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own company, you're never truly alone.
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Welcome to the Throttle and Roast podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. Spring seems to be sputtering to life with wide temperature variations, at least near me. Yesterday, it was a low of 40 degrees Fahrenheit, or about four degrees Celsius, and it went up to a high of 73 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 23 Celsius. And as I look out the window this morning, it's still overcast with this cold looking skies that may not be encouraging one to ride.
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So let's start with some of the advantages that you'll have when you're riding alone.
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Well, the biggest one is when you want to get going. There's no need to schedule a meeting time with other people that you'll be riding with. There's no worry about. Oh, well, I've got to wait for all of these people to arrive. Maybe you scheduled that you were meet everyone at 9 a.m.. And you know, as always happen, some people will show up a little bit late and now you're waiting and waiting and waiting. You don't have any of that when you're getting to ride alone. You want to ride. Now you just get out on the bike and start riding. that you'll have as an advantage is you don't need to coordinate with when you want to stop and eat or take a bio break. You are in full control of that. So you get to do it when you feel up to it. And this is an incredibly empowering capability for when you're riding, because sometimes when you're riding with a group, maybe you're not hungry or maybe you are hungry a half an hour ago, you've got to deal with the group dynamics when you're in that group ride, whereas when you're alone, you can do it any time that you want. Now the other thing is I've always had a saying that if you want to ride fast, ride alone. And what I mean by that is typically in a group ride, you're going to be going as a pace of the group as pretty much the slowest rider of the group. So you won't be able to necessarily go to the pace that you want to go at unless you happen to be the slow rider.
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So you have a little bit more flexibility of changing your pace to what you feel is appropriate for the particular road conditions.
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Another great thing about being alone when you're riding is you can sort of call an audible. And what I mean by this is you can adapt and change what you're going to do in that ride at any given moment. You can pull over and take a look at something.
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Maybe it was a beautiful sight or scenery, or maybe it's a little roadside stand and you wanted to just figure out what they had available. Maybe it was some fresh fruit at a farm or something. You can do those things that were completely unplanned and you don't have to worry about, Oh, can I fit five, six, ten, 20 bikes with me here?
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It's just about whether you can fit there. So this makes it really, really convenient of that. You can change your mind.
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You can even change the plan.
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Maybe you had intended to go to a restaurant a couple hundred miles away and you decide, Hi.
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I'm not just really feeling it.
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I'm feeling a little tired. I'm going to go to this restaurant over there and just pull into the restaurant. No big deal because you're in complete control.
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Now another thing that you can do and this is one of my favorite things when I'm riding by myself and just almost exploring is I can turn down any road that might look interesting.
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I didn't have to have a specific route in mind. I can just go and check that road out and not worry about, well, is this going to be an issue for other people or are they going to miss the turn? Because I just turn down there really quickly. I just have a lot more flexibility. And if I'm on one of my you know, if I'm on an adventure bike, let's say, and maybe it's a dirt road that I go down, I don't have to worry about, Well, everyone who's behind me on maybe some of the cruisers or the sport bikes isn't going to want to go down that dirt road. I've got complete flexibility where I can just say I'm going to go down there no matter what. It doesn't really matter.
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Now before this all sounds like it's unicorns and rainbows, there are some downsides to when you are riding on your own. The biggest one I'll sort of start with is an aspect of almost the inversion of what we were talking about, and that's really about the camaraderie. When you pull off to that side of the road and you're looking at some maybe a really great vista, you can remark on that vista with your fellow riders when you're riding in a group by yourself. Yeah, you can be inwardly contemplative of what you think, but you don't get to share that excitement with some others.
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Same thing is if you finish up your ride for the day and maybe you've arrived at, you know, your destination, be at a hotel for a full day ride or maybe a restaurant for a mid-day ride.
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And you can talk about the ride afterwards with your fellow riders. You do miss out on that when you're riding by yourself.
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The other one that I want to highlight that you're going to miss out on is if you have a breakdown and you have the support of some fellow riders and they can really help you if you have an issue or whatnot that can actually affect your ability to continue on or whatnot. I actually had this last year. I was riding on my fairly old bike I have a 1972 BMW R75/5, and I ride that bike oftentimes for the distinguished gentleman's ride. We talked about that in one of the previous episodes. And it's a it's a great old bike, but it's more than 50 years old. So not everything is going to work 100% perfect on it. And most of it I've tried to keep it as original as possible while what happens is when you have an old bike, you can have some issues with the wiring and I ended up having an electrical fire and I'm riding along. And then also one of my riding buddies pulls up to me and he's like, Hey, pull over, pull over, you're on fire. And the electric wires had shorted and were starting to smoke out. Now the irony is that I was able to. Then I pulled the ignition. The bike didn't actually turn off, but it did stop the electrical fire and I was able to then still ride, albeit with the turn signal lights full, bright and my brake light full, right. So I didn't have any indicators whatsoever, so I had to go back to hand signals, but I was able to then still get on my way. And because I had someone who was riding with me, they were able to actually follow along, make sure that I got home okay just in case I had a further failure. So having that backup of someone who can be there just in case you have an issue is really a very powerful thing. Now, the other one is a downside. When you're riding by yourself is you have to plan the ride completely on your own. And for some people, this is going to be a little bit more of a challenge because maybe you don't want to think about where you need to do.
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Maybe you don't want to worry about all the logistics. Maybe you just want to follow along on the ride. And that's something that you won't have available to you if you're riding alone now you may be able to find some routes that have already been generated and you can just follow them. So it may require a little bit less planning in that end, but you still need to worry about some of the logistics, such as stopping for fuel or stopping for food. So you still have to plan a little bit and that is something that you have to take on. The other one is and this is almost a juxtaposition to what we've talked about as a advantage of the audibles is sometimes when you get to a situation of a particular ride, maybe it's looking, you know, not that great weather wise and you say, hey, you know, maybe we should rethink where we were going. When you have a group with you, you can actually get a lot of other ideas. There may be suggestions of places that other people have gone to that they could recommend, that you could then navigate to instead of your original planned location. And you don't have that input from people. So I'd say that's one of the biggest downsides. The other one is maybe you meet for a regular ride with a bunch of other people and you didn't have a destination in mind. Well, the group can now come up and say like, Well, why don't we go to there or to this place? And you can have some inspiration by having a few other people contributing to this. The last one that I'll say that's a disadvantage of riding alone is really if you're not keen on leading a ride, well, fundamentally when you're riding by yourself, you are leading the ride. So you have to take over all the duties of that. You have to manage when you're thinking of fuel stops, when you're thinking of food stops, when you're thinking of rest stops, whether you're navigating.
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Suppose that there's construction or traffic that's in the way. How do you navigate around that? It's all up on you to sort that all out, and that can add a lot of pressure on to some people that may not be where their comfort zone is.
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So what I'll say is, when you are riding alone, there is definitely some gear that I really would encourage you to bring along. Now, while printed maps never run out of batteries, if your orienteering skills are maybe a little bit rusty, a GPS will be able to tell you exactly where you are and be able to direct you where you want to go from wherever you are at any given point. So GPS is a really phenomenal option to have when you're riding on your own. Now, there's a few options that I'll point out here, and I'm going to start with the one that's probably the granddaddy of them all. And this is the Garmin Zumo, and this is a series that they've had that's motorcycle specific GPS. And the beauty of these models is that they're hardened. They're intended for being ridden on a motorcycle. So to be exposed to all of the weather, to have all the vibrations, to have all the dust, to have all of that heavy pressure coming in, of all of the weather and wind, everything hitting into the bike. But also, more importantly, to have the ability for you to navigate through the touchscreen controls with your gloves on. They're really designed to work specifically for motorcyclists.
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Now, I happen to have the Zumo XT model, which is not the newest one right now. It's been replaced by the XT2, but we actually have an article on our blog that talks about this particular XT as well as looking at some other options, including the XT2. So I'll add that into the show notes. There are other models and brands that have some similar capability, so it doesn't have to be specifically a Garmin Zumo Tom Tom for a number of years did actually have a motorcycle specific GPS unit. But the fundamental characteristic that all of these share is that they'll be a relatively large screen, usually 5 to 6 inch diagonal, and they will have a moving map display.
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So you can actually see where you are physically on a map that gives you some more context of where you are in the world. Now, another GPS that I can talk about is the Beeline Moto 2. Now this is actually my personal favorite GPS for motorcycling today, and it almost will be a contradiction to what I just described with the Garmin Zumo.
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This is a very small device and it's not a full color display.
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It's maybe about an inch, inch and a half in diameter. So it's a very, very small display. But the beauty of that is that it's very discreet on your motorcycle.
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You can put it onto your handlebars. It comes with mounts that have rubber bands, so you can basically mount it on any bike. Even if you're just taking a bike for a test ride, you can throw this on there. So it's really, really convenient it takes away a lot of the complexity and the, too much information that you can get from a dedicated moving map. GPS, you just have a very simplistic of it's almost like at least at the moto, it's a very simplistic map that's showing you just how the road is shaped. And if you're getting to a junction where you would actually want to go and direct yourself. So it's very convenient without being distracting. And that's the thing I like about it. The other one that it can do is it can do what's called compass mode, and this is actually my favorite mode for exploring, if you will, especially when you're riding by yourself, because I'll just pointed at a destination. Maybe I'm like, you know what? I'm going to go there for lunch and I just pick a destination and then I just have an arrow that's just pointing from where I'm starting off to my destination.
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And it might say, okay, it's 74 miles. Well, I've got to just figure out which roads go. So I kind of look at the roads and like, Well, that one's kind of aligned with the arrow. I'll take that one. And after a while, that arrow may no longer be aligned with the road that I'm on. Maybe the road has continued to turn, and now I've got to find and turn to a different road. And this exploration, that's actually one of my favorite things about riding with the beeline in that compass mode. And I do this all the time when I'm riding by myself. I really love this particular mode because it is an explorer mode.
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Now what I take from that is I'll find these really great roads and I'll just sort of mark them. The nice thing about the Beeline too, is you can actually mark like, Oh, this is a good road or this is a terrible road.
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And that tracks into your G.P.S.
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it's actually crowdsourced, so it actually helps other people know that this is a good or a bad road. But more importantly is you then can look through your map of journeys that you've done and see which road you liked and which roads you didn't like. So if I'm planning a route with some riding friends, I can actually find the route. That's going to be a better route because I've already sort of tried out some of the roads. So I really, really like the the beeline moto2. My favourite route planning app is Rever and I did talk about in one of the recent episodes where I said that, you know, there are some things that it is not perfect at from a route planning perspective, but it's still, I think, one of the best options out there now CaliMoto for those in Europe are actually also a really good option, and it's very similar in terms of its capabilities. I would say they are functionally similar and there's not really a dramatic difference. The thing I'd say that's an advantage for CaliMoto if you're in Europe is it tends to be a little bit more oriented towards Europe in terms of its mapping and in terms of some of the content, whereas Rever tends to be a little bit more of a North American focus onto it. So if you're in the United States, I would really say use Rever. If you were in Europe, I might encourage you to use CaliMoto and both of these apps and other ones, they're Scenic. There's a few other ones that are like this. You can mount your phone on to a handlebar on your motorcycle and then use the app to navigate just like you might do in your car. Now, I think because people have gotten used to doing this in their car, they kind of don't think about it much of anything. And they're just like, Well, I'll just run the app of how I navigate on my phone. I'll put it on a motorcycle. But here's the thing.
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When you're out on your motorcycle, you're not inside of a car. You don't have a cage that's surrounding you, that's protecting you from the weather and protecting your phone from the weather as well. Your phone is now fully exposed to all the vibrations of your motorcycle.
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And let's be honest, a motorcycle does tend to vibrate more than a car. It's exposed to all of the weather. It's exposed to all of the wind. And the thing is, all of those conditions can have a negative impact onto your phone. And one of the ones that's probably the the most surprising of it is actually the cameras on the phones. Well, those stabilised elements, if they're over exercised, if you will, from massive, massive vibration, you can actually destroy them and they will stop working correctly and I've actually had this happen across three different phones using it on a motorcycle.
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And of course, these are not going to be warranted for that because that is actually damage that you did. The other problem that you can run into is that with your microphone and your speakers exposed with all the wind hitting onto them, they also can be hit and hurt from functioning correctly. your phone is really not designed to be sitting out in the air and in the elements on your motorcycle, while many of them are actually now a little bit more weather resistant. It's fine. It's one thing if you're walking around outside and hey, there's a little bit of sprinkle, no big deal to different thing when you're riding at 60 miles an hour. And now that rain and the wind is hitting your phone at 60 miles an hour, that's not what they're designed for. So you are more likely to damage the device in those type of situations. So I actually have an article on our website that talks a little bit more about this. I'll put it into the show notes of why using a smartphone on your motorcycle It may not be the best option and I'm personally a fan more of the dedicated GPS units. Now, another thing that you're going to want to bring with you is some tools. And you know, you may run into a mechanical failure. This is one of the advantages we talked about of where you're riding with a group.
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You may have some people who can help you. Maybe they have their own tools with them. They can help do some repairs, whatever.
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Having some tools might allow you to continue on your ride in the event of some mechanical breakdowns. Now, you're not going to tear apart the transmission on the side of the road. So be practical in terms of what kind of tools you're going to bring along, next category that I'll say of items that I think are really helpful to bring when you're riding on your own would be some communication devices. Now, of course, we talked about a phone.
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This is one of the other reasons why I'm not a big fan of using your phone on your handlebar is that it is also your communication device. So if you had a emergency situation, you had a mechanical breakdown, you had a crash of some sort, your phone is probably going to be the most primary mechanism for you to communicate and get assistance. And if it was out on the bike, eh, it could be thrown, it could be damaged. You may run out of battery because of all that. So it's really critical that you have your phone in, in good shape. So if you are going to use it in that sort of Rever, CaliMoto type of an environment, I would encourage you to make sure that you have a power adapter that is providing charging power to the phone while you are riding. And I would also strongly encourage you to bring along a powerbank so that even if that had a failure while you're riding, you have a powerbank that can provide additional power for your phone just as an emergency communication device. Now, the thing is, when you're riding on your own, you might go into an area that is maybe some really fun roads and you're off the beaten path, so to speak, and there may not be cell coverage where you're going. And this is where having something like a satellite communicator can also be a good option. Now, I've used the InReach Garmin communicators for many, many years. I like them because they allow you to send messages as well as to send tracking data of exactly where your location is to people like friends, loved ones, etc. and the newest ones, the like. The Garmin in Reach Messenger actually allow you to two way communication back and forth versus the one way that the original had. And what's nice about this is the way that Garmin has implemented is they have an app called Messenger.
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And what it does is you can use it just like you would a normal texting app on your phone and just runs on your phone and just connects wirelessly to this device. And if you have cell coverage or Wi-Fi coverage, it will send the message over either of those two directly to the phone number of the person that you're trying to reach. So it'll act and look exactly like a normal text message to them.
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However, if you don't have reception, it all now fall to using the satellites to still be able to get your message out even if you don't have access.
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So this is a really nice just to keep loved ones up to date with where you are, what's going on, or even ask for help, maybe have a breakdown, etc.. But if you're in a really problematic situation, you can also send out an S.O.S.. And this will connect with the emergency services, provide your GPS location because the device is getting that as well, and be able to get you the support and assistance that you need very quickly. So I really like having these devices.
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There is a fee, but it's not that much. I think if you get one of the smaller deals in terms of your limited of how many messages you can send each month, it's maybe ten or $15 a month. And that's a really good insurance contract just to have for when you're riding out on your own. Now, the last piece of gear that I think is really helpful when you're riding is a Bluetooth headset. Now, we talked about having a GPS. Well, one of the things you might want to have when you're using that GPS is to be able to hear the GPS instructions. So a Bluetooth headset is really critical to enable you to actually do so.
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The second thing is, and this is what I really like to do, is I like to listen to music or even podcasts while I'm riding. And when you have an article on the website, I'll actually post a link for it in the show notes where we talk about a number of the headsets that are out on the market today and what you might be able to choose of what priorities or features are really most critical to you. one of the things about them is that you can also then make phone calls. So if you did need to contact, you know, a friend's family, whatever, you had to set up an appointment, whatever the thing is, you have that ability to just communicate over a phone directly while you're riding.
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And the big thing is just because you're alone in your thoughts doesn't mean you need to sit in silence and listening to music or podcasts while you're riding. I actually really enjoy it, so it's something why I always have a Bluetooth headset even when I am riding alone, so I'm not using an intercom capability.
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discussed some of the advantages of riding alone, like being in complete control of the schedule and stopping as the mood hits you. We also covered were what were some downsides of riding alone and why? It may not be the only way to ride. And finally, we looked at some gear that would be good to bring along with you just when you're riding alone, something that just gives you a little bit of extra support because you are riding solo. So my question for you is, do you prefer riding alone or in groups? Share your thoughts. The text, the show link in the show notes, or leave us a voicemail at throttle and post dot com slash voicemail.
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Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week.
