Mark Richardson Returns **Running On Empty** a Motorcycle Novel

Let’s add Mark’s new novel to the Motorcycle Book Club and discuss this new work of American biker fiction. 

We're off to India and Tokyo this week! 

Running On Empty takes readers on a gripping, fictionalized motorcycle journey through a vividly real America. As the main characters flee both an organized crime syndicate and the police, they ride through many of the country’s most iconic motorcycling destinations. The level of detail in the narrative suggests the author has ridden every mile himself—and perhaps even spent some time on the run. The story resonates with the universal fear of how a few bad choices—our own or those of people close to us—can spiral out of control. At its heart, the book delivers a raw, unflinching exploration of religious cults in America, shining a light on the dark secrets hidden in its quietest corners. For any motorcyclist craving a high-octane escape, this novel offers the perfect ride—one filled with danger, freedom, and the kind of adventure that feels just one decision away.

-Aaron Pufal 

Chapters

• 17:49 Interview
• 1:11:34 ADV Cannonball Rally News

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:00

And before we get started, a quick thank you to Pat for buying us a beer at buymeacoffee.com and to our Patreon supporters, Brian, Conrad, and Goatesk for helping us out at patreon.com. Now let's roll the intro. Welcome to the ADV Cannonball

SPEAKER_04: 0:18

Podcast, where we discuss all things on two wheels, the adventure bike cannonball, and other motorcycle-related nonsense.

SPEAKER_02: 0:37

Season three, episode 14. Welcome to Adventure Cannonball Podcast. I am your host, Taylor Lawson. And today I am joined by my good friend, Aaron Pufall.

SPEAKER_03: 0:49

What's up, big guy? Good to see you. It's been a while.

SPEAKER_02: 0:51

Man, I am so excited about what's about to happen. You mean you're going to crack that beer open? That's exactly what I meant. Here we go. It's maybe a little bit more. I'll get into that, but let's start with this. First things first, buddy. First things first. Deepa, baby. Oh, this is, yeah, you love this one. Double IPA. The mighty double IPA from Beer City, from Air City. Explosively aromatic, fresh,

SPEAKER_03: 1:16

and... Oh, a little bit fruity. Fruity. Listen, if there's a place called Beer City in Sweden... Oh, nice. Nicely done. I need to go to Beer City. That sounds like a great place. I'm rocking a Cobra Clutch by Parallel 49, double IPA, 8%. on alcohol, 473 milliliters. Here we go. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:43

Nice. You got a tall boy. It looks like you're wearing some of that in your beard.

SPEAKER_03: 1:46

That's how I roll, man. Listen, take out prisoners. Give me a one-way ticket to Beer City, baby.

SPEAKER_02: 1:53

Here we go. Speaking of one-way tickets, I had a return flight, I'll have you know, for starters. I'm leaving at 3 a.m. on Saturday, well, morning. Ouch. Yeah, you know, it's not what initially was planned, but by the time, the fourth time, the fourth reshuffling of the flights with Air India, yeah, that's what I got. So, 3 a.m., but the good news is that I get to the hotel on Sunday, Saturday, Sunday, Sunday morning at, uh, at eight o'clock. I thought initially I was going to be there with you, but, um, I, I missed that extra plus two on your reservation when I booked my ticket.

SPEAKER_03: 2:32

Yeah. It's a lot. Cause I'm flying from, uh, North America to Tokyo and I have an overnight in a capsule hotel, by the way. And yeah, so that's going to be fun or really small. One of the two and, uh, yeah. And I'm overnighting there. So I'm going to drop my bags and i am restarting my photography journey so i'm taking my full camera set and i'm heading into tokyo and i have a whole uh shoot list and i'm gonna drink sake shoot pictures eat ramen double back to my capsule hotel keep everyone awake with my drunken snoring it's gonna be fantastic i have to sleep in my own air filth in a little capsule which will which will be a fun experience i will be sure to take a bunch of uh videos and post them to our social media for everyone to laugh. And then I fly to Delhi and then I have another overnight there. None of this was by choice is because I had a bunch of Air Canada points and I booked everything for free and it's all coach. It's all going to be brutal. And then I also have some photography lined up for my overnight in Delhi. Do you have any plans when you arrive in Srinagar?

SPEAKER_02: 3:48

When I arrive in Srinagar, I'm going to go get maybe some reflexology on my feet because i will have been standing on them for yeah a fair amount of time um and then i'm just gonna you know like a like a lost puppy dog i'm just gonna sit at the station and wait for you to arrive 36 hours later nice uh no there's tons there's lots to do in in srinagar um one of the cool things is that it's part of the the acclimatization that we'll need to do before we get up to uh 19 000 i don't know 200 ish feet somewhere around there i know it i know it in metric i don't it's an eight eight five thousand eight hundred almost eight hundred meters so almost yeah nineteen thousand two hundred feet so well beyond where the trees stop growing

SPEAKER_03: 4:32

nice so speaking of climatization when i'm in delhi my very first well my second thing i'm going to do because first time i check into the imperial by the way i'm checking into the imperial in delhi it's a proper colonial hotel i'm looking forward to that before i'm stuck in you know mental mouse ridden campsites with you in Trinidad. No, no thanks to your booking ability. But anyways, as soon as I check in, I, uh, I have a security detail arranged for a whopping$40 and we're going to immediately go out and get, um, get stocked up on Diamox and I don't know how to pronounce that. Zyfaxin. It's the, I ran out of my, um, antibiotic for traveler's diarrhea.

SPEAKER_02: 5:17

Is that, hold on, hold on. Is that different than like stay at home diarrhea? Yeah,

SPEAKER_03: 5:21

it's absolutely, you know, let's just say, uh, I love Indian food, but perhaps the handling and, uh, uh, sanitary protocols are not usually what we're accustomed to. So we're definitely going to need some antibiotics.

SPEAKER_02: 5:39

Yeah. Yeah. You pick up an extra pack for me if you, if you, if you would, while you're there. Um, you know, I just wanted to reflect back when I was, um, when we were at the scoog and we were chatting with like an Well, maybe, actually, during the interview, we were chatting with Elspeth Beard, and she talked about, sort of made the comparison between then and now of when she was in Indy when she was 23 versus when she went back recently and led a group of people around at a motorcycle event. And she said the main reason that there's less sickness now is because the availability of bottled water. So keep that in mind. If you didn't peel it, crack it like the bottle. If you didn't peel it, crack it or boil it don't eat it that's the general rule

SPEAKER_03: 6:23

oh i'm eating everything the whole purpose of going to india is to get everything you don't recognize on the street and things that you do recognize it is absolutely the reason to go to india but i also know that you know i also don't want to have you know debilitating diarrhea so let's uh let's get some antibiotics uh on standby for when that happens

SPEAKER_02: 6:45

yeah fair enough and um there's a guy um aaron who's the um He's a Filipino guy. He's a YouTuber. We mentioned him when we first talked about this and I watched his video again. He did two, we'll put the links in the show notes. He did two one hour-ish videos. One of them was an entire hour on everything on how to prepare, including which airlines are difficult to transfer through, what they ask for when you get there, i.e. size of drones that you can take, the fact that they want to see every single piece of if anything has a wire attached to it or a battery they want to see it in the end they didn't scrutinize anything of his and he's a youtuber he had he had a small drone either you know a mini dji like we have these mics and a mini dji and anyway he's fully kitted out camera and they never scrutinized anything but they wanted to see it all so they had to dig it out but he goes through this and then the other video is an hour and three minutes of him actually doing the trip which i started to watch and then i was like i don't want to watch watch any more of that because well why go because if i look at this like right i've seen this right i saw this on that video yeah he did a good job good job uh editing and capturing this it looks just like it is here i was like i don't want to spoil it it's like watching the end of a movie

SPEAKER_03: 8:03

yeah that's a common thing so i'm not sure if we talked about it best example of being overly prepared and not going for an adventure was recently my wife and i hiked the west coast trail it's a famous trail on vancouver island and everyone has this guidebook. It's like a Bible for hiking this trail. And everyone regurgitated the same phraseology and they knew exactly where they were going. They knew what sites they want to see. They even, the lingo was identical. They said, well, what is your luxury item? I go, luxury item? What are you talking about? And everyone was saying that. Yeah. It was like this one thing that you could bring that was not mandatory equipment. And it was like, it was kind of sad that everyone was simply going through a checklist and not going for an adventure or a new experience that's all so hey aaron

SPEAKER_02: 8:59

what was your luxury item

SPEAKER_03: 9:00

i didn't have one i i well no that's not true i actually had a little flask of uh double strength whiskey uh with me that i had a i had a a wee dram each night out of nice

SPEAKER_02: 9:14

did you like reduce it down so it was it was like double double strength let's just get the water out of that let's just get it down to the essence of what i really need

SPEAKER_03: 9:22

yeah my my water that i got out of the the still river that had aquatab leftover chlorine and it really set off the the real mossy notes of that irish whiskey was fantastic

SPEAKER_02: 9:34

yeah it's because it brings out the smoke i like

SPEAKER_03: 9:36

that that's right that's right yeah some poor bastard was out there in a peat bog getting peat out of the irish uh countryside and i destroyed it with aquatabs what a what a brutal bastard I am.

SPEAKER_02: 9:54

It reminds me, I just, I don't know how to flashback to like in yachting. And then somebody asked me one time, it was a yacht I was running and somebody asked me and they said, what's the, what's the, what's the new girlfriend like? And I said, well, she's like, she'll get on a boat one time, the first time she's on the boat and she'll say, it's very important to me. It was like, whatever you need, give us your preferences and we'll make sure that they are here because our job is to make you happy. So she'll say, I would like you to send a team of 20 Sherpas in December up to the north side of Everest and get the moss that grows on the rock that you can't get to. And I want you to bring that back and make me the tea. And then we go, all right. So then she showed up on the boat. Next time we were like, we, we sent the Sherpas as amazing as they are. We, um, we lost four, but six made it back. We got you the moss. We made you the tea and here it is. And she's like, that is so last week. So it's like, what? That sounds about right, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. And then we're like, then she's the girlfriend is like, well, what don't you have? I'll have that.

SPEAKER_03: 11:02

Oh my God. That sounds about right. Listen, at the end of this trip, when I go back to Tokyo on the way back, I'm going to get a tattoo and it's going to say, eat the rich. That is my new mantra moving forward. All right. Well, fair enough. I think you're going to lose a lot of clientele, but you know, that's true. I don't have any clientele. Who's my client? my clientele are exactly like us we ride adventure bikes we were sleep deprived we crush a beer and then go to sleep in the hotel and then we try to do it again this is hashtag Riley life

SPEAKER_05: 11:33

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SPEAKER_03: 12:29

We have a great interview coming up, but I just wanted to mention that one of the travel tips that they had on the WhatsApp group is that when you get off the airplane in Srinagar, see if there's a duty-free shop and buy all the beer that you can carry. Because apparently in Srinagar, it's not exactly a big party town. So I will do the same. When you come to pick me up, I will make sure I buy all the beer I can at the duty-free shop in Srinagar.

SPEAKER_02: 12:58

Excellent. I'll pick you up in a... hell yeah you will tuck tuck do well do well baby um hey i just wanted to um to do a shout out so talk about packing gear so one of the things we always say here is like you've got to test your gear before you take it into the field and

SPEAKER_03: 13:17

you

SPEAKER_02: 13:17

totally did that right and i'm gonna guess what you're not doing that i'm not gonna do it i'm gonna i'm gonna take a risk ready i'm gonna take a risk here's the risk i'm taking but i'm gonna base it on the 10 000 reviews for the Moscow Moto Basilica jacket that came before me. So Moscow Moto, because of the tariffs in the States, during when the tariffs, before they were coming in, they ordered a bunch of gear to be built. They got it shipped in and then they, they turns out they were overstocked. So they put a, in year, in, in the States, in the US, they put a 40% discount on some of the equipment. And I, and I, yeah. So I bought this jacket and um bought the basilica jacket 40 off i was like because i was always kind of like a little bit crowded out because i was it's it's it's expensive gear and so i i bought it it showed up and i was like great i've got a you know i've got a week before the trip i'll have everything packed and it showed up and i was like

SPEAKER_06: 14:18

oh my god that's small

SPEAKER_02: 14:20

so it just didn't do it so i um i called the customer service and i said hey look um is there any chance you guys can uh can spin this a And I just want to do a shout out to Silke. Pretty much everybody at Mosco Moto rocks and Silke took great care of me. She took my old jacket back and she got me a new one and she expressed it out. And anyway, I got it. It fits and I'm going to use it for the first time in India. And I'm just going to base on the fact that it got such a high review from the other 10,000 people who bought it before me and just go with that.

SPEAKER_03: 14:55

Nice. I love that we are such hypocrites. You've got a brand new jacket. I saw a brand new tank bag slash carry on bag. I also saw a brand new tail bag that you have there. We're such hypocrites. I have a brand new photography backpack that is totally untested. I have a brand new bag for my helmet for my personal item on the airplane. And we're such hypocrites. I love it. So the next podcast will be us in India saying nothing worked. It was a disaster.

SPEAKER_02: 15:24

Look, I do. I just want to say something in my defense. I have had that Moscow Moto tank bag for, which I will also say matches my jacket. I've had that for two years now on my Tenere 700 and I love it because it comes off the bike with a couple of snaps of like four snaps, click, click, click, quick release. And then it turns into a backpack and it also allows you to snap your helmet onto it and carry that. So how can you, how can you lose with that?

SPEAKER_03: 15:54

Yeah, it looks good. Actually looks brand new. That's why I thought it was new. I also wanted to give a shout out to everyone in the alcan 5000 they just left yesterday on their great adventure and i just wanted to give a shout out to them

SPEAKER_02: 16:07

i saw that mercedes had posted something about them picking up their their goodie bag on the way out the door and i was like those are way better colors than when we did it i

SPEAKER_03: 16:16

know yeah they're uh did you see that as well no i didn't see that but my my baby blue alcan 5000 rally shirt is uh definitely something that is uh sleepwear and not exactly uh clubbing wear. That's for sure.

SPEAKER_02: 16:31

Oh, great. Can't wait to, uh, can't wait to, to, to see you sporting that. Cause we're sharing a room and we were in India.

SPEAKER_03: 16:36

I'm so sorry for you.

SPEAKER_02: 16:37

All right. So, um, if I'm not mistaken, you did a really amazing interview and, um, and I listened to it as well. So I got to say that you did do an amazing interview. What do you say? We, um, we talk a bit about that.

SPEAKER_03: 16:51

Yeah. Mark Richardson is our only return guest and he's a Prince of a dude. And, uh, yeah, I was really happy to talk to him about his fictional novel it's called running on empty i wrote a review about that and put it on our motorcycle book club which is on the adv cannonball website so yeah great book it's very rare to get a fictional work about motorcycles but like any good work if you study people like huntress thompson it's very important to have a thread of reality through a fictional work and as a motorcycle list who's done i don't know hundreds of thousands of miles in in the u.s he goes to all the great motorcycle locations and i'm like yeah i've been there i've been here i've been there and like in your mind you're going on that journey so it was a real page turner it was a fantastic read and you can get it on amazon

SPEAKER_02: 17:47

fantastic and with that i think we should roll the interview

SPEAKER_01: 17:51

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. Cannonball!

SPEAKER_05: 18:07

Hey, cannonballers. Thanks for subscribing to our podcast. We appreciate it. If you're not a cheap Canadian and want to buy us a coffee, head on over to buymeacoffee.com. Or better yet, buy us a case of Sweet Ass Craft IPA. We'll list it on patreon.com. Links are in the show notes. Now, back to the riveting podcast intro. progress.

SPEAKER_03: 18:32

Mark Richardson, welcome back to the podcast. It's good to be here, Aaron. Thanks. And I said, welcome back because you are our first guest to return to the podcast. And I think it was season two, episode 12. And we talked about your blockbuster motorcycle book, Zen and Now. It was tough getting ahold of you. I think you just got back from the UK. Maybe you can tell us about that trip.

SPEAKER_00: 18:54

Oh, it was okay. Thank you very much. But I didn't get to ride any motorcycles. It's just too bad. I kept looking at, I was driving around in a car. It wasn't so bad, but even so, I was looking at all the Royal Enfields and the Triumphs and everything else. And I was there for my birthday. My wife got me a copy of Classic Bike Magazine, and I got to admit, I was flipping through the ads in the back. I could just, I don't want anything big and fancy for my next bike. I'd like an old vintage bike, but I don't want to have to spend too much time fixing it up. I want to be able to actually ride it. That's the trouble. So I'm only halfway through the magazine though, but I'm still thinking about it. Perhaps

SPEAKER_03: 19:31

you'll find some inspiration I hope so. We've talked about the British bike culture many times on the show. And last year we did our special series over there. I was so inspired that I'm going to be shipping my motorcycle over to London after our rally in late October. And the idea is for people like you, if you want to use the bike, just give me a ring and you can borrow the bike. It'll be stored with Kathy at MotoShip.

SPEAKER_00: 19:58

It's a GSA, right? The BMW?

SPEAKER_03: 20:00

Yeah, just a box standard GSA.

SPEAKER_00: 20:01

Oh, be happy to do that for you happy Aaron

SPEAKER_03: 20:04

thanks yeah anytime it strikes me as odd that this is your second time on the podcast and we don't really know a lot about your start in motorcycling perhaps you can tell us the first motorcycle you had

SPEAKER_00: 20:16

right so uh yeah so I'm throwing back here I'm throwing back like 45 years ago because I'm old now right I'm in my 60s and I've got my first bike when I was 15 I was still living in the UK I left the UK to come live in Canada when I was 18. So I got my first bike, which I was supposed to get for my 16th birthday. That's the youngest you could be and you could ride a powered form of transport at the time. So my buddy was selling a Honda C50 step through scooter. And I persuaded my parents that we should get it now because it's the perfect bike for me. So we got it when I was 15 and three quarters. And the idea was that I would just sort of get to know the bike by riding up and down our little local country road, which was only very small and short. And I would do that until I was old enough to actually get my license and ride properly. So of course, that lasted about a day. And then I started venturing further and further afield on this motorcycle, highly illegal. I was underage, not insured, anything like that. I had my first crash on my very first day. I remember wailing into this right-hand corner and thinking, right, how do you do the brakes again? And I stuffed my right foot down and just went piling into the ditch. And I about 40 miles an hour. But I managed to get out of there. I didn't hurt myself too badly. Never told anybody it had happened because I didn't want my parents taking the bike away. And I rode, I think I crashed every day for a week. But I was lucky because I was always riding on very remote, unused country lanes. I didn't want anybody to see me or the cops to pull me over. So because of that, whenever I did crash, I could pretty much pick myself up again and pretend nothing had ever happened. And I did that for three months until I turned 16. And then suddenly I had my motorcycle and I was so happy and I eventually crashed it into the side of a car at 55 miles an hour, which was an immense speed, top speed for that C50. I was very proud. But I was on my way home from a motorcycle safety course and smashed into the side of this car that actually did run a red light. And rather than trying to break into avoid it. I was 16, so I sped up to avoid it and just hit it a little harder. So that was my first bike. And then I got another moped, a Honda SS50, because I was 16 and could only have a moped. And that sucker only went at 25 miles an hour. It was pathetic. Although it had five speeds and disc brake and it looked cool. And then I got a natural motorcycle when I was 17. I got my Honda 250, a CJ250T, which was a very utilitarian, boring looking motorcycle, but it would do 85 miles an hour. So I was happy and rode around. And I think I got, I mean, I crashed that within a month on a roundabout in the pouring rain with cheap Japanese tires fitted to it, which I decided was completely the fault of the tires and not at all my fault. But I managed to get all of that sort of teenage hoodlum boy racer stuff out of me without hurting myself too badly, which was partly luck and partly training because I did go to motorcycle school, so safety school for both mopeds and motorcycles. And I sort of survived those first two years, which I haven't had another accident since then. So I feel blessed.

SPEAKER_03: 23:45

I think many of us have been in the same position. When I was a kid, I dropped my CB750 Supersport on my left knee, and it will remind me every once in a while about my irresponsibility. But it sounds like you got off pretty scot-free.

SPEAKER_00: 24:01

Right. Well, It helps when you're learning on little bikes as well, which is what I was doing in the UK. You could only ride bikes with so much of a cubic capacity. Nowadays, they have horsepower limits depending on your age, which of course we don't have any of that sort of stuff here in Canada or North America, right? It's whatever you can afford to ensure.

SPEAKER_03: 24:20

Yeah, you got the freedom to wrap whatever you can afford around a tree.

SPEAKER_00: 24:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 24:24

And you've been writing automotive journalism and motorcycle journalism for a while. Did you start that as soon as you arrived in Canada? I

SPEAKER_00: 24:33

came over at 18 years old and I didn't think anything about writing. I didn't even know I wanted to write. I went into, I got a job. I got another job. I worked for a few years. And then I decided that I wanted to travel and I wanted to travel on my motorcycle. I want, because I had come to Toronto and I wanted to see more than just Toronto. I'd been driving around cars and trucks. I had a motorcycle. I would travel around on my bike i i went from a honda get another honda g a honda 364 which was the one that came just before the much much better 404 and then i when i turned 21 for my 21st birthday i bought myself kawasaki gpz 750 brand spanking new uh i i love that bike i remember that i i bought myself some some leather jeans and a leather jacket for my new 750 but i I wanted to do double duty with the leather jeans. I wanted to be able to wear them down the disco as well and pull dates. So I got a tight pair of leather jeans. And I remember that I went to Guelph. My buddy gave me a ride to Guelph to collect my brand new 750 GPZ. And the owner of Two Wheel Motorsports, Colin something or another, he gave me the key and he said, well, there you go, Mark. It's your bike now. And I said, thank you very much. I took the key, put it in the ignition, swung my leg over the saddle It ripped the pants right up from ass to sack. And I rode the whole way home from Guelph with a gaping hole in my tight leather jeans. And my mom had to sew them up for me. It was very embarrassing. Anyway, I survived those years. But it wasn't until I decided to leave my job and take off and see some of North America that I, on a motorcycle, which was now my Suzuki DR600. I traded in the GPZ 750. because I got too many tickets and I went too fast. And I knew that was a bad thing to do. So I traded in for the slower, more adventurous bike and took off and just sort of traveled around. But I was traveling around for, I did it for a year, all over North America, up to the Arctic, down to Mexico, that sort of thing. And I was writing lots of letters home. So because I had nothing else to do when I pull into a coffee shop or a lunch stop or something, right? And I really had no money. But I was writing all these letters. And this waitress came up in a bar in Texas, a diner in Texas, and I was with a couple of friends. And she said, what do you do to me? And I said, well, I was about to say, well, I'm just a bum because that's what I was. But one of the guys I was with, Dale, said, Mark is a journalist and he's traveling America to write about the American dream, which I wasn't. But I thought, well, you know what? That sounds pretty good. So I decided, yeah, that's what I am. And then I started telling everybody I was a journalist writing about the American dream. Then I thought that I probably should write about the American dream. So actually, I applied to journalism school, got into journalism school, which was a disappointment because I'd wanted to carry on traveling and go around the world. I wanted to do the Ted Simon thing. But I had promised my mom that if I got accepted to journalism school, I would give it a try for a year or the first semester at any rate. And then I did that. But just before I started journalism school, I did actually write a story for Cycle Canada magazine about riding up to the Arctic on my DR-600. And I sent that in. And the editor, John Cooper, said, yeah, we love the story. We'll print it. We'll give you$300. And I thought, wow, there is money in journalism. I could do this. This is fabulous. I should do more of this. I had some slides to illustrate the story. And I remember I met Bruce Reeve, who was the editor at the time, or the sub-editor, I guess, who was staying in some dingy motel at Daytona Beach, Florida for Bike Week. And I met him and delivered the slides to him personally. And I was impressed by the fact that he was staying in this motel and somebody was paying for that for him. I thought, journalism, that's the way to go. Bike journalism. But then that was the end of my motorcycle journalism. career for a little bit because, as I said, I went to journalism school and then I became an actual journalist and I did real journalism for a decade or so and got to travel around some with that too. But then when I came back, I was working at the Toronto Star. I had come back from being away. I'd been working in Africa for a couple of years and I worked in the UK again for a couple of years as a journalist. Then I got a job with the Toronto Star as an editor and I won in to see the editor of the automotive section. And I said to him, hey, I'd just like to write you an essay about what it is like to ride a motorcycle. Would you be interested in that for the automotive section? I'm an editor now. I'm not a writer. So I just want to do some writing and get this off my chest. And he said, sure. He said, do you know much about motorcycles? Because our motorcycle writer just quit. And I said, oh, let me think about that. And then the next day, I came to him with 52 column ideas. for motorcycle column and I said I can do all of these and I'll do them for cheap as long as you run one every single Saturday when this paper is delivered I don't want you to run it when you got space or when you know once a month or something I want to be regular in this so here's 52 and there weren't all reviews of bikes and stuff I can't remember what they were but there were all these different ideas and he said and my price was pretty cheap I think I was asking for like 20 bucks a story or something because I just wanted to do some writing so So that was my break into motorcycle journalism. And then after I left the Toronto Star and became a freelancer, I started branching into magazine writing as well, and now websites and everything else. And ultimately, I wanted to be able to write books about motorcycles, which I've now done. That was a very long answer to your question, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_03: 30:53

If readers are anything like me, we want to know about the guy who's telling us this story. I think it's great. And today you're here to talk about Running on Empty. Running on Empty is a fictional novel, and I really enjoyed it. And I especially enjoyed all the accurate locations all around the US. Have you been to all those places you wrote about in the book?

SPEAKER_00: 31:13

Yeah. I mean, this is a story that goes ultimately from Florida to California and goes through Texas. It's the meeting of a couple of different writers. One of them is a newbie writer who's inherited Harley Davidson. His name is Grant. And he's the guy from Florida. And then there's the sort of grizzled biker guy, Zach, his name is. He's from Detroit. And he's escaping a debt, a bad debt. So he gets the hell out of Detroit. And they both go to Sturgis for one reason or another. They meet up there and the story goes from there. Zach is also using this opportunity while he's escaping his debts to try and find his long lost son, who he last saw 20 odd years ago. ago, when he was escaping, Zach was escaping from a very weird cult. And he wants, all he has is a photograph of his son, and he wants to try and find his son, and maybe the son's mother too, Zach's wife at the time. And all he has is a photograph to go on. So the two of these guys meet somewhat reluctantly in Sturgis, and one thing leads to another, and they end up crossing the country in the search for the son. But this was, for me, you know what, people had, I I'd written another book before this, another novel, Bird on a Wire, it's called. And this is a sequel in that the character, Grant, you meet in Bird on a Wire. You don't have to read the first novel to enjoy the second novel or either on any particular order. But the point is that after I wrote Bird on a Wire, people said to me, hey, Mark, I thought you wrote about motorcycles. I was kind of hoping to read about bikes. And there's no motorcycles in Bird on a Wire. I said, well, no, that's not what the point of it was. But enough people had said that they wanted to read something with motorcycles that I thought, well, you know what? I can't actually think of any good novels or not novels I've enjoyed about which have motorcycles in them. Unless you want to think of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a novel. But there aren't any. And people say you should write about what you know. And I had this story in the back of my mind that I wanted to get out there. And I guess these guys, I mean, they could have been driving RVs or they could have been hitching or riding bicycles or whatever. But I wanted to ride something with motorcycles. And I wanted the roads, I wanted to get across all these feelings and thoughts that I've had whenever I've been out on the highway on a good road trip. And I'm very proud to say that I have traveled on a motorcycle. I've ridden a motorcycle to every single US state, including Hawaii and including Alaska. And I've also ridden to every single Canadian province and every territory except Nunavut, which is kind of tough to ride to, you got to admit. And I wanted to get across some of the favorite places, the feelings that I'd had, what I'd observed, what I'd seen in some of the better places that I'd been to. And I wanted to, more than that, I wanted to get across the feeling of what it's like to actually ride a motorcycle rather than just drive a car in some of these iconic places and on these iconic roads. And so it's not all sunshine and roses. I mean, my guys ride in pouring rain on the Million Dollar Highway between Silverton and Durango and Colorado. Deadly highway. There's no guardrail. You look down 2,000 feet into the mist and you hope to not crash. They ride in the baking heat in the Dakotas, the wind of the loneliest highway in Nevada. I've been to all these places. I wanted to be able to describe them. There's even the Pacific Coast Highway, of course, in California a whole bunch of others. But ultimately, they are just the transitions that are used between the scenes that describe the whole mystery behind searching for Zach's son and dealing with the cult that's behind everything.

SPEAKER_03: 35:15

That journey took everyone through the Million Dollar Highway and Gunnison, all the way down to Durango. And I've spent a lot of time in that area, like a bunch of motorcyclists surely have that are listening. And Zach, Zach's a very relatable character in the book. You know, he's a bit of a Bit of a disaster. He had not much of a family background. I think we can all relate to Zach in some form or fashion. And I'm highly suspicious that maybe you formed the character after me. Is that possible?

SPEAKER_00: 35:45

Well, that takes my answer away here.

SPEAKER_03: 35:48

The only thing I'm missing is the cool jacket and eye patch.

SPEAKER_00: 35:51

Yeah. Yeah. Zach has an eye patch and a glass eye. And people have asked me, actually, who is Zach? I mean, Zach's not you. Mark, are you the other guy? Are you Grant? And I said, well, maybe I might've been years ago, but I was concerned with Zach that I was going to make him out to be a cliche of a grizzly biker. And in many ways he is, but I've met a whole bunch of guys who are cliches of grizzly bikers and it still fits. And I mean, geez, you go to Sturgis and you see the people at Sturgis and you recognize that these people are out there and they do exist. And they have lives and they're as important as anybody else. Ultimately, though, to answer your question, Zach is based around a guy that I knew many years ago called Ian, Ian Kaner. And he was a very good buddy. And we rode together, in fact, across America, back when he had a Yamaha XS11. And I still have my dirt bike and the like. And we went to Sturgis together and experienced it all. And I last saw Ian in maybe 10 years ago when he got married and I haven't seen him since. But Ian doesn't have an eye patch and a glass eye, but he pretty much is the epitome of the grizzly biker. And I would like to think that I may have done him justice in this book.

SPEAKER_03: 37:16

I'm happy to hear that you've been to Sturgis because your description of Deadwood was spot on. You were probably polite about what happens at Buffalo Chip, which can be a little outrageous. But yeah, it's good to hear you've been there. And Zach is really relatable for a lot of motorcyclists because, you know, truth be told, we're only a couple of bad decisions or, you know, happenings away from ending up like Zach. Was that your idea behind the character? Oh,

SPEAKER_00: 37:46

yeah. I wanted people to be able to relate to the story whether they rode motorcycles or not too, right? I thought it was very important that you should be able to enjoy this book if you don't care about bikes. And ultimately, hopefully, you might be interested in motorcycles at the end of it. And you might be curious as to what motorcycles have to offer, or you might just be a little more open towards people who do ride motorcycles after reading this book. But yeah, it absolutely had to be relatable. It absolutely had to be something that I'd lived through, you've lived through, the reader has lived through, or would like to live through, or would not like to live through, because some pretty bad things happened to quite a variety of people in this story. And some of it you expect, some of it you don't, some of it you will anticipate, some of it you won't. I really did stretch my writing chops a little bit with this storyline, I must admit.

SPEAKER_03: 38:38

I think by chapter eight or nine, the shit really starts to hit the fan. And I really enjoyed the friendship between Zach and another character named Jay. And this friendship is really put to the test with, well, with a few interactions, but one of them especially with a dirty cop. And, you know, I think we can admire that brotherhood, that friendship. Do you have a friend like Jay that you can rely on?

SPEAKER_00: 39:02

I don't have a close buddy who rides a motorcycle like Jay. I have close buddies who ride motorcycles. Nobody's quite like Jay. Jay was a bit of an amalgam of everything. Jay is a guy who runs a motorcycle shop. It's a chop shop, caters to everybody, including gang members. And I based him a little bit on a guy who runs Bronco's Motorcycle Shop in Milton, Ontario, who used to sit my motorcycle. And he wasn't a buddy of mine, but he was a guy I trusted implicitly with the bike. And I thought, you know what, if I knew my way around a motorcycle enough to be a mechanic, which I certainly do not, then this is the kind of bike shop that I'd like to work at. So Jay's bike shop was like Bronco's bike shop in Milton, Ontario, to me, or at least the way that I wanted to think it would be.

SPEAKER_03: 39:53

I'm sure that many of us can relate to the brotherhood or the promise of brotherhood as it relates to much of MC bike culture. And there's always a super cool bike shop involved in every one of these stories. Yeah. But in the beginning of this book, we're introduced to some of the characters through a crazy, violent, religious cult. Was this cult modeled after an actual group in the US? No,

SPEAKER_00: 40:22

it's an amalgam. Again, it's an amalgam of a whole variety of different cults. I've always been fascinated in cults. I've known people who have been members of cults. I've watched every documentary I can think of about cults, and especially suicidal cults, doomsday cults, things like that. I just find them to be fascinating. And so I wanted the cult that I describe in my book to be a whole group of these things, but to also be quite believable. I wanted the leader to be enigmatic. The leader is a guy called Juan. But in fact, his followers follow His followers call him Juan, right? From Juan. And you never quite, until the end, find out whatever happened to Juan. He's always looming over everything in a little way, right? I wanted him to be both understandable, but also scary. And I wanted him to be not a very nice guy. And of course, what you ultimately, when you look at all these various cults, half of them come down to sex. And the cult leader just wants to have sex. with every woman in the cult. And sometimes every guy too, they don't care, right? They just want to have a lot of sex. And so one is like that too, right? You had to have sex with everybody. And he had to have sex with Zach's wife. And it was understood and part of it because whatever child came about from any kind of union would be the promised child who would be the new Messiah. This is the kid, in fact, who is Zach's son, who was to be the promised Messiah, was groomed to be the Messiah who, well, you find out what happened when you read the book.

SPEAKER_03: 42:05

Yeah. I'm glad you clarified that a bit because when you first cracked the book open, you're like, what is going on? Do I have the right book here? It's a bit, it's a bit wild, but it all, it all makes sense. Obviously by, by chapter two or three, it definitely catches you a little off guard though. But speaking of the intersection of motorcycles and religion, I just finished reading through dust and darkness. Have you read that book? Jeremy Krieger. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 42:30

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. He sent me a copy of that book when he first wrote it. And I reviewed it, actually, in the newspaper when it came out. And I thought it was a good book. I enjoyed reading it. I think you should read it if you haven't read it. I mean, you've read it, but I think that anyone listening to this podcast should read it. But they should keep an open mind to the whole book. Jeremy is a fascinating guy himself, right? Have you ever met him? No, no. Not yet. Have you ever had him on the podcast?

SPEAKER_03: 43:02

No, but he is scheduled to come on in a few days, I think.

SPEAKER_00: 43:06

Cool. Say hello from me, will you? I will. I will. We met at a motorcycle shop, a motorcycle show, sorry, in Toronto. We had tables next to each other and I was sitting there selling my book and he was selling his book and he sold about 10 copies of his book for every one that I sold of mine. But then that's because he was also jumping up and saying, hey, you should read my book. And I've heard nothing but good stuff about his writing. And I really do enjoy the various books that he's produced.

SPEAKER_03: 43:33

I absolutely enjoy reading things by people that are much smarter than me. And if you add some motorcycle stories in there, you've got me hooked, that's for sure. And in preparation for this talk and also for Jeremy's talk, I did a little research. As you know, I organize a motorcycle rally based in the US and I have to use Google Maps a lot. And you're constantly seeing churches everywhere in America. And I was shocked by this number. there are 360,000 registered congregations in America alone. Do you find that number as shocking as I do?

SPEAKER_00: 44:09

That is a lot, isn't it? You got to remember that they're all tax exempt too, right? Which I think would account for a whole bunch of them. But it's a lot. And I don't know how you can have so many, I must admit. But I did a lot of research into this book and into religion and into the idea of of religious cults. Being not a very religious person myself, personally, but when I did run up against stuff that I needed to fact check, you know who I contacted? Zach Kurylik. Does that name mean anything to you?

SPEAKER_03: 44:44

Yes, it does. I actually emailed him yesterday on another topic and I did happen to ask him if he was the inspiration behind the Zach character and he denies it up

SPEAKER_00: 44:57

and down. You know what? He is the reason Zach is called Ah, see, I knew it. buddy, my good buddy, Costa Mazuris, who writes about motorcycles based out of Montreal, Ontario, Montreal, Quebec. Anyway, that's the only other little gem in there. But no, Zach is not a grizzly guy for sure. But he did read my book. He enjoyed my book. But he also is a person of faith, and he knows his Bible inside out. So when I was looking for specific references in the Bible, I could contact him, and he would refer me to the best places to find the extension of that. He was a but also really keen on the idea of religious cult members who rip people's eyes out and stuff. So, you know,

SPEAKER_03: 46:06

it's more than just me. Boy, I sure hope Zach hasn't had to resort to ripping out eyeballs of folks submitting articles to his publication in his role as editor. But I'm sure he has politely put a few articles into the recycling bin. Can you tell folks where they can get a copy of Running On Empty?

SPEAKER_00: 46:25

The only place you can get it is through Amazon. I published this myself. I went through all the correct channels to do so. Uh, so it's, it's not a vanity publication at all, but I did keep it through Amazon as I did with my other book, uh, because my fiction, I like to self publish. It's a different process from my nonfiction where I, I kind of have traditional publishers for that. And I think that that's also important because with nonfiction, you kind of need to be able to, to demonstrate a legitimacy, right? That an editor has been through and assure you're not lying or making stuff up. But With fiction, I could give myself a wider realm. So Amazon is the place to go to find it. There are other books called Running on Empty. There are a whole bunch of them. So you got to make sure that you look for the one by Mark Richardson.

SPEAKER_03: 47:11

And if there's any confusion, we've added Running on Empty to the Motorcycle Book Club that is on the ADV Cannonball website. So there's no confusion there. And I've left my review also on that page for folks. Maybe you can give us a scoop. Is there anything interesting you're working on in the near future?

SPEAKER_00: 47:29

I am. I don't know if you'd find it exciting, because it doesn't have motorcycles in it, I'm afraid. But I'm just beginning work. I just published another book, a nonfiction book, Story of the Trans-Canada Highway, called The Drive Across Canada. It was published in May, which is kind of the book I was born to write in many ways, because I was born on exactly the same day as the Trans-Canada Highway was opened in British Columbia back in 1962. So I found I found that there wasn't a book that told its story and told the stories of the various adventurers who tried to drive across the country before there were even roads. So I wrote it. But in doing that, I found one guy, this fast-talking, loudmouth guy, a journalist from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, who tried to drive across the country in 1930. He took a McLaughlin Buick, a through the bush north of Lake Superior and ultimately didn't make it. But it's a fast, I thought it was a fascinating story. And I've since found out all about this guy because he's briefly famous. He's famous for like six months while he's trying to do this thing. And then he injures himself and leaves it to somebody else to try to finish the journey for him, which also is a failure. And the car just ends up rusting out in Thunder Bay. But he then goes to Halifax and gets interest. in driving around the world. He wants to take a car, which is shaped like a torpedo, with two seats in it, side by side. It's going to be painted red and white. It's going to be made out of nickel, because that's a Canadian mineral. And he wants to call it Miss Canada, and it's going to be painted in red and white and red upholstery and everything else. And he's going to drive around the world in this thing, promoting Canada's interests. And he's this big talker, and the journalists all write everything down faithfully. And then he just disappears. And so I'm writing his story. I found his family, which was a fluke, a stroke of luck, I must admit. I found the family and it's mostly a novel. I should be considered a novel because I'm having to make up huge chunks of it where I just don't know what happened. But I do know the bones of his life story. And so I'm writing a story about him and I'm really looking forward to getting into it.

SPEAKER_03: 49:59

Absolutely. the risk of embarrassing myself, I was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. That's not the embarrassing part. The embarrassing part is I've never done the Trans-Canada Highway in any real portion. And that's a real shame.

SPEAKER_00: 50:15

Well, you know what? The Trans-Canada Highway in many places is now just a kind of trucking route. So in Quebec, for example, it's just a way to get across the province to get down to the Maritimes. And the same thing in New Brunswick. It's just a fast three-lane interstate with restricted access junctions and all of that stuff. But what it is good at is getting you to places so that you can go off the highway and you can go onto what's often the old roads that used to be the highway, like in Quebec on Highway 132, running along the south shore of the St. Lawrence. Oh my God, it's beautiful. And you can carry on and go around the Gaspé Peninsula. Oh my God. And in New Brunswick, you can venture off the fast three-lane interstate where everybody's doing, you know, 70 miles an hour. And you can go into the old roads that used to be the TransCanada way back when, some of which are flooded out now, others are fine, through the backwoods of New Brunswick. And it's a way to get you to these places because that's what a highway is for, right? It's to get you to adventure. And it really is the journey is the destination and everything else, I must admit. I think it was Ted Simon who first said that,

SPEAKER_03: 51:25

by the way. Yeah, I think that's the entire purpose of this podcast. the rally that we run, and all the miles that we crush. But thanks very much for writing this book. Thanks for sharing some time with us and telling the story about the book and some background. And again, everyone go to the Motorcycle Book Club on our webpage for more information or in the show notes. And hopefully the next time we talk, I will have conquered the Trans-Canada Highway and we can talk about that. And I'll look forward to seeing you doing that. Again, thanks for coming on. I appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_05: 51:57

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SPEAKER_02: 52:58

And we are back. Yes, we are. interviewed them before has asked because anybody we bring on the podcast, you can, you can just go like Elizabeth Beard, super hard to interview. Lyndon Poskett, super hard to interview. How do you ask a question that a thousand people haven't already asked the same question of? Anyway, shout out to Aaron Poopball for doing a great job at asking the questions and having a conversation seem very natural and covering things that weren't previously asked.

SPEAKER_03: 53:55

Well, I'm a fan, right? Like Mark Richardson is a great writer. He, uh, he's obviously a great order and, you know, he's well-traveled and it's just cool to have a, um, a chat with someone. And this podcast is a great excuse to force yourself to read those books or watch those videos. Uh, here's a pro tip for everyone. Half that book was read while I was walking the dog. So there's a app by 11 studios. I think it's called where before I take the dog out, I screen, I, sorry, I capture with my camera. a chapter or two and then i press read and then ai which is good ai by the way it's quite quite natural it's not perfect but it's it's almost there so while i'm walking the dog for like 30 45 minutes i can knock out a a couple of chapters

SPEAKER_02: 54:43

so wait a minute so you so the book the book's electronic

SPEAKER_03: 54:47

no no

SPEAKER_02: 54:47

it's it's a paper book okay so then walk me through this no pun intended

SPEAKER_03: 54:52

no no hey you're on fire today buddy taylor the pun master So you're so wild. I love it. Put that beer down. And you know, you know what everyone, the problem is he's smashing a double IPA. This is, this is the problem. The problem is I'm almost done with

SPEAKER_02: 55:09

it. We better get through this. We better finish this podcast. I thought it was going to fall down.

SPEAKER_03: 55:13

Well done, sir. So, yeah, so I have the paper book and you know what, normally I'm reading it, but if I need to go leave, I use the camera on the phone while I'm in the app. I photograph the pages carefully, right? I watch the margins and then I press read and then you choose the character with AI and it's quite good. It's, it's, it's quite convincing. And then as you're walking a dog, you threw in some headphones and the AI will, you know, do OCR, pump it through an AI, and then we'll read the book to you. So, uh, it, it was nice to read the book with my eyes, but when I had to walk the dog, why not continue reading?

SPEAKER_02: 55:49

So you use the optical character recognition. Do you, do you still use that, um, you know, that job monkey AI go? Yeah, man, they'd be walking down the street. Dad, what about does it come out and talk to him? No, I

SPEAKER_03: 56:01

didn't use that one. I don't think that goes with the characters. You know, in my mind's eye, Zach, you know, the motorcyclist with the eye patch is in Rastafari. You know what I mean? It's not exactly

SPEAKER_02: 56:14

that guy. Fair enough. Okay. I have to say, though, in terms of character development, he does a really, really good job with character development. And as you intro, before we roll the interview, he does a lot of this and he ties into It's like if you want to be a really good liar, you've got to ensure that there's some little red thread of truth throughout the entire bit of it. So he does that in his character development. So a lot of it, as he was to explain in the interview, is that he does tie it into other individuals who are real people in the world. Sadly, not you, but Zach, for example, yes, with a different spelling.

SPEAKER_03: 56:54

Yeah. And, you know, a lot of authors will tell you this. You want it to be as believable as possible and only alter a little bit of the story to make it, uh, you know, over the top and, uh, and interesting. And I think he mentioned Ted Simon again, and what people don't know is him and Ted, you know, are friends. And when we interviewed him the first time about Zen and now, uh, about the Robert Persick journey on his way home from, uh, traveling the, the, I think they call it the Zen way, the Zen journey. trail. He hung out with Ted Simon for like a couple of days and worked on his motorcycle. So it's, you know, it's, it's really rarefied air and it's really cool to, uh, dip your toe into that once in a while.

SPEAKER_02: 57:40

Yeah, it's nice. We've had some really fun people on the podcast and people who are rich in this. And I think one of the cool things about a lot of the people that we've had and we've chosen, and the reason we've chosen them is because they're quite modest about it. They're just like, this is something I did. And you know, I, something I enjoy doing and they're passionate about it. They didn't, they They didn't do it to be the first. They didn't do it to set some new standard. They did it because they liked it. And they just happened to be really good at it. And that's what makes, I think, it very authentic. It also makes them, people see that and it makes them popular because people want to read that and be part of that, experience that.

SPEAKER_03: 58:15

My interview with Ted Simon, you may want to go listen to it or not. I'm not sure, but I think it's season three, episode one or something. But it wasn't my best work. I was really, really nervous to like be in Ted Simon's home, like on birthday and hang out so it wasn't my best work but it was cool to talk to him and hang out with him and just kind of you know swim in his presence it was it was it was pretty cool they say but never never never meet your

SPEAKER_02: 58:39

heroes

SPEAKER_03: 58:40

is that

SPEAKER_02: 58:40

it

SPEAKER_03: 58:40

yeah but that's totally false everyone I've ever met on this podcast has been awesome you know what I mean but maybe I just haven't spent enough time with them but but it's always been a positive experience and I'm and I'm better for it

SPEAKER_02: 58:53

yeah

SPEAKER_03: 58:54

and that's

SPEAKER_02: 58:54

one of the reasons I'm looking forward to hanging out with you this week in India

SPEAKER_03: 58:58

Yeah. Well, we got to get there. So it's funny.

SPEAKER_02: 59:03

Why do you have to say that? Like you totally threw a wrench in that. I'm like, Oh God, they got to get there. It's going to take like 36 hours.

SPEAKER_03: 59:09

Well, because everyone's flights have been literally canceled. I don't know how many times, but my flights have not been altered. No, sorry. My flights have been altered. They've changed some equipment. So my seat assignments have changed. And anyways, I will bellyache about that when we're having and a beer on the aft deck of the houseboat. But you guys have had flights literally canceled and I haven't had any, you know, scheduling changes. I've had equipment changes, which is going to be really fantastic for my fat ass to be sitting in coach. But, you know, not that I'm upset about that, but you guys, you guys have had so many cancellations. I'm so thankful that we're going very early, several days early, just in case there is some sort of snafu along the way.

SPEAKER_02: 59:56

Yeah, man. Love actually just in cases. Sorry, I had to throw it in. I do want to talk about, if you back up here and talk about the interview, I love the fact that with Mark Richardson, when his first bike, the plan was for him to ride up and down this country road on this small bike when he was underage by a year, and he was just going to practice on that road for a year. You know, it was a short road, he even said. And then he was going to be able to, after he was more mature and he had mastered the road, then he would get to a bigger bike. And like the first day he was done with it, then he took it and he piled it up. And then he continues to talk about every single bike he owned that he piled up. And then he was like, you know, but it's amazing. He talked about your knee. It's amazing that he's been able to walk away from all of the incidents that were, you know, that happened. his brain was writing checks that his body couldn't cash, but he still walked away.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:02

Yeah. When you're young, you could do that. You can fall off your bike at, you know, 40 miles an hour, low side it and go, Oh, I hope no one notices. Uh, but when you're our age, like I am not interested in falling off my bike at this age. I already got enough problems. I don't need any new ones.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:17

Yeah. I was thinking about it. I was like, like, uh, I was, I was leaving the office today. Um, some of my colleagues were like, so what do you think is going to be the biggest challenge? And safety guy is going to go work, go ride a motorcycle through the Himalayas. And so the college were like, what do you think is going to be your biggest challenge? And I was like, so just to make it fun, I was like, I think just surviving it, not everybody lives through this. And they went, what? And I said, no, not everybody, not everybody comes back from this. And they were, they believed me for a moment. And I was like, no, in all honesty, I think the main challenge is going to be the, the altitude so that we're going to take diet mocks so we don't get acute mountain sickness. And, and And then, you know, so I don't come back and wither and blow away from acute diarrhea. So these are the main concerns there. And I think that's about it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:05

Yeah, but don't estimate the terrain, right? Like I've avoided any kind of research. But what I do know is landslides are common. There was just hundreds of people killed in the area recently because of landslides. It's almost 100% off road. Granted, the reason why I'm not stressed about it is they're tiny bikes. They're little 400s or 450s or something Four fifties. Yeah. And it's going to be a walk in the park cause there's no luggage on it except for stuff we need for the day. So I'm not stressing about the riding cause it's not like a 1250 GS or something like that. So, but you know, make no mistake. It is, it is an off-road journey, uh, to be sure.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:44

Yeah, true. And then the one thing that I did additional saying that I did say was I was concerned about the, uh, the deep water crossings and, uh, and, and these boys did make a point. Our, our, the guys that were traveling with our lead and our sag, uh, they did say are sweep. They said, get waterproof socks. And the only reason you need waterproof socks is if your boots are going to fill with water.

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:07

Yeah. Well, I don't have a giant, you know, tech sevens anymore. I just have, I'm not sure what they are, but they're, they're the Alpine stars, ADV type of a boot. And there's only like low rise. Yeah. There's only two buckles on it. You know, I'm not, you know, I'm not riding around off-roading anymore. Right. We kind of stopped all that in the last, in the last few years. So, but yeah, there are plenty river crossings, you know, my, my strategy is just going to send it through the water. Don't be gentle. It's a rental. And, uh, hopefully I don't get too wet.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:38

Yeah. I think, I think the main problem I did a, um, I did a little research recently on, on, um, water crossing. The main problem is, uh, if you don't get your weight far enough back, if your front wheel, like you can't see where the front wheel is going to hit. And if you, if you hit a rock that throws your bike off to the side and you've got too much weight committed forward and it throws you out like you know dropping you into a rut or something then you can get dropped off you know the bike goes left and you go right or vice versa so the main thing is to first of all watch first of all don't be the first through and then watch where the front wheels make it through watch when somebody has you know a bumpy you know rocky transition through but they get through without their front wheel getting whacked out and then follow that line through so as soon as somebody starts going through get behind them and watch the line they take and then make sure you take the same line for the, you know, for the person who doesn't drop. And then if that, you know, if all that fails, make sure you've got tech sevens and waterproof socks like I do.

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:38

So dear listener, what he's saying is I'm going to go first because I'm the fattest of all of them. And I, and I plan on just sending it. So I will go first. And if I make it, they're just going to copy my line, which is, which is a genius strategy, by the way, but not so genius for me, unfortunately. Your

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:56

words, not mine, but true.

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:58

True.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:02

Sad but true, sir. says he's traveling the world and he's writing about the American dream while he's in America. And then he went to journalism school and he actually did it. I think that's great.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:38

Yeah, that's really awesome. I think that as we get older, especially when we're not chasing a bunch of women around as we used to, it's a good access card into some interesting interaction. So rather than just sitting at the pub by yourself, scrolling on your phone, for instance, on my return journey from the Himalayas, I'm overnighting in Delhi and I reached out to the official Royal Enfield club in Delhi. They're called the Royal Mavericks. And if you guys are listening, shout out, I'm looking forward to meeting you guys. And we're going to do some podcasting in our research into Royal Enfield. We're going to do like a factory Royal Enfield kind of dive into things in the Himalayas. Leia's. And then I want to dive into the Royal infield culture. So I'm going to go embed myself with the Royal infield club, the Royal Mavericks, and I'm really looking forward to meeting them. And obviously that's going to be a podcast interview coming up.

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:43

That's really cool. I think about, I didn't know you had set that up. That's fantastic. It reminds me of when I did, it was a Valentine's day drop and it was a V day with Vijay. Vijay is going to be on this trip with us. And he talked about, so I think it was Bangalore he grew up in, and he bought a Bullet 500 and you had to buy the Royal Enfield motorcycle. So let me just back up a moment and say, where we're going once we get out of Leh, it's all military controlled roads. If the road washes out, then there's military bulldozers in there fixing. It's all military controlled because it's, if you go to one location, we look, we're going to look into China. If you go to another action, another place, one of the places I think when we first go the pass into the lake, I might be mistaken here, but as I understand, you can look into Pakistan. Vijay said that when he was a young guy, and this was in the interview, he said he bought a Royal Enfield because to be in the Royal Enfield Club was the only way you could get access to this part of India. And he bought the bike, he got into the club, he booked the trip in the military, and they took you around to the different sets of barracks, and you stayed in the military. barracks as you went through this particular region. And then they had a skirmish or something happened, whatever the level of discontent was with Pakistan, and they closed it all down. So he was sitting on this motorcycle and he's like, I love this bike, but now I can't use it for the purpose I bought it for. Because if you didn't have that bike, you couldn't do that trip with the military.

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:22

And we have fixers that are arranging all this. And apparently we had to send them our passports and we had to get special permissions and regional visas to get into these areas. But because we have these, these fixers that are putting all this together, we are going to have access into all of those areas. And I'm really happy that Vijay will finally be able to achieve that goal and be able to ride in these specific parts of the Himalayas.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:53

Yeah, it's cool. Because when I met him at a party, and I was like, I'm thinking about doing this. And you and I had already talked about that. And I said, i'm thinking about doing this and he's like i'm in and then and then and he was saying he got his brother-in-law in so vj and sanjay will both be joining us on this trip so uh for the listeners out there you will hear interviews from both of them as the uh as the yeah as the weeks roll forward

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:16

yeah and uh and i'm looking forward to checking out these royal infields in their uh in the area that they were specifically designed for and uh named after that'll be fun

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:26

yeah hey look before we leave the mark richardson interview i just want to say one thing okay maybe 10 um but i'll conclude with this one so i love the fact that when he he's like he showed up and he realized that there was a way to actually make money to get paid to ride and write about motorcycling and he found that niche and it's it's a bit reminiscent about the first time when i was living in annapolis maryland as a kid and i was going to like sailing school in the summer i know sorry. And then I remember seeing this big yacht sitting on the end of the dock. And then I was in like the mall later that week. And I saw this girl and she had this, the name of the boat, this big sailboat on her shirt. And I was like, hey, is that the sailboat that's in town? And she's like, yeah. And I said, what's that about? And she told me that there was actually an industry where you could get paid and somebody would actually pay pay you to go drive someone else's boat. And I was like, there's no way there's, there's no way people would pay you to do the thing. That's the most fun that I would just do for free forever. Anyway, back to that 20 years of doing that. I realized it's a pretty amazing gig.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:42

Yeah. Unfortunately I should have talked to Mark about that because instead of becoming a proper journalist, we became motorcycle podcasters, which is nothing but a giant hole you shovel money into. And it has totally backfired, but it has been a A fun journey nonetheless. I'm going to write you an email about that. Maybe you can sell it. I appreciate

SPEAKER_02: 1:11:05

that. What a disaster. That's all I got to say about Mark Richardson. I thought it was a great interview. And I loved it when he bought the last comment. I love it when he said he bought the tight leather pants for leathers for protection. And he wanted them to have dual purpose. So he got super tight ones. And then on his new bike, I think one of the bikes he had, he slung his leg over it. And he was like, then it ripped, cracked a sack. And then they were, they had to have my mom. So I'm up. Anyway, fun interview. You did a great job with that. Yeah. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:35

Let's do some cannonball news. If you don't mind. Yeah, man, let's roll with it. Okay. I wanted to shout out to number 34, Wayne and number 13, John. So very sorry. You guys can't make it. Sorry about the last minute cancellation, but yeah, that's life. Hopefully we see you in 2026. Yeah, man. Yeah. And I want to specialize thanks to my friend Rob. Rob is going to roll with me in a Sprinter van. Normally he rides a sweet-ass special edition 1250 GSA, but he's going to roll with me in the Sprinter van for the 2025 Cannonball Rally, and he is going to be our media specialist. He's bringing his camera equipment, so we're looking forward to Rob helping out. Fantastic. Oh, dude, that's really good. You're going to

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:22

get some good coverage there.

SPEAKER_03: 1:12:23

It'll be nice to talk to someone instead of talking to myself.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:26

Well, you know, I understand you can have a pretty good conversation with yourself, Aaron. But I just want to say one thing. It's really important that he never let the camera go over to the dash so no one can actually record the actual speed the Sprinter van is running at.

SPEAKER_03: 1:12:40

I don't think the diesel Sprinter is going to go that fast dragging the trailer full of motorcycles, but we will give our very best cannonball try for sure. And I wanted to mention that the rally tracking page and the rally leaderboard page, are public and they are now live on the ADVcannonball.com website. So if people want to follow along with the 2025 ADV Cannonball Rally, they can see everyone's position on the Spot Wallet page. And separately, you can see the live scoreboard as people crush checkpoints across the country. So that'd be fun for listeners to watch that.

SPEAKER_02: 1:13:24

Like if someone's doing the rally, like they're busy, they're doing the rally. so if like they can give it to their friends and loved ones to say watch me watch me try to beat taylor try try be hard to beat me that's right nothing goes faster than 747 baby i'll be on the west coast waiting

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:45

yeah 520 knots is kind of hard to beat but uh yeah yeah people can follow along and watch scores uh accumulate and just a reminder it starts october the 6th 2025 for our inaugural ADV cannonball. What else we got here? We have, we have some, yeah, I've been talking to some people about their strategies. It's been interesting. There's a poll up on Facebook to see if people's motivations are touristic or if they want to just place in a top 10 or win. Most people are just coming along for the ride, but there are a few masochistic people that are trying to get all the checkpoints, which means not only have they plotted out to get the options, optional off-road sections some of these people want to double back and get the paved sections as well so i'm really excited about people really grabbing a hold of the cannonball spirit with two hands even though this is uh going to be quite masochistic as they show up at midnight to the hotel uh you know weathered from the road but hey listen if they want to uh win they got to uh they got to do the work so my hat's off to them for planning to get all the checkpoints which was Nevermind tension. I thought that people would choose either paved or unpaved and there are awards available for both, but I never thought that someone would try to get all of them. So let's see if they actually accomplish it.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:11

That's pretty cool. So I guess I'm just going to deep dive into strategy for a second. So that means that having done the strategy on that, people have recognized that by trying to nail down both paved and unpaved, they can win by not getting the bonus that you get for being first at the hotel.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:31

Yeah, the bonus is the first to arrive bonus each day is 25 points. However, if you got all the extreme checkpoints and the paved and unpaved checkpoints in 2025, that is a greater score per day than just ripping through missing the extreme, let's say missing the off-road points and achieving the first to arrive bonus That is technically less points than being a glutton for punishment and trying to get all of them. So, however, I will say, listen, this is all academic because there are road closures. There are fires. There are mechanical failures. There is weather to contend with. There is fatigue. Who knows what is going to happen? Just like Mike Tyson said, everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face. So good luck to everyone.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:27

Everyone's got a plan until you bite somebody's ear off.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:30

Right. Listen, that might be a strategy also. I would consider that unsportsmanlike conduct. But if you rip off someone's ear at the start line, it'll make for great social media. But just to be clear, that's unsportsmanlike conduct. Don't be a weenie. Don't be a weenie and rip someone's

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:49

ear off. Don't do it. Not worth it. You're not going to get bonus points for this.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:54

Yeah. In more pedestrian news. and more realistic news. All the hotels have been booked. So that's exciting. And all the checkpoint files are polished as best as they can get. I noticed a few little naming convention mistakes that I had in there. Those have been fixed and the schedule is also finalized and that's on the website. So if you are a part of the rally, please poke around the whole website. Look at the schedule. It has restaurants and pubs we're going to. It has the address of the hotel. hotel if you have an issue and you just want to navigate to the hotel that information is there uh the practice routes are on the schedule uh everything is done everything is finalized so sorry finalized so you will notice in the naming convention of all the files the word draft has been removed and we're a little ahead of schedule but everything is finalized so everyone have at it

SPEAKER_02: 1:17:52

really good job because i know the level of detail of the documents that you sent out there i know one of the things you sent out was amazing. Like every single lat and lon for every waypoint and every checkpoint, whether it's extreme or otherwise, was in there and you're like, you're welcome. And I know that the amount of work that goes into that, just what it takes to plot a course, you know, in an automated GPS system from Fort Lauderdale to the Bahamas to Nassau, you know, you've got a bunch of waypoints in there. It takes a lot of work. So really good job on that. And thank you.

SPEAKER_03: 1:18:24

Yeah. And there's, I've noticed some people have proofreaders printed out and laminated that spreadsheet to have on their tank bag. Cause there's other information in there. So it's a great example of, even though this is a GPS rally, a checkpoint rally, and we rely heavily on computers and GPS and displays, having a paper printout of all of the checkpoints can be a useful tool. Even though this is a paperless type of rally, there's no road book. it can be useful to print out the spreadsheet that I made. I

SPEAKER_02: 1:19:02

just want to just throw this in there is that remember, if you didn't practice with the equipment, if you didn't practice with the app, if you didn't practice with any of these things, and you didn't win, remember, there might be a correlation.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:17

Yeah, for sure. And I've actually gone above and beyond. So if you arrive a day or two early in the Outer Banks, I have set up a practice journal gpx route practice checkpoints and even the scoring app after you check in and you and you get your token for the scoring app you can go run a mini rally as many times as you want on the outer banks and it's not a terrible place to be ride a motorcycle around you know to be sure so uh there's no excuse and i realize life gets in the way and we all have things to do but if you want to come and practice come early to the rally and this will be a tradition no matter where we are in the world no matter what year it is we're always going to have a miniature practice rally for people to run on their own so there's no excuses i don't you know in all seriousness i don't want people leaving the start line and they're messing around with their their gps's and their phones i don't want that i want your eyes on the road and i want you to have a good time and the second nature portion of the rally should be your rally equipment and your now skills. So please come early practice and have your eyes on the road and having a good ride. It is a tough route. Fatigue is going to be a problem. The roads are even the paved sections are some of the twistiest roads around the back of the dragon is not a joke. You know, ripping through high altitude, you know, mountain passes is not a joke. So I would rather you eyes up having fun being prepared and ignoring the navigation skills. portion of it. So please, I know I'm harping, but please be prepared and have more enjoyment of riding rather than frustration with navigation.

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:06

We joke a lot about riding fast or otherwise, but the truth is that it's important. Think about the sustainability of this. If you plan on doing the 2026, you need to survive the 2025. Don't go out there and get hurt. Don't go out there and get hurt. It's really important that people do this, have a good time, but do it safely. And do it within your capabilities. And if you're going to go back to the rant you had a moment ago about three bullet points up, which talked about, you know, you mentioned fatigue. It's like, don't forget that people who potentially want to capture all of these waypoints, every waypoint out there, I mean, every checkpoint out there, you want to capture them. We're still human beings, you know. Some are, you know, like you, Aaron, superhuman. But then there's the rest of us out there. And then we just got what we got, man. But be safe. Be safe. Have a good time. And it's sustainable that way. You make sure you can go back and do it again and then learn from your mistakes like Aaron and I did in the Alcan 5000 every day was a list of, oh my God, how do we screw that up? But learn from it and have fun so you can come back and continue with this in any event, whether it's a cannonball or another one. But be safe and come back.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:19

Yeah. And there was a comment I made on Facebook that if you do have a horrible accident and you need to be airlifted, please get your phone out and stream it. Cause that would be awesome. Social media content for us. I'm just saying, be a good lad. And as you're splinting your, your, your femur, just make sure someone is recording it so I can use that in social media. That would be awesome.

SPEAKER_02: 1:22:41

Yeah. So it's a really good tip. Yes. On the heels of our seriousness. That's really nice. So thanks for, thanks for adding that in. Yeah. As a safety professional, I feel good about that. Thanks Aaron.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:50

Listen, you know, you know, we, we, we, we very rarely practice what we preach, uh, that's for sure listen and on that note if you don't mind let's roll the outro

SPEAKER_04: 1:23:05

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 coffee on buymecoffee.com slash ADV Cannonball or directly help save this sinking ship for the price of a pint at patreon.com slash ADV Cannonball. Follow us on all the socials with the handle at ADV Cannonball. If you'd like to send us a question or Thanks for listening, and remember, don't be an ADV weenie. Keep your right hand cranked and your feet on the pegs.

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