside your helmet just as important as what's outside your helmet?
It very much is. And it is amazing how often I will talk to people that don't realize that
motorcycle riding really is an athletic pursuit.
A lot of physical demands on your body, being exposed to the element can really drain you.
What you put in your body to fuel your ride has a big impact on your ability to safely ride those
kinds of distances. So there's definitely a lot that goes into it in addition to being aware of all
of those same things, potholes and traffic and animals and all of the other things we all
experience every day. You know, I want to talk about packing in a second, but something you said,
you know, there's this guy, Gasper Trauma, who I don't know if you ever heard of. One of the best
motorcycle riding instructors the good Lord ever put on this planet Earth.
Unfortunately, passed away about 20 years ago. I hear his, and he taught me advanced skills.
I hear his voice in my head a lot when I'm on the bike. The other voice I hear is Elisa
Clickingers. often and I'll tell you why because she is a big proponent of many things but
something that sticks with me is she always said Len we make bad decisions when we're or slow
decisions when we're dehydrated so I don't care you know I mean if I'm going around the block I'm
not going to drink a half a quart of water but if I'm doing anything more than 60 or 70 miles or 50
miles I always make sure I'm hydrated so can you talk about like eating and drinking on the road
like what is you know to do a thousand miles in a day it's not like you're pulling over to a
steakhouse and having a five course meal so what are you bringing stuff with you stopping at these
little quick checks like what's what's the strategy there usually It is so, so important.
And it's really timely, too. I literally just a few days ago finished a ride that was about 15,000
miles total in 24 days. Right. And we invited other women to come join us.
And these weren't iron butt days, but they were five to 650 miles per day. So they really did
encourage women to extend, and men joined us as well, expand their range.
Very early on my bike, I have two jugs. I carry two gallons of water on the bike with a little
retractable hose that I can drink from. That way I don't have to have it on my back. My jacket can
still vent. You know, I can cool as designed, but I can get enough water. And having those
conversations with women early on, it's so important you hydrate. And no, no, it's fine. I'll grab
a soda or a, you know, coffee drink at a gas stop. And we ended up with a rider that landed in the
hospital for dehydration. You don't realize how quickly the wind moving over your body and the heat
and everything dehydrates you. And there's just no way to make up for the dehydration just by
slamming a couple drinks at gas stops. You need to have a plan in place when you're doing a long
ride like that. Even if it's just a cup holder on your bike, you can continue to hydrate as you
ride. Meals was another big one for newer writers. I don't eat breakfast or lunch.
And every day we had, I'm hungry. And then shortly thereafter, I'm tired.
Why am I so tired? Are these like 14-year-old women? But it genuinely is like I poke fun,
but I had a learning curve and then they had a learning curve. So instead of,
you know, anytime you're drinking caffeine drinks or sugary drinks or having big meals or eating
junk food on the road, it is impacting your ability to identify your fatigue level.
Am I actually fatigued or am I having a sugar crash because I just had 900 grams of sugar in a
coffee drink? Um, so those things are really, really important. What's your feeling about,
you know, did you know that they're, they make now, I think not only caffeinated gummies, but I
think like, um, instead of the tobacco pouches or those Zins, they have them filled with caffeine.
And I think that's an accident waiting to happen. But how do you use either five hour energies or
any of these, like, do you use them at all? And, and what do you recommend to others? So here's my
approach to it. During the day, I drink only water or I have something called sport tea, which is a
herbal electrolyte drink. So I can throw that in my water jug and a cold bruise. No sugar, just a
teeny tiny bit of natural caffeine. Something that I know about myself from a million miles of
riding is that when the sun goes down, my brain just kind of goes beep. And I'm not fatigued.
Like if I get off the bike, have a conversation with somebody, get past that, you know, dusk phase,
I'm fine. So at that point, once a day maximum, I'll allow myself a five hour energy and just get
off and run around. The very next time I feel tired, if that's 20 minutes later or five hours
later, I get off the bike and sleep. Because when you are genuinely fatigued, not just road weary,
the only thing that fixes that is sleep. I agree. And, you know,
I, sometimes I, um, sometimes I'll pick out a cemetery. I don't know if you've ever done this, but
like cemetery is a great place to sleep. And I would, you know, be very respectful of, you know,
what's going on. Never sleep, you know, on a grave or anything like that. But yeah, and I would
just grab a 20 minute power nap and, and that would be fine for me. And, um, now let's talk about
the subject that's near and dear to my heart. I'm actually planning a trip to, up to Vermont next
week. And I, I vowed I'm taking one pair of pants. enough underwear.
I'll even do socks in my hotel room to save space. But you know, I was, I was, I was telling Wendy
earlier that I suck at packing and I'm trying to get better. What would you tell somebody who sucks
not only at doing it, but who somebody gets anxiety about it?
And I know I shouldn't like, you know, there's so many crappy things going on in the world. It's
absolutely to get anxiety over packing, but what would you tell somebody that to, to be a better
packer and planner for a long distance trip it's it's really funny because i have this conversation
all the time and one of the um one of the women i'm traveling with on this big ride she and i
travel often together all around the world and she is a chronic over packer and it gives her such
anxiety how little i pack that she packs extra extra to just in case she needs to offer me clothes
But genuinely, you need so much less stuff than you think. Layers,
thin layers. layers serve you really well. On the coldest day you are likely to experience,
you should be wearing everything you brought with you. So I'm talking, you know, merino wool is
very forgiving. Silk is very warm and it packs very small. So I have LD Comfort are the base layers
I wear. And those are fantastic for wicking moisture away from your skin. They're great in hot
weather to help keep you cool. And then merino wool are my socks and those will go a very long time
without needing washing and without getting stinky um but then yeah several pairs of underwear i
have for this entire two months i'm going to be on the road i have two pairs of riding socks pair
of flip-flops for off the bike um and then your tools and things like that so you have the fj 1300
right yes the jr so that has the you know those saddlebags are not like super huge right are they
and then you do you have like a tail pack and stuff like that i have a um auxiliary fuel tank on my
bike that has a flatbed on it so it's a little bit different than a stock setup but i've got a
little pelican case that rides up there but it's it's not um it's funny we were doing laundry last
night at the end of this long trip and um two of the other women who are built up like the clampets
um with stuff on the back of their bike right we're going to laundry and they both have two big
duffel bags and they're like i'm bringing all my laundry and i have a little 10 by 10 pouch and i'm
like i am also bringing all of my laundry oh man just you really if you're you know you're moving
often People aren't going to know you're wearing the same shirt four days in a row as long as it's
not stinky. I bring Dr. Bronner's soap with me. It's good for a lot of things,
including doing laundry. So I'll often do laundry in between being able to visit laundromats.
I carry those little flat laundry detergent sheets with me.
That makes it easy to do laundry when the opportunity arises. you know,
unless you're planning on being completely off grid for a very extended period of time, in which
case you're still going to end up doing your own laundry. You always have that opportunity. How
many, I always bring a tire repair kit because my mother always said,
if you bring something, you won't need it, but if you don't bring it. So, and you know,
I'm knocking on wood. I haven't. I think I've only had to plug a tire once in riding 25 plus years
on the road. And back then we had those little CO2 cartridges. Now, I mean, on Amazon,
like six months ago, I bought this $24 compressor, you know, that has a lithium ion battery.
And you just set it. It's amazing. It's like, you know, we didn't have this years ago. How many
tires have you plugged or fixed in the last 10 years,
would you say? In the last 10 years, I was going to say, in my whole lighting career, a fair
number. Dozens, but to be fair, 14 of those were all on the Hall Road up to Anuvik,
and that road is Shale going above the Arctic Circle. Oh, boy. Yeah, a couple dozen times,
and again, I have over a million miles, so that's a pretty big data set.
Sure. Is that something that you're like... Do you come out of your hotel or wherever you're
camping and do you notice that, holy crap, my tire is down? Or is it something that happens during
the ride and you hit something and all of a sudden it's also like maybe an emergency maneuver? It's
happened during the ride. So I had one time a blowout, like a catastrophic blowout in the middle of
nowhere. And so I now have a tire pressure monitoring system so I can keep track of if I am losing
pressure.
you know, get over and figure out what's going on before I lose so much pressure that it becomes
unsafe. So yeah, I've probably in the last year, um, I've probably had four or five flats.
Is it usually like some people say it's always the back because that's where the weight is, even
though you're running stuff over. Is that, have you found that? Uh, oftentimes it is, you're
running something over with the front that stands it up and then the rear picks it up.
I know you've been to New York City, so if there is a heaven and a hell,
I'm pretty sure hell, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway is part of hell.
because that's where every contractor, subcontractor, carpenter,
you know, takes their truck to like a construction site. And it's, you know, you said shale.
It's basically, you can't lane split on the right because if you do, it's just a sea of screws and
thumbtacks and nails. You can't even do that. So I'd rather get stuck in traffic because that
happened to me once. I'm like, holy, you know, that's where you pick them up. Absolutely. Yeah. And
I've, I've had, I had that conversation recently too. It said, be careful on that shoulder van.
There's a lot of stuff there. Well, I didn't get a flat this time. That's fantastic this time,
but as a rule, be very careful. So you've ridden New York city.
Have you ever ridden any place on planet earth that had worse potholes than New York city? I'm
going to say there's a, you know, Pakistan's got pretty rough roads. All right. Mexico's got some
pretty rough roads. Oh, Mexico. Like I'm talking asphalt, not like in the dirt, like the street
that's supposed to be okay. All right. I mean, I have potholes in my neighborhood that I give names
to because I know them so well. I mean, Louisiana is pretty epic for bike eating potholes as well.
And, you know, I've been to Denver a few times and I'm surprised that with all the cold weather
they have there. Their roads are like a sheet of ice. It's beautiful. Like in a good, the flat and
smooth because they actually, you know, I don't know what their tax structure is there, but they
take care of their roads. And I didn't notice any potholes were here. You know, it's really tough.
Do you, when you're riding in a place with, that has a lot of potholes,
how much of that is in your head? Because you have to look left and right and where you're going.
Are you consciously? looking for a pothole? Or does your FJ kind of have enough suspension that
it's not that much of a big deal? It depends on what I'm riding. I have a lot of different bikes
and ride a lot of different bikes around the world. And there's a lot of different situations.
When you're riding in a group situation, you know, we have kind of limited ability to do really
aggressive course correction. So it's one of those things that...
will correct if I have the opportunity to do so smoothly and safely. But sometimes,
you know, you're riding in a group. They know there's a pothole there because I go.
It gives them the ability to course correct. I hear you.
I don't know, you know, North Jersey. So we go riding, uh, you know, we have our two wheel Tuesday,
which is just a meetup. It's not a ride. People come and they, you know, have barbecue, a burger
and say, Hey, nice bike. And that's a nice bike and blah, blah, blah. And we actually actually have
this one guy that comes every week or most of the weeks. And he's got a Pelican case and his case
is like, his bike is small. Like his case is like as big as his bike. Right. And, and I think it's
like as big as a, as a studio apartment. But, um, we took a ride up to bear mountain a few weeks
ago. on a Saturday afternoon on route three.
And I kid you not, we saw four dead deer on the side of the road,
a route three, which is where you have like Wendy's and white castle and things like that. And it
was such a shame. I mean, but you know, We talk about this a lot, but I'd love to get your
perspective. Have you ever had any run-ins with deers? And what do you recommend for people to
kind of identify them, avoid them? Are there any devices they use? The only run-in I've had with
the deer is in my car, thankfully. Oh, wow, okay. I am extra,
extra vigilant during dawn and dusk when they're busiest. I don't use a deer whistle.
I mean, I've not seen any data on those that says they're useful. I mean, it's a,
you know, are they staying out of your way? Or is it a,
you think they're staying out of your way because of a confirmation bias? Or I've heard people say
that the noise starts just as likely to startle them into your path. I don't know. But there's it
lacking any sort of hard data on that. I haven't bothered with them, but all you can do is be
vigilant when you see one or evidence of one. There are almost always more. The big ride we just
came off of, the only time we saw deer in the road was in the middle of the afternoon.
We saw a lot of deer staying on the side of the road, which is a good sign that there's enough food
for them there to keep them out of my way. When we saw the deer in the middle after the noon,
it was a buck ran across the road and I slowed way, way down. And then a second buck jumped out.
And at the next gas stop, the riders behind me were like, what made you slow down? Did you see
another deer? I said, I didn't see anything, but I know they, they run in herds. They're herd
animals. So anytime you see one, anticipate that there'll be more than one. That's a good point.
We have a woman who has been on the show a couple of times, Jamie Chang. She's an artist, and she
originally grew up in Taiwan. And she's petite, 5'3", maybe 110 pounds,
you know. And she had a Royal Enfield. And she hit a deer up going Bear Mountain. And the deer was
actually okay, and her bike was totaled. But, you know, you would think it's just like an early,
mid-30s, something like that. You would think that would scare somebody to never get a bike. As
soon as she got the insurance payment, she was, you know, back on the bike.
doesn't really faze them.
What did I want to talk to you about? Oh, so we talked about, you know, packing.
That's something that you prep, right? And can you talk to, as a mechanic, like, have you always
been a mechanic? Is that has been your, you know, first, your full-time job because you're on the
road a lot. Talk to me about, like, your mechanical... and just normal shop where people brought in
their bikes or by appointment? How does that work? I started out actually in the medical field. I
was an EMT and I worked in a trauma center and I just always thought motorcycles would be fun.
So I kind of the same as your previous example.
Okay. was like i would love to play with motorcycles for a living but i'm fully committed to this
career and what do you do and i got into an accident somebody ran a stop sign and hit me and a lot
of people were like great now you know motorcycles are stupid and dangerous and you won't ride them
again but my takeaway was life is short and i want to go play with motorcycles for a living so i
actually um went back to school for motorcycle mechanics i've been doing that for 26 years now oh
wow you went to mmi is that like the big school Yeah, I went to MMI in Arizona and I had a shop in
California in the mountains at the southern end of the Sequoia National Forest for about 15 years.
We were there and now we are in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
And so. I have recently become an instructor for Road Guardians,
teaching motorcycle accident scene first aid. So it's really come full circle from my medical
beginnings all the way to include that in everything that I teach regarding motorcycles.
Wow. I know you're from California. You started riding when you were in California, obviously,
right? I did. Yeah, I grew up learning. I learned to ride in Los Angeles.
I don't prefer big cities. I certainly am grateful for that experience because they don't bother me
either. I know a lot of people get extremely stressed out in traffic and chaotic situations.
So I am glad to have that as my background. You know, I don't know if you were riding when
California did not have a motorcycle helmet log. Were you riding back then? No. So the funny thing
is when I took my motorcycle licensing test, the written test at the DMV,
the only question I missed was when do you have to wear a helmet? And I answered all the time and
they marked it wrong because the test was so old that it still said you only had to wear a helmet
under certain circumstances, like if you were under 18 or something. And I'm like, well, I want you
to mark it right. And they said, well, you still passed. And I said, it's the principle of the
matter. This is like a 13-year-old test at this point. But no, in my lifetime, in my riding life,
there's always been a helmet law. You know, I remember, I think it was like the late 80s, early 90s
when they changed the law. And I remember reading that the New York Times wrote an article when
that law was changed. And they went to LA. I don't know if they interviewed EMTs, but they
definitely interviewed people at the hospitals that do the organ transplants and doctors and things
like that. And they asked them what they thought about the new helmet law where people have to wear
a helmet all the time. And so a couple of the doctors said, well, you know, it's probably a good
idea. But boy, do we get great organs from those 25-year-old kids crashing on motorcycles.
And it's true because you don't want a lung from a 70-year-old guy. You want a kidney from a
young person.
So as far as maintenance goes then, you're around a lot of other people that ride.
Is there a maintenance shortcut people take that kind of drives you crazy? Then they'll bring their
bike in and this is wrong. You said, oh man, if you would have just done this, you wouldn't have
this problem. I have two major ones for that. And the first one is valve inspections and
adjustments. We have so many people that will bring their bike into a shop and they're like,
have a coronary when they see the quote for this service and they're like, well,
why is the steelership trying to rip me off? I know it only costs a hundred bucks for an oil change
or whatever. Without realizing that there is this major thing.
And with valves, Yes, you can probably get away with not ever looking at them for a long time.
But the price of what happens when the valves get well out of adjustment is not worth the cost
savings of never looking at them. So I've had people say, oh, I went, you know,
100,000 miles and never had a valve inspection until my engine surprisingly lost all compression.
Who could have foreseen that? Like, well, I have. I have 500,000 miles on the exact same bike.
And yes, it's expensive and yes, it's onerous. But again, the cost of not doing it is so much
greater. But the other thing that I see a lot of is people will air their tire up to the sidewall
pressure. And that is a big one because that same exact tire might...
fit on a bike that weighs half what yours weighs and it might fit on a bike that weighs twice what
yours weighs so that sidewall pressure is the maximum safe operating pressure for that tire.
So if you air it up to max sidewall pressure, chances are really, really good that that tire is
going to be overinflated. So that's going to mean a really harsh ride and really rapid tire wear.
So what you want to do is look at, you will have a sticker on your bike that tells what the
pressure is for your bike. It'll be in your owner's manual. Again, keeping in mind that that
pressure is only for that model of tire that was originally on your bike. But it's a much better
jumping off point for where to air up your tire than the sidewall pressure of the tire itself.
Well, that's interesting because I have a BMW R1200R 2013, and it looks like brand new,
and it's well-maintained because I bought it from this guy who was an engineer and the whole
thing. But I am getting a little bit of cupping or dishing.
And I do have a tire pressure monitor, although it went out like a year ago. I need to replace the
battery. So for this set of tires for the last year, it hasn't. And Ken,
do you know eight-ball tires? Do you know Ken Walster? He started a motorcycle warehouse in the
90s, sold it to a PE firm, and now he's got a company called Eight Ball Tires.
He's got five locations around the country, and basically they'll change your tire in an hour, and
they have a pool table at each location so you can play pool while your tire's getting changed. And
that's really all they do. Sometimes they'll do brakes and things like that. But he kind of
admonishes me to keep the tire. He never told me that, though, about... Because I have a Michelin
Road 5, which is current technology, but in 2012, the technology was probably different in tires.
So I'm wondering, should I go by what it says on my bike, knowing that the technology has changed,
or what it's saying on the tire, but not the map? What do you think there? If you're getting
cupping, it means that you're likely running lower pressure than you need to be running. And tire
pressure does change with ambient temperature and with elevation and things like that.
So it's not a matter of you pick up your bike from the shop and never worry about tire pressure
again unless you pick up a nail. It is something that you should be checking on a regular basis and
especially before any big rides. But it sounds to me like you need to air up a few pounds at least.
The R1200 is a pretty heavy bike. It is.
You can go as much as the sidewall pressure on that tire and then air down a little bit.
There's tire pressure is one of those things where there's not just one right answer, but the one
wrong answer is not paying attention to your tire pressure. So if you air it up to that max and you
find that it's pretty harsh, air it down a couple of pounds. But the important thing is that you're
paying attention and staying on top of it. I just ordered to replace that rear tire, the GT
version, which has the stronger sidewalls. And even though it's recommended for slightly heavier
bikes, my mechanic, who's from Austria, said it's probably a good idea. I'm always riding with the
side cases. Not that they're filled, but I'm a bigger guy too. Any thoughts there? Yeah,
so the GT versions of those tires have a more robust chassis to that tire and thinner.
tread like thinner siping so usually it's about a wash as in terms of the mileage that you can
expect to get but you might get better handling on a heavy bike i've run both on my bike when it's
fully loaded i've run the gt version and the non-gt version um and they both come out about the
same in terms of tire wear got it and um you know those michelins are really good in the wet though
i try not to ride you know let's talk about the wet so um
Describe,
what's the worst rainstorm you've ever ridden in? I mean, I know there's like, how many rainstorms
come to mind when I ask that question? I have ridden in two hurricanes, like actual literal
hurricanes.
You know you can pull over to the side of the road? Did you know that's an option? I was in a
rally. So you put a point value on something and suddenly you go, you know.
Everybody's going this way because they're being evacuated. I bet I could get in there really quick
with no traffic. Oh, gosh. Yeah, so I've ridden in some pretty wild weather.
So for the normal person, that's not an iron button. Her name is Phyllis. She lives in Edison, New
Jersey. She's got a Honda whatever. Let's just call it the Shadow 750.
and she's wearing you know she's got a rain suit and they're out in the jersey turnpike going to
the shore and rain starts coming in what would you what advice would you give to the normal rider
or the less experienced rider about riding in the rain um your tires are really really good in the
rain your braking ability is not significantly impacted by the rain if you've got some rain The
only difference is you're a little wet. Where it becomes potentially dangerous is if there is any
standing water or if it significantly impacts your ability to see the road ahead of you.
So I have some apps on my phone with real-time satellite data,
and I use that when I'm riding with other people. Again, the choices that I'd make for myself as an
individual are not the same as I would make for the group. So I'm able to look at that map and say,
if we pull over and we sit here for 30 minutes and warm up and have a coffee or whatever you guys
want to do and let that storm move on a little bit, then we can more safely move behind it.
We're going to be in a much better position than if everybody is struggling to see the road and
they're going at a snail's pace because they're standing water. You're not making forward progress.
You're just making yourself miserable. What's worse? Bad rain or bad wind?
Oh, gosh. I think they are both equally miserable in their own ways.
You know, wind is really exhausting. And it's especially tough if it's gusty wind.
When you have a nice steady wind, you know, you kind of get your lean going and you can know what
to expect. But when you are like a coiled spring all the time.
you know waiting for gusts of wind and that happened like again all of these things there were
things that we encountered on the the ride we just came off of coming across the the midwest the
plains states there's you know 70 mile an hour winds and gusty winds it is exhausting and i'm a
bigger guy i'm a bigger i have a bigger motorcycle but let's say You know, for smaller people on
Royal Enfields, you know, actually I have a friend that has a Suzuki T250. Have you seen those?
You know, it's a great starter bike, but the running joke in our motorcycle group is not only is it
a motorcycle, but it can double as an earring or a key chain,
right? It's so darn small. And usually the people that ride them, like the woman that has this,
she's, you know, 5'3", 110 pounds, 5'4", something like that, is wind. more of a factor for
somebody like me that's bigger on a big bike or or somebody like her that's you know petite on a
smaller bike our big bikes are pretty big wind socks right so you know again if we if we take the
80 mile per hour interstate out of the equation because those real small bikes aren't you know well
suited for those conditions anyways um everything else being equal on a smaller highway we're gonna
have a harder time on bigger than those smaller bikes will. Got it, got it. And this is really
good.
I want to talk about, so you ride in cities,
you ride in different countries. You know, one of the reasons why I started this show is, you know,
being Italian, we're very emotional people sometimes, you know. And I used to get road rage pretty
bad. And... Eric Anderson, I don't know if you know him, he was one of the founders of Scorpion
Helmets back in the day. And now he's doing consulting and just a wonderful,
wonderful man. And, you know, he would tell me, because like Len, don't, you know, he's like a very
Zen guy, which, you know, I'm not. But he would try to help me with road rage.
He said, don't try to be the hero. Like a lot of times I would get upset with people because I
didn't want them to cut off somebody in the future. And he said, that ain't happening. But is that
something you've ever experienced? Do you experience it a lot? How do you deal with it? Or how do
you tell other people, you know, to kind of deal with road rage because it works against us.
It does. Yeah. And so, you know, I coach everybody. I also teach, you know,
beginner rider training and you tell people. act like you're invisible,
and yet also everybody is aiming for you. So if you leave the house with that mindset,
like always on the defensive, those people are always going to be aiming for you.
It kind of takes a bit of the sting off when people are being complete imbeciles.
But the reality is you can be completely right and still dead,
right? I don't need to start a fight with that guy because I will lose.
I am on a smaller vehicle, completely, you know, exposed to the world.
So if I pick a fight with somebody that's just having an epic bad day, I am not going to win.
So that said, I had on this long ride we just completed, we had linked comms.
And that's not something I always have unless I'm guiding a tour. And there were several times
where this string of expletives came out of my mouth and I forget that other people are in my
helmet. And they're like... saw what happened. Why didn't you just honk at that guy? And I'm like,
well, I don't need to do outside angry. I just tell the guy in my helmet what I think of him and
then move on with my day.
But yeah, it's really interesting. In a lot of other countries, you have kind of this honking
language and it's... perfectly normal you just give a little beep beep i'm here beep beep beep i'm
passing however the language works in that country and i love it and i miss it when i'm back here
because it's um just a very nice way to just say oh hi friend you missed me over here um whereas in
the u.s oftentimes it is seen as aggressive no matter what the circumstances are so i really don't
tend to use my horn very much here Got it. Got it. That's cool. Let me ask you a little bit more
questions about like the long distance riding because I was talking to somebody about this the
other day who did a big trip, you know, not as big as yours. But when you're doing a thousand miles
a day, is it typically on interstates or are you picking some of these back roads with two lanes
going each way? And which do you find? The answer is probably obvious, but you never know. Like
what is more, what type of roads do you really enjoy riding on? And on these thousand roads days,
do you maybe not forsake but avoid some of the twisties to cover more distance on an interstate it
completely depends on what i'm trying to accomplish okay so if i'm in a long distance event like
the iron bot rally it's um gonna be a big mix oftentimes it'll be primarily back roads and you know
things like that they're getting you off to see fun interesting things um i just do like i don't
certify most of my rides. If I have somewhere to be, you know,
I'm in South Dakota and I'm teaching a class in California and it's 1500 miles away. I'll just ride
that through because I can. If I'm doing it for something more interesting, so I have a little bit
more time, I definitely will skew towards the back roads. I want to have fun. I want to feel that
dance of the ride. I want to enjoy what I'm doing. I don't want the drudgery of just you know,
rolling down the highway. Yeah. I don't know if you've ever seen like Jay Leno's, uh, motorcycle
collection and, you know, he has a few, uh, videos on YouTube and he always says, if I ever have to
be somewhere at a certain time, I'll never take the bike because, right. Because I just want to
enjoy it and be nice. But, you know, and then he's got like all these, you know, great cars too.
Um, we were talking earlier before we started recording about our children. Uh,
you have a daughter who's 12, I have a daughter who's 22. My daughter grew up in Tampa, and she's
moving to New York City in five days, and she's been on the back of the motorcycle with me,
and she'll probably admit that the longest time she's been without a phone in her hand is when
she's been on the back of the motorcycle with me. We took a 165-mile ride around Father's Day,
and it was like twisty roads, and three, four, five hours, and she didn't have the phone in her
hand once.
And she's moving to Jersey City, which is kind of like, not the suburbs, but it's not Manhattan.
And she wants to sell her Camry and get a motorcycle.
And I'm scared to death. Because I see, I've lost two,
I told Wendy earlier, and I've said it on my show, I lost my cousin three months ago.
One of the guys that we rode with. uh i don't know if you mayor de blasio that was one of our
mayors here a few years ago um before the guy that's on here now two actually two mares ago a
lawyer that we rode with and this guy had a yamaha no kawasaki z1000 nice fast bike the guy
wouldn't even sit on the bike to take a picture without full safety gear fortunately he passed away
on a dude a motorcycle accident another guy that we ride with eddie was paralyzed from the neck
down now he's paralyzed from the waist down And who knows if he'll stay that way forever. We hope
that he won't. But, you know, and there's that famous, I don't know if you've ever seen it on,
it's many years old when they interviewed the head of the Flying Walendas trapeze family,
you know. And they said how he discouraged his family,
you know, his children from getting in that because how dangerous it is.
What would you advise parents? And a lot of people that listen to my show, late 30s to mid 60s,
so they have kids that are 12, 14, 15, 18. And what would you advise parents how to kind of
approach this? It is tough. It's a tough question. And I ride with my daughter on my bike all
around the world and we have a sidecar rig and she's been with me to countries. All around the
world she's traveled with me. And I have, it is always an internal conversation I have with myself
that I am making a choice when I put her on the back of my bike that does have the ability to
impact her safety, even if I do everything right. But I can be a skilled,
competent, confident rider. And that's the best I can do because you never know what life brings.
That said, she is getting old enough to wear. You know, she's gone through a phase where,
like, I don't like motorcycles, Mom. That's your thing. Right. Good. Yeah,
she's asked to take an off-road riding class. She is talking about getting her motorcycle license
in a couple of years. And I do have those concerns. Part of me is thrilled that she is finding that
same joy in motorcycles that I have. And part of me says I'd never be able to live with myself if
anything happened to her. And, but that's, I think that's parenting in general is what we do is we
try to give our kids the very best tools that they can to be smart and safe and make the best
choices in life. And then at a certain point, um, we trust them.
Yeah. I think I would make sure that she's got every freaking piece of training available. And then
this kind of dovetails into the next question. So for people that below are a certain age, man,
they love to have their phones on their handlebars, okay? And they use it as the guise of,
oh, it's my GPS. I don't buy that for a second. And I had Monica Holmes.
She's also a motorcycle safety instructor for many years. And I tell you, you're like,
this is episode number 111, multiple guests, probably have 118 guests over the last six years.
I would say 114 are dead set against having a phone on the handlebars.
And Monica said, well, if you've been writing five years or more, maybe it's okay.
Oh, and you know, Alicia Elving, are you friends with her? I think you're friends with her on
Facebook, I noticed. But she wrote a book, I think you're in her book. Oh,
yeah, yeah, okay. She's in Portland, right. And one of the things that she said was she doesn't
keep it on the handlebars because if she goes down and the bike's on the handlebars, who are you
going to call? Not Ghostbusters, right? And she actually went down on the side of the road because
she had her phone in her breast pocket and was using headphones.
She was able to call for help. What is your advice that you give or teach to women or men about
putting that... little iphone 17 that has all the things you know on on their handlebar uh i keep
mine on my handlebar okay so but you're like an expert i use mine for maps um on your regular gps i
do have a regular gps as well um so regular gps's don't have the same kinds of ability to reroute
around traffic and you know that type of thing i do have You know, the traffic subscription on my
Zumo, but that's on the tail end of its functionality. It's just not quite as current.
That said, I recommend to everybody to not have it. You know, it's a distraction.
I've, you know, I'm not going to be responsible for telling people to have it up there.
What a lot of people do, what my husband does, what a lot of my friends do, is they have like the
CarPlay screen. So you can set your phone. to whatever your route is and then it reflects to the
car play screen and it has limited functionality but it also has limited distractions when you're
messing with that but it is a good like it's an ongoing argument i carry a satellite tracker in
case of emergency and it's um you know do you have that on your body or do you have that on your
bike where is it going to be the best place to access something in the event of an emergency um and
i've seen both scenarios. I had it on my body and I crashed and I smashed it and it was no longer
functional or I had it on the bike and it took leave of the bike or had it on the bike and I was
far from the bike. So there's, um, you know, again, we do the best we can.
I like to have redundancies in case of, uh, emergencies, but, um,
at the end of the day. Yeah.
Um, as a kid or even now, do you like magic? Sure. Do you remember like a famous magician that you
enjoyed watching as a kid or even as an adult?
Um, I don't know. I, so I grew up not far from the magic castle in Hollywood. So we'd see,
um, a lot of shows there, but I don't know that I have one specific. Yeah. I remember, I don't know
if David Copperfield is still alive. And I think, I think he's had, he's had a lot of work done to
his face. Him and Barry Manilow. Have you seen Barry Manilow lately? I can't say that I have.
Yeah. He's, he looks like he was, you know, Definitely got a lot of work. But anyway, hey, God
bless him. You know, God bless him. But if there was a magician here with us,
and you're very experienced and very talented, but if there was a magician here with us and with a
wave of his or her magic wand, they could improve one aspect of your writing skills by five times.
What would you ask them to create that magic spell? Off-road riding,
for sure. You're kidding. Really? No. Yes. I tell people all the time to keep taking training.
I don't care how experienced you think you are. Begin a rider's training class if you live in a
winter state and want to shake off the cobwebs. Take your bike out to an advanced rider class so
you can practice things on your bike. Take off-road classes, even if you don't have any
expectation of ever needing those skills. Take police classes. Every single type of class that you
take is going to give you another tool in your toolbox to make you a better rider. And off-road
skills is one where I just, as I get older and I don't want to get hurt, like I get it done off
-road, but I don't feel like I have that same level of muscle memory that I have on road.
And I would love to have that level of, confidence on-road that I've got,
or off-road that I've got on-road. I know we don't have much time, but I just want to ask you one
or two more questions, if that's okay? Sure. Okay, cool. I was watching one of your interviews, and
you told on one of the news stations, TV stations, and you mentioned an incident with fireflies,
lightning bugs. Yes. Can you recount that for everybody listening at home?
Yeah, so it's a common question, and I'm sure a lot of people get this question. What is your
favorite ride? What's the favorite road you've ever ridden or place you've ever ridden? And what I
tell people genuinely is my favorite part of motorcycles are those experiences that you cannot put
in a GPS. They're the moments that you have simply because you put yourself out there in the world
on two wheels. You experience the world differently on two wheels. And so in this particular case,
my riding partner and I were in the middle of another world record ride attempt and we were
watching my satellite. and there was two giant storm systems that were going to be colliding.
So we had spent the entire day riding quite purposefully to try to get around this storm system,
and we reached a point where it looked like it was not going to happen. The storm was kind of in
the shape of Pac-Man, and we were in his mouth, and it was getting ready to close around us.
So we knew we were about to get wet, but we were on dry roads.
And the storm was all around us. And the sky was just lit up with, I still get goosebumps.
I'm getting goosebumps talking about it. The sky was just lit up with lightning. Just cloud to
cloud lightning everywhere. Just the sky was aglow. And then in the ditches next to the road,
all of a sudden, just like a jillion fireflies started blinking on the side. of the road and then
off in the distance somewhere some fireworks started going off and i'm like this is magical i will
never ever ever find a moment like this again i could ride for another million miles and i will
never have that just moment of beauty zen just incredible and those things you just have to get out
there and ride um yeah you had it with fireflies um Do you know what the state bird of Maine is?
The mosquito? Yeah. Oh, my God. You're the only one that knows that.
Holy crap. You just ruined my note. But I was in Maine like 12 years ago in August.
And I was heading, first of all, I think I'm the only person to ever miss a country.
I was looking for Canada, right, in Maine or wherever I was. And it said,
Canada, 30 miles. dark-ish, getting dark. And I'm, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah. And then I'm seeing, like, and I'm noticing, then I noticed on my odometer that I've traveled
42 miles. Like, where the fudge is Canada? And then I ended up at a truck stop in Maine where this
guy next to me, I said, I said, let me just have some dinner. And this guy was having, like, franks
and beans, like, heart attack on a plate. And I'm not a skinny guy either. But, uh,
but I called it. So anyway, so I had to like at nine 30, I had to find my way into, um, Halifax,
Canada. Yeah. St. John's St. John's. And, and, and I have a little bit of a windshield, you know,
not as I've seen your bike, not as big as yours, but it's not as tiny either. And cicadas,
the size of softballs are committing suicide on my,
on my, you know, and I'm sitting there like, Do I go faster to try to make time or do I go slower?
And I had this Vanson, was it Vanson? No, it wasn't Vanson. It was another, Hein-Garrick.
I don't know if you remember Hein-Garrick. Yeah, those Hein-Garrick. And I get to the hotel at
like 11 o'clock at night. And my thing is a black jacket. It turned brown, like brown from all the
dead cicadas on me. It was crazy. It was crazy. And they hurt. They're big.
Yeah, they're big. They can't control their flight and they hurt. They are big. So,
oh man. All right. So I know you got to leave in a few minutes. This was great.
If people are listening, what are the next cities and towns? Today's Monday the 27th.
We'll probably go live in a few days. Where are you going to be next? They can go to pushingmiles
.com. It has a lot of my upcoming events and things there. We are going to be headed shortly to the
Sturgis Rally where we'll be speaking at the Pearls Jam. uh women's day at the sturgis motorcycle
museum and hall of fame during the sturgis rally so definitely come on out and see us and from
there yeah it's um i'm going to british columbia for a while then italy then pakistan then mexico
i'll be at barber vintage days so i'm i'm bouncing all around the globe what's going on in pakistan
Beautiful riding, man. Really? This is my favorite place I've ever ridden. You have the... You're
kidding. The Himalayas, the Hindukush, and the Karakoram Mountains all come together in Pakistan.
Absolutely stunning. What's the capital of Pakistan? Islamabad. Okay. Is that like a bigger city,
like a Chicago, New York type thing? Yeah, it's a modern city, so we usually fly into either Lahore
or Islamabad. and then immediately take off into the mountains, and you can have as many or as few
dirt roads as you want, and right up to the border of China,
the highest paved border crossing in the world at almost 16,000 feet, and beautiful views,
beautiful people, wonderful little villages. Yeah, absolutely amazing experience. Oh, you know what
you brought up? Then I'll let you go, I swear. I know you're communicating,
but... Um,
these long days, are you listening to, do you have a Sony Walkman with a cassette deck? I'm kind of
kidding there, but what are you, you know, are you listening to music or you listen to eBooks? Like
you do have a lot of time and somebody that's experienced like you, you could probably handle
listening to music or even an eBook and still keep your attention and focus.
What do you do that? Yep, it depends on the situation. You know, if I'm riding through across the
George Washington Bridge, I'll not have anything on. I want full focus on the task at hand.
If I want just a little bit of background noise, I might have music going. But often on, you know,
long days where I've got easy roads and I love listening to audiobooks or podcasts.
It's really, I don't have a lot of quiet time when I'm off the bike and I just love having that
too. Time to catch up. Excellent. Excellent. All right. This has been wonderful. We will put links
to your website, Instagram, and all that stuff so people can follow you. Really appreciate you
being on. Fantastic. Thanks, Len. It's been fun.