Blood Bikers (not what you think) live from the UK and ADV Cannonball Rally News!

Special guest, Alex Chalmers, Chair, Nationwide Association of Blood Bikes. Recorded live in Surrey, UK in the SURREY PODCAST STUDIO. 

Music provided and authorized by Austin Vince, UK.
Thank you, Austin, you're a legend! 

Chapters

• 10:45 Blood Bikers Interview
• 43:33 ADV Cannonball News

Transcript

Welcome to the ADV cannonball podcast where we discuss all things on two wheels, the adventure bike cannonball, and other motorcycle related nonsense. Welcome to season three episode five, adventure cannonball podcast. My name is Taylor Lawson, and I am your host. And today, I am joined by Aaron Pufal. Welcome, Aaron.

Big dog? What's up? Oh, man. I'm over here in Sweden. Riding season is rolling.

Things are good. I got, Skoog coming up, which is the s k o g, actually, in Swedish means forest. There is, it's an event that's limited to a 25 motorcycles, and it is essentially an a camping in the wild event where during the day so it's a typical rally. You go out. You come back to the same spot every night.

Well, shall I say, not a typical rally in that sense. It's very different than a in a than, for example, a GPS rally where you're traveling from one point to the next. In this case, there is a, a a a well known, chef who's got the entire setup going on there with, cooking meats of all kinds, smoking fish, doing all kinds of crazy stuff that you can do. Think about if you would see a, a video of someone, like, living out in a cabin forever and, you know, going out and hunting seal and skinning them and then coming back and taking the meat and turning and putting it in their smoke shed. This this he's not skilling he's not hunting seal, but he's bringing all this meat in.

And this entire thing is going to be set up as a an amazing cooking operation where you can actually also go and ride motorcycles, train, boot camp. Elspeth beer is gonna be a speaker there, our previous post on the podcast. But I diverge. I go on I go on a tangent here. Let's start with the most important thing.

What are you drinking? I have a open can of Yellow Dog Brewing Corporation, high five hazy IPA. Cheers, bro. You couldn't even wait? You couldn't wait to start?

No, man. I, I would be smashing this while we were setting up setting up the equipment, and I've come to realization that we always drink beer during the podcast. And I'm sure it doesn't sound good every time I'm burping in the microphones. I apologize for burping in your ears. Yeah.

Fair enough. Well, you know, I haven't really picked that one up. But, I thought I could give you a hard time about that to maybe hide the fact that I too had opened mine previously. So Nice. Nice.

Listen, What do you say? One in the one in the hand is better than two in the fridge or something? Exactly right. Exactly. So you're so wise.

Alright. So I promise, I promise that I would give a little bit of a of a a tech is it tech rant or tech talk? No. It's a positive thing, so it's a tech talk. Yeah.

Give us your tech talk before we get to the, Blood Biker interview from from Britain. Alright. Very cool. So before we go in on this this India trip, we talked to our local contacts there, and they were like, you've got because the water crossings are like, you've got to have waterproof socks. And I said, what do they mean by waterproof socks?

Did you have any idea what a waterproof sock was? No. I I still think it's witchcraft, and I don't believe anything. Right. I know.

So, anyway, long story short, I, I did I'd never heard of them before. And then these guys are like, no. It's a real thing. And they gave us some brand names, and I looked them up, and I actually have two pair. I've worn one pair on a two hour hike, and, I do have a report on that.

So what I bought was this sealskins, s one word, s e a l s k I n, z as in zebra. It's called it's a sock called Worstead waterproof cold weather knee high length sock thermal regulation. And it's got merino wool in it, and it kinda has the consistency of a really thin, like, a two mil wet suit. But I can say that in a two hour hike that I did in these things, I, I was warm for one. But, and I wasn't wearing, like, you know, motorcycle boots, but I was just in regular hiking shoes, low top hiking shoes, actually.

And my foot came out at the end, and it wasn't any more, you know, sweaty than I would have expected had I been doing that same level of exertion or activity wearing a regular pair of, like, just Merino Will hiking socks. So, in that regard, I have to say that they were they they did breathe like they said they would. And then as I and when I came home, I thought it'd be a good idea to try to shower with them on. If you get water down the top, water gets in. Yeah.

Yeah. But you said it was waterproof. One star review. One star review. You know, like, they say, you know, there's certain things that are like washing your feet with your socks on.

So I thought I'd give it a whirl for real. Yeah. Absolutely. And and what's funny about this is we're doing all this preparation for this fall Himalaya trip, and then, you know, a war breaks out in the region, and we may not be going to that region at all. So I don't think you'll be needing waterproof socks if we end up in Goa on the beach.

But, we will continue to prepare, and fingers crossed that things don't escalate, for obvious reasons. Never mind our silly motorcycle trip. But if we can continue our trip to the Himalayas, that will be awesome, and I will be getting myself a pair of waterproof socks as well. Yeah. I, but I have to say if we're on the beach in Goa, I might just be wearing these just for spite.

I am gonna wear these damn socks up to my ankles. Bought these. I bought these for India. I'm wearing them. Listen.

It's Goa. You can let your freak flag fly, and, you know, we do not discriminate on the beach. Yeah. So I'll also wear these in in the Skoog, which is this, I guess, a four day event. I'm gonna leave on Thursday morning with, with Vijay.

We're gonna ride down. There's about a four, four and a half hour ride from Stockholm to this to the bottom of one of these, these big lakes in the middle of this of the country. And, yeah, and then we'll meet, we will meet Per. He was on a few podcasts ago when we were over the motorcycle event. He did some field notes with me.

He's gonna ride his GS 1,200 down there, same as, Brian Coffin has actually. Nice. And, yeah. So we'll give a we'll give a report on that, and we'll also have some more information to share about Scoog. Yeah.

That should be fun. I'm jealous that you're going. I'll be, sitting in front of the computer making GPX files for everyone. Yeah. Well, we appreciate that.

Just want you to know. It's nice to be recognized. Nice to be recognized. And, we've been working on our acronym, following the orders of Austin Vince. We've been working on our badass acronym, And, why don't you let the listeners know what we have so far, and if people could help us out, that'd be great.

Alright. Here we go. Backcountry. So b a d a s s. Backcountry adventure direction assisted self reliant survival.

Yeah. It's a start. I like the first half. We just need to finish the second half with, like, you know, rally racing kind of speed themed for the rally, but we're we are we are getting closer. Sir, I would like to remind you that this is not a race.

I stand corrected. You're absolutely correct. This is not a race. This is not a race. But there's extra points if you get there first, just so you know.

Just just just saying. But, Not a race. Not a race. Well, speaking of more responsible motorcycle use, let's talk about the blood bikers in England. And I think I explained how I stumbled onto the blood bikers.

But, you know, it's it's great. It's a a very serious group of of people doing important work for a the common good, and they are doing some important work with their their motorcycles. What did you think of the interview? I thought it was really it was really nice. It was what I thought was really cool is kinda how it grows organically, how he explained that everyone who gets into it either got into it because of some other affiliation.

They wanted to be able to, have another reason to ride their bikes in the middle of the night, or they were benefited. They received, blood from someone who brought it, you know, and got and got that to happen because of the the value that they provide, it's been a potentially saved their life. They, there was a lot of different ways into this and a lot of ways that people got into it, but it wasn't always like, I wanna go do this thing. It was always through a club, and there's amazing network. Like, the the interview was just, I was trying to keep track of the number of names and and groups that he worked together and supported, and I couldn't keep track.

I lost I lost count. It was just super impressed by that. Yeah. And there's a diverse group of people that are involved from management and organization from legal departments to, you know, guys that are answering phones to family members all the way down to the badass on the motorcycle that's doing a run-in the middle of the night to get some blood to, to a hospital or to a helicopter. So it's a it's definitely a badass group of people, and, and I think more places around the world should start up groups like this.

So, it'll be awesome, whether it's in US or Canada, that perhaps this will inspire, a grassroots movement here. Let's not give away anymore. Let's roll the interview. Registration is now open to the public for the next ADV cannonball rally. All riders on any motorcycle are welcome to join the adventure.

Whether you're looking for an exciting and highly organized coast to coast ride with a group of like minded riders or a friendly competition for cannonball glory, it doesn't matter. Everyone can participate. Head over to advcannonball.com to secure your rally starting position today. Now back to the podcast. We're in Surrey, England.

And, Alex, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. You are the chair of the Blood Bikers Association. You know, we don't know anything about the Blood Bikers, and I think it's super cool. And thanks for taking the time.

Maybe we should start with what is a blood biker? Yeah. So we are multiple sort of, like, probably there's about probably about four and a half thousand volunteers across The UK that do blood biking in all different regions, all different ways over The UK. So the core of it is that we move blood products from hospital to hospital or from blood banks to hospitals as they need them. But it branches out all over different things.

We do human milk, donor milk. We do medications. At times, we will do medical equipment. And we support the air ambulance. So a thing called blood on board so they can have blood on the ambulance and when they get to people that helps them deal with them as well.

But ultimately, we are moving anything that hostels ask us to move, main thing's blood, to get to people when they need it. And perhaps we should start at the very beginning. So I ended up finding you because I was researching the fifty nine club. And after reading volumes and volumes, I noticed that they created something called the volunteer emergency Services in, I think, around 1962, and her name was Margaret Ryerson and her husband. Was that the origin story or am I or am I off?

It is, but there's various different sort of break off bits that happened around that. But, yeah, that went back probably 40 ago, forty five years ago. There was various bits. The oldest still running region of blood bikes, because all the blood bike groups are split into different regions, and they're all run as their own individual entities in those regions. And then we're the umbrella body that sits above about over 30 of those groups in The UK.

The oldest running region is Yeovil, and they're they're sort of over 40 years old. There was a bit of a bigger group, which was called the serve group, which was London, Surrey, all over the place, and it broke into regions eventually. So you had one that did Oxfordshire and one that's doing Surrey and London, One that's doing Sussex. So it broke because it was too big a thing to deal with as in one go. So now, yeah, they're over 40 years old, and 59 club have actually crossed over quite a lot with all sorts of bits of blood biking in the past as well.

So they're they're a really good bunch of people. Yeah. I was there a couple of nights ago, and they were really welcoming. And they brought all the pictures and everything, and it seems to be a a thread that's running through The UK bike community, and everyone is, you know, positive. And and in this case, they're altruistic about their time.

What was your start? Did you start off riding, and now you're the chair? So maybe you need your history. I've gone through all sort of roles in terms of bloodbark. So I started off as a motorbike rider, went to an event with my kids actually, and there was it was what they call emergency services day.

So there was all different emergency services there. The kids can climb in the fire engine and have a play and policeman and all this, that, and the other. And there were some blood bikers there, and I thought, oh, okay. Had a look. So, oh, what do we need?

How does that work? Went away, did what we all do, got on the Internet, had a look. Found out they're all volunteers and they go down that route. So, yeah, after a couple of years, sort of it must have been a good couple of years. It was just in the back of my mind.

Life was busy. I I got in touch with what was my local regional group and went from there. So I've done all parts of it. I've been the person out on the bike deliveries. I've been the person who's what we call the controller, who takes the phone calls from the different people and then allocates the jobs out to the different riders and keeps an eye on where they are through the shift and out and about like that.

And then I've ended up going into the sort of like I then ended up with the local group being on the committee for that local group, helping run that group. And then, yeah, over time, I've ended up I'm I now don't get out on the road or do any of the on the ground regional stuff. I'm now the chair of the the national body, which is the umbrella body that sits over loads of the groups across The UK. Yeah. So we're more sort of like governance and trying to get things good for blood bikers now and what we're doing.

But it's it's still great just to be involved. Well, you did show up on a bike. What kind of bike did you show up on a bike? Oh, I showed up on my tryout for 10 Fifth 1050 ST. Yeah.

It's a bit of an old girl, but it commutes around and it does everything I need it to do. Well, listen. I've been taking public transit for probably the first time in twenty years, and it's actually been great. I've everywhere I wanted to go. You know, the train has just magically been there, and then I took a bus, and it was there, and it was seamless.

I do feel a bit of a fraud, but it was very expensive, to ship my bike here, this year. Last June, I shipped the bike here for a month, but some reason, it was really expensive. Maybe I just need to have a bike here so I can be less of a fraud. But, you mentioned NHS. You know, for the uninitiated, in America, we have a for profit health care system.

In Canada, we have a not for profit health care system. So what is the NHS? And then how did you identify or how did the original blood bikers identify the the need? So NHS is our national health service, free free service in The UK to everything. One of the departments of the NHS is called NHS BT, and the BT is blood and transfusion.

So effectively, blood and transfusion team, they're they're they're great guys as well. They'll be from taking the blood from the people. They they have the labs to deal with it and get it ready, and they then transport it out to the hospitals that need it and things like they have masses of set up across The UK moving stuff around for people as well. But that that is it's it's not a commercial entity in any way, but the hospitals have to sort of take out their own budget a bit to give to NHS BT, the blood transfusion bit. So we sort of fill a little bit of a gap.

So as much as we can move around for the hospitals ourselves and various trusts and different things, they're not having that expense. So the hundreds of thousands of pounds a year is saved by us moving products rather than having to pay they don't pay for it as such, but the NHS is having to pay for that to be moved around, if you see what I mean, in a roundabout way. And we work closely with NHS BT. I had I was on a call with them the other day, and we try and help each other out because they understand that at times it's it's more cost effective and actually sometimes quicker for the hostels to come to us to get what they need. Sure.

And then yeah. I mean, there's times when we can move something very quickly to certain hospitals that need it quickly. And there's other times that it might be a preplanned thing if it's so, yeah, it's it's we do all sorts, but the NHS ultimately is free, and every one of us as volunteers is just trying to save them a bit more money that can go back into something that's a bit more usable. You know, I was doing a bunch of research, and many times when there was an interview with a blood biker all around the country, usually their story started off with, well, the NHS did something great for me or we've taken a lot from it. And now that I'm retired or they have time on the weekend, they really want to give back.

And it's you know, in this this day and age, you know, we just don't hear that anymore. So it's really heartwarming to, hear those stories. So how many riders do you think are volunteering their time across the nation? We approximately have about four and a half thousand members of blood bike groups across The UK. Now not every one of them is a rider.

It's massively important that we have those people that answer the phone calls as well and they you know, and things like that. And we do have a big percentage now, not not anywhere near the percentage that goes on on bikes, but of car usage as well. So one of the reasons for that is sometimes we are doing the the the orders we get are so large that a bike just can't handle that, for example. So an example around here would be of an evening every night around here, there's, a big batch order that comes out of the blood bank in London where there's a laboratory that gets read ready the blood gets ready for different hostels. Every night around here, one of the the London group will pick up that that service area in London, they're called, will pick up that order, come down to near here, and distribute it out to the other local groups down here, Sussex and Kent and wherever.

And then they can go off where they need to to their hostels. So that needs a car. That can't be on a bike. There's just too much going on there. But quite often, that one car or van will get meet by maybe six or seven bikes, and they all go off in their direction of where it needs to go.

But, yeah, we think there's about four and a half thousand people in total doing that. And majority will do a couple of shifts a month. So it's quite a lot of people, but not a lot on each person, if you see what I mean. You do get the some people that just do it. I mean, there was one guy, a guy called Ray, who in one year did, like, 35,000 miles just doing blood biking and was on, I think, he had about three days off in the whole year.

He did something on every day for and he was a really interesting guy as well. But yeah. No. He's he's done all sorts. I was a volunteer firefighter for a while when I lived in rural America.

And especially in rural communities, you end up realizing that no one else is showing up or you're so remote that you really are filling in that gap. And maybe you could describe, I don't wanna say typical, but maybe in this region, what a typical run would be for a blood biker. Yeah. So there's I'd say there's two main things around here especially that gets done. One is the the blood duty and one is the milk.

And then every day around here as well, they also do a restock of the air ambulance. But a main run would be so you'll have a hostel phone the controller as we call it and say we need, and they will tell them what they've what they need from the local whichever blood bank they've chosen to go that to. The main ones around here, let's say, is Tooting in London. They will let the controller of the charity know, we need this. That person will then look at who they've got on shift of that night, where they are and wherever else, and send someone to get it.

So multiple times, you'll find that the bigger trauma hostels, the hospitals that are dealing with the the more sort of serious incidents, they could, of an evening, have multiple times that they will phone and say. And that's the biggest thing. Most of what we end up doing is night times and the out of hours sort of bits because the NHS has more provision in the day to do it and less at night. So I know myself, I've gone out at 02:00 in the morning to go do something and not got back till 07:00 in the morning because I've ended up doing two or three things while I've been out ridden into London, picked it up, dropped it at the hostel that needed it, and then come home again. The worst the worst one I had is I got all the way home and then got another phone call and had to go all the way back again.

That was that was one of those nights where you're like, right. Okay. Just got my kit off. Let's get it all back on again and on we go. So but it's it's brilliant.

It's a great thing where you go into those labs. And sometimes it's just normal handover, say hello to people there, come away. There's other times when you get there and you just the way they act with you, you know that they needed it. They really needed it quite quick. And the same with the controllers.

The controllers, different hostels give us different amount of information over to when they ring you up. I we have, and I've been on the phone myself, you have that phone call and they they tell you the person's bleeding out, we're running out of it, so we need a big delivery, or we need this, that, and the other. We never pass that information onto the actual rider who's riding because although we may tell them it's it's urgent, we wouldn't tell them what because you know that's a little bit extra pressure on that person if if they think that hold on. I've gotta get that there quicker than I would do normally. They know when they get there, they find out.

Or the ones you really know is when you pick up the box and you realize how light it is, which tends to mean it's for a baby. Because the blood everything's lighter. So you pick up the box at the blood bank and you think, oh, okay. And then you'll see on it, it'll say, like, neonatal or something. Right.

That's really powerful, and it sounds like it's can be really rewarding. And how much money do you think is being saved by your service into the NHS system? Oh, so it's it's hundreds and hundreds of thousands a year. I mean, each group regionally saves them money in different ways. So, and it it's not all just the money.

It's, things like the air ambulance. They, a few years ago, did a study to find out that if they had blood products on the ambulance on the air on the helicopter, then they wouldn't need to do so much quick transfers to the hospital because they could deal with certain things at the site. And that that's proven to save multiple lives where they've been able to do a transfusion where they are, then get them transported off the hospital. They couldn't easily get a way to have the blood with them. So the NHS BT, again, great system, but didn't have the facility to be able to take one or two little boxes of blood around to the air ambulance every day.

Because once the blood has been prepared, it has to get used within a certain window, otherwise you can't use it. Now if it doesn't get used, it's first, it's a waste. And also, there's a there's a cost to it all getting put together and everything else like that. So the way it's done around here, for example, is every day, the air ambulance hit near here, the low local blood bikers will go to the local hostel, pick up the blood that's needed, take it to the hostel. If the air ambulance haven't used what they've got, because they're doing it every day, they can take it back to the hostel and the hostel could then use that product.

They've got another twenty four hours or so or something like that to use the product still. So it doesn't get wasted rather than if it just sat, it would get wasted. So you've got I think, don't quote me on this, but I think it's something that they've got a couple of days to use it once it's it's chilled and it's still everything else like that after it's been prepped. So if it can take them back if they haven't had to use it, then it can still get used and not waste it, which is great. And there was no real provision for doing that, so the blood bites got stepped in and filled that gap.

So now when when the aircraft go out, they go out with blood on board as they call it, and that means they can actually do stuff on-site straight away. So and then, again, with that, you there may be times in the day, although they have this regular turnover once a day, if you get a phone call in the middle of the night from the air ambulance, you know they've used it because they want it restocked. So you'll be told when the aircraft is gonna be back at the depot sort of thing, and then you get back and swap the boxes over, and then they've they're ready to go again. So Yeah. It sounds like that not only are you saving the country money, you've provided services that you can't really even quantify because they weren't even there before.

Yeah. That's that's kind of it. Yeah. So when you say about the it's hundreds of thousands a year that gets saved, but it's all those other things that get done, but there was never any figure to it before. And now it's a service that could be offered that wasn't offered before.

And how do you get your funding, for all this? It seems like quite the operation. Yeah. It is. It's massive.

So regionally, like I say, each group is its own entity, is its own charity. So every group itself is finding ways to to get funding. On a national level, we try to help with the sort of awareness and putting things out there. There's some great supporters out there. I mean, you've mentioned fifty nine Club.

They support Ace Cafe, which have a big tie up with that. They've always been a massive supporter. Not necessarily so much big inputs of money, but the great sort of, like, presence of bit promoting bloodbikes. There's also, in The UK, there's a lot of Mason groups. They give so much to bloodbikes.

Now I don't know much about Masons as such, but this year, for example, they've earmarked £750,000 just as for every blood bike group to get a new vehicle. So there there's some really amazing, like, charities out there that will do every group's doing its small fundraising things, but there's some really massive things that come through some big organizations which are brilliant. Yeah. That's fantastic. And it sounds like the community writ large is is, coming together for this great cause.

I was thinking about larger demands on the system system. You know, we just went through the COVID pandemic. What role did the blood bikers play during the pandemic? There was loads of stuff. So, effectively, what went from being a quieter daytime shift to a we we we tend to be usually quieter in the daytime, busier in the night times and stuff like that.

That changed partly because we could offer more services because there was a lot of people sitting at home thinking, well, we could be volunteering now. So for a lot of people, a lot of people used it to actually get out of the house which I think actually helped a lot of people because they could go out and do something. But there was a lot of medication moving around. There was a lot of samples that get moved around people. Even in some places there was, equipment being moved around and stuff.

So there was just anything extra that could be helped with was helped with. And there was some great support from some big organizations with stuff as well. So for example, BP, the the fuel company, they paid for all Blood Bikers fuel. They just there was no charge for Blood Bikers fuel for the whole for for ages. BP did and things like that.

So there's some really big things that that are going on in the background to support that. But, yeah, ultimately, anything that could be helped with was helped with. So the service stepped up. A lot of the service has had to sort of go back down a bit now, which is a shame. But a lot of that come down to volunteer levels.

People weren't at work, so they had time to to be out and do stuff. So the whole yeah. It was just busier. Much busier. Every time you say a sentence, you mention someone else who's positive and helping and contributing, which is which is really heartwarming.

You mentioned, you know, the average blood biker. Who is your typical blood biker? Typical blood biker, I would say, has either had something go on which has made them think about how did I end up having help. You get a lot of that. You get also a lot of people I think that just that bit more maybe they've been in motorcycling for a long time or not even they may be in for a long time.

They just wanna do a little bit more than just be out on their bike on a weekend riding around. If you see what I mean? And for me, it was twofold. I I loved what they were doing, but it was also an excuse to get out of the bike. That's how it started.

And then you sort of like get drawn in, and then once you're drawn in, you're you're in it sort of thing. But, yeah, there's a there's something quite nice sometimes about just going out the bike in the middle of the night and just, like, you're coming back. I mean, after doing some runs through London at Christmas, for example, was amazing. Lights on, and you've just finished your run. You're feeling pretty good about yourself anyway because, you know, you've just done something quite nice.

And, yeah, it's just it's a great place to be riding around and whatever else. And, yeah, I'd say the average biker tends tends to be a little bit more mature because they have got to that point where they're maybe the they wanna do a bit more with their biking. But, yeah, we're and a lot of us, I think, have had connections into blood biking through other groups. So we do ask that blood bikers, what we call advanced trained in The UK. So we've all done some extra bit of training, you know, for motorcycles.

So some people come through that. They've done advanced training for other reasons and then realize they can get involved with blood biking as well. Sure. You mentioned, training. So what qualifications does someone need to be a a blood biker?

So if you're gonna do the like I say, the controlling, the car drivers, everything, you just can just be anyone and you can come and help us. You know, there's so many roles that can get done that you you don't need anything extra. We ask for the people out on the bikes to have what we call advanced training. Now there's there's multiple agencies in The UK that offer advanced training for motorcycle riders. There's the Institute of Advanced Motorists.

There's the British Motorcycle Federation. There there's there's ROS, but there's various groups that have their sort of certified thing. Ultimately, they all teach to a system which called Roadcraft. I don't know if you've come across that. It's the system that they teach the police to, of how to, like, how to sort of, like, deal with being on the road sort of thing.

Ultimately, they deal to that they teach to that same manual, what they call the Roadcraft manual. So, yeah, all of us who are out on the bikes have have been out and done some level of that training and passed that training to whatever level. So, yeah, that that and that's a great thing to do as well because you go out and you you go back to basics almost as you're out, and you that that's brilliant as well. And that in itself was great for me. I did that training.

I did the training to become a to get on the bloodbikes. I didn't do it for any other reason. Some people have come through it the other way around. They've done the training for various reasons and then get into bloodbikes. But, yeah, that that's a really good thing to do.

I would actually whether you're getting into bloodbikes or not, it's a really useful thing to do. It makes you sort of open your eyes a little bit on the road. It's it's really good. Sure. I can think of some of my first calls as a volunteer firefighter, and we actually responded POV, personal owned vehicle sometimes, and we had all lights on and stuff.

And I often found there was a gap between your training and then you're just on your own one day. There's that feeling of, oh, man, I'm on my own. Do you have any kind of mentorship or to help people with that gap? So each group does deal with this slightly differently to however their regions, geographically are and everything else like that. But, yeah, majority so you'll have the riders come along.

They've done their advanced training and everything else like that. But every group will then do what they call familiaration rides or in house assessments and things like that. So as a rider, you you will have to go out and do some sort of rides with someone and get assessed and check you and know you what you're doing. You then also have to do training. So the NHS have a standard that when you're moving products around like blood and stuff like that, there's standards that have to be met with how that's that's done.

So there's a couple of little training sessions, online things really, that you have to do to understand the the good practices of how to move blood products around and what you can do with it and what you can't do with it and things like that. So everyone has to do that as well. And actually, pretty much everyone does that, whether they're the controller sitting sitting on the phone or whether they're the bike. Everyone does that, good practice of how to move things about because that that's really good as well because that sort of makes you realize, okay, these products we need to do this with or and things like that and times and things like that. So, yeah, everyone has that.

And in most of the groups, everyone in them is so helpful. So if you're a newbie and if you're on your first shift and you if someone if someone said to you, I'm on first shift. I'm not sure. Most people go, well, I'll come along with you on your first shift. You know, things like that.

It's everyone's really good. In my mind, I'm thinking, well, you show up at the hospital. Just the where can I park? Where do I go? Just the the the comfortability of that.

And then the training you were talking about, we call that the blood borne pathogen, training. Just knowing how to handle things and not get yourself, you know, in trouble or cause damage to the product, and things like that. But let's talk about something cool. Let's talk about motorcycles. So, are they riding their own motorcycles, or or are they provided motorcycle?

How how does it work? Complete mixture. So we've got every group out there has got a a fleet. They'll have their fleet bikes. Some groups are really lucky.

They have a really good spread of fleet bikes all over their region, and every shift is done on a on a fleet bike. Some groups, they have a good fleet of bikes still, but just through where there are maybe a busier location, they couldn't physically get those bikes out on every shift, on every bike, on every person. So you still have a massive percentage out there doing shifts on their own bikes. You can't your own bikes aren't quite as usable as the fleet bikes because the fleet bikes are designed in a certain way that they have a a tray on the back that you could fix two of the normal sort of mid sized blood boxes on and things like so you can do more with a fleet bike because of the way you can do things around it. But lots of stuff, a huge amount of stuff is done on personal bikes and vehicles, cars, and all sorts.

And they again, that's not just donating time at that point. You're donating the cost of running your bike around and everything like that. People are out there doing loads all the time. If you were to add it all up, it would be crazy amount of money. But, you know, the fleet bikes are great because they're designed for it.

They're they're brilliant. And, you know, they're a little bit more imposing and, you know, like you pull up and park outside the hostel, no one's gonna think why it's parked that sort of thing. And whereas the personal bikes is a little bit more. Although people will will do their best to label it up or put a sign on it saying, you know, we're doing this and that. It's not quite the same in terms of sometimes, but, yeah, ultimately, it couldn't function without people and their own bikes, A lot of regions and it it yeah.

So people put put a fair few miles on their own bikes sometimes. Wow. They're just sitting in the garage anyways, I find. Anyways, so the bikes that are provided the fleet, Keith, maybe describe the average make and model and how they're set up and how they're stickers up? So they they sticker up, lots of high vis sort of light yellow on them and sometimes orange and stuff like that.

We're still clear obviously because we're we're not allowed of the blue light colors and things like that. But you will find they have the similar look to maybe what, like, a paramedic bike would look like or something like that. One of the best bikes in the there's various bikes that get used, but one of the best bikes that was being used and with some great backing from Yamaha was the Yamaha f j the FJR 1,300. They Yamaha did a lot of work with us to get that all set up right with the tray on it and and all of you know, really supported it. And we're doing them out of factory.

We've already converted effectively into blood bars with the help from another company. Sadly, the FJR didn't meet the new euro whatever spec admissions and has gone out of production now. So there's now a little bit of a bit of back and forth going on with various manufacturers to try and find the perfect bike again because that that bike really did suit. Some of the groups are running electric bikes, which in some regions works really well. There's a couple of groups running the zeros.

That works well in in the sort of more in a town where where they've got the regions. But then you've got other regions which is really rural that they just can't do it, so they're trying to find the perfect bike still. And some of them have found some really good solutions that, you know, there's all sorts out there. There's Triumphs. There's other there's BMWs out there.

There's there's all sorts of bikes being used, and converted. It's just a shame that the FJR stopped because Yamaha had done a lot of work on that. They have done a lot of work again, Yamaha, on the new on the Tracer, the GT nine, Tracer nine GT. And they they have put a lot of work into that. And it's a good bike, but it's just not quite the FJR.

Right. If you see and that bike was very good for the wind protection. You could sit them, you know, the range it had, everything you could sit on there for hours. And that's some of these shifts are long. So you need that sort of bike that you could sit there for a long time.

For sure. We just had on, a gentleman who maybe we shouldn't mention this, but he has the new Cannonball record in America, and he did it on exact that bike. And he put a big fuel cell on the back of it. His name is Bo Ernest. And, actually, I think he's doing another run right now, but that's something that we shouldn't be talking about on this, this, wholesome, segment.

But, I also wanted to mention that I saw on some of the bikes they had names on them. What is that tradition? That tends to come back to how the sponsorship has come about for getting those bikes. So quite often people will, offer to fund a bike or a charity or an organization will fund a bike. And when that happens, pretty much nine out of 10 vehicles out there have been funded in some way by someone or an organization or something.

The people get to choose. They choose the name for it. So there's various examples out there. You will find bikes named after people that have sadly passed away, but the blood bike community of somewhere else helped, and then their family have chosen to donate, or there'll be organizations out there that have just been asked to you've paid for it, pick a name, sort of thing. So I think a lot of the groups will somewhere have a bike called Mark or Mason because of the Masons and that there's the Mark Reverellament Fund, which is the Mason's pot they put in.

There's yeah. There's various bikes out there, various names, but and and that's a real nice touch for some people because some people, they literally will have one of their loved ones names written on the bike And, you know, and sometimes they get presented the bike and everything else like that. It's really nice. That is nice. Yeah.

Can you think of, seeing as though you're in more the the management and the oversight, can you think of any other countries that are have a similar program, or is this really unique to The United Kingdom? So there's it's growing. So Australia have it going now. Funny enough, we've got and there's there's talk of it going over various places in Europe. Ireland are doing it.

And there's next year I can't remember the exact dates, but there is talk of, there's effectively like an emergency motorcycle voluntary organization, get together somewhere in Eastern Europe. I can't think where it is now. And Blood Bikers have been invited. And so there's various different organizations coming together there. So if I can talk my other half into letting me go, I might be finding a road trip.

So so so but that's yeah. We'll see how that goes. Yeah. I think it's important in a altruistic sense to pass on the knowledge that you have and the experiences that you have so, you know, other countries and organizations don't make the same mistakes that you made in the past and learn and learn from those lessons. If people wanna learn more about the Blood Bikers association, where can they go?

So you can go to our website which is bloodbikes.org.uk, or just Google Blood Bikes in your area. So if you would put Blood Bikes Surrey or Blood Bikes, Scotland or something, you will find your local group. Anyone that comes to us, we we tend to point them towards their local group anyway. Because every group, it runs its own way. In their own charity, we're just there to try and help over over in the background a bit.

And they're all brilliant. All of them. There there's everyone is a volunteer. Everyone is putting their time in. And, yeah, some probably put too much time in.

You know? They probably should have, like, take a moment, but that's what they're committed to doing it. And, yeah, every one of them. None of it works without people putting their time in, and it's Sure. It's brilliant.

It really is. Listen. If we spend more time with our bikes doing this instead of, you know, popping around to the pub, I think the world is a better place. So you're it's fine to spend too much time, you know, helping other people. I I don't I don't think that's a a net negative thing for for the world.

But listen, thanks so much for taking time out of your day. I will be sure to put those links in the show notes. And who knows? Maybe we can spread the, Blood Bikers message around the world. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Yeah. Thank you very much. It's great. Ladies and gentlemen, could I please have your attention? I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story.

And I need all of you to stop what you're doing and listen. Cannonball. Hey, Cannonballers. Thanks for subscribing to our podcast. We appreciate it.

If you're not a cheap Canadian and want to buy us a coffee, head on over to buymeacoffee.com, or better yet, buy us a case of sweet ass craft IPA? We'll visit on patreon.com. Links are in the show notes. Now back to the riveting podcast in progress. And we are back.

Yeah. Super cool people. Yeah. You know, one thing that actually choked me up when I listened to that interview is, is when he is like, when the calls come in and you probably know what I'm gonna say. He says when the calls come in to the dispatcher and they communicate to the actual rider what it is that they need to do or where they need to go, they just say, you should probably get there.

You know, you should you should expedite this one. They don't tell them what the circumstances. Like, he says, someone's bleeding out or it's extremely dire. So they don't tell them that because that would influence potentially how they wrote, and then the unspoken part was that they they might be the ones who end up next needing blood, and don't actually get to do the job they were there to do, which is to to deliver the actual blood. Was it blood, milk, supplies, all kinds of things he ended up doing, especially during COVID.

But the one part that really choked me up as he said, sometimes, you know, sometimes, you know, when you pick up the package and it's really small, and you know it's for a baby. Yeah. For sure. It's really powerful stuff, and they're doing important work. And speaking of the babies, during the day when it's regular hours, they supplement the, mother's milk program.

So they actually ride their motorcycles around to moms' houses that have excess milk or aren't able to use it, and they are helping moms that, for some reason, can't produce milk, and they're doing that during the day. So it is a twenty four hour operation, and they're doing a lot of good. So my hats off to them, and we are better for knowing about that program. Yeah. It's true.

When I soon as I heard that, I was like, oh, we gotta we should probably you know, we should start that in Sweden. We should do that here. And they hear that they started this in Australia. And then I was like, wait a minute. But we could've lend you that for, like, three months out of the year.

Oh, yeah. Good point. Well, they, you know, they are using cars and trucks as well. So, the program could just have three months of motorcycles and then the rest in four by fours. Yeah.

True. Very true. But the network, it's like, if you think about the fifty nine Club and the Ace Cafe and all of these organizations that you have spoken about, there's been some common thread in all of them. One common thread that I've mentioned before is that people want to give back, and that's one aspect of it. And two is that they all know each other.

Everyone, they're all connected. Yeah. And even the outside of the the blood bikers, whether it's the authors or the YouTubers or people in our industry, podcasters and stuff, everyone is, yeah. I know that guy. Here's his phone number.

You should give him a call. So everyone throughout this journey has been positive and willing to, open those contacts up to us, and everyone wants to share their story, which is which is awesome. Yeah. Genuine super genuine guy, and, what an amazing cause. So, again, if we could spread this around and more countries took this on, I think it'd be a, the world would be a better place for it.

Sure would, man. That'd be awesome. You don't have to just do wheelies down the middle of the highway. You can actually do some good once in a while, and there's nothing, less badass about that. I think I need to work on the wheelies on the highway first.

For sure. And speaking of wheelies down the highway, do you mind if I do a little cannonball news? Why don't you roll into some cannonball news? And then yeah. Let's do that.

Okay. So we have released a working preliminary unofficial route for twenty twenty six, and we have changed the model. So in 2026, we're gonna follow the scooter cannonball model, which is you pay your entry fee, and then you are responsible for booking your own accommodations. And, of course, working with our partners at Hilton, we are providing a incredibly discounted group coupon code for the official Raleigh hotel, which hopefully everyone uses rather than, you know, camping at the at the Super eight parking lot down the street, which would just be gross. So hopefully everyone uses the program the way it was intended.

So that is up @advcannonball.com. So, Aaron, do you think maybe in 2026, there's gonna be a possibility that you're not the one sleeping in the van guarding all the motorcycles with a lock on them? Probably not. I'm probably the only you know, never ask other people to do things you won't do yourself. So I'm happy to sit in the van and and and and sleep out there to make sure everyone's motorcycles are okay for the morning.

You know, I'd I'd really hate to be anybody who come up and mess with any one of those bikes in the middle of the night. They they can see the van door flying over and be like, I tell you what. You know, I have that automatic sliding door, so I could just see I could press the button and, like, you'd be looking down the barrel of something. I'm like, yeah, you've chosen the wrong motorcycle to mess with. It it will be quite cinematic as a matter of fact.

It will be we should, you know, we should just record that. I mean, that that'd be a YouTube unto itself. It's funny, you know, I've never had anyone mess with my motorcycle at a Hilton hotel. But that being said, I know people have a lot of money invested in their bikes. And, you know, why not make yourself a hard target rather than a soft target and have an ounce of prevention is the only reason why we have that program.

And, you know, I'm I am happy to sleep in the van and keep an eye on people's people's babies. So I did notice that you said you had never had your bike messed with when it was at a Hilton hotel, but how about at the Super eight? I wouldn't know. I've never been in a Super eight. What are we?

Monsters? Come on. Just checking just checking in. Just wanted to confirm. Yeah.

For sure, man. Cheers. Cheers to the Hilton brand. Cheers to the Shelton brother. So before the Cannonball rally, you're gonna drop off a bike for me in LA.

Yeah. I I would like to. So I would like to drop off a GS in the LA area, either at the second to last hotel or at the Portofino. So if anyone in the area has space for a motorcycle for a couple of weeks, I would love to drop off a bike for Taylor. So when he lands from Sweden, he has something to race around in.

But I don't have room in the van and the trailer because I'm shipping a lot of bikes to the start line. So, as always, our finder comes last, and rally goers come first. So there's no room for me to bring a bike, on the rally. So if someone has some space to hold on for a bike for a couple of weeks, in September to October, that'd be great. Yeah.

So it's gonna be, like, two, two and a half weeks. Right? Yeah. For sure. Because I'm a I'm a planner, so I'd like to drop I have to pick up, one motorcycle in the area anyways.

Yeah. Very cool. So I think it might is there any other Cannonball news you wanna share? Or No. That's enough for now.

Maybe you can tell us what's coming up on the next episode. Alright. So if anyone has ever ridden, read a book about people riding motorcycles around the world or adventure books, there is one particular gentleman who has written six motorcycle adventure books about circumnavigating the globe, and that gentleman's name is Sam Manicom, m a n I c o m. And I have to say that our own world traveler, Aaron Bufall, actually met with him, got a couple of days ago. Yeah.

He was super cool. He is a gentleman. He is a prince of a guy. He's super nice. He's everything that I'm not.

And he in addition, he is a well read man, and he is a good writer. And his, courtesy and his thoughtfulness came into play when he arranged for us to meet at the Ace Cafe in the back offices, and we were able to, get a episode in the can of his travels and about writing his books and some other personal events in his life, which are, heartwarming. So it is all in all a well rounded episode, and it is worth a listen coming up next. Very nice. Looking forward to hearing that.

And, and with that, is there anything else you'd like to add? Nope. Nothing at all. So let's roll the outro. Thanks for listening to the ADV cannonball podcast.

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