(00:00) riding the roads Missouri is like the weather if you don't like it wait one [Music] mile 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 routes other tips

(00:37) and everything in between from essential prep to Unforgettable routes 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 we'll talk about a couple things

(01:06) motorcycle gloves we've talked about those before they kind of come in two varieties really leather or mesh and then within that there's a bunch and um a lot of meshes some are writing more kind of a lot of more air flow um but you can also have a leather mesh so like you know it's super confusing but it's kind of whatever you get used to or what you like leather to me after a while gets really um um it kind of takes the shape of your hand it does and and they're of course more expensive and the

(01:36) mesh ones are a little more um easier They Don't Really break in they're brok in and they kind of stay that way so um but then of course there's all different kinds there's just your standard wrist glove you know you got Gauntlet gloves and then you like uh even like a fingerless glove sometimes I use a leather fingerless glove uh the one thing I've found with my leather gloves I don't know if this is all but when they get wet a bunch of times yeah there's some of the die that actually

(02:01) kind of leaks out of them you know like I I see my hands turning black but I like the fingerless because I can touch my phone yeah my GPS it doesn't matter I can use fingered gloves but my phone of course I can't and I think what I've found is with many things is the longer you know the kind of more nicer gloves you get the more I like them like I think my mesh leather gloves are I've had them probably for five or six years and I kind of feel like sometimes I should buy another pair because I feel

(02:29) like if these do rip or go bad then it's going to take me too long to get them broke in or something like so like I feel like at some point I should probably just buy some other gloves but yeah take a look at those I think we've talked a lot to is having a couple pair with you minimum you know if some if you get caught in Rain wet gloves especially if it's a little cooler is not fun uh so yeah the second one that we haven't talked about too much is just under clothing gear um there's a really great

(02:58) company called bonor uh bon bon Armour Bon armour.com and what I've noticed about those and I this is kind of my new thing that I'd like to get to is is kind of they have like under armor that goes under your clothing a little bit so um think of it like I mean it's not like rub but it's flexible stuff so you'd almost put it on like as underwear it has a little bit of um it has shock absorbing built in flexibility built in and then you can get it in either like cool summer wear or winter wear but then

(03:34) it also has the armor which is all removable um so like with the pants there's like nine points that it's protecting you know above the knees below the knees hips um and then with the shirt they call it a shirt or it's kind of like a coat but it's like an under shirt I would call it and it has armor in it as well again though depending on which one you go with um the made a very flexible easy to kind of move around but then you just put regular pants right over the top of them so uh when you're talking about shirts

(04:06) under shirt is it a long sleeve zip yep long sleeve so you get an elbow protection in it too oh okay and then you could slip another coat or something over it if you wanted to or like a long sleeve t-shirt oh wow so it it's really good back protection so what I kind of like about this is you buy this you wear it and then if you just want to wear a flannel wear a flanel if you want to wear a long sleeve t-shirt wear a long sleeve t-shirt there's not you know you kind of cover all this up and it's and

(04:30) it's underneath but it's also kind of designed for this use so therefore like what I feel like sometimes like what I don't like is when we're riding in the in the rain sometimes like I need to take off my coat and put my rain coat on well my ring coat doesn't have any armor in it and I don't have any armor when I'm riding in the rain and Hell the most important time to be riding in the rain maybe to have the armor on so I'm kind of looking at this as another option so check out the website it's really cool

(04:59) men's and women's they have different colors they have some shells that you can change the Fabrics on as well a little bit but uh and then some of it's high viz as well so you're getting some of that high viz on the shirts and stuff so yeah check it out it's good stuff um high quality not cheap but I think it's worth the investment Bon armor Bon b o h n armor a r m o r yep that's the tool kit I like it ridewise is the section we focus on planning and safety tips ridewise the section we focus on

(05:30) planning and safety tips uh today I'm going to talk a little bit about uh motorcycle safety courses uh there's there's several different types there's a beginner riding course then there's the returning Rider beginning Rider course so this is someone you've had a bike in the past you've you know done some riding and then maybe you've gone two three four years five years you haven't ridden a bike this kind of a refresher yeah um and then there's a beginner writing course two mhm um and

(05:59) then there's a three-wheel uh beginner riding course yeah that's of course they've had to you know adapt that um you know just in the last 10 years I suppose uh you know the well it's really weird because you get a motorcycle license to ride the three-wheeler that's right yeah so yeah and it it yeah seems like it should be a car license but um and then there's the advanced riding course and I you and I both um went through that together you know I think we actually went through the return writer beginner writer course

(06:29) I don't know that was Advan but maybe it was I don't I don't remember I thought it was called Advanced I thought it was too but then later on there was another one like that we could have went too so anyway sorry I didn't mean interrupt oh that's right um so in the beginner writing courses uh this would be for someone who's a pretty new writer but they really cover a lot it's like mental preparedness um perceptual uh perception development y situational awareness risk evaluation evasive strategies uh writing

(06:55) in a straight line turning shifting stopping uh slow in it's it's really great yeah I took the beginner class before I started writing how many of years ago now I loved it um the first night was uh was book work and then in Iowa the second and then the second day was all writing and they took different things like they had a 2x4 out there and they kind of taught you to accelerate with your front wheel break when you get over it to kind of like you know keep the lightness of the bike just quick you know you said Swit situational rareness

(07:29) this that you know curve turning um what I thought it was amazing was um well I I guess what I was trying to say was in Iowa they actually allow you to use that as opposed to going then down and writing at the DMV oh right yes which is kind of nice too so yeah um they're kind of hard to find in Iowa but that's one of the things that the Harley dealerships have really embraced as well is they have some of those classes which that's awesome yeah you know I mean some of the community colleges yep you know

(07:58) offer the beginning writing course anyway it's hard to find it's sometimes hard to find the uh the number two class or the advanced writer class but um the beginner writing classes you can see to find those yeah yeah I know that one that we took the advanced writing one that was amazing and and you know there was probably what seven or eight 10 people in that thing maybe there was yeah it was shocking to me how many people could not like turn around in a small box yeah and then you watch these videos of people that just manhandle

(08:27) motorcycles it's completely impressive like w beyond my means but I was just surprised at like just a small I don't know like two parking space box people could not turn that motorcycle around it yeah you know and I know when I started um I couldn't I couldn't do it at first it it took a lot of practice and and you have to learn from somebody the skills of how to do it where to put your eyes dets where to put your head yeah where the balance point should be how to how to you know feather the clutch and and

(08:56) and that and and just handle that you know your your throttle but um I was going to say like in the advaned course we did a lot of things like you know crash avoidance yeah um yeah there that was I was surprised like we also got the thing up to speed really we got moving I was like H yeah yeah there was uh that that was great I I was glad we took that at first I was kind of like I don't know I've been riding for 20 years do I really need to or 25 years and it was scary how bad you know like it was like

(09:25) oh well okay I think about this stuff a lot when we writing and at that point I was writing my Gold Wing right um so turning the Gold Wing in that small box and doing the figure I think you do the mental back oh you know this is a Gold Wing I'm not I'm not going to be able to turn around this box and this guy pulls up the one of the instructors I remember had one of those big victory Cruis he turning that thing on a dime you know I was like oh okay duly noted so when he when he did that I was like all right

(09:50) I'm G to have to do this so I did it yeah yeah so anyway um that's that's what I would say if if you haven't ridden in a while you know go back to the um yeah uh you know the refresher course you know if you're a new Rider take the beginner course uh the three-wheel course I don't know anything about it but totally makes sense I mean um just a quick note the beginner course usually provides motorcycles usually it's people without bikes and then the advanced class you bring your bike bring your bik yeah I

(10:19) guess we didn't mention that so the next segment is what we call the mile marker it's our story segment this is a story segment we call mile marker So today we're going to talk to about um a planning trip that we're planning on at some point kind of put in the files um again we're in Iowa so Missouri is a nice ride Missouri has some great riding roads and this is kind of a um I guess you might call it a battlefield tour um found a couple places in Missouri that some of the Civil War battles happened on and I thought wow

(10:51) that's a good combination stuff that we've never stopped to see before so this would be uh leaving from Soul in Iowa and then we'd head to the Wilson's Creek National Battlefield Missouri which um that is quite an interesting um little history on that it's near Republic Missouri but um I guess the Battle of Wilson's Creek was fought in 1861 in August so that that's kind of a really interesting thing sounds like they have a visitor center and a tour and some of those things so I don't know

(11:22) that was kind of that was quite the I guess I didn't realize so much that there was that much history right right below us here so so yeah and there's some good Rides To Ride Along um some we've taken um a few of these roads before in Iowa down to 34 63 and 54 and then 13 in Missouri are all great roads that we've rode before as well um just never really got into this tour so so after that then it takes you down to um another place in Herman Missouri which I think you'd said you've heard of before

(11:54) but and maybe reason partially the reasons why is cuz one of our favorite Missouri roads Missouri 19 is how you get there as well but some of this would be cutting through some of the Lake of the Ozarks which is great writing um and then um Herman Missouri would be a potential like stay for the for the second night and it's kind of a German Heritage Place uh which could be kind of cool um and then from Herman Missouri it's more um kind of Jefferson City Arrow Rock so some of the roads that you might encounter there is Missouri 94w

(12:28) we've been in that area before if you remember when we maybe you didn't ride in to the Ozarks with us that time don't remember Backwater Jacks no I don't remember that famous for their fried potato salad no I know it wasn't there I just remember it was like 105 that day and then we were parking on asphalt it was like woo yeah but um interesting um in that area of Arrow Rock actually they has a Penitentiary tour which we've seen you guys have taken one I was not on the trip where he took the tour

(13:00) but they have a guided tour of a prison that was in operation from 1836 to 2004 so that's kind of cool I mean another and I think what we've found over the times and we've talked about this before is it's really nice to plan these stops and breaks so you can kind of just get off the motorcycle for a little while walk around and then kind of do something that's fun and maybe not so um you know you don't want to get off the bike and then go on a nature hike you're already kind of like hot sweaty

(13:27) it's kind of nice to kind of have have an altern alternative yeah I a Penitentiary that started in 1836 and lasted the 2004 right I can't imagine what that might look like you know I mean Stony Stony right I mean did they upgrade it did they make it look modern find out let's let's go there yeah um we don't do a lot of motorcycle camping but there is a great uh place to Camp um in AOL Rock State Historical Site it's a c it's like a it's an area we we're not into that but some people

(14:04) really really do yeah and then kind of on the way back there's one more battle site it's called The Boon Boonville site um June 17th 861 was kind of one of the early battles in that area but uh I don't think there's tours in this area this is more of um like you'd roll through some historical markers you know and things like that and I don't I don't know if you've seen these before and I didn't check on this particular one have you seen these um new kind of Tours where people are recording like almost

(14:36) like a podcast and then you listen to it while you're riding through a certain area have you heard about these I have not oh my gosh it's quite interesting the technology hasn't got there there's some sites that are trying to sell it and then there's some people that just do them the technology isn't quite there you almost need a specific player that's based on GPS so starts to trigger things boy it's interesting though you can kind of learn some things things at the same time um but yeah also there in Lexington

(15:03) Missouri was the Battle of the Lexington State Historical Site so again Battle of hemp Bales and that was in September of 1861 so there is a visitor center there and I think there's some battlefields and houses that you might be able to get to so okay it's kind of interesting this would be about a um 1100 mile trip I guess I would say and you know outside of staying off the four lanes we never really encountered anything in Missouri that wasn't a great motorcycle that's true yeah so four days

(15:35) yeah that's thinking yeah that would be what this would be I think it could be I think you could probably find a fifth day in there if you really wanted to um you know the things where we've been planning lately it seems like people are five days is almost a little too much so we're trying to kind of crank in some these four days yeah um and then some of this area we've been to before and so you know we could probably skip some of those parts but mhm yeah that's been fun we've been using a lot of chat GPT to

(16:03) kind of build out some of these maps and it's really interesting sometimes frustrating sometimes interesting but what I've noticed is it's really helpful if especially if you have an area where you want to go to finding like some of these sites like without too much work and I we've talked about in the past to kind of dig in oh yeah I'll start doing Chamber of Commerce you know State websites this seems to be really helpful when you say here's my circle like what do you got you know yeah and then it

(16:30) kind of came up it ended up with a theme um which I think would be pretty all right I I really like that idea you know we brought it up I don't know if it was last podcast or a couple episod or a couple ago but um you can upload a map right map yeah into chat G GPT easy for you to say thank you uh but there's that's not the only AI engine you can use well actually I was using Gemini a little bit and that's the Google's version what was really cool about that I'm like oh well can you make a map for

(17:04) this and it and it could now chat GPT doesn't play nicely with Google Maps of course yeah but Gemini Google's product does and it kicked out some maps so if we kind of if you walk through this you know it shows you the actual takes you on some roads I asked it to avoid the bigger roads and it did so when we were going from Solen down to Mount Pleasant to atuma Kirksville it was really trying hard to um to skip the bigger roads you know and it laid out some really really nice roads and actually some of these

(17:35) that we found um when we went down to the eclipse ride um you know these are some similar roads or you know better and then this at least gives you a place to start you can start to tweak a little couple of these like one of the days they only had 125 miles we'd probably want to push that a little bit harder but based on we'd want to base on some of the stops that we had planned as well yeah um but yeah so I mean it's kind of fun to to um to play with these in this way so um it'll be interesting yeah

(18:04) it'll be interesting to see how these rides ride out as we kind of like was this good or bad but yeah yeah so I I really like it for finding some things that we wouldn't have caught agreed yeah the podcast can be found on best motorcycleroads.com podcast all the information you need will be there uh but you can subscribe on Spotify Amazon music Apple pocket C 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

(18:37) topics and anything else you have on your mind today's roadside Q&A comes from Jim and Jim was asking how do you stay comfortable and avoid fatigue on Long stretches of Ry riding especially in a group uh where you're having to maintain a pace yeah yeah that's that's a good one um and for those who haven't ridden in a group before and you're about to do a group ride uh I've talked about this before that that can be a little stressful it can build some anxiety because yes you're trying to

(19:08) stay in that group and not slow things down and feel like you have to maintain a pace but you know hydrate the night before get a good night's sleep make sure you drink start drinking water the day before uh unless you're old and you have then you'll have to stop all the time go to the bathroom there's diapers for that but uh do you know do get hydrated the day before and then while you're riding um the other the other thing I would say is snack along the way fill your pockets with something that

(19:40) you can snack on uh as you go so you don't have to eat a huge meal that'll make you tired usually you know after you eat something big so you know maybe small uh small snacks as you go uh change positions you know stretch out your leg stretch out your knees stand up on your pegs a little bit um you know scoot back don't be afraid to say hey I need a little break or just ask for a break communicate with the group that's that's a big one but you know really just don't push yourself uh into being

(20:10) fatigued and don't push yourself if the group is going too fast and you don't feel com comfortable say something Absolut you know uh I'm sure they're fine with it they'll they'll slow down for you but just say hey we're going at a speed that I I don't usually ride this doesn't feel good to me we're making a lot of corners and uh might if we bring it back a little bit they'll do that yeah and some of this Bond wear that we're talking about you know it has some it's it's made for motorcycle

(20:37) riding right so I think sometimes people don't want to spend a little bit of extra money on that and I saw it the other day with highway pegs some guy was talking about putting $80 highway pegs on his new Gold Wing and it's like you just spent 20 grand or 15 grand for motorcycle and now you want to save 150 bucks so you can clamp some goofy Highway pigs on and it's like just buy some nice Highway pigs that go with the bike you're going to ride it ride it a lot and you want them to be as comfortable as possible that's a great

(21:07) you know and the same thing with the gear this stuff helps you feel better you know so yeah I mean that's a great if you need to buy a cheaper bike to get better gear I think you'd be better off to buy I mean any O2 gold I mean we just know gold wings cuz we ring so much but those are still great bikes you know like buy a cheaper bike and have some better gear you know or better seat or a better you know whatever so yeah yeah yeah that's that's a a great tip I I I I totally agree with you now it's time for

(21:37) The Last Mile our way to kind of close the episode with our Reflections from today so what are you thinking Todd well I like this idea of uh using Gemini to create some maps for us this this sounds like um a lot easier maybe and I think we're actually going to find more um this AI technology is fantastic and now that it's uh Gemini is you know Google so it it integrates with maps yeah wow Game Changer I think yeah I would also say I just I'm kind of excited when we came up with a theme that includes some

(22:08) of these Civil War sites that's not something I've ever been to so like that's kind of exciting yeah that would be a really fun a fun ride for me I think so if this episode revved up your day 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 by bikes friends and endless roads the stories ride forever take care [Music] [Music]