Welcome to think bike, the podcast about all things motorcycle and the voice of motorcycle safety and awareness in Alberta. Your host is Leanne Langlois.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of think bike. This week, I am joined by Larry Bates. You might recognize that name from a previous season talking about his trip to Ireland with his daughter. We have brought him back to talk about, he alluded to adventurous his sons on that episode.

So we're going to get into that. Welcome back to the show, Larry.

Hey, Gabe. Thanks for the invite. A chance to tell stories, know, heart tricked down.

Yeah. You hate telling stories.

No. The sound of my invoice is so soothing to me and I, and hopefully other people get used to it. We'll just see what it does.

And you are a member of AMSS. So we really appreciate your ongoing support from pretty much the beginning of time. Just a reminder to everybody, who is Larry and what got you into riding?

Yeah. Larry's like so many of the stories we keep hearing, the discovering some form of motorized two wheel in, you know, in junior high high, school and, being a really important part of it. And, actually, since the last time we were talking, I I kinda thought about, like, why why touring and why the kind of rides that I do? And some of the folks listing me remember cycle magazine. But the influence of guys like Cook Nielsen, Kevin Cameron, Phil Schilling, some of those guys, the stories they told, the kind of trips they went on was, you know, it was all aspirational.

They they talked about the road warrior stuff, the traveling, you know, interesting roads, you know. So they just it kept feeding the the the passion to keep finding more stuff. So, yeah, a mini bike might've started it, but that was just the entry. That was the gateway drug. And then the rest, is all the mystery and adventure of travel.

And that's, you know, certainly what the boys and I, embrace.

Are you still on your tiger?

I am. I am. I got three very satisfying track days in so far this season with the tiger. I have the glory, the glory hole picture of a very fuzzy rear tire from, abusing street tires on the track on a nice day. Low hanging fruit to be sure, but it's it's a blast.

And it's you know, it it reshapes how you see road traffic. So one, there are times where the skill sets you learn apply so well to to road traffic. But the other side is you realize streets can can be pretty sketchy and they're not a time to to necessarily try and exploit how much lean angle you can get on a grit road when there's potholes and gravel and debris and other stuff. And, yeah, taking it to the tracks been a blessing. And I actually got the inspiration from one of the board members, past former board members from AMSS.

And we he he just kept insisting on that, the benefit of that. And it's it's so relevant. So relevant. So I do show up. I a guy with a tiger amongst a bunch of sport bikes.

But at the same time, I'm not the the strangest guy. I've seen people on all manner of of bikes. And, you know, it's it's it's a it's just so it's worthy on itself. It no. No.

No question.

It's and that helps to dispel a myth that you don't require a sport bike to do a track day, that they're actually there to help anybody on any type of bike. What kind of different prep do you have to do to the Tiger to get it onto the track? Anything at all?

It's pretty minor. The biggest prep I had to do was get a one piece leather suit. And because of my stature, I'm I'm a taller guy. I I was able to find somebody that did a custom suit fairly economically. And so that was the biggest single investment.

The rest is street tires. It just the pressures down from this the weight carrying street threshold to get a bit better grip. Mirrors come off. And that's pretty much the extent of it because most lights are plastic. You don't have to take those off.

There's no requirements to do anything with it used to be in the old days. Some people insisted that you had to have a take the coolant out because it's slippery. And if it leaked, it can cause havoc on the track. That's not the case. Now everybody accepts it.

Generally a good condition street bike. The coolant leaks are rare. Yeah. And and it's so it's made it really super accessible. So basically for the first little while, first couple of years, I was riding up to the track days and I just, you know, packed a luggage bag with some support stuff on and took it off when they got to the track.

And lately I've been learning how to trailer the bike out so that I can consider going to like Area 27 and further afield. And just getting used to what's your card like loading, strapping it down so that you're comfortable that it's not going to fly away and dealing with getting the car set up to handle it. That also makes it a little bit more relaxing at the end of the day because instead of riding the bike home, it may only be fifteen minute sessions and you get so you could get six sessions and to a lot of people like an hour and a half. What is that? That's that's nothing.

It is the most intense fifteen minutes of that hour that you're going to have. There's a lot of concentration and a lot of a lot of coordinating it. Like, I happen to start wearing my fitness watch with it, and it thinks I'm doing crazy stuff and, you know, racking up racking up big energy outputs and stuff. And I'll and I'll take it. I'll take it.

And and that's the other thing too is one of the biggest things for, especially me as an as an older rider working on general fitness is a big factor of being comfortable on the bike. So can you move it around, handle it and stuff like that? So you get that reinforcement. The track day helps capitalize all that's why I'm doing the exercises regularly because the track day becomes a lot more accessible that way.

You know, and I noticed that too with my recent, my annual trip out to BC for the Kootenai Rat Raid. So I've been back in the gym for just over a year and my riding out to BC in previous years in comparison to this year, drastically different, way less tired, way less sore, more because I am, you know, strengthening my body and conditioning my body for more endurance and strength manage So it does pay off, especially as we age.

Oh yeah. I like, I'm sorry. I mean, youth has got the benefit of having a whole bunch of surplus, but at the end of the day, like I remember I I was talking to Marty Forbes about his experiences, stuff like that. And I appreciate the the challenge and the difficulty of making the choices he did to step away. But at the same time, I'm I'm stubborn.

I'm stupidly stubborn about this. And, like, I I commute to work on a bike where it's so much easier just get in the car and go. But it's a matter of keeping the skills fresh and knowing where the stuff is. So you get into that routine of what's the order you're getting geared up for and having that bike and having that presence of mind. So I yeah, I'm stubborn about it and I keep keep doing it.

It's it's an important part of what I see myself as and it goes back to those those cycle magazine essays and articles. Yeah. Not not a not somebody that you want to take it seriously. It's a craft. You build it up a bit at a time.

And there's also there's so many parts to it in terms of prep the bike, prep the person, prep the gear, kind of evolve it, adapt to the situation. When as soon as you're traveling for distance, then there's no, well, I'm not, I don't feel like it. I can't go like you've got to find some accommodation of break it down in some way that you can safely comfortably deal with rain, deal with, you know, whatever the conditions present us and adapt to it. So and and it's funny too because my son, Matt, he's he's gone on some bigger, more ambitious trips like through Death Valley and stuff like that. And and I I ask him about it and he talks about it.

Yeah. Like, we we've talked around and about these kinds of crew requirements and how do we navigate it? And he takes it so seriously. That's very gratifying to hear.

So did Kate, let's let's get a little into that. Like your your son's ride. When did they start riding and how much influence did you have with these young men about getting into it properly? Because they sound like responsible young men, which is a hard thing to find.

Yeah. I like to think so. I mean, never bought them bikes. They always self funded for that. And then I tried to be authentic about what it is you're doing.

So when they guys make the decision to start their own riding path, are a couple conditions. It was gear, you know, get get some reliable gear. How much certainly a factor, but, you know, I want to see gloves. I want to see reliable shoes, you know, and no short stuff like that to as a baseline. But the other part of it was that they took writer training course before they got their license.

And that was a big factor too. I mean, certainly my wife's on the sidelines. She's not a writer. And so she's got a certain expectation to that it's being taken seriously, not casually. So that that was a big, that was a big chunk.

But in particular to Matt, he was been working in the industry for quite a while. He does doing the rap program. So he was getting apprenticeship hours while you're still in high school. And it happened to be very early on when somebody they took a GS 500 in trade and I'm walking to the floor and I'm looking at going, geez, that's that's a really good starter bike. And that's a really good price.

And I go to Matt, I said, Matt, did you see this come across the floor? It goes, yeah. I said, I think you should get that. And that goes, yeah, I was thinking about that. And so very early on that first adventure, Matt had his learners.

So he was riding under my supervision with a learner's license. But then we did a bunch of day trips around and stretch it out. And we broke out the trip from Edmonton to Crawford Bay in the Kootenai's. We'd stopped outside of Nordic camping and then we broke the trip off the second day. So Matt's introduction to the Kootenays, to that area was, you know, dad and Matt are going on this adventure.

And my wife and daughter and younger son came out in the in a minivan. We we had a house rented in Crawford Bay. So Matt was super familiar with the area and we had a way of breaking it down and and exploring it. And I gotta say it's so to have somebody come out and appreciate the area at an early age, all of sudden, it it helps what the appetite keeps the fashion up. And so for Matt, that was it was an easy one.

Nick, that my youngest son, know, here's a dark secret. Nick on our big trip out through the Kootenays Kootenays and and the whole route that we we the SCA essentially talked about. Yeah. Nick was in a quadricycle. He had a a little Subaru Impreza with coilovers and lower suspension and stuff like that.

A tiny little engine. He he could not keep up on the straights reliably. Passing was a chore. But in the corners, he was a demon. And he since moved on.

He's got a KLR now out in Squamish where he lives now. And he's part of the riding world. And he's he in a large party always was. He had the same same focus, same discipline, same passion. And, know, he he talked the language authentically with all the people because along the way we were both traveling with people and meeting other people in the writing community.

And, you know, so he he he was he's he's the real deal. He's he's not a poser. He's he's not dismissive, he's a fan. But do you want to get into the outline

the Yeah, let's get into So you've had some adventures with them and like last time we had you on, we talked about we went to Ireland and did this amazing tour around Ireland with your daughter and then realizing both your sons ride their own. Let's talk a little bit about this, this adventure that you had with them.

Yeah. The biggest thing for that trip with the boys was that there was an anniversary that we wanted to recognize. And there is somebody that in our writing community that the boys had heard many stories of that the trip kinda coincided with the tenth anniversary of a big social event that had taken place. So that's its own big long story. But the shortest possible version is that it was this incredible coming together with community.

We had probably 15 people from the Northwest from California, BC, Manitoba all arrived at this place in Forks, Washington. And the host Jimmy had a pig roast. And there's all kinds of tall tales about the pig roast. He took us on some crazy rides. He put us all up in his house.

I brought an inflatable pig, which is a well, let's call it an NSF story, not safe for work, but the inflatable pig was the mascot. And it features prominently in a lot of the group photos and stuff that we had from the place. And so it was a tenth anniversary of that big event. And I said, you know, the boys had had they'd seen some part of the Kootenai's previously. I said, let's string it all together and we're we'll connect the dots through.

So the route was Everton to Revy down to Nikas, head up to Leyland Lodge, had a meal on that beautiful deck and looking out in a on Kootenai leg or Arrow Lake. Sorry. It's Arrow Lake. And then I made our way down through the crest and do all those beautiful roads, 31 a three a. And then we made our way south to Missoula, kinda held up there.

The heat was beating us down. And then we ducked over from Missoula to Baker City via Lolo Pass. Yep. And going through a bunch of stuff in Idaho. And we held tough in Baker City.

I have friends that they live there and they live in that area in Eastern Oregon. Great roads around there, tons of opportunity. Then we took advantage of that. But themselves had sold everything at one point and they had committed to traveling for a year, year and a half around The US, Continental US. And so they'd said they'd done a big chunk of that.

They'd settled in Baker. We were going out there. And so their place was an acreage outside of South Of Baker City proper into a place called Stitches Gulch, which is this little, canyon outside of Baker City. And you're actually you gain a bit of elevation when you when you go to it. And so it's this high mountain not high mountain, but it's a high like a high plains, like like around Jasper kind of terrain, you know, big pine trees and stuff like that.

And this little, this little community that's in this valley and the bunk there is, it's old stables that were converted to a bunkhouse. And so they they were super generous hosts. They let us ride their dirt bikes and we wandered off into the trails. And there's a bunch of great pictures and stories of playing with the dogs and just hanging out. But you go out in the middle of the night and the stars are just Yeah.

Just a a carpet across the sky.

Yeah.

And we realized that very quickly we had brought the wrong sleeping bags and we're freezing and had to get had to get support from from our hosts. And then from Baker City after a couple of days, we took the most wandering route we could come up with to Portland, hung out in Portland for a day and a bit. And then from Portland up the over to Tillamook and then up to 101 and made her we ended up stopping at Claylock Lodge, complete absolute accidental discovery. We had no idea it was there. And then hung out there and then hung around forks where everything took place.

And then we ended up going to Pikes, our full our friends in Anacortes. And then we went up 99 in BC and take the back way in. And so we just found the way of making the longest path between two points so we could. Sounds like it. About two weeks, give or take, about, know, like something like 6,000 k or something it was.

Jeez. And, yeah, it was it was a it was a hoot. And so that's that's the journey, the physical journey. But it was really important to me on this trip that we did connect with Jim and Penny because of stuff that had gone on. They like, the the group that met in we all got together in Forks back in 02/2003.

Yeah. It was it was just a it was a high point in all our lives. And what made him more poignant was that six months later, we're back in Forks for Jimmy's memorial because he had a tragic accident coming back from Daytona Beach. It wasn't right or error. It was just he was in the wrong place at the wrong time coming up on somebody else having an accident.

And in the dark under an overpass, he hit this vehicle that had crashed. You know, there's no marker lights. There's no emergency service there. He was literally the first person on the scene after it happened. And it was a traumatic thing.

So that really galvanize it in our head that we had this incredibly generous host, this guy that was the lightning rod of all our energy and passion. He, Jimmy was this person who taught us how to put this play face on wherever we went. We were going to play. There's no serious business. Let's have a laugh.

Let's have a good time. And it was a blast. And so by extension, my sons had heard the stories. They heard me talk about it. They were aware of all the stuff going on.

I said, well, let's part of me is we're going to go on this trip and we're going to touch these points and we're going to touch the corners of the map and see what happens. But my youngest son is got all my cynic genes. And every time I started telling stories, oh, Jimmy and I did this or Jimmy and I did that. And Nick would just kind look at me really, really enroll his eyes. This one again, dad, this one.

And, so he was always, he was kind of needling. He was the counterpoint to it, to not take ourselves too terribly seriously. And, so that would, the one thing that really happened that was really super gratifying is that we'd, we'd done this journey and we've, you know, now the course of, you know, four or five days we've made our way from Edmonton all the way through to Stitches Gulch. This beautiful place. It's completely off the beaten path.

Everybody gets a reset and Jim and Penny happened to have other hosts there. And we're having supper, we cook supper, we're hanging out in this big a frame and, and the storytelling starts. And then the whole oral history comes. And the question came around, what's with the pig? What's the story with the pig?

And so Jim, Jim bake, Jim, Jim, Baker, or pardon me, Jim, Jim and Penny Jim said, you got to tell the story. So I go on this long winded story about how I ended up buying this adult oriented pig and embarrassing myself in the process. Trust me, I can stretch that story out, but that's not for here. Nick's going, And he was just about to chirp in and go make his usual smart remark. And then somebody else in the group goes, Hey, I get asked about it too.

And what I found out afterwards is that everywhere, when I left big when I left Forks, I left the pig behind. And what I found out was that Jimmy took that pig with him everywhere. And he would he would do these coast to coast rides. And it's the ride out to Daytona Beach. He was one of these rides.

So he would go on and he was with a group of people that are trying to do an iron butt ride. So was forty eight hours coast to coast before he pulled into town because there was this whole Internet station like, Oh, we're going go into this guy's town and he's going put us up for a night. We never met the guy. We met him on the internet. We're going go in.

He would stop, inflate the pig, strap it to his bike and roll into this guy's place. Never said a word why. Never said a word why. He would roll in and there's this pig in the back and people are going, Jimmy's and Jimmy came with a pig. And Jimmy go, yeah.

And just carry on like nothing's happened. And he did this all the way across and, and had it with him on the, on the way back. So this folklore of the pig within this community is ridiculous. So there's, I have been approached by people who are not at the event who knew of the group and they, they do come up and go like, seriously, what is this pig? Like you got, you know, what, what's the significance of it?

And we started telling tall tales about it. And Nick's hearing that from these other people, all of sudden it kind of puts them back. And he's like, what what's going on? Like, there's this shared history that's distributed across all these weird points. And so later that night, looking out the stars, Matt and Nick and I were talking about I said, look, where are we?

We're in Stitches Gulch, Baker City, Stitches Gulch. I know Jim and Penny from those events. We have a handful of meetings over the course of a few years, and you're here now and you're part of the community. They kind of saw it in that sense. They'd been embraced by this community and these people.

The hospitality was super generous. And so that put a different kind of spin on the event. So later on as the trip goes on and like I say, when I said we found the most wandering way from Baker City to Portland, when you go through a cattle drive, that's a wandering way. Yes. So we're rolling through and there's the lady on horseback and her daughter on another horse.

We're rolling through and we're seeing like sixty, seventy cattle on this open range because there's a lot of open grazing in that part of the world. And she's just gone, no, keep rolling, keep rolling, just rolling through. And the cows, they barely look. And we're just kind of going up through and the the cows part just enough to go on the road. Mind mind the cow patties.

Get on through. So, yeah, we so that was an adventure. Get into Portland was an adventure. And so okay. So so we're we're in the thick of it now.

Portland was Portland. It was fun. My son had some Kafigiri wanted to get my oldest son and I, we checked out some craft beer and stuff. And then the next day we're going to go up and the boys are going to tell them, we got to get some cheese and tell them, can't go seriously. We are unrefrigerated.

We've got motorcycles. We're not going to get cheese. It happens to be that Tillamook County smokers is on the, and they have a factory outlet store there. You can get a massive bag of some of the best jerky I've had for for modest amount. So we're loading up on that and chowing down on that in the way.

And we're making our way north. And, you know, that whole 101 is a bit of a windy some of it's windy, but some of it's very heavily traveled. And we happened to hit in rain. So you go through the, like the long bridge in a story and some of the other stuff. But as we're going along, we're getting closer and closer to the coast and I'm just seeing the sun is starting to break through the rain.

And I'm seeing these glints of the ocean, glints of the ocean. We have to stop. We cannot just be rolling up because we're, the goal was to go hang out in forks and, and I'm getting more and more anxious. We got to stop. We got to stop.

And so finally this parking lot opens up when you roll in and we had no idea what it was. It was Claylock Lodge. Claylock Lodge used to be a coastal station of some sort, and it became part of a park. Gorgeous little bungalows out on the peninsula and this hotel. And I'm looking at this going, this is drop dead gorgeous.

Where the whole Oregon Coast with the the trees and everything else is just all sitting there. And I'm looking around and as soon as the boys saw that jackets off out, taking pictures, hanging out, and I go, cannot pass this up. So I walked wander into the office, said you got space for for for you had a room for the night? Well, how many people? Well, there's three.

Okay. Yeah. We got you a cabin. Okay, done. And so I come back out and tell the boys, hey, I think we're staying here tonight.

And I barely got the words out. Which cabin? Because there's bags in hand. They're rushing for the for the cabin. Afterwards, I found out people booked that place a year in advance.

It was just absolute serendipity that we roll in there and could actually, you know, find a find an opening. It was we could not have planned it that way. It was we we still celebrate that as a discovery of the trip. And the boys go, they're looking at all the fire, firewood that they bring for the stoves in the cabin. It's not that it's not that cold.

Said, we're having a fire in the beach. Okay. Let's have a fire in the beach. And so we had a fire in the beach on the Oregon Coast, and, it was it was it was such a great celebration. Like, they just didn't go and hang with them like that and that that unintended discovery.

And then so, you know, I mean, you kind of bookend. We've got the the personal side and then we've our own history making going on. We went into Forks. We went into there's a beautiful road out to the furthest northwest point in the Continental US, Cape Flattery. And the road out to it is just this little just a little ribbon of road draped over the hill and around the trees and stuff.

And it was just a treat and get out there. And it's just a stunning view when you go through, you stop, you get to like a three quarter of a mile hike to the boardwalk they've made to to get a to a point. So you see this to the channel and the trees. And so I got a picture of the I got a picture came out of it. It's sitting in my it's in my my living room downstairs.

Nick's Nick's a very good photographer and I got a great shot of it. Put that up on the wall. And so the I mean, the scenic vistas, all the rest of it. And then from there, we like I said, we had a couple days, went by the side of the big roast and forks, kind of drive by quietly. Somebody else lives in the house now.

Can't can't go and knock on the door or anything. And and I said to the boys, said, like, There's so many that place has got so many stories, and you can't see them and stuff. So and then we there's other people that have been on the ride during Anacortes, so that's about, you know, a five or six hour ride. So we roll into there, and then all the storytelling begins again because they'd been on the ride and all the stuff's going on. Yeah.

It was so gratifying to close loop. In the essay that I wrote for publication, I said like they couldn't meet the people that I want to, but they could walk the ground. They could look in the eyes of people in there. They could see the tears. They could hear the laughter in the stories.

And that was so important to close those loops, the family loops, one one circle of family and friends had now been joined with this other one. And I mean, like, oh, you want tire stories? Like we were talking tire stories before the broadcast. One of the traveling people we were with decided to change tires from some really heavy tire. They wanted to get put Michelin Rhodes on his his touring bike.

Yep. And so they did shop. Was able to change one, but they didn't have time to change. They got the wrong size in, so they sent them away with just a tire the next day. So there's my son, the mechanic with Jimmy, who Jim Jim and Penny Jim also mechanic, and they're changing that tire.

And they're just doing like a, just a balancing wheel and just balancing it and changing it on. And you can see the two of them. It was almost like gunfighters seeing, they're of sizing each other up. Well, how do how do you change the rim? Or how do you clean it?

How do you how do you balance it? And the guy's vicar was sitting back and were like, that may be the most thoroughly changed tire I'll ever have.

Absolutely. What it that sounds like such an incredible adventure. I always find those things you happen upon tend to be like the most special parts of trips like that. What did it mean to you to have that specific adventure with both of your boys? To me it sounds like it was growth in your relationship and a little life changing.

Would I be right

on It absolutely was in the sense that when I talked to the last time about how Marion has certain swagger like people talk to all you traveling, travel by bike and then they do the double take. When my son Matt did the travel, he uses that as a touching jumping off point for a lot of the other trips that he did, some of that he did solo. And we'd gone back and done other trips in the area together. But it is a growth thing. Like we all had to solve some of our own problems in terms of bike and road and circumstances.

And then you come back together and you know, you got the community support. But for us to do it, it was We're going back to the thing I said last time with Mary Anne. I'm relating to my kids as peers. This is their deal and I'm not their boss and they're not beholden to me. We're just doing stuff we can together, enjoying the event and finding our own way.

And so there's times where their suggestion or their activity wins a day or mine wins a day. But you're you're you're among equals. You're among peers. And that switch and power dynamic for me as as an adult, I've come to realize is is is powerful. You have to give up control to to get to that next level.

And as recently as the other week where my son's taking a camper back and we're trying to solve a problem with a flat tire in his trailer, it is that teamwork that comes out of it as respecting opinions or respecting points of view. Yeah. So it was, yeah, the boys and I have talked about it that we always relate back to those things and then, you know, it's part of a continuum. It's great that it was that event. It was great that we brought all these significant things together, but we've gone on.

We had ones before we had ones afterwards. So it was more that that one was a big ambitious one. And we had a lot of moment moment memorable events happen on it, but it's part of a continuing way. We didn't just create the one and done. We, it was, you know, build up.

It was a, was a cornerstone of certainly of a lot of stuff. Yeah. So yeah, growth is people.

Yeah. I'll give you the respect as a parent, you're always going to be dad, but it's nice to hear the advice as a parent to once you hit a certain age with your kids, you have to start giving that mutual respect to more of like a friendship level. You'll always be dad, but their opinions matter as well.

Yeah. And yeah, you're absolutely right. I talked to a lot of people and I tell people, I said, as soon as you become a parent, you're never not a parent. So even like, I was happening to talking to this young person, I said, your mom and dad are trying to do parenting for you now, even though you're in your thirties. You know, they're trying to find that fine line between what they would have done in those situation.

But the times have changed the circumstances. The lessons don't necessarily apply. The principles might, but the lessons are going to be different that we have to take. So you never escape that mantle, but being able to have a conversation and go and one of the things that the boys say, adulting is hard. There's no rules.

The rules aren't always obvious in every situation. So you do what you can. But the fact that it was a motorcycle that we, you know, that we got to do this on at the end and, riding entertaining roads in a, in a respectfully aggressive manner, enjoying the scenery, enjoying the circumstances. We got to do some group rides with people that you see people from all circumstances. And like I say, being part of that wider community has a way of opening your sight lines.

You see yourself differently. You're not somebody doing it individually. You've got peers that you can bounce stuff off of, know, shared, shared adventures on the road. So it's, it is gratifying.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. One last question for you, Larry, before we let you go. So you had mentioned that, well, two things that Jim is no longer with us and an unfortunate incident, but traveled everywhere with that pig. Did it resurface and is it still going in memory of Jim?

On the twentieth anniversary, I bought a new inflatable pig.

Okay.

And I, and I strapped to the bike and I recreated a lot of the route. But the punchline, you know, and it's a, it's, it's a, it's a funny sort of a sad situation. Like when when Jimmy Boland passed, are about 25 folks that rode in for his his memorial service. Everybody in the in the theater knew about or in the church knew that who we were and what we done. And they all came up and they told us how grateful Jimmy was to have found us.

And my boys knew that story too. One story that I learned later on though was when Bubba went out to claim Jimmy's effects, Bubba's Jimmy's brother. The deal was he got all the catalog stuff that they'd taken and all the clothing and personal effects, everything else. And he's, you know, signs a receipt for, okay, you've got all this stuff. And then the way Baba tells the story, the person giving him the stuff, he does this kind of double take looks around, reaches below the counter and he slides the pig across.

And this was in his saddle bag. And that pig presently is over Bubba's toolbox in a place of honor because, like, the life goes on. It is a ridiculous story,

That's awesome.

Oh, yeah. The whole deal with the pig was I'm I'm I'm I'm stretching it out, but I'll I'll be quick. This in the spring, we were riding the Kootenays and Jimmy Jimmy Bowen goes, what are we going to do for a ride? He said, we'll have a pig roasting forks. It was just that quick.

I just blurted the first thing out that I thought. And he turns around and looks to me, and you're bringing the pig. And so I had to bring a pig. And so it, you know, the story of finding the pig is unto itself. But when I showed up with this pig strapped to the back of the bike, it was this six months separate separation of a, you know, joke and a punchline.

And that was kind of the friendship that Jimmy had. It was a let's play. I'm going to eat. You're to be the straight man. I'm going to be the punchline.

And we just kept trading it off. And that was the kind of spirit, you know, the approach to life that that, you know, part of what I wanted to celebrate with the boys too. Yeah. Yeah. Have have a have a laugh and enjoy them all and, you know, accept the discoveries.

Yeah. So here we are.

Here we are. Does Nick still roll his eyes at your stories or is he has that, that moment changed him?

He Nick never not rolls his eyes at stories. So sorry.

Boys will be the boys. Right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's that's that's part of the next personality. So and I and I get that. And it just it forces me to not ramble on, get to the point.

But, you know, I, and I know, like I said, the boys are touched by the community and the people they saw. Told me so, they demonstrated it. So when they, when they give me a joke about it, it's part of that rapport of they they generally were moved by it. And Yeah. So the jokes like the shared joke, it's it's our secret.

So or it's our experience that we're, you know, having for some fun with. And I'm grateful for that.

I think that this is a great lesson to everybody out there to, you know, find those adventures with your kids, whether it's motorcycles or not. And, you know, Larry, I want to appreciate you coming on, coming back and sharing this because I think it's a valuable lesson and I appreciate your time for that.

Oh, thank you.

For everybody else, let's hang tight for the mixed bag. On today's mailbag, we had a message from Liz from Calgary asked if there was a universal way to alert other riders to road hazards like dead deer on the road or debris, anything like that. If you're in the lead, point with your hand or your foot to signal those behind you. But if you're oncoming, the rule of thumb, cars, bikes, whatever, flash your brights at an oncoming rider. The other thing on a motorcycle is a pushing down motion with your one hand, which tells somebody to slow down.

This becomes very handy on roads like the Icefields Parkway. As I recently discovered, when an oncoming truck and trailer were flashing their brights and hazards at me, I slowed right down as I came around the corner, found a bear fully in my lane with no one else around. I slowed, moved to the oncoming lane, waved at the bear as I passed by very quietly and made my way on the rest of the road. Without that heads up, I still probably would have been able to manage that encounter. But having that heads up allowed me to slow down and have full capacity without having emergency maneuvers.

Moral of the story, provide a heads up if you can and only where it makes sense. And that's our show for today. To make sure that you don't miss out on any of our upcoming podcasts or listen to previous ones, make sure you click on subscribe or follow wherever you get yours. If there's a topic you'd like us to cover or a guest you think would be great on the show or even a question for the mailbag, let us know. You can connect with us on all the socials.

Email us at info@ab-amss.org or reach out through the website at a b dash amss dot org. Thanks for listening to Think Bike. From us, always remember to ride smart, ride safe, and think bike. See you out on the road.