(1) episode024 movie - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DHRSKrqLOo

Transcript:

(00:00) I'll go as long as it's not a three-hour [Music] tour hello and welcome to best motorcycle roads I'm Tom and I'm Todd we have over 65 years of combined motorcycling experience and 30 years of planning and riding motorcycle trips we're here to share with you everything we've learned over those years our goal at best motorcycle roads is simple make your next motorcycle trip the best it can be we'll dive into technology planning packing the roots and other tips and everything in between from

(00:38) 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 in today's toolkit we're going to talk about credit cards tie

(01:07) downs and locking cables not necessarily in that order okay um actually I think we're going to talk about leaving the country not for political reasons but just for the motorcycle trip um and one thing you do have to be a little careful of is credit cards debit cards and such when you exit the country so just remember to call ahead and also remember not to let them be expired in the middle of the trip which I have done oh no it was my debit card and I let it expire halfway through like it was we went over like I think it

(01:40) was a Labor Day weekend so we left in August and it was August 31st then the card wouldn't work I couldn't forgot why expiration yeah I still haven't replaced it oh but you know but that's a great Point I've done that myself where I've traveled out of the country went to use a credit card or debit card it stops I'm like what's going on and yeah the bank stops that are automatically puts a whole well and we use kind of a local bank and they're a little overaggressive sometimes on their stopping I mean I can

(02:10) buy $5,000 worth of wood and wood supplies down at the local lumber yard but if I spend $9.99 on the line foret about it no but uh no that's good we're also talking going to be talking about a little bit of of a fery ride too so if you can throw in a couple tie downs they don't take too much uh space it could even be one of the cam Buckle cuz not every fairy allow has you you supply it sometimes so do they have wheel chalk or what do they no so what are you strapping to they usually just have some

(02:40) d-rings somewhere close so generally when you ride the FY they'll generally have the motorcycles load first they usually have a little pocket for them and then usually they'll you just never know what they'll have but uh a lot of I've never seen usually we just Center stand and then went D rings is what we did but yeah but and they did Supply them on the particular one we were on but I know the other there's two like Michigan a Southern and a northern one the northern one doesn't um Supply tie

(03:10) down so so yeah just have a couple you know you don't even one long one would work too you just got to go you just want it not to tip over something happens really it's not going to be like a it's not like a trailer I mean it's it just needs to make sure that if something cuz they do get like Michigan I you know guess I've been on the small ferry that just crosses the Mississippi and yeah you're just you just stand by the bike it's nothing because there's no waves to worry about but no this is just

(03:36) a little you know I think mostly well the one on the south really it hustles so yeah and then lastly just like I think we've talked about it before but a locking I use like a locking bike cable um when you get into some of the bigger cities it's not always a horrible thing to just uh run a bike cable through your coat and your um helmet and then that way it just slows the slows the the thieving down well you know keeps the honest people honest but yeah yeah and then one more toolkit item I think we'll

(04:07) explain and talk about a little bit later is maybe using chat gbt to help you plan routes like we're talk about today so ridewise is the section we focus on planning and safety tips ridewise is a section we focus on planning and safety tips and since we're talking about uh Lake Michigan Lake hon um I thought I would talk about a few of the uh things to watch out for when you're um when you're on some some of these drives like uh M22 Scenic Drive uh just be cautious of wildlife uh you could have some deer uh you know close

(04:38) to those wooded areas or any sort of Critters that uh you know like to Scurry across the road right in front of you and there's a lot of Curves and elevation changes in this area so just you know be watching for people um on these sharp Corners coming across the center line uh you know a lot of them are blind corners and that so pay attention and then some of these uh roads will have beach access points yeah and when there's strong winds it'll blow a bunch of that uh beach sand up onto the road oh yeah and you know that's not

(05:09) easy to see sometimes so slow down and just be ready for some you know reduced Traction in those areas um the Red Arrow Highway uh that route can can get busy especially in the summer uh that's kind of their Peak so um you know just stay diligent on those and because we're in an area that you know gets some uh you know ice and that in in the winter that um they'll have potholes and they'll have some heaving in the pavement so it might still be frozen August up there it could be uh us23 uh Lake hon we're talking

(05:44) about there's a lot of Scenic o overlooks there uh make sure that when you're going off to these Scenic overlooks you're you can still be visible you know make sure um you're seen because or put your hazards on as you're coming up to those because sometimes they're pretty sudden little off you know offroads off these uh these roads and and just watch for the pedestrian traffic when you get into some of the tourist areas like uh Port Austin and Lexington and uh just you know kind of be aware yeah for extra

(06:15) people in those areas in Michigan and Canada too you're going to you kind of when you're running into some of these places that are a little more sparse of people what you'll see is like you're going to be out and there's going to be nothing and then you're going to get to a city and I know in Canada when we were there last they were really concerned that we going to hit moose oh yeah and they're like just don't do that like don't do it they're bad they're huge the

(06:36) other thing that you'll I mean you know Canada is lot I mean when you go to Michigan you go to Canada there's some areas that are but like Canada is pretty much nobody in most of the country so like most of Canada the people are near these Lakes you know areas like so like you'll just see big truck traffic you know they run some pretty good siiz trucks semi- trucks up there um and then this will start to become some of the seasons when they're in there logging and doing different things um also um

(07:07) just uh you know you're in a different country I know they're really picity about their speed limits there as well and it's you know you're in kilometer so it's the little bitty numbers on the you just got to be careful like I know a lot of the area we rode last was 60 km well 60 km is not even I don't think full 55 miles hour so you feel like you're going so slow and you want to get going because there's nothing going on so the one more more thing you got to be really careful is if you eat the puntine in

(07:38) Canada which is uh fries with gravy you just got to make sure there's a stop you know in your future cuz you will be stopping to to uh to rid yourself of that so good point yeah so plan your stops and you can pretty much get poutin at any gas station in Canada so and how are the gas stations I mean is it pretty sparse up there um you know most of the time it's not so bad I mean most bikes go 150 Mi that's whatever 200 change kilometers that's pretty far especially when we're in the coastal areas but um

(08:14) you just it's like they say it's like if you if you're not sure get Gess you know because you're better off the next segment is what we call the mile marker it's our story segment this is a story segment we call the mile marker well Todd we planning kind of a I would call it a new trip this this year um I feel always bad for Chris every year Chris is our one Illinois rider that's near Chicago and I feel like we always drag him our way you know so I was like when we were thinking about possible

(08:47) destinations well what I was thinking it was a full all the Great Lakes Loop and I looked at that and it was like 3,000 mil or 2500 maybe and I was like well that's not going to work but so starting in Chicago I sorted diving it up and it looks like we might be able to sneak in a two Lake Circle mhm and then um you and I were just kind of preparing a little bit for this and thinking man this is going to be cool there's a fairy ride um that's too so so what we've been looking at is maybe leaving from Aurora just take the

(09:22) interstate up get to Green Bag get it over with um you know anything that's near the lake on that side is pretty populous oh very populous just roll through yeah so maybe we can get some extra miles on but once we get up there I think we talked about this maybe today or maybe the last podcast was uh US Highway 2 that's that runs right along L that's a great that is a great ride Escanaba mana and then maybe we can get all the way up to Paradise Michigan which is a cool little town that's kind

(09:51) of on the edge of civilization really which will allow us maybe the next day second day to go and visit White Fish Point yeah um which is cool that's the wreck of the um Edmund fist J Edmund fit yeah that's right it's cool um and I highly recommend if you get in that to go to see it it's it's quite fascinating and you know the museums do such a great job always like you know the walking tour with the headphones and you can kind of go at your own pace and boy they have like a reenactment of the whole

(10:21) thing it's really really good audio really tells a story so then I was looking around and it looks like if you get into Ontario then there's a town called Sal South baymouth and I noticed that there was a ferry that we could go across and I don't know it was really fun except sometimes the pr price so I checked it out here a little bit ago and uh it's like 45 bucks with the bite so it seems like a no-brainer that's a nobin so this really allows us to do a double Lake tour around Michigan and

(10:54) hon and then maybe I don't is this Hon up here I'm looking at the maps on the as yeah that's all Heron so so basically a heron Michigan Lake tour hitting a ferry and then coming back through but then it's like okay so we get asked a lot of times well how do you figure all these places out you know we gave all these super educated ideas of how you can you can research all the towns and all the Chamber of commer and you know call the Canadians and ask them where to go right and I would say we use we will

(11:24) probably put this on on like the motorcycle trips and advice uh Facebook group yeah people are super helpful there another one motorcycle Maps both of those really popular put them in there people will tell you places to go but then I thought you know let's see what chat GPT has to say about it so I put it into chat GPT Todd what what did you put in so I took the link to the map off Google Maps Okay and I took the link and copied and pasted in there and then it said I can't read JavaScript so oh so then what I did is I

(11:58) took a screenshot of the Google Map page so just did a screenshot okay and I pasted that in here and I said we're going to go clockwise we want to we don't care about Aurora to Green Bay we don't care about get when you get into from Canada to in the South part of Michigan we don't care about that we'll just take the interstates in those two places what else can we do what are things to see okay see put a picture in there it's a JPEG yep and you actually said we don't care about D D D D D this is what I

(12:29) literally let me read to you what I literally put I said we are taking a motorcycle ride along this route over the summer can you help me brainstorm great places which are group of five guys could stop for fun along the way we'll probably interstate and Skip Aurora to north of Green Bay we'll need details from there all the way around until we get back to the US via e East Michigan then we can skip interstates from there to Aurora and and you can upload the picture into chat GPT how where do you do that you might have to have the pro

(12:59) version to upload the picture but I'm not positive on that cuz the the new version just came out the 40 and it allows you to do um it allows you to do a lot more I just can't remember if you're going to upload a picture not all right I'm not on Pro so I if you can't do that you could I'm sure find a picture of the Lake Michigan area and I know you can link to the picture okay so I'm sure you can do that because it can read the web so then I said you know we're going to be traveling clockwise

(13:25) just to give it a good idea yeah and so what and I think this could be improved actually if we were to put a few more stops in cuz I didn't have too many stops in so it only gave me ideas for where the points it could see the stops on the map which is kind of interesting but yeah so it says uh here and it says north of Green Bay activities include Lambo field tour there's a national railroad museum we probably won't stop in Green Bay but that could be interesting or maybe there's a cool railroad place to eat lunch I don't know

(13:54) Escanaba Michigan which is a too it's at lington Park there is a Sandpoint Lighthouse oh and then I got a little scared because I saw some names that I might not uh be able to read on the podcast so I said would you help me with some phonetic pronunciations as well and so um when it when it I don't think we'll be going to Marquette but in muning there is Picture Rocks National Lake Shore which was seemed kind of interesting but then this was the one that was really cool is that boat tours if you want to see the cliffs now i' had

(14:27) never even heard of that before oh wow so that might be something that's interesting Paradise um to South Baymont Ontario then what they suggested of course was the Great Lake Ship Wreck Museum but also pointed out that white fish has a bird Observatory which might be kind of interesting y um in Paradise Michigan there was the Tako Manan Falls State Park and then which I know I missed last time Oswald's bear Ranch I'm pretty much thinking that might be a mustsee all right that's a mustsee that might be a must SE so then

(15:04) um you're going to Mino City so that's about where you cross the cross into the other uh area it appears that Fort Mish manau I didn't I I probably remember seeing that but I know we didn't stop there and then I I think that one time we stopped at the Bridge Museum which was kind of interesting but it's kind of a one time stopper um but then when you get over into Ontario um and this is what they listed the fairy ride that we're talking about the Chi-Chi the chichim fairy ride so that would take us down to tuber Mori

(15:37) tuber Mori Ontario and there is a national park there and then flower pot Island which I didn't notice so we could check into that a little bit more and then London onario it looks like London onario might be a little bit bigger city there's a museum a London Museum there um and then they did give some thoughts around from Ontario to cazo to Aurora but we pretty much we thinking we'd jet through that so this was really interesting um to kind of this is new for us to use chat GPT or one of the AI things to kind of

(16:12) start to plan the trip out that's really interesting and I what I'd be really now interested my next thoughts when I start to think through this more it's like what if we would tell it how many miles each day maybe we wanted to ride oh wow or maybe now start to say well you know Chris he's kind of a Camaro guy and Todd's a music guy and Tom's an idiot but he might like all kinds of be things he's kind Brad's a farming kind of guy you know if we started to add those things in are there things to see related too

(16:44) yeah yeah so I'm I'm going to do this I think it'll be fun to take this another step further maybe we can another episode on just that report back cool I like that this might be um more fun to do because you know that's the problem right like we've went to so many places we went to the cor Corvette Museum somewhat Universal I would say right yeah but some of the places were probably more for one person or another person um and the real question is what places did we miss yeah so to me this is

(17:15) super interesting I think another angle that we haven't taken yet but I think we'll be um be interesting so I like that idea yeah I might have to post this into the uh into the Facebook group of well then you know in Facebook pretty polarizing half the people will say that I probably you're stupid yeah or the CIA so you just want to know where I'm going to a motorcycle trip you already posted that you were going to North Carolina so anyway so yeah I mean it I get asked so many times like how do you

(17:48) plan the trips and I mean there's a million apps out there and I don't know that it really matters MH and then how do you find these new interesting places well this might be it that might be it yeah I like that I would like to also go back through and come back and say Well we'd like to stay like or we'd like to eat at some really eclectic interesting places what's the you know food of Ontario you know well we know that's been it's everywhere but no you know like I don't know like I you know we've

(18:16) been 5 miles four miles 3 miles from something amazing that we love you know one of the coolest places we haven't talked about I don't think that we stopped that was the um what was the recording studio oh muscle shs I mean that was amazing and I know that happened cuz Brad accidentally and you remember I don't know if you remember Brad's like well I don't know if you guys want to stop at muscle shs or not but you know it's along the way yeah and they were like what I what is that yeah

(18:44) I I had heard of that you yeah a little more deep into it what an amazing tour that was a great tour you know just love that yeah yeah we asked at the tour it's like hey where can we get some good lunch yeah and that chicken place that we ate it is just insane you know like I think we can start to maybe piece some things together with that you know so this this is a great idea yeah yeah I'm glad you thought of it it'll be good so yeah so so if you zoomed in let's say you zoomed in on your map more so that

(19:14) chat GPT could see more of the details of the actual roads would that help or not does it no is it that smart that it can I don't I mean yeah it's not smart that gets you know things get confusing what I would do is probably put a few more points along the way add a few more uh little dots if we see something that's interesting like one of the things I saw when I was zooming in a long time ago was there's a lot of Shoreline in some of these places and then you can kind of see some like little like areas that you would

(19:46) definitely skip like up here in Ontario it says it's the serpent River Indian reserve number seven and then way down at the bottom it says bare bottoms Cove the podcast can be found on best motorcycle 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 questions and suggestions for roads topics and anything else you have on

(20:18) your mind now I don't know if that's anything or not but it's something right like and as you as you keep looking around like what am I missing you know what is this Gateway 57 up here right like you see these things on the map you know and you're looking around and some of them have this one happens to have a you know it happens to have a a thing but I think if we were to put in descriptions of what the things we like I think it would be better you know and looking forward to trying that yeah

(20:48) it'll be good so this will be fun I think this will be a fun trip um I think the hardest part we have right now is figuring out the dates like we've always said is tough cuz it looks to be about a 5 day trip mhm um plus we got to get to Chicago back right so yeah so this will be good I like it I like it a lot I like it this you okay today's roadside Q&A didn't happen we we didn't actually we didn't actually question nothing actually we didn't have any questions this week so please you know ask away

(21:26) yeah send us questions it it help helps us with some topics sometimes and uh you know just tap into the things we've done yeah um so I thought uh on this one I would talk about like multi-day motorcycle trips around Lake Michigan Lake hon uh including a few things to see um that was cool that the chat GPT picked all those things out um because I had just brought up a few like Sleeping Bear Dunes I've heard a lot of people went to that and really like it yeah I I've been to Warren Dunes I don't like

(21:58) sand my underwear though so I probably would skip it mostly I don't know how you put that in the chat gpg I've been to the Warren dun State Park but I haven't been to Sleeping Bear uh Travis City uh Traverse TR City Traverse City sorry uh bunch of wineries there and then uh there's a historic Fish Town in Leland which I don't know anything about but um that's something we need to look into Silver Beach and St Joseph that's all uh that's worth a visit uh around Lake hon uh um let's see we've got

(22:31) the oh gosh cenic Al Sable River in ascada uh in historic sites in Shaban uh Port Austin's turnup Rock and uh there's some other Charming towns long M25 yeah um do you know of any others that well what I would say also like I would just say this is um you know you know what you want to do and then you just got to dig around and look you know um you just got to got to try some stuff but I think the biggest tip like and 10 years ago I started that Facebook group you know motorcycle trips and advice or whatever and it took a long time before

(23:12) it kind of did much but boy in the last couple years boy like it's amazing to me how many like it rarely does a place that someone asked about go unanswered yes you know yeah and it's because there's so many people from so far around and and there's more than one like motorcycle map is also a very good one yes um well monitored and well admin and that's the key to a good Facebook group because one or two people will crush an entire Facebook group and then it just gets out of control and so I

(23:45) would say find a good Facebook group and ask questions because good ones answer great and they're that's so helpful and I'm definitely going to do that for this trip as well but yeah I think there's 25,000 or so in that group now is there yeah and I think uh motorcycle map is 50,000 50 yeah so both of those groups are well monitored well admin and answer well now it's time for The Last Mile it's kind of our way to close out the episode reflecting on the things we talked about today Todd what do you got

(24:13) I was super impressed with the with the chat GPT response to a little bit of instruction and a photo a JPEG or a PNG whatever it took there of the map that you built yeah and for it to find things along the way and point out roads and routes and yeah that was cool and um there's I know what you can do with chat gbt as far as like asking it more questions and getting more detail um so I think it'll be fun to to try doing some else I couldn't agree and first of all I'm excited to do it I've enjoyed

(24:47) the fairy ride so that's one of my first things but the second thing I think if we dialed this thing in even a little bit more it could be helpful um as far as like I think if we were took a little more time on it even and went a little deeper yeah like we talked about describing the people and then even um yeah I don't know I haven't quite formulated all the extra prompting but I think a little more prompting might even be even more more helpful so if we can figure that out we'll share it again in

(25:12) a future episode yeah if this episode revved up your day don't keep it to yourself like it 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 [Music] [Music]