ADV Cannonball
Interviewing adventure riders, overland creators, and authors is a key feature of the Adventure Cannonball Podcast. Aaron and Taylor speak with adventure travelers from various backgrounds, aiming to inspire listeners to embark on their journeys. The duo often discusses a wide range of motorsports, including motorcycle rallies, TSD rallies, checkpoint events, overlanding, and anything related to adrenaline and horsepower!
ADV Cannonball
TAT, Alcan 5000 and TSD with Crankshaft Culture & Satish Gopalkrishnan
Special thanks to the sponsor of this episode NICECNC
Mercedes and Andy Lilienthal from Crankshaft Culture drove the entire TransAmerica Trail in a Subaru! We talk about their journey, build, and preparation in detail. We also discuss the Alcan 5000 Rally and the 2024 Baltic Sea Circle Rally.
Website: http://crankshaftculture.com
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Satish Gopalkrishnan TSD Rally Champ
Championships Titles
- India, FMSCI Champion
- Indian National TSD Rally Champion
- US TSD SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) Champion
- National Course Rally Champion - 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
- National Touring Rally Champion - 2016, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024
- United States RoadRally Challenge - 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
MUSIC BY AUSTIN VINCE & MOBY. Thank you!
Winner of the Dot Comm 2025 Gold Podcasting Award
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Welcome to the ADV cannonball podcast, where we discuss all things on two wheels, the adventure bike cannonball and other motorcycle related nonsense.
SPEAKER_06:Season three, episode 13. Welcome to Adventure Cannonball Podcast. I'm your host, Taylor Lawson. And today I am joined by all around good guy and good friend, Aaron Pufall. What's up, Taylor? Good to see your face. Yeah, man, I made it back from mainland Europe. And I have to say that that's a cause for celebration to have a, well, an IPA. Nice. What do you got going there? You know, it's not my favorite beer, but it Absolutely is one of my favorite beer names. Apocalyptic Thunder Juice. Nice. It kind of says it all right there. And let's see, this little 33 milliliter can is swinging 6.5% by alcohol. So we probably ought to get through this one quickly because I haven't had dinner yet.
SPEAKER_05:All right. Well, I'm going to crack open this Bale Breaker Top Cutter IPA. It's a standard one for the state of Washington. Let it rip, bud. Nice. Oh, yeah. Nice. I'm rocking. I'm rocking 6.8% alcohol and an IBU of a moderate 70. Sorry, man. I'm just not that into beer.
SPEAKER_06:I'm going to love beer. What's IBU? It sounds like something. So when somebody's going around the hospital, I go, he's got a severe IBU happening in room five.
SPEAKER_05:It's the bitter index, yeah. The bitter index. Bitter, bitter units, yeah.
SPEAKER_06:All right. So let's talk. This episode is going to be kind of fun. It's kind of, we got a bunch jammed into it. It's going to be a long episode for those who are listening. We have two interviews, which are over 40 minutes a piece, but they do tie in together. And they are with people that Aaron and I met when we did the Alcan 5000 in 2024.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, we got the Crankshaft Culture folks. They just finished ripping across the country, the US on the Transamerica Trail. We're going to talk Alcan 5000 and we're going to talk TSD rallies, time, speed, distance rallies. And then we have the champion of TSD rallies. Satish is our second interview and it's it's going to be great. Why don't you tell us about your trip home from the Mediterranean?
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, that was super fun. A shout out to my buddy Stuart from from years ago, a friend of mine who's a captain. We worked together managing super yachts for I think we worked together about five years. And anyway, he's down there in, in Jouan-la-Pin, which is where we had an apartment. It's right between Cannes and Antibes on the South of France. And we had this, yeah, we had this place that we, yeah, We got to use for a week. So we took a couple of weeks to get down there, stayed there a week. And then we took, again, the entire trip was train travel, which I know you love.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I was super jealous. And I wanted all the gory details, which you gave me some of them. But you did a sleeper train, I think more than once, right?
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, we did a sleeper train down. And it's really interesting. I'll try to keep this short, but I thought it was super interesting. So the, you know, train travel is super, yeah, you can move a lot of bodies for not a ton of energy expenditure. So the Europeans, the European governments were asked, they went out to all the, well, the citizens of different countries and they said, why don't you guys use trains more? And they said, well, why aren't you on time more? So they set up a system. They said, okay, well, we're going to set up a system that penalizes us for when we are late and And the way you penalize a train company is you penalize them in the pocketbook. So for the trip down, you get your interrail pass. And then on top of that, you reserve your sleeper car. So you pay extra for that. So on the way down, if they're an hour late, 25% discount. Actually, either down or up. And if it's two hours late, it's a 50% discount. So on the way down, they were like four hours and a little bit late. And, um, it was a hundred percent discount. So, and then on the way back, it was two hours late. So essentially the way we look at it, we love trains. We got paid to take a sleeper car, both directions.
SPEAKER_05:No way. That's amazing. Yeah. Wow. I wish air travel was, uh, was as strict as that. The only experience that I have in the U S on trains is I tried to do a cross country trip once. And by the time I made it to, I forget where the depot was San Diego, maybe the next train, I had to take the starlight express North Seattle and it was so late it was three or four hours late and had nowhere to go and the train station was like dark and dangerous I ended up grabbing a hotel and I was getting text messages from Amtrak and it was saying your estimated departure time was I don't know 3 a.m. or something like this however the train may be there at any time and and we'll give you 30 minutes notice. I said, well, how the hell am I supposed to have a sleep while I'm waiting for your delinquent train? And then when I got on the train, It was, it was gross. It was dirty. It was, it was a nightmare. It was noisy. And that was my, that was the end of any, you know, overnight, you know, cross country train travel in America. It was over. It was over. You may
SPEAKER_06:want to try the, I think Greyhound offers a service. You give that world next time. I
SPEAKER_05:think it was equally as good as the Greyhound service. And then last year, my wife and I went and hiked the West Highland trail and I thought, oh, I'm going to introduce her to train travels. So we took the, what is the name of it? Anyways, it's an overnight train from London up to Scotland. And let's just say we won't be going on an overnight train with my wife again.
SPEAKER_06:Okay. All right. Was it a decent experience on the train, you know, despite your wife's, you know, appreciation for it?
SPEAKER_05:it was okay. But again, we reserved a certain cabin and then we were, we were told as we boarded that that cabin was no longer available. So we're going to give you another one, which didn't have an en suite bathroom. Uh, and then there were some other issues. Yeah, there was a, in the adjacent bathroom, there was something loose and it was banging against the wall and I had to go repair the train so we could go to sleep. Anyways, it's just, it just ruined the night. So all of my recent training experiences have been, have been a nightmare. Although I'm still holding out that one of these days I will I will be able to do some sort of epic journey anyways.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah. Well, I wish you, I wish you better luck, but I have to say that the, the trains did, they were, they were well booked. They were well-timed. I did end up sitting on the floor for two and a half hours out of a, of a six hour trip from Strasbourg, France up to Frankfurt. But I, did sit in air condition and I did have an inflatable camp pillow. So it wasn't that bad. Nice. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:But anyways, enough talking about trains. Let me just quickly mention that the final payments are due for the 2025 Cannonball by Friday, August 29th. We will get Cannonball news later. You can skip forward to the chapter markers if you want, but I just want to hit that up now. And I also want to mention that there's a hundred dollar gift card from Nice CNC See? for the first person who emails me on Wednesday, August 26th. And you can find the email address down in the show notes. So good luck to everyone. Hey, when's this episode going to drop? This episode will drop on Wednesday, August 26th. All right. Just wanted to hear it again. Yeah. Wednesday, August 26th.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah. Thanks for that. Yep. We're going to be on the summer schedule for just a little while longer, and then we will get back to our regular weekly. So, hey, Aaron, I wanted to ask you, ask you if you, you know, I was just looking at the statistics, you know, sometimes I do that and you wouldn't believe where we are the number two podcast. It's always number two. I don't know, man. Where was it this week? Please tell me. It was for this month, last month, it was in Iceland. Ever since we talked to Mike about doing that and he's setting up his tours there, we've been crushing the market there, man.
SPEAKER_05:Nice. The wickedly large and expansive market of Iceland. We're crushing it. I love it. Congratulations.
SPEAKER_06:We're crushing it like ice cubes in a glass.
SPEAKER_05:That's it. Hey, speaking of that, if you could take two seconds, if you're on Apple Podcasts, could you take two seconds to just give us a five-star review? And I will pay you in IPAs the next time I see you. So please just take a second and click a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.
SPEAKER_06:I think a few episodes ago, you talked about why that's so important. And anyway, thank you very much for those of you who are doing that. It apparently makes a difference. How would we be number two otherwise?
SPEAKER_05:Absolutely. All hail the algorithm gods.
SPEAKER_06:All hail
SPEAKER_05:the algorithm gods. And speaking of AI and the algorithm, I was doing some research because we're setting up Isla Man TT miniseries that's going to come up next year. And I was trying to track down some authors. We figured out that there is, there are companies that are pumping out books in certain niches like ILMNTT and, you know, niche-y kind of easy to write books. And they have to be using AI because I was trying to find this author and like the author didn't really exist. I wonder if it was a pen name or something. And I did a lot of digging and surely it's a company that are making books that publications using AI and under fake pen names. So I found this one so-called author and this publisher, and then they had a bunch of books of like other races and then you know, cycling events and then hiking and stuff like this. So clearly just be be aware when you buy something, try to research the author and make sure it is a human being and a reputable source and not just using AI generation and independently publishing on Amazon. So it was a really big eye opener. And just so everyone knows, we're not AI, we're real. And that's why, you know, we're only number two. But if you could just take a little time and just make sure you're buying something that's that's done by a human and not just by the algorithm.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, but just to obviously support that, every single thing that is in the book club is a legitimate author and, as you well know, For those who have been listening, we've had most of them on the podcast, so they're all real.
SPEAKER_05:And speaking of that, I'm currently reading Ragged Edge. It's by Stuart Barker. He's a fantastic author. He used to have a band, and he's just a super cool guy. And he's like, he's an expert on the TT. And we've set up an interview with him in May, live in England. But if listeners have some ideas for TT episodes, whether you have someone that you admire in a TT, if you want to maybe know some background on certain subjects please send us an email and i'll be sure to include that in the mini series nice nicely
SPEAKER_06:done yeah that should be cool and um of course we will be in England together.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, that'll be fun.
SPEAKER_06:All right. So we have the TAT, the Trans American Trail interview with Crankshaft Culture. And that is with Andy and Mercedes Lilienthal. I thought that was a great interview, by the way. So let's roll it.
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SPEAKER_05:Andy and Mercedes, welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks. Thanks for having us.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, you guys are crankshaft culture. And the first time we met was in the Alcan 5000 Winter Rally. Andy, maybe you can tell me what vehicle you were driving.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, we were driving an Ineos Grenadier Trialmaster, a 4x4 BMW-powered bot. It is from Ineos, which is a UK brand.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, that was a sweet-looking ride, and there was another one there, and you guys kind of stole the show. So we were in our FJ Cruiser a la 2010, but I think we shared a little bit of synergy there with the ugly, boxy trucks that were just super cool.
SPEAKER_07:Not only that, but I think you actually beat us at the ice racing, so...
SPEAKER_05:Well, we did have a supercharger instead of tire, so it was an unfair advantage. But thank you for for letting us know. But but you guys did really well. Maybe you can tell us what class you're in and how you placed.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, we were in the 2S or the 2SOP class, which is for trucks and SUVs. And amazingly, we won the class. We have been doing time, speed, distance rally for some time, but we had never had a finish that good.
SPEAKER_02:And it's basically just, you know, your route book and hand calculations. So SOP is seat of pants. So as a navigator, Andy drove, I navigated. Basically, it's a lot of long form math and figuring out incremental times as to where you're supposed to be at any given second.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, we have an interview coming right after yours. I haven't told you yet, but I interviewed Satish and we went through, yeah, and we went through his whole history and it's really amazing. There's such a humble group of people that they won't offer up all the details, but I prided out of them. But starting with SOP, it's really challenging. You use a roadbook and tulips. Maybe you can describe how you get from point A to point B.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So as a navigator, every rally or every TSD or time speed distance rally is a little bit different. So the Alcan 5000 rally doesn't actually use tulip notes where they have tulip notes basically are the little arrows that say you're going over a bridge or here's this structure or turn left with an arrow that goes left. It basically is just a long form written book. So it's about a half an inch thick. It seems to get thicker every time, I swear. And it basically has the overall odometer reading, and then the incremental odometer reading, and then in written form, what you're supposed to be doing. So whether it is in transit saying, okay, in 252 miles, you turn left on, you know, whatever highway it may be, uh, or in actual TSD competition mode, it'll tell you also, uh, the speed you're supposed to be going, how much you turn or, you know, where you turn or do you stop or, or those kinds of things. And you adjust that way.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, it's pretty intense. And I always say that the drive never steals out of the glory, but it's really the navigator that gets you to the finish line and not driving over the embankment that's around the corner. And you're here today to talk about the TAT, the Transamerica Trail, but I just have to ask you about another rally you were in, because I follow you guys on social media, and that was the 2024 Baltic Sea Circle Rally. Maybe Mercedes, you can tell me what type of vehicle you were in for that rally.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so Andy and I talked to Volkswagen of Germany, and I'm dual citizen of German-American. And the rally starts in Germany and winds all the way around the Baltic Sea. And so when we talked to them, the ID Buzz van, the new EV van was out there. That was a short wheelbase version. That was a different battery pack and whatnot than what North America was even getting. At that time when we did this rally, we have yet to even have any media drive it or this or that. We saw one at the global reveal, but nobody had their hands on it yet. So we're very fortunate to basically camp sleep and drive out of that for 16 days.
SPEAKER_05:Taylor, the actual host of the podcast and I were in Norway last June, and we had seen those peppered everywhere. And the whole time we're like, oh, that would be so cool to go and drive that around the Baltic. And Andy, did you find a major difference between doing a rally in a gas powered vehicle and an electric vehicle?
SPEAKER_07:Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was it was quite different. Of course, you know, performance is one thing, but just the you know, having to deal with the charge infrastructure. The Baltic Sea Circle rally isn't nearly as structured as the Alcan 5000. So it's basically you leave Hamburg, Germany, on one day and 16 days later, you have to show back up in Hamburg, Germany, and there is no real route. There's no anything that you have to do. They give sort of instructions and whatnot, but we had to do things like charge along the way. So that created a much different scenario than Alcan.
SPEAKER_02:And we had to finish 16 days in nine countries later in a one and a half hour timeframe in order to legitimately finish.
SPEAKER_07:It was a window of one. Right, right.
SPEAKER_02:And so, you know, all of that and they had daily challenges and multiple different fun little kitschy things to do. So but as journalists, not only were we test driving and reviewing the vehicle, the ID buzz, we were photographing it and we were doing social media on it. And so we had a whole bunch of other duties in addition to trying to do some of these challenges that they had, which were all kind of fun and silly and quirky.
SPEAKER_05:I love it whenever you guys have an oddball vehicle because it just proves to the You don't have to have this overly built, you know, internal combustion engine to do everything. We are breaking the barriers and you are able to do these things. And here you are just regular people, you know, crushing those miles, which is really great. So you recently did the TAT and you were in a Subaru. Maybe, Andy, you can tell us about the Subaru and how you ended up with that car doing this challenge.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, so it was a 2025 Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness. So this is their smallest of the Wilderness family of vehicles, which are all a little bit more ruggedized. It's not just a set of all trains they throw on there. It has more ground clearance. It has a larger differential. It has a variety of sort of accoutrements that are going to make it more off-road capable. We had driven that at the media launch the year before, and it was surprisingly capable. capable. So the TAT is something that I had kind of thought would be really interesting. And a few years ago, I met people that were doing it in four-wheel drives, and I thought, yeah, man, I'd like to do that. And so... Mercedes and I are always kind of looking for the next big adventure. And I thought, hey, you know, we worked with Subaru in 2022 and did the Alcan 5000 summer rally. I wonder if they'd be interested in loaning us a Crosstrek Wilderness or a Wilderness vehicle of some sort. We figured it would be either the Crosstrek or, but the Forrester Wilderness was still the older generation at the time. So we approached them and they said yes.
SPEAKER_05:I talked to a lot of people at rallies and such about, about our particular cross-country rally, and everyone always mentions the TAT, and people are like, well, why don't you just do the route for our rally across the TAT? And Mercedes, maybe you can explain to people how long it took you to do the TAT.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you know, the Transamerica Trail, or as Andy and I have been kind of calling it TAT, just because it's short and easy and rolls off the tongue, but it took us 29 days, and I think it was 300 and what was it? Let me look here. 317 hours and five minutes. So think about that. And our longest drive day was 13 hours and 40 minutes. But most of them were anywhere from nine and a half to mostly 12 hours plus every single day of those 29 days. So if you want to do a time speed distance rally, that might be a challenge because we, including that, had 39 deviations that I had to figure out. you know, oh, there is a bridge out. OK, we need to turn out of here. Or there's, you know, lots of flooding, tons of flooding. I mean, we thought that North Carolina was going to be bad, but Oklahoma was really bad. Tennessee was really bad. And we're in Arkansas. We had two days of severe storms. We couldn't dodge or outrun wildfires. I mean, you name it down trees. It would be one heck of an adventure. I'll tell you that much if you had time to be distanced into it.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. And that's exactly what I tell everyone. And there's always someone who's, you know, a badass hardcore guy and he's like no man we can do it i'm like listen it's so hard from an organizational standpoint to organize that with all the deviations and things closed from day to day plus people don't have the time when we organize a rally for regular people to show up to very hard to dedicate any more between eight and ten days plus on either side you got to get there and you have to get home but anyways i digress uh andy maybe we can do some geek talk here what kind of tires did you run what kind of off-road gear did you have and camping? Did you stay in hotels? Maybe you could just give us your build overview.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. So we wanted to keep it sort of minimal. So we didn't go too crazy, but we knew there were things that we wanted to add. So first of all, and they ended up being probably one of the most key modifications we made were rally, sorry, were primitive racing skid plates. So we added front, mid and rear skid plates to three 16ths aluminum. And I, I would have done it without the and once we finished, we really realized we couldn't have done it without them because we had 9.3 inches of ground clearance, actually a little bit more because we ran a slightly taller tire, but they took some serious hits and that's not because we were driving crazy, it's because the trails had rocks. So we changed tires, we went to a BFGoodrich KO2, we went from a 60 series to a 60 series, 65 series, getting us about 0.9 inches of ground clearance. So we'll take every little bit we can get. We ran a Rally Innovations light bar on the front with Baja Designs XLR Pro LED lights. We ran some gear from ARB. We brought a refrigerator, freezer from ARB, an awning from them, an air compressor from them, their speedy seal, spare tire kit. We ran kind of a crucial bit of gear. Whenever you're traveling in a smaller vehicle, which we're pretty accustomed to doing, anything you could do to add more space. And we had a rooftop tent, so we couldn't put a box or basket on top. We ran a rigged supply, ultra swing, spare tire carrier. And on that, We had a full-size spare, but we also had our Maxtrax Extreme boards. We had a Trasharoo that held trash in our laundry. We also had their SideHack extension, which allowed us to carry five gallons of fuel. We shod those tires onto a set of Rika Seeker wheels. We run those on our personal Crosstrek, although we went to a 17-inch. We brought an EcoFlow power system. Basically, this was the Delta 3 Plus, which is portable power bank and it had a really interesting bit of kit that we'd never seen and never used before but it's an 800 watt alternator charger so you run wiring from your battery back to this power bank and as you drive it will charge the power system and then at night you can using the app you can reverse that and it'll keep your battery on the car topped up because we're running this fridge and we turn this fridge freezer off zero times in 29 days we We definitely ran that, and it was amazing. And then just a couple of recovery things. We had a Factor 55 hitch link, which goes into the two-inch receiver. Now the rigged supply swing-away tower carrier goes into the Subaru's receiver. And then it has its own receiver that we were able to plug that little guy in. And then, like I said, we were able to hang the max tracks off of that using a holder. We opted for the Xtreme boards, which are kind of their most, well, Xtreme, but they have another set called their light boards, which would have worked. It's a newer set. at a lighter set, kind of at, you know, aimed towards the CUV market, but we opted to go with the extreme just in case.
SPEAKER_05:Wow, that sounds like quite the rig. It was probably fun building it. How long did you guys spend building that rig?
SPEAKER_07:So it's funny you mentioned that because We have built other of our rigs in the past for even when a manufacturer helps out. But they are headquartered. Subaru is headquartered in New Jersey. And they said they'll build it because we had to fly from Portland, Oregon with our gear to New Jersey. So they said they'd build it up. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, because the Transamerica Trail starts in Nags Head, North Carolina. So it wouldn't have made any sense for us to have actually physically built it or shop out here and then ship it all the way over there and us fly all the way over there. So, you know, logistically it just made sense for them to build it.
SPEAKER_05:Well, that's a, that's a sweet deal. If you ask me, um, Mercedes, maybe you could tell us what you discovered about the, the TAT when you decided to do the Shirley, you mess or saw some history. Maybe you can tell us what you found out about the, about the trail.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Um, you know, Andy can attest as to how the trail came about, um, a little bit better than I can. Um, but as far as what we learned about the trail, oh my gosh. And we were expecting every type of and we hit that, and then even more so. We were expecting pinstriping, we were expecting rocky ledges, we were expecting tons of boulders, washouts, keeping very close tabs on the post-hurricane situation with what's being fixed, what's not. As a navigator, I tried my best to understand the route, which we both did paper maps and turn-by-turn instructions, as well as GPX files. So you could buy either or, or both. And we always plan for redundancy contingencies. So we did both. And I went through and looked at the map, where it's going, what states it's going, and then basically analyzed that with Google Maps or Google Earth to find out, okay, what's really washed out. So I looked at, you know, all the DMV websites, the, you know, forestry websites, this and that to see what road closures there were. And some of them we did research did in fact happen. And there were a lot more that were, you know, recent that we were, I wasn't able to find online, nor was Andy.
SPEAKER_07:The history real briefly was a a man by the name of San Carrero. He was a pharmacist actually in Mississippi and he loved adventure riding and this was the 1980s and he started mapping out a route starting in Mississippi and then heading west. Excuse me, yeah, west. And apparently he didn't set out to make this big Transamerica Trail, but it ended up just, he stitched all these things together and eventually ended up with this amazing route. Took him over a decade to do this. And so we're very glad he did that. I
SPEAKER_05:think everyone in the overlanding community, whether it be on two wheels or four wheels, we all benefit from that vision. And it's great that it's still around today. So where did you physically pick up the TAT? I know you went all the way to the ocean, but where does the trail officially start on the east side?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so we were in Philadelphia with Subaru Corporate. And then we took receipt of the vehicle. We finished some last minute things, packed all of our gear because we flew with all of our camping stuff and vehicle recovery stuff and tools, all that type of thing. And it took us, what, about seven and a half hours, I think, to drive down to Nags Head, North Carolina, the official start. So we tried to find camping as close as we could. Our primary was to tent camp on the rooftop tent as many nights as we could, and then basically start from Nags Head, North Carolina, work our way 29 days later to Port Orford, Oregon.
SPEAKER_05:Wow, that's quite the journey. What an accomplishment. And let's talk about season. We're now in August, August the 4th, 2025. We're a We started on
SPEAKER_07:June 15th. 16th, I believe. June
SPEAKER_02:19th.
SPEAKER_07:I'm sorry, June 19th. We flew to the East Coast on the 16th and then drove from New Jersey. And then on the 19th, we actually started from Nags Head, North Carolina.
SPEAKER_02:And basically, summer, I think from mid-June or late June all the way through early September is the best time to do TAT because the San Juans and Colorado can get snow pretty much any time of the year. And a lot of the times, if you were to try to do spring or fall or even winter, they're in impassable and a lot of the roads are closed. So that window, and it's on their website too, is kind of the best time to go. So we try to err on the earlier part of that.
SPEAKER_05:Let's talk about the other traffic on the trail. Did you guys see any adventure bikes? Was there anything pantomime or silly that you saw? What kind of other trail goers did you see?
SPEAKER_07:You know, it's really funny that you asked that question because we saw nobody. And I mean, it was like Like isolation. I mean, we just couldn't believe it. You know, when you go through towns, because you do go through these little towns and hamlets and villages and all this, and, you know, there'd be people there. But when you turned down these dusty roads, dusty roads, these mountain roads, everybody went away. I think, honestly, in 7100 plus miles, 3100 plus were off pavement. I mean, we probably ran into 20 people across the entire country, if that.
SPEAKER_02:And the other thing was, is we did not and we're hoping to run into other TAT riders or TAT people in four wheel drives or all wheel drives, you know, which the isolation aspect of it was quite extreme. I mean, Andy and I are used to doing, you know, long distance endurance stuff, crazy things, you know, being stuck in a steel box for however many days. But twenty nine. of those, I mean, that's the longest that we've ever been together.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. And, you know, it was just incredible. We would stop in towns and we had a thing that just said Transamerica Trail across the side and not even in big font. And then when we'd be in a town, we would get occasionally someone come up to us and say, are you doing the Transamerica Trail? I said, yeah, yeah. And we would get people say, oh yeah, I did it on my motorcycle. I, you know, and I did it and I do sections of it. And so we would, we would get people who had done it before. But yeah, we didn't run into anybody along the way that was actually on the path.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I think the most conversations we had were, uh, oddly enough at grocery stores or the occasional liquor store. Cause you know, you need to unwind a bit at night here and there, but, uh, you know, for instance, food ranch, I don't even know. I think it was Idaho, Utah. Okay. Uh, there was a food ranch and we got, uh, went in and he was trying to find a coffee just cause we wanted to just buy coffee and not do it at camp and, and, and, uh, needed to resupply. And, uh, I had the window down. I was working on some stuff, trying to figure out the next part of the roots and, and I, or the route. And I hear a An older gentleman's like, yeah, those are vehicle recovery boards. And I kind of popped my head out. And then there's a couple other people and they start talking about the car. And I said, hi, fellas. And oh, is this your car? Well, you know, and then it went down the whole thing. And lo and behold, we talked probably 15, 20 minutes. And Andy comes out with groceries. He's like, oh, you got an audience.
SPEAKER_05:You guys are always performers. I love it. It's really great. to hear your reporting on the actual traffic, because in our minds, we always think that it's a super highway of awesome off-road vehicles and motorcycles, but it's obviously quite the opposite. And you had mentioned, Mercedes, you had some navigation challenges. Maybe you can tell us what... made you divert? And was it locked gates? Was it terrain? Was it weather? Maybe just give us an overview on some of those diversions?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yes, yes, yes. And yes. I mean, we, we had pretty much every type of diversion possible. The eastern side, like I had mentioned, severe flooding, the storms were dropping as we got there. So we were constantly I would say at least two weeks or so constantly dodging severe lines of thunderstorms, and also ones that would pop up like popcorn and they would be dropping, you know, hail. They'd have 60 mile plus an hour winds. They'd have torrential rain that would dump inches in a couple of hours. I mean, in a rooftop tent in a Subaru or any vehicle, you just don't want to be in that type of scenario. So the eastern side had mud, had flooding, had washouts, had all sorts of down trees, a number of down trees. And we thought about if we wanted to bring a chainsaw We saw then how loaded down we were, and we're still under the overall weight rating that's required for the car, but But we knew that, do we want to bring it? Not. Okay. We had a good ax. We're like, okay, if it's something really big, we're just going to turn around. And actually we got past most of the downed trees, except a couple were just way too big, even for the chains that we were planning on bringing, which we didn't. Once we got out more towards Oklahoma, we still had a lot of severe storms. That's where more mud came in with Mississippi and Oklahoma, which we did not want to get mired in mud. And then the Western side, once you started hitting Colorado, it's all forest fires. So we had wildfires and we had burned areas that they had sectioned off, especially in Oregon. Then we also had even sinkholes in Oregon. There were some areas, one road, that we knew based on a rider that went through and posted a crazy photo of a washout where there was maybe one foot wide left of actual usable road. And he was going to try to pass it. But by the time we left, I asked, I said, where exactly is this so that we know? Cause we can't do it in a car. And and I didn't get the answer. So I think it was national forest three, three, five, three in the rogue area of Oregon, if I remember right. And yeah, we were, we were right after sinkhole number what?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. The ironic part was that sinkhole was the last day. We thought we'd coast into Port Orford, Oregon, but the last day ended up being quite difficult. And we had this sinkhole, which was ridiculous.
SPEAKER_02:Well, yeah. And that was after multiple washouts. And I told Andy, I said, we travel, whether it's on-road, off-road, flying, or any which way. If one of us is feeling A little bit apprehensive or a little bit like this just isn't the right thing to do or nervous or dangerous or something like that. It's a non-issue. We got to get out of it. We got to figure out a different way. And that's when I basically told Andy after the second or third, like bad area of three, three, five, three, believe it is. I'm like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. knowing that I think that was our last hundred miles to go. And we had to reroute quite, quite extensively to try to get around it.
SPEAKER_07:You know, I was like, I think we can make it. And she's like, no, I don't think that's a good idea. I think we should turn around. I mean, this is why women live longer than
SPEAKER_05:men. Listen, I've been guilty of making a lot of poor choices, but I'm still here so far. And, and we have great stories because of it. So we make the stories and they, and they save us from, from absolute danger. There's always a lot of discussion with this particular trail about, uh, And maybe you can tell us the mix of where they named roads, where they for service roads. And did you ever run into any private property issues?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, private property, not really, thankfully. But Andy, you can add to this. But on the eastern side, we noticed or as the navigator, I noticed a lot of gaps there. branch roads, things that were named differently. Hollow. Yeah, hollow. There were a lot of hollow ending roads, which was kind of new to us. But once we got more to the western half, everything was pass, like Geyser Pass, Ofer Pass, California Pass, things like that, especially in San Juan.
SPEAKER_05:There's always a discussion of you physically can't do it because of gates and private property. And you've obviously proven that it is passable with some minor diversions. And Andy, did you experience any water crossings Did you get any awesome social media of you splashing through the river?
SPEAKER_07:First of all, we adhere to tread lightly principles, so no big splashes, no crazy driving. We did run across a number of water crossings, a lot of them in Tennessee, Arkansas, that kind of area, and Oklahoma, and There were a few that we would get to and we'd either walk or we'd get a stick. And we were just like, this is too deep for a Subaru. I mean, we weren't even on a 28 inch tire and it's not our car. So we were not gonna do anything that we could end up ruining the car, hydro locking, anything like that. Now, we did run across a whole set of these water crossings that are big cement slabs And sometimes there's people there playing and, you know, families, you know, in the river. And I had never seen this before, to be honest, in person
SPEAKER_02:and water over. Yeah, literally gushing over that cement slab.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. And so I pulled we pulled up to it. I mean, it was only maybe a foot deep. And We thought, okay, yeah, and that we could do. You could feel in some of the deeper ones that were maybe up to about the hubs, you could feel the water moving, you know, and it's not something that we were ever in danger of being carried downstream by, and I understand these are more difficult for people on two-wheel vehicles than they are for four wheels, and I guess they can get slippery and all that, but we didn't have any problem crossing any of them.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, those concrete slabs are a godsend if you're on four wheels, but if you're on two, it is literally like a sheet of ice. And you're like, yeah, because it's got growth on it. And the slightest, you have the water pushing you one way and then it's very common to have a nice little bath and hopefully you shut your bike off. But yeah, we're really impressed to hear that, you know, the Subaru was able to take you places that people traditionally think it's only for a 4x4. Maybe you can give us your opinion on the Subaru and the fact that it was able to accomplish this.
SPEAKER_07:It was... Definitely something I found out that that little Crosstrek wilderness punches above its weight off-road. I mean, we're pretty experienced four-wheel drive people with multiple vehicles that have low range transfer cases and such. And as the driver, I was regularly impressed with the capability. It has X mode, which is a computer controlled driving mode. You can change it to, for example, the dirt snow. It's going to sort of deaden the accelerator pedal, your throttle response, and let you go a little bit slower, more precisely, Kind of like a simulated low range. Now, it's not going to be, say, an Ineos Grenadier or an FJ Cruiser off-road, but it does pretty amazingly well. The first time we ever experienced this, this was in the Appalachian Mountains, and it was kind of late. We were trying to get out of the forest, and there was a road that was super washed out. And I just, I mean, literally there was another car's entire splash guard that had fallen off or been ripped off. And I thought, well, I mean, it's a good thing we had the skid plates, but you just kind of would get to these obstacles and let the all-wheel drive system figure it out. And it's amazing because you can feel it going, oh, I think we need to send power to the left rear. And it does it. And it just kind of crawls over it. So it's not going to be doing the Rubicon Trail anytime soon, but it was really quite good on the Transamerica Trail.
SPEAKER_02:And I think to add to that, um, the approach, break over and departure angles were, were really quite impressive. Uh, there were several instances where I got out and I spotted Andy coming down, especially in, and this is, we've been told about this and warned about this part of the road, war loop road in Arkansas. Uh, actually if, um, if people visit crankshaft culture on Instagram, our latest reel on day 12, uh, highlights that via video. And you could see me physically spotting Andy coming down, but especially the departure angle, um, you know, on the back end is just, it's really impressive. And I mean, we had hardly any scrapes. If anything, it was the bottom of the max tracks, just a tiny bit.
SPEAKER_07:We did get one guy when we made it to a cinnamon, up cinnamon pass, which was to over 12,500 feet. A gentleman in a Tundra came over and he said, how did you get up here? And we're like, well, we drove. He's like, well, you must've just dragged your underbelly the whole way. I said, no, with a Subaru, like the Crosstrek Wilderness, go slowly, pick your lines. Yep. And it does remarkably well. I was thoroughly impressed.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I think when you have the underweight or the vehicle with not the biggest ground clearance, there's a lot more satisfaction to doing like those passes in Colorado. And the reaction you get from people is usually a little more kudos because they've got showed up there with their$90,000 highly modified four by four. And you're like, yeah, I did this in the Subaru and it's just as awesome. So it's a little more gratifying.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and I think Andy and I have a habit of picking unconventional vehicles and setting ourselves up for bigger challenges. But that for us, it's how you use it. Like Andy said, you know, it's pick your lines, all these different kinds of things. But, you know, I mean, heck, we took our, you know, 1992 Mitsubishi Pajero right hand drive diesel all the way up to the Arctic Ocean for the Alcan 5000 rally in 2020. And we succeeded in the winter, in the winter. Yeah. In the winter through blizzards, through, you know, minus 43, minus 43 Fahrenheit, all that type of stuff. And again, the diesel and we didn't have it gel up and like, you know, completely. Yeah, but that's for another podcast. But You know, so again, unconventional vehicles, seeing if we could succeed. And if you don't, then you learn. But if you do, it's one heck of a story.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. And that's why you're here. And you were even more unconventional. You stuck a rooftop tent on top of this Subaru. First of all, did it even fit? And how did you do at night with actual comfort?
SPEAKER_07:So we went with a Thule approach, which is actually a rooftop tent that sold through Subaru accessories. Yeah. We had not used one of those rooftop tents before. We've owned a rooftop tent for years. And it was really good quality. And it fits fine. They have a set of crossbars and all that for the Crosstrek. And it worked quite well. Truth be told, I think if I was going to do it again, I'd go with something that was more of a hard shell. more aerodynamic, might save a few miles per gallon. But even so, the Thule approach was quite a bit larger than the rooftop tent we used to own. And it was very comfortable at night. It had windows and rain fly and had plenty of room for our sleeping bag. We could leave our sleeping bags and even our pajamas and whatnot up there and just close everything up. So it's pretty quick to set up. We got into a real good routine. And yeah, rooftop tents are a good, you're off the ground, they're good in winter, or I'm sorry, they're good in foul weather. and that kind of stuff. Critters. You're off the ground for critters and mud and all that. So yeah, I guess had we not done that, we could have brought a ground tent and put like a cargo box on the top and kept more gear up there. But I don't regret the way we did it.
SPEAKER_02:No, no, I think it was very comfortable. And of the nights that we did have, I think there was one, where was it that we woke up at four in the morning with just torrential rain?
SPEAKER_07:We were in Jasper. Tennessee.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So the fireside kind of remote camp area. But when we were there and I mean, it just poured and poured and poured and poured. And, you know, the first, like I said, the two weeks, I think the humidity played such a huge role. Extreme humidity, dew points of like middle to upper 70s to near 80 and temps of, you know, gosh, close to 100 degrees every single day. I mean, we had every day other than one at 90 degrees or above. And we had six days almost straight of hundreds and above, up to 111. But the first half was all extreme humidity. So the tent, albeit a very good tent, didn't dry out. So we'd had to pack it away wet because we didn't have time to just let it sit out there and get warm up and this and that. It's just the community killed it in that respect.
SPEAKER_07:We were on the road for 29 days and we camped 23 of those. The nights we were in motels were almost exclusively because of severe weather. And we did get a hotel the last night in Port Orford.
SPEAKER_02:Because, you know, you have to. It was the day of celebration.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, the day of celebration and the day of having a shower.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. And the day that it actually ended up being our 21st wedding anniversary, oddly enough, too.
SPEAKER_05:You romantic devil, you. You really know how to treat a lady.
SPEAKER_02:I loved every bit of it.
SPEAKER_05:Good, good. Yeah, right answer. Very good. Mercedes, I want to ask you a geek question. And it says you mentioned, sir, you mentioned earlier that you navigated partially by GPX track. Could you tell us when you were given the GPX track, which device used to display it? And when you were looking at the GPX tracks, were you able to get turn by turn directions out of them or did you just follow the line?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's a really good question. So basically you buy different GPX tracks So it's not one big track because people want it for us. For instance, we bought the Atlantic Ocean Spur, which is one of the easternmost section, then the main Transamerica Trail east to west, then the Pacific Ocean Spur. But that comes with several separate files in which Andy put together to kind of stitch and make one big one. We had a Garmin try to overland device that he mainly used, and that showed the route. I used that somewhat just to verify, all right, here's the red line, here's the route, this and that. So it's a track, not a route. So as Andy's alluding to, it only shows you where you're at. And if you're along the line or off the line, you can't get turn by turn on it. So what he was starting to say was the turn by turn Directions I had via paper. So a lot of you moto guys have used a roll chart holder before or maybe many times. I never have. So we had to figure out how to bring it up to the car and see if it fit and, you know, roll it back. And no, that was kind of a pain in the butt for both of us. But so I had paper maps and I had turn by turn directions. So that's what I mainly used. And then we also used Onyx. which was great because then I could look at trail conditions. I can look at wildfire issues. I can look at all sorts of different things and real life data of what people have said about War Loop Road, about, you know, overpass and that kind of thing and go from there.
SPEAKER_07:And I just want to give Mercedes a huge shout out because as a driver, I'm steering the car, I'm pushing the pedals and then trying to figure out when I get off the trail. Mercedes did an amazing job keeping us on the Transamerica Trail. and I would miss the occasional turn. Too busy talking. I don't know how you moto guys do it solo. I'm looking at the scenery and thinking about this place and how amazing it is, and then I'll blow past the corner and go, oh no.
SPEAKER_02:You got to turn, you got to turn. Yeah, exactly. On gravel, but then back up or turn around and then go back.
SPEAKER_07:There's thousands of turns on this thing. Oh, yeah. But she did a great job now.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and thank you. I appreciate that. But I mean, you've done one heck of a job driving. I mean, you know, the lines that you pick, the slowness, you listen to me when I'm out spotting. But I mean, you've got natural intuition. And I mean, that really carries you far.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, that's fantastic. You guys are a great team. So what's next? What's the next big adventure for Crankshaft Culture?
SPEAKER_07:Well, we're going to be doing the 2025 Alcan 5000. We actually leave, oh, in about 25 days for that. Yeah, it's under a month. Yeah, it's a big deal. And so we're actually going to be partnering with Honda and doing it in a 2026 Honda Passport Trail Sport. So that's their new sort of off-road centric five-seat SUV. I was at the launch of that product in Puerto Rico earlier this year and got to drive it off-road and on-road. partially through the jungle and it should be a fantastic Alcan vehicle. The three things Mercedes and I always say you need in an Alcan vehicle, summer or winter, power, comfort, And ground clearance. And so the Passport Trail Sport should have that in spades.
SPEAKER_05:Wow. Congratulations, guys. That's going to be a great adventure. And, you know, maybe you can tell us how the summer rally has evolved. I know there's a lot of ADV bikes now entering that. And to be honest with you, I don't know how you do an actual TSD marathon on a motorcycle myself because navigating is hard enough, never mind riding up to the Arctic Circle. But maybe you can tell us how you've noticed the the feel get more diverse over the last few summer rallies you've been on?
SPEAKER_07:So this is actually only the second summer rally we've done. We did a 2022, but I can tell you one thing I can definitely tell you is the difference between summer and winter vehicles is different. When we did the 2022 summer rally, there were a variety of at least two or three vintage Mini Coopers. It's probably not something you're going to take on the winter rally. You get more of the vintage vehicles in the summer. And we're told, and actually I think we can both attest to this, that the roads are actually worse in the summer because the potholes aren't filled in with snow and ice. So there's much greater chance for getting flat tires. And knock on wood, we have never experienced a flat tire on the event. That's us knocking on some wood. And of course, the route changes every year. And or every time we do this this year, we're going to be going up through D.C. and then Yukon into Alaska. There's going to be an extreme control optional that goes up into the Northwest Territories up on the Dempster. And we're going to do as much gravel as possible, which should be over a thousand miles this year. A
SPEAKER_02:thousand ninety miles.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So we do it all.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, but it is definitely different. The winter one is so extreme. Great word. It's so extreme. There's always that threat of dying. I mean, I know they have a sweeps team and all that, but at temperatures of minus 45, minus 40 Celsius or Fahrenheit, you really got to to think about that. And this summer, you know, it can be hot and there's a lot more bugs.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, the summer rally for me is the only one you can go on a motorcycle, obviously. Well, I shouldn't say that. I've seen people ride motorcycles in the Arctic in the winter, but they're especially kind of crazy. But for me, I actually don't have a lot of interest in the summer rally. It's just... it's bugs. It's, you know, it's hot. There's a lot of traffic. There's RVs. I'm really interested in the winter rally and I would very much like to, uh, to do it again. So maybe I'll definitely see you guys on the next, the next winter rally.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I think, you know, uh, you mentioned RVs. There's actually not very many RVs at all. Um, because we're in so many, when the farther North that you go and maybe Andy, you feel differently, but There are, you know, we start near Seattle every year, right? So we start in Kirkland, Washington. But for me, it's the long haul truck drivers, you know, the long haulers that are really, I don't want to say the concern, but they own the roads. Once you get farther north in British Columbia, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Alaska, really give them a wide berth. Let them know you're there. You know, all those types of things would be very gracious because that's their livelihood. They own the road. And when you're that far north, maybe you feel differently, but I haven't really seen a ton of RVs or like slow campers. I mean, you might see occasional, but.
SPEAKER_07:I think that if you're on the actual Alcan Highway, you know, the main road that goes all the way up to Alaska. Yeah, you'll run into a fair bit of RVs and some slower traffic, but yeah, the Alcan route often deviates off of the main road and you're on, you know, some of the smaller stuff. And I'm with her. I think I was more concerned about the semi-truck traffic than I was RVs.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, that's often a common discussion with motorcyclists is these trucks that go by and they're not slowing down and fair enough, I get it. But on a bike, especially, you're going to have a mouthful of gravel and so on and so forth. But But we'll definitely be excited to see your pictures on social media. I'll put the links to all your socials in the show notes. I'm also going to put your stats for the Transamerica Trail that are fresh. This is accurate data. This is not scuttlebutt and rumor. This is from Andy and Mercedes. And we'll put that in the show notes. And I want to thank you guys for coming on the podcast. And I'm looking forward to seeing your next adventure on your Honda.
SPEAKER_07:Thanks so much. Yeah. It's our pleasure. I appreciate you having us on the show.
SPEAKER_08:Is that Jimmy's bike you're riding? Uh-uh. It's mine.
SPEAKER_06:We're back. Yeah. That was a nice interview. First of all, I thought the, just on a technical aspect, two technical aspects. One is that I'm not sure what they both had mics or they're both speaking at the same mic, but they never stepped on each other and the audio quality that they put out was amazing. So I thought that was great on a technical point.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I have a big technical briefing before interviews now. So it was nice to edit
SPEAKER_06:that one, that's for sure. Yeah, good. And the other thing is, you know, We met Andy and we spent time with them, whether it's the gas station, fueling in the transfers between the TSD portions in the Alcan. In sitting with Andy, he is so... He is such a techie. He's got so much, like when he goes through the interview and he lays out all the details of things he had on that car, I was like, oh my God, I'm having a hard time following it. But it was all so dead accurate. I was really impressed by that.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, they built the car to their spec. And then, you know, they relied on those components and they relied on that car to get them across the country. So you better hope it works when you're in the middle of some hollow and you're high centered and you're relying on the car to get you home.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, absolutely. They did have good things to say about the Subaru. And also, you know, they are journalists and Mercedes writes some great stuff and they do great content together. So I guess one of the things I wanted to say is that the synergy between the two of them is what makes that crankshaft culture and makes them so successful in what they do is that they have great energy together. And I think what's really easy to see is the level of respect and trust they have for one another. And it comes down to things like if one of us doesn't feel good about it, we just bail. We go, nope, we're not doing this. And that's nice that they have that level of respect and trust with each other. And I think that's what makes them so good at what they do.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. And a segue into the next interview is they've been doing that for a long time and all this stuff doesn't come easy. It doesn't come, people don't trust you with their cars and publishing things. you know, your first time out. They've been doing it for decades. And that brings us to the Satish interview. And he is a TSD, the TST rally champion. Maybe you can read his resume for us.
SPEAKER_06:I'll try to get through this. It's a big resume and I'm just talking about the wins. So Satish Gopalkrishnan, he is super nice. We had a chance to meet and spend time with him and also in the 2024 OutKamp 5000. So that's 5000 miles, 8,000 kilometers over 10 days. So it's a lot of driving, a lot of time with you, Aaron. Sorry. All right. So here's his resume and then we'll get to the interview. So a TSD rally, so time, speed, distance rally resume. Here we go. So it's done 160 plus rallies in 14 years and overall first place in 65 of them. So get this, it's over 40% first place finishes. So basically it's If Satish shows up at a rally, you're not going to win.
SPEAKER_05:no and then he has podiumed on almost all of those rallies so if he shows up to a rally he's at least getting on the podium which is amazing
SPEAKER_06:yeah so yeah and a lot of it has to do with in the interview you'll understand the technical aspect that he brings to it so it's not like he just got he shows up and he just wins you can listen to the interview and you'll understand exactly why and what he puts into it so um he has driven with uh severa she has navigated all but a handful of them and all the wins mentioned below have been with severe his wife as navigator. So here we go. This is cross countries. So these are cross country rally wins.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, they're not the rallies in series. So cross country are major multi-day thousands of mile events. So if you're doing, you know, the kind of TSD rallies that are on a Friday, Saturday, we're not talking about this. We're talking about major events only.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah. So here we go. Dakshindhare, India, 2011 win. Desert Storm, India, 2012 and 2014, win, first place. Raid to Himalaya, India, 2018, win. Alcan 5000, US and Canada, that's the one that we were in, 2022, and then that we were in 2024, win. Targa, Newfoundland, Canada, 2023, win. Press on Regardless, which is in Northern Michigan, I believe, and that's in the U.S. here, and that is a 2024 win. So these are his championship titles. This is crazy. All championship wins need podium finishes and at least five rallies in the same series. So India, FMSCI champion. Indian National Time Speed Distance Rally champion. United States Time Speed Distance Sports Car Club of America champion. National Course Rally Champion 2021, 22, 23, and 24. National Touring Rally Champion 2026, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024. United States Road Rally Challenge. This is insane. 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. And with that, roll the interview.
SPEAKER_00:Ladies and gentlemen, can 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.
SPEAKER_04:Cannonball! 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 list it on patreon.com. Links are in the show notes. Now, back to the riveting podcast in progress.
SPEAKER_05:Satish, welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks, Aaron,
SPEAKER_05:for having me. Excellent. And where are you today?
SPEAKER_01:I'm home in Jersey City, New Jersey.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I used to spend a bit of time in Jersey City as a yacht captain. We used to stop in the Jersey City Marina. Have you ever been over there?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, totally. So I used to rent near the marina until maybe five years back. And now we bought a condo on the other side, still on the waterfront.
SPEAKER_05:Nice. Yeah, it's a great place. Lots of fun. And you take the taxi into town for a big night out. It was a lot of fun there.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. It's a nice place to live. Yes, it's close to New York City, but we don't Right, yeah,
SPEAKER_05:that's a bit outrageous, isn't it? So listeners know we met last at the Alcan 5000 Winter Rally. That was that last year or the year before?
SPEAKER_01:That was 22, 24, sorry, 22 or summer 24. So last year, yes.
SPEAKER_05:And the Alcan 5000 is a TSD rally. That's a time, speed, distance rally. And this was not your first rodeo. Maybe you can bring us back to the beginning where you got your start in this type of rallying.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I've been rallying for about 15 years now. Most of my rallies are with my... wife, Savera. And as you know, any kind of motorsports rally, and especially TSD, you need two people in the cars, right? There's a driver and a navigator, and she has been my navigator for almost all the rallies I've done. I grew up in India. I used to live in India until 10 years back. I used to go to this, I mean, I was always interested in cars. I had a car, I would drive around. Savera and I were both interested in road trips. And there was this... I mean, this is like 2008 or whatever. So, I mean, these are the days of bulletin boards and stuff where, you know, you would have an interest and there would be an internet forum or a bulletin board around it and people would come and write and read and share experiences and stuff, right? So this bulletin board was about cars in India. So it's mostly for where to buy a used car, new car reviews and stuff like that. But there was also a travelogue section. So people would go to the various parts of India, road trips, and they would share their experiences and stuff. I used to visit that site often because I like reading about stuff. Anyway, so one travelogue talked about going to the Himalayas, driving around for five days, but it seemed like it was part of a convoy or whatever. But when I kept reading, no, it was some kind of competition. And it was something called time, speed, distance, rallying. And the people, the person who went, went in their own car with their spouse. And it sounded like a fun activity. I mean, it was... It sounded fun because they went to the Himalayas, obviously. For me, growing up in South India, the Himalayas was in the north and quite far away and mysterious and stuff. This guy also went from somewhere near where I lived. So he traveled for like three days in a car and did this thing and then came back and it sounded fascinating. So I read about what this thing was and I figured these are things called time-speed distance rallies, and I found out more, and I actually found an event that was going to happen six months from then, and then I kind of started preparing for it. So this is the background, like how I discovered time-speed distance rally. But the event itself was a multi-day, it was a five-day car rally that happened in the deserts of Rajasthan. So maybe 80% of the roads, there were no roads, the tracks were over sand and over dunes and stuff like that. And it was a time-speed distance event. So by the time I registered, without even really knowing what TSD was, there were already 50 cars and the entry list had filled up like months in advance. So one nice thing that what the organizers did was they offered a bootcamp to participants saying, hey, if you guys want to know what, a TSD rally is, come to this place in Delhi, stay, I mean, you have to pay for the class and you stay two days and then go. So Savera and I attended that. We learned the basics of what tulips are, what time, speed, and distance are, and what are the calculations that are required. And they gave us this four-function calculator, which is like, I don't know, like$2 or whatever. The simplest of the calculators. But they also showed us how to use the memory functions and store speeds and stuff like that. So we did that. We thought it was cool. We thought it was easy. Then we came back to Bangalore and then I looked around. So that's the other thing, right? Once you start some activity like this and you look deep, you see that there's a subculture of people that are out there who you didn't know before and who you didn't even know existed before. So Bangalore had, luckily for us, had a very thriving industry. DSD community. So there were a couple of motorsports clubs and they would do like one day rallies every month or whatever. So we found there was one. So we went for that. I did really badly because we thought what we thought was easy was really hard when we were driving in the car. But I also met a couple of people and we're also going to go to the same big event, desert event three months later. So we kind of pondered and they showed me the stuff they do. So I also figured the kind of equipment one needs to do a rally well. I mean, until now, I used to think it was calculation, but no, the most important thing is a trip meter or an odometer that you can calibrate and adjust and stuff so you don't lose your way because staying on course is the most important. Anyway, so that was our start. I mean, so this was... 15 years back, I found something accidentally on some bulletin board. And yeah, we started from there.
SPEAKER_05:Well, we have to, it makes me very happy to hear that you did poorly because every time I've met you, you've always been the overall winner. And not only have you been the overall winner, you've scored so few points that every night at the bar, there is all this talk about how on earth did you do that? But let's go back to India. And you mentioned that you started with the calculator and the a four function calculator. And it's my understanding that in a short period of time, you started writing software to run on a calculator to help you score better. Maybe you can talk about your first sort of innovations or your first programming to help you do TSD.
SPEAKER_01:I was fascinated by TSD or rallying in general. Rallying in general is basically going to new places, meeting people, driving my own car and, you know, Driving in places which otherwise I wouldn't drive. I mean, initially I thought there was math involved, right? So I like maths and I thought it was math. But it really isn't math, but it's more of automating stuff. And I'm a software engineer by trade and by passion. So I mean, I was writing code in high school. So this was very fascinating to me and right up my interest and aptitude, which is to somehow write software or use technology to make our lives easier in the car, as in both driver and navigator. So our first rally with this four-function calculator, I saw Savera struggle a lot, right? So it didn't feel like, hey, we are going to be driving in the Himalayas or desert or whatever and having fun. It didn't seem like we were going to have fun at all because of the stress levels, The amount of effort you had to put in and because of which the stress levels of the car, you know, going up and stuff like that. And when I looked at it, it's basically you're given a speed chart, like distances and speeds, right? So a speed chart, you can imagine, is just like an Excel sheet with three columns. The first column is the begin distance. Second column is end distance. And third column is speed. So if it says 0, 4.5, 30, it means go from 0 to 4.5 miles at 30 miles an hour. And 4.5 to 7, 20 means go from 4.5 to 7 at 20 miles an hour. It's as simple as that. And this is the data that we had to enter into the calculator or figure out the ideal time we should be at at any given spot. If they tell you that you have to travel at 60 miles an hour and you start... At 8 a.m., you zero your trip meter and you start at 8 a.m. At 8.01, you should be exactly at the one mile mark. It's basically that. So we also figured that if we kept doing this incrementally, saying that if we start being on time every mile or we start being on time every 0.5 miles and keep reducing that increment to the lowest number that we could possibly handle, we could probably do well. So how to get this ideal time as quickly as possible, right? So that was the goal. So I found this calculator that is a scientific calculator college kids use. I think in the US, they use TI and... asia and india and stuff they uh use casio i mean it's just a brand thing but it was it's one of those slightly bigger scientific calculators with a large display and a large uh keyboard where you type in and it was a good device uh for a bouncy rally car right so navigator could hold it it's big enough to hold and once you kind of figured the lay of the keyboard like you didn't even have to look at it you could feel it and type it and stuff yeah so that was my first software It was for a scientific calculator. It was hard to write because, I mean, it's not as easy as web programming where you have libraries and stuff like that. All you could do in that SDK or the system or whatever was you could just plot a point. That's it. You had an XY coordinate kind of thing and you could draw one pixel. So even making a grid, like an Excel thing, it's like putting pixels together and making vertical and horizontal lines and then stuff like that. It was really hard, but it was fun. I also made friends with some teenagers in Germany who were high school kids and who were really into it. And they actually were the... probably the foremost experts on the system. Like they told me like system calls, it was practically assembly coding, but it was a lot of fun. Anyway, so I kind of made it very user friendly that Savera could now just type in the speed chart and then rest of the rally, she just had to press a button which increments. So from, I earlier said one mile, 0.5 mile, obviously that's too high a number we used to do like, 50 meters or 100 meters. So we would be on time every 50 meters. And we had a shorthand between us where she didn't ever tell me the whole distance and the whole time. She would just tell me the last two digits of the distance and just the seconds number and we would keep on time. So we went to this desert event, the one I had heard about and I went to boot camp for and stuff using this system. So out of the 50 cars, the first day, I think we were overall sixth. After the second day, we were overall fourth. And third day, we DNFed. So DNFs did not finish. But obviously, we made quite an impact in that thing. Like, who are these people who have just randomly landed? I mean, I had a good car. End of the day, I had an expensive for India car. It was a Suzuki Grand Vitara. It's a really... I don't know if you get it in... I mean, I kind of see it sometimes in upstate New York and all that. I mean, like old rusted models, but... It's a really capable, compact, it did really well and we kept on time because we had the system. So yeah, so when we came back, I started getting inquiries about, hey, will you sell it and will you show it and stuff like that. So I kind of packaged it and I started selling it. There was a time when every, I think, And India gets a lot of teams in TSD events. Like my average number would be like 30 cars. Big events are like 50, 70 cars. For the longest time, maybe like over a period of 10 years, the top 10 teams in the rally would be using my calculator. I mean, people started beating me with my own system, but I didn't care. I mean, it kind of helped new people get into the sport is also what I feel because you didn't have to go through the pains of trying to do like a four function calculator and stuff. I mean, this made entering the speed chart a lot easier, being on time a lot easier. now obviously there are much better systems but this is pre kind of rally app days and also in india even though we get a lot of cards and stuff there has never been quite an exposure into what rally computers and stuff like we didn't have access to those so So for our little environment, this was pretty
SPEAKER_05:good. Yeah, people underestimate how big the TSD rallying is in India. And anytime I looked for some information on TSD, it wasn't too long before you discovered that there was a big culture in India for TSD. And it's still that way today. And I would also say that that whole middle class is getting bigger. And with that becomes more motorsports in that community. And I think you glossed over something that is important here. We're talking about the math and we're talking about calculations. But, you know, you went in a full on rally in the desert and that has driving skill involved as well. Were you always into motorsports as a kid? Yeah, I used to love cars.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I grew up kind of I mean, most people in India grow up middle class or low middle class. And I wasn't any different. So obviously, my parents didn't have cars and stuff. One of my rich uncles had. But I would go, he would take me on road trips and stuff and I would sit in the front and like when I found it, it was amazing. I mean, just being on the road, just even sitting inside a car and stuff. So I guess I grew up with that fond memory and this appetite or like in the hope that one day I would be able to do such things and stuff, right? That is one. And second, we also, I mean, when I was growing up, I mean, we had TVs, but we didn't have so many channels or whatever. I mean, it was the government-run stations and a bunch of private channels or whatever. But the programming was generally very good. And one of the good programs was was a sunday sports hour so every day from 4 p.m to 5 p.m and what they would show is stuff that wasn't regularly in the olympics order so like tracking everyone knows track and field or soccer or the popular stuff but they would do more uh random stuff so i've seen curling for example in sitting in india but one of the things they would always do is if there was a a rally in India, they would cover it and do a 15 minutes on it. That's how I knew that there was this concept of stage rallying and people going fast. I always had an interest and in stage rallying, but I knew it was a lot of money and my career was in my way and there was no way I was spending the time or money to do that. and that's why when I got to know and I didn't know what TSD was even though I knew a staged release I didn't know the concept of time speed distance so once I got to know about this like for me it was this is what exactly what I was looking for which is I didn't have to spend as much money as doing stage rallies. And I didn't need a rally-prepped car. I could do it in a daily driver or whatever. Specifically, coming back to the driving well in the desert part. So it was a desert rally, yes. It was a six-day event. The first two days were more in the plains. So if you look at the map of India, Rajasthan is in the west. And west of that is Pakistan. But in between there, somewhere, there are these salt lands, right? I mean, that's like a natural border. Like, you don't need, like, border patrol and stuff there. You go 10 miles into there, you're dead. It's like, it's completely. So we started from near there. So the first two days were driving on hard, flat stuff. And then we got crossed into Rajasthan and got into sand and whatever. So I had DNF'd much before getting into the real sand. But I did go and win the event next year, right? So I was so disappointed that we DNF'd. And it was a stupid, some fan belt snapped or whatever. I didn't have a spare. And this car didn't have good, you know, good dealers all around or whatever. So I learned a couple of things. One was have spares for everything, right? I mean, even though I'm not a good car person, I mean, I cannot like fix stuff and stuff. I can probably change. I mean, I can change tires, but maybe probably change... check oil levels with a dipstick or something i mean that that's my level of expertise but i would carry common spares so that if i did get stuck somewhere i could get some service person to help me and even though it's a tst rally and it is my daily driver like in bad terrain like what my car needed to be get fixed order like better engine mounts and stuff like that i mean that is one part of it and second i also realized that um Desert driving needed some skill, and that skill could be taught, obviously. So I actually took a course. So me and Savera went to a desert driving course for a week. And it was a really good class. I mean, they taught us general fundamentals, but then they also taught us recovery. They also, obviously, in a rally... It's between you and your navigator. So they would make us go get stuck somewhere and the two of us had to get out and how to self-recover and stuff like that. So that was a really good experience. So before the next event, I had done this. Yeah. And we also practiced GPS navigation. So this rally was called Desert Storm. Not the war, but the rally itself was called Desert Storm. But they modeled it after Dakar. So they kind of used to call it the mini Dakar. So TSD was one part of it. So there are three major classes. One was a time speed distance where we took part. The other was motorbikes. They wouldn't be doing TSD. They were doing go as fast as possible. Kind of that was rally. And they also had cars doing go as fast as possible. So exactly same as what Dakar is now. Like Dakar classic is TSD. They have cars. I mean, they have trucks. This event didn't have trucks. They have cars and bikes. Driving course really helped me do better in the next few desert events.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, for sure. And I think we're starting to see a theme here. You didn't just show up like most of us do at our first TFT and hope to do well. It's definitely a progression of the technical calculation side of it, the skill of driving, and also accumulation of experience. And then when you finally came over to the US, I know that you entered the Alcan 5000 summer rally four years ago. Did you do other rallies here in the US prior to the Alcan 5000?
SPEAKER_01:I did. I did. So even in India, these type of rallies were called cross-country rallies, right? So multi-day events, different kind of terrains. So we talked about desert. I did a bunch in the Himalayas, in the mountains. They were also multi-day events. So I thought, this is my calling, right? Which is my, as a hobby, I mean, obviously I still had to work, that going to cross-country rallies. But then that year, the Indian Motorsports Federation, FMSEI, decided that TSD is getting really popular. We already have a stage rally national championship. We will start a TSD national championship, right? So that kind of excited me too, because now, There was a leaderboard and you could be a national champion. And also they had announced like about 12 rounds and in different parts of the country. So, I mean, gave me an excuse to go to all these places. And the difference between this kind of rally and the ones we had started doing was that these were one day events and these were going to happen mostly in tarmac and near cities because you would want, you couldn't just randomly drive away for five days, then do a one day rally and come back. So this kind of event, the flavor was very different from what what I was used to. And it had more navigation skills required than driving skills. So in the desert and in the mountains, like the speeds could be 40 miles an hour, but the terrain is so bad that you had to be a, the better drivers often won. But in this case, kind of, I mean, you didn't have to be a great driver, but you had to be in a great team doing navigation. So the first national championship was in 2012, which we won. And the other thing was that after each rally, I would keep playing with my calculator app, right? I mean, the software that I was selling people, add new features and this and that. So doing more rallies helped me add more features to the thing. So that was a cycle that I continued. And so we did a bunch of those. To answer your question, so when I came to the US in 2014 for work, the first thing obviously I looked was what were the TSB rallies that were happening. And I found events similar to those, which are like one day events, some clubs organizing a half a day rally. Then I also figured there was a national series and there was a leaderboard and whatever stuff happening here. So I thought, okay, that gives me more of a purpose than just randomly going to one. I mean, I don't mind going to random rallies, but this kind of gave me a goal of, okay, I can plan my year saying I'll do this, that and the other and hopefully be in the podium. 2014 is when we came and we started rallying here. 22 was when I did my first L cam. So between in those eight years, I think we won 16, 17, I think five national championships. SCCA, Sports Car Club of America. SCCA is the federation that does the national series in the US for TSD rallying. So whenever they had their national or divisional rounds and if I could take time off. And most of these things, like you don't even need to take time off because you could just drive in a weekend and come back. So we did quite a bit of those. Obviously, what I missed coming here was the cross-country rally experience, right? So I was looking for one such event. I found Elcan very early as soon as I came here. 2016, for some reason, I couldn't take time off work at all. I knew I couldn't. I aimed for 2020, but 2020, I wasn't confident I had a car that I could do winter rallies in. But by this time, I'd done a lot of winter rallying here in upstate New York. Every year, they have a winter rally series, like six rounds or whatever. And I used to do it in my two-wheel drive hatchback, and I used to struggle quite a bit. But we used to have fun. We used to win. But I wasn't confident of taking a two-wheel drive car all the way to Alaska for 10 days order. I skipped 2020 and 22 was the summer edition. So that's... what I decided to do and we ended up doing.
SPEAKER_05:It's definitely an epic cross-country journey, the Alcan 5000, whether it's the summer or the winter. And if listeners are familiar with a TSD, just because we're talking about lower speeds here, especially in a winter rally, if the speed limit on a little back road is 45 miles an hour and the TSD says to do 42 miles an hour, well, good luck trying to do that when it's all covered in snow and ice. So we're really underestimating the the driver skill when it comes to winter rallying specifically. But you know, I wanted to talk to you about how you prepare for rallies. Cause a lot of like, I'd say a lot of us, mostly everyone I've ever talked to about TSD rallying, they just kind of showed up and they're figuring out for the first time, but that's not your case. You've actually developed some tools and software that you use to prepare for these rallies. Maybe you can talk about your current iteration of the hardware and software that you currently use.
SPEAKER_01:So I did use the same calculator that I was selling in India for the first five years. But when I landed in the US, I mean, When all over the world, when they say TSD rallies, the concept is the same. It's time, speed, distance. You have to follow a set of instructions beyond course and beyond time. That's it. I mean, that's a universal goal of a time, speed, distance rally. But then there are these subtle rules that are different from region to region. For example, US has a thing called pause and gain. So it's not just a speed of go at 30 miles an hour. At some point, they might say pause for 15 seconds. Or some other point, they might say gain 20 seconds. These are things I could do in my calculator, but then it's, you know, again, typing and feeding and stuff. So even all these rule changes, rules... or new features that were there part of the rally, I would want to incorporate it to automate stuff as much as possible. The other thing that was a big change for us when we came was the timing clocks, right? So all of us know clocks as hours, minutes, and seconds, right? But no, not in ESD rallies in the US. So US, they had clocks that would count 100 cents. So it's not 60 seconds that make up a minute. It's 100 cents that make up a minute, right? So all the timing clocks were like that. So you had to buy a specialized clock or you had to do the mental math looking at seconds or you had a timetable and stuff like that. So I'm like, wow, okay. So my app doesn't support seconds, support sense. So I should do that. And then I also came to the conclusion that I shouldn't be beating up on this assembly language kind of thing that I was working on a small calculator. I mean, why am I doing that? I mean, the reason I used to do that in India was because I was selling it and it made sense to add more features, customers and support and all that stuff. So I decided to go into a completely new platform. And when I looked around. obviously android iphone that way was one way to go i decided that i would have a server like a real computer or a server running somewhere and somewhere as in with me portable in the car initially i thought laptops or whatever but then i decided on raspberry pi right raspberry pi is a really small they don't take too much power so you can attach a battery pack to it and it'll last like 16 hours and it's a full-fledged linux machine so you can now write code in any thing you want, Python, JavaScript, whatever. So once I decided on that and started writing all my Rally app logic to it, actually it made sense that I was doing that because now I could have different displays. So all the logic and code is running on the server, but I could have a display in front of me as the driver, which tells me how the clock or, I mean, at that time I wasn't doing how fast or early, but Like the ideal distance I should be at. The navigator could have the trip meter thing in front of her. And she could have a different device where she could do data entry. So all these things were connected to each other via this server. So when I started, our setup was Savera had an iPod touch where she would enter speeds and any kind of data, pauses, gains, time allowances. Whatever data that needed to go in, she would enter there. And we used to use a time-wise B box for our trip meter. So alpha and time-wise are the most popular trip meters in the US. So I had a time-wise. So that would just show me the distance that's traveled. We also came up with this, I should have a display because we knew what the current or the system knew what the current time was. this display would show me what is the distance I should be at, right? So in an earlier example of if you are asked to do 60 miles an hour and you start at 8 o'clock, when the time is 8.10 a.m., the ideal distance is 10 miles, right? So this display used to show me what that ideal distance should be. So while driving, I would compare that to the odometer and keep those in sync. So if those were in sync, then I'm always on time. And if this one was running low, then I'm running late. So I would keep looking at two displays and drive. At that time, we had three classes in SEC rallies, equipped, limited, and stock. And this put us in a limited class order. So that's what And
SPEAKER_05:now in the Alcan 5000, you're in the unlimited class. So what has changed between that technology to your current setup?
SPEAKER_01:So I kind of got married to the SCCA way of doing things because I was doing most of the events under their flag, right? I mean, I did do some interesting events like the Alcan, which are not SCCA. But since 90% of rallies, and I would still go back to India and do some events there too. But since 90% of my rallies were under ACCA rules, I would obviously confirm to what their class structure was. What I really wanted to do was, I want to write software, because I'm good at that, and somehow connect a wheel sensor and derive odometer from that, which this wheel sensor somehow... being connected to my system. And this somehow I didn't know how, right? I had no clue. I didn't know electronics. I didn't know like analog, digital, any of that stuff. So this was an idea from, I don't know, 20, 10 years back and I never worked towards it. So I kind of had given up on that saying that I won't be able to do it and let's just stay in limited and keep doing this. But five years back, because there was a big influx of rally apps, like GPS based phone apps, that kind of did TSD. So there were some that were just automators, some just calculators. Then there were some full-fledged kind of Rally computers. And all of them a lot cheaper than TimeWise or Alpha. And TimeWise Rally computers are no longer in sale. So it's not even... I mean, this was... People started gravitating towards this technology. And SCCA... recognized that and said, the GPS folks, they are not able to compete against the wheel-driven, full-fledged Ali computers, because GPS is inherently not consistent. That is the problem with GPS. So we should make a different class for them. And they called it the G class. And when that class came about, I decided, oh, that's right up my alley, right? Because obviously, GPS odometers are software. So I bought a GPS Bluetooth module connected to Raspberry Pi, read slat long from the satellites and made the odometer. So then my setup or my current setup is that, which is I have an odometer that's running off GPS. And now I can have a display in front of me that tells me how late or early I am. I don't need to look at two different displays. I just look at one and it tells me a plus or minus 0.1. So that's my current setup. But I recently, I mean, I've always met, seen Mike Friedman in different rallies. Mike Friedman is the founder of Alpha and he lives close to me. So I met him in a rally a couple of months back and I said, yeah, if only someone could do me this wiring thing. I have this Arduino and I know where the things go, but I don't know how to solder and stuff like that. So he offered to, and so I took him up on that and he built me those things. So now this is a setup I haven't rallied. I did rally one small rally just to test it out. But I haven't done any big rallies with it. But I have a setup where a wheel sensor connects to an Arduino, which converts analog pulses to digital and sends it to Raspberry Pi over USB. And then it is my current system of doing whatever.
SPEAKER_05:Wow, that's really impressive that there's so many iterations of your in-car calculation setup. And you and your wife are a fantastic team. And thankfully, she puts up with you when she's probably yelling at you to speed up or slow down. And trust me, the calculations are right. How does that relationship go when she's telling you to turn out of street and there's some discussion in the car? How do you guys work that out?
SPEAKER_01:In regular TSD, which we were used to in India and most of the rallies we do here, There's not much of talking because the timekeeping is done by me because I look at the clock and go. Her responsibility is obviously keeping me on course, left, right. So there's not much yelling and whatever in that because we generally don't. It has become stressful. recently because recently as in three years back we started doing these trap rallies i don't know if you know the concept but it's basically and you don't see this anywhere else in the world other than the us us calls it course rallies or whatever so it's basically on a typical time speed distance rally you when you reach an intersection you would have to be given an instruction how to leave the intersection should you go left right straight whatever And if you're not given an instruction, generally it is just follow the principle road, which is or the road that looks more main roadish than the other roads. You just continue until the next one. Or some rallies might say, just go straight as possible. If you aren't told anything at an intersection, go straight as possible. So in the trap rally, what you do at such intersections are defined by rules. Like there's an 80-page document ACCA has, for example. But I mean, it just gets super complex and sometimes super annoying. Sometimes it's just, I mean, it gets weird. I mean, it's a very acquired taste but for whatever reason I started doing that three or four years back and that those rallies are stress levels are really high where I tell her that, no, this is the way because this is the rule that we are supposed to follow. And then she's like, oh, really? Is it whatever? And that kind of stuff. And then we lose time because this is a timed event. So there also we have kind of divided responsibilities and stuff and the yelling has come down a little bit. But that's where we have the most stress. But one great thing about Sawera and I think why we do well is that She doesn't care about the competition aspect of it. She doesn't care about winning or losing. She does care about doing well in her craft, which is like course following. But I care... only about winning. So I think we kind of have struck that balance. I would be happy if I won. I mean, even if we had lost away, we had lost two minutes and somehow scraped through to a win, I would be like, yeah, let's go have a beer. But she would obviously be pissed about the fact that we didn't do well. So I think we kind of do well as a team primarily because of that. Because I have seen teams where I mean, if both are not competitive, obviously it's not going anywhere. But if both are competitive, then it kind of, there is a, there's a friction there too. So, I mean, what are the strategies in the sense that even in the car, what to do and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_05:And what's in the future? What are your goals as a team in the next few years? Is there any big rallies that you're looking forward to doing?
SPEAKER_01:Obviously after the Alcan summer, we did Alcan winter. This is probably one of the best experiences I've had. That's where I, met you and i'm sure you also remember it as a great rally not just the i mean alcan end of the day it's not too many competition miles but just being in those transit zones in the winter just getting from one place to another you know without falling into a ditch was a big deal another good event we have done a couple of times in new finland targa new finland which is again a TSD event but very high speed where average speeds of it was Canada so average speeds of 100 kmph in a stage but they close down the stages and stuff so it's like a stage rally practically but with TSD kind of thing. So that was in my, both of these were in my North America bucket list for a long time. So both we were able to do, which is we are fortunate. I mean, if I had the money to do it, obviously I would want to do the Dakar classic which is again desert and it's basically it's not that the cars are not required to be that vintage that it's going to be I don't know like not fun I think they love cars that have taken part in the Dakar so like even Pajeros and the Mitsubishi ones and which are just still drivable and great. So yeah, if I had the money, I would do that. But I don't, I mean, I'm not, I'm not planning or not even dreaming about it. So yeah, but otherwise there's no such plan. I mean, end of the day, it is a hobby. It's something that we get to do together 10 weekends a year. So I think, I hope that I can still continue doing that. And if I can, I would be great.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. One of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you and, and, and post this talk is that there's always these discussions about how do they do that. So maybe this will offer some clarity to everyone in the community that it is a very simple equation of a whole lot of work practice and innovation will, will make you the, the overall winner. So I definitely appreciate you sharing those stories and you've always been open. If someone comes and talks to you, you just tell them you, you have to practice and innovate and, and then you can play as well, even though it can be a bit intimidating being in a rally with you when your score is one for a stage. Sometimes you feel like giving up, but is that, is that really the advice you would give the people is, is simply practice.
SPEAKER_01:Practice. Also learn from one mistakes. I mean, learn from mistakes, even in the rally. So I, uh, we have done in the past too. And, uh, which is like, you could go wrong in one TC time control or the checkpoint because you did something wrong. I mean, I mean, that's in the past, right? That's, that's one, that's one of the great things about TSD rally. Like whatever happens in a, at a checkpoint, it doesn't carry over to, to, uh, screw you later. Yeah. So it's the same with every rally. When you come out of the rally, just see where you could have done better and That's it. I mean, there's no real advice other than when don't just come out of a rally, not knowing why you got a bad score. It doesn't matter how bad it is. You should still figure out so that the next one you go to, you know how you can improve.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, that's great. And do you have plans to do another Alcan 5000? Just so if you are going to do it, I'll make sure I'm not in the same class as you. That's the real reason I'm
SPEAKER_01:asking. Yes. So I was supposed to do the summer one now with the one that's starting in two weeks. I had paid the entry. Everything was set. But I couldn't get off work because we are in some kind of bad work situation where I cannot take two weeks off. So I've canceled going this year. Yeah, I'm hoping to go back next year, which is again going to be a summer. But I'm really looking forward to doing the winter and both Savera and I, but she, she comes to rallies with me. She remembers some good events that she had fun in. And, and there are very few of them. And Alcan winter is one of them. So, so we are hoping to go back in 28 for that. Well,
SPEAKER_05:those are my plans also. I will be doing the seat of the pants class to avoid major disappointment. All right. So we will, we will see you there at, at the hotel. hotel in Seattle on our way to, uh, who knows wherever Jerry ends up, ends up taking us to in, uh, in the Arctic. But at some point I'm sure, uh, I'm sure we'll, uh, we'll pass each other, uh, above the Arctic circle.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully we'll cross each, uh, our paths will cross much before that. I mean, it's still three years down the line. And I see that you are doing adventure bike rallying. Maybe I'll buy an adventure bike and do one of your rallies. Let's see.
SPEAKER_05:My friend, if you want to do one, I will lend you a motorcycle. It's an open invitation. I
SPEAKER_01:might actually take you up on that. I mean, okay, great. I'll remember this, Aaron.
SPEAKER_05:All right, you got it, sir. Thanks very much for coming on the podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much. It was so much fun. Thank you for having me.
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SPEAKER_06:And we are back. Nice one. Yeah, really good interview. One of the things I'd like to do is to tie these two together. And one thing that stuck out for me was the fact that as Andy and Mercedes are a really good team and they have a lot of trust within one another and a lot of respect. That's obvious. And you can also sell, you can also tell that here with Satish and Savera as well. It's like, um, as he talks about how they communicate when they're, he's like, yeah, we don't talk very much. I do the, you know, I do this and she does it. She tells me when the turn and yeah, it's true. It's just chill. We just rock up and win. Um, but he's very, you know, I was saying that he's very humble about it. And, uh, again, that's what makes him a champion.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, for sure. And their work ethic at rallies is, uh, is obvious they're not out partying all night and they're arriving early they've been practicing you know so anyways practice pays off discipline pays off and it's obviously paid off in dividends for them yeah well done
SPEAKER_06:and with that Aaron Pufol, do you have any Cannonball news?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, like we said at the top of the show, the final payments are due on Friday, August 29th for the 2025 ADV Cannonball and 2026 registration is open. I set up the Spotwalla backup. tracking system. And there were some questions from people about why is there the Spotwalla and why is there the GPS Checkpoint app? So let's just talk about that quick. The GPS Checkpoint app is used for scoring. It just kind of runs and the organizers know who has achieved a checkpoint and when, and there is a real-time scoreboard, it's called leaderboard, on that app. The Spotwalla tracking system can use either an app on the phone or or a satellite tracker, and that is only for showing everyone's position on a map. It's a bit of a backup, but it's also a public map and a rider resource to see where everyone is in real time. It has a resolution of about 15 minutes. So that's the difference between those two systems. Yeah, good explanation. And we had people down in California checking some of the optional off-road sections, and we noticed there were some closures due to water. wildfires. And I also noticed that CA2, Angela's Crest, Angela's Crest, Angela's Crest, I'm not sure how to pronounce it, that epic road is also closed. So I wanted to mention something about checkpoints, because you need to collect certain checkpoints to win certain awards. If a road is closed, or it's impassable, or you simply can't get the checkpoint, we will obviously remove that mandatory achievement from getting that award. So if you're going for the Rough Ride Award or a Checkpoint Crush Award and you can't get to it, don't worry about it. We'll just take that off the requirement. However, once the checkpoints are published, they will forever remain achievable. So do with that information as you will. And I also wanted to mention that, yeah, that was number 25 ran some of the off-road sections in his Subaru, including the Checkpoint Rhythm of Life, which was really, really cool.
SPEAKER_06:Let me just back up for a second here. So just to maybe beat a dead horse here. So is there the possibility that someone can achieve something that's like, they'll get up to it and it's closed and they can't act, they can't get through it, but they'll actually get, they'll, they'll get within the geofence and they'll get the checkpoint and then they'll come back out and then other people will potentially have heard that it was closed and decided not to go. And that person gets the extra points, but they had the backtrack. I mean,
SPEAKER_05:no, what I'm trying to say is, and I'm not encouraging it is that, you know, if the thing is closed, then you just happen to not see the sign or something and go get the checkpoint. Well, that's your business. Or, you know, if it's, if the road is flooded and you built a little, you know, inflatable boat and went and got the checkpoint, well, good for you. I'm just saying that the checkpoint is always achievable. And if you want to go say hey, hold my beer, then go for it. That's your business.
SPEAKER_06:Got it. All right. Understood. You made it really clear when you said hold my beer.
SPEAKER_05:That's right. Yeah. And speaking of, you know, checkpoints, I noticed some people are taking their strategy really seriously. And I wanted to... Give some advice and stay flexible. Don't create a in stone GPX route, assuming that you'll be able to get everything. Remember, you could have mechanical failure. You could have a road closure. There could be severe weather. You know, you may just be tired. So If you're creating a strategy, have some latitude within that strategy. And you know, you may want to change your strategy partially way through the rally. So that's my advice to people is don't put yourself in a etched in stone strategy and something may change. Just remain flexible.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, it's a good point. And as a follow-up comment on that, and if you look at, think about the interview from Satish, if you didn't practice and you didn't win, there's probably a direct correlation.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, absolutely. We hear that all the time. Everyone's complaining at the pub that night. But yeah, you didn't practice and we're guilty of that also.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, that's true. Being at the pub or not practicing? Both. Fair enough.
SPEAKER_05:All right. Well, listen, with that, it's a huge episode. I hope everyone stuck around to the end. But anyways, I'm going to roll the outro.
SPEAKER_03:Thanks for listening to the ADV Cannonball Podcast. Please give us a five-star review on your preferred podcast platform. That really helps us with the algorithm gods. All hail the algorithm gods. You can buy us a copy on buyme Thank you for watching. Thanks for listening, and remember, don't be an ADV weenie. Keep your right hand cranked and your feet on the base.
