TAT, Alcan 5000 and TSD with Crankshaft Culture & Satish Gopalkrishnan

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_03 (00:03):
Welcome to the ADV cannonball podcast, where we
discuss all things on twowheels, the adventure bike
cannonball and other motorcyclerelated nonsense.

SPEAKER_06 (00:26):
Season three, episode 13.
Welcome to Adventure CannonballPodcast.
I'm your host, Taylor Lawson.
And today I am joined by allaround good guy and good friend,
Aaron Pufall.
What's up, Taylor?
Good to see your face.
Yeah, man, I made it back frommainland Europe.
And I have to say that that's acause for celebration to have a,

(00:47):
well, an IPA.
Nice.
What do you got going there?
You know, it's not my favoritebeer, but it Absolutely is one
of my favorite beer names.
Apocalyptic Thunder Juice.
Nice.
It kind of says it all rightthere.
And let's see, this little 33milliliter can is swinging 6.5%

(01:09):
by alcohol.
So we probably ought to getthrough this one quickly because
I haven't had dinner yet.

SPEAKER_05 (01:15):
All right.
Well, I'm going to crack openthis Bale Breaker Top Cutter
IPA.
It's a standard one for thestate of Washington.
Let it rip, bud.
Nice.
Oh, yeah.
Nice.
I'm rocking.
I'm rocking 6.8% alcohol and anIBU of a moderate 70.

(01:36):
Sorry, man.
I'm just not that into beer.

SPEAKER_06 (01:38):
I'm going to love beer.
What's IBU?
It sounds like something.
So when somebody's going aroundthe hospital, I go, he's got a
severe IBU happening in roomfive.

SPEAKER_05 (01:47):
It's the bitter index, yeah.
The bitter index.
Bitter, bitter units, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 (01:55):
All right.
So let's talk.
This episode is going to be kindof fun.
It's kind of, we got a bunchjammed into it.
It's going to be a long episodefor those who are listening.
We have two interviews, whichare over 40 minutes a piece, but
they do tie in together.
And they are with people thatAaron and I met when we did the
Alcan 5000 in 2024.

SPEAKER_05 (02:16):
Yeah, we got the Crankshaft Culture folks.
They just finished rippingacross the country, the US on
the Transamerica Trail.
We're going to talk Alcan 5000and we're going to talk TSD
rallies, time, speed, distancerallies.
And then we have the champion ofTSD rallies.

(02:36):
Satish is our second interviewand it's it's going to be great.
Why don't you tell us about yourtrip home from the
Mediterranean?

SPEAKER_06 (02:46):
Yeah, that was super fun.
A shout out to my buddy Stuartfrom from years ago, a friend of
mine who's a captain.
We worked together managingsuper yachts for I think we
worked together about fiveyears.
And anyway, he's down there in,in Jouan-la-Pin, which is where
we had an apartment.
It's right between Cannes andAntibes on the South of France.

(03:09):
And we had this, yeah, we hadthis place that we, yeah, We got
to use for a week.
So we took a couple of weeks toget down there, stayed there a
week.
And then we took, again, theentire trip was train travel,
which I know you love.

SPEAKER_05 (03:21):
Yeah, I was super jealous.
And I wanted all the gorydetails, which you gave me some
of them.
But you did a sleeper train, Ithink more than once, right?

SPEAKER_06 (03:30):
Yeah, we did a sleeper train down.
And it's really interesting.
I'll try to keep this short, butI thought it was super
interesting.
So the, you know, train travelis super, yeah, you can move a
lot of bodies for not a ton ofenergy expenditure.
So the Europeans, the Europeangovernments were asked, they
went out to all the, well, thecitizens of different countries

(03:52):
and they said, why don't youguys use trains more?
And they said, well, why aren'tyou on time more?
So they set up a system.
They said, okay, well, we'regoing to set up a system that
penalizes us for when we arelate and And the way you
penalize a train company is youpenalize them in the pocketbook.
So for the trip down, you getyour interrail pass.

(04:14):
And then on top of that, youreserve your sleeper car.
So you pay extra for that.
So on the way down, if they'rean hour late, 25% discount.
Actually, either down or up.
And if it's two hours late, it'sa 50% discount.
So on the way down, they werelike four hours and a little bit
late.
And, um, it was a hundredpercent discount.

(04:35):
So, and then on the way back, itwas two hours late.
So essentially the way we lookat it, we love trains.
We got paid to take a sleepercar, both directions.

SPEAKER_05 (04:42):
No way.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
Wow.
I wish air travel was, uh, wasas strict as that.
The only experience that I havein the U S on trains is I tried
to do a cross country trip once.
And by the time I made it to, Iforget where the depot was San
Diego, maybe the next train, Ihad to take the starlight

(05:02):
express North Seattle and it wasso late it was three or four
hours late and had nowhere to goand the train station was like
dark and dangerous I ended upgrabbing a hotel and I was
getting text messages fromAmtrak and it was saying your
estimated departure time was Idon't know 3 a.m.
or something like this howeverthe train may be there at any

(05:26):
time and and we'll give you 30minutes notice.
I said, well, how the hell am Isupposed to have a sleep while
I'm waiting for your delinquenttrain?
And then when I got on thetrain, It was, it was gross.
It was dirty.
It was, it was a nightmare.
It was noisy.
And that was my, that was theend of any, you know, overnight,
you know, cross country traintravel in America.

(05:48):
It was over.
It was over.
You may

SPEAKER_06 (05:50):
want to try the, I think Greyhound offers a
service.
You give that world next time.
I

SPEAKER_05 (05:54):
think it was equally as good as the Greyhound
service.
And then last year, my wife andI 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 nameof it?
Anyways, it's an overnight trainfrom London up to Scotland.
And let's just say we won't begoing on an overnight train with

(06:18):
my wife again.

SPEAKER_06 (06:19):
Okay.
All right.
Was it a decent experience onthe train, you know, despite
your wife's, you know,appreciation for it?

SPEAKER_05 (06:28):
it was okay.
But again, we reserved a certaincabin and then we were, we were
told as we boarded that thatcabin was no longer available.
So we're going to give youanother one, which didn't have
an en suite bathroom.
Uh, and then there were someother issues.
Yeah, there was a, in theadjacent bathroom, there was
something loose and it wasbanging against the wall and I
had to go repair the train so wecould go to sleep.

(06:50):
Anyways, it's just, it justruined the night.
So all of my recent trainingexperiences have been, have been
a nightmare.
Although I'm still holding outthat one of these days I will I
will be able to do some sort ofepic journey anyways.

SPEAKER_06 (07:01):
Yeah.
Well, I wish you, I wish youbetter luck, but I have to say
that the, the trains did, theywere, they were well booked.
They were well-timed.
I did end up sitting on thefloor for two and a half hours
out of a, of a six hour tripfrom Strasbourg, France up to
Frankfurt.
But I, did sit in air conditionand I did have an inflatable

(07:24):
camp pillow.
So it wasn't that bad.
Nice.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (07:27):
But anyways, enough talking about trains.
Let me just quickly mention thatthe final payments are due for
the 2025 Cannonball by Friday,August 29th.
We will get Cannonball newslater.
You can skip forward to thechapter markers if you want, but
I just want to hit that up now.
And I also want to mention thatthere's a hundred dollar gift

(07:47):
card from Nice CNC See?
for the first person who emailsme on Wednesday, August 26th.
And you can find the emailaddress down in the show notes.
So good luck to everyone.
Hey, when's this episode goingto drop?
This episode will drop onWednesday, August 26th.
All right.
Just wanted to hear it again.
Yeah.

(08:07):
Wednesday, August 26th.

SPEAKER_06 (08:10):
Yeah.
Thanks for that.
Yep.
We're going to be on the summerschedule for just a little while
longer, and then we will getback to our regular weekly.
So, hey, Aaron, I wanted to askyou, ask you if you, you know, I
was just looking at thestatistics, you know, sometimes
I do that and you wouldn'tbelieve where we are the number
two podcast.
It's always number two.

(08:31):
I don't know, man.
Where was it this week?
Please tell me.
It was for this month, lastmonth, it was in Iceland.
Ever since we talked to Mikeabout doing that and he's
setting up his tours there,we've been crushing the market
there, man.

SPEAKER_05 (08:45):
Nice.
The wickedly large and expansivemarket of Iceland.
We're crushing it.
I love it.
Congratulations.

SPEAKER_06 (08:52):
We're crushing it like ice cubes in a glass.

SPEAKER_05 (08:55):
That's it.
Hey, speaking of that, if youcould take two seconds, if
you're on Apple Podcasts, couldyou take two seconds to just
give us a five-star review?
And I will pay you in IPAs thenext time I see you.
So please just take a second andclick a five-star review on
Apple Podcasts.

SPEAKER_06 (09:10):
I think a few episodes ago, you talked about
why that's so important.
And anyway, thank you very muchfor those of you who are doing
that.
It apparently makes adifference.
How would we be number twootherwise?

SPEAKER_05 (09:20):
Absolutely.
All hail the algorithm gods.

SPEAKER_06 (09:23):
All hail

SPEAKER_05 (09:23):
the algorithm gods.
And speaking of AI and thealgorithm, I was doing some
research because we're settingup Isla Man TT miniseries that's
going to come up next year.
And I was trying to track downsome authors.
We figured out that there is,there are companies that are
pumping out books in certainniches like ILMNTT and, you

(09:47):
know, niche-y kind of easy towrite books.
And they have to be using AIbecause I was trying to find
this author and like the authordidn't really exist.
I wonder if it was a pen name orsomething.
And I did a lot of digging andsurely it's a company that are
making books that publicationsusing AI and under fake pen

(10:10):
names.
So I found this one so-calledauthor and this publisher, and
then they had a bunch of booksof like other races and then you
know, cycling events and thenhiking and stuff like this.
So clearly just be be aware whenyou buy something, try to
research the author and makesure it is a human being and a
reputable source and not justusing AI generation and

(10:34):
independently publishing onAmazon.
So it was a really big eyeopener.
And just so everyone knows,we're not AI, we're real.
And that's why, you know, we'reonly number two.
But if you could just take alittle time and just make sure
you're buying something that'sthat's done by a human and not
just by the algorithm.

SPEAKER_06 (10:52):
Yeah, but just to obviously support that, every
single thing that is in the bookclub is a legitimate author and,
as you well know, For those whohave been listening, we've had
most of them on the podcast, sothey're all real.

SPEAKER_05 (11:07):
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'sjust a super cool guy.
And he's like, he's an expert onthe TT.
And we've set up an interviewwith him in May, live in
England.
But if listeners have some ideasfor TT episodes, whether you

(11:29):
have someone that you admire ina TT, if you want to maybe know
some background on certainsubjects please send us an email
and i'll be sure to include thatin the mini series nice nicely

SPEAKER_06 (11:40):
done yeah that should be cool and um of course
we will be in England together.

SPEAKER_05 (11:45):
Yeah, that'll be fun.

SPEAKER_06 (11:46):
All right.
So we have the TAT, the TransAmerican Trail interview with
Crankshaft Culture.
And that is with Andy andMercedes Lilienthal.
I thought that was a greatinterview, by the way.
So let's roll it.

SPEAKER_04 (12:00):
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(12:44):
Sign up today.

SPEAKER_05 (12:56):
Andy and Mercedes, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 (12:58):
Thanks.
Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_05 (13:00):
Yeah, you guys are crankshaft culture.
And the first time we met was inthe Alcan 5000 Winter Rally.
Andy, maybe you can tell me whatvehicle you were driving.

SPEAKER_07 (13:09):
Yeah, we were driving an Ineos Grenadier
Trialmaster, a 4x4 BMW-poweredbot.
It is from Ineos, which is a UKbrand.

SPEAKER_05 (13:21):
Yeah, that was a sweet-looking ride, and there
was another one there, and youguys kind of stole the show.
So we were in our FJ Cruiser ala 2010, but I think we shared a
little bit of synergy there withthe ugly, boxy trucks that were
just super cool.

SPEAKER_07 (13:36):
Not only that, but I think you actually beat us at
the ice racing, so...

SPEAKER_05 (13:39):
Well, we did have a supercharger instead of tire, so
it was an unfair advantage.
But thank you for for letting usknow.
But but you guys did reallywell.
Maybe you can tell us what classyou're in and how you placed.

SPEAKER_07 (13:52):
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 finishthat good.

SPEAKER_02 (14:08):
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, Inavigated.
Basically, it's a lot of longform math and figuring out
incremental times as to whereyou're supposed to be at any
given second.

SPEAKER_05 (14:26):
Yeah, we have an interview coming right after
yours.
I haven't told you yet, but Iinterviewed Satish and we went
through, yeah, and we wentthrough his whole history and
it's really amazing.
There's such a humble group ofpeople that they won't offer up
all the details, but I pridedout of them.
But starting with SOP, it'sreally challenging.

(14:46):
You use a roadbook and tulips.
Maybe you can describe how youget from point A to point B.

SPEAKER_02 (14:52):
Yeah.
So as a navigator, every rallyor every TSD or time speed
distance rally is a little bitdifferent.
So the Alcan 5000 rally doesn'tactually use tulip notes where
they have tulip notes basicallyare the little arrows that say
you're going over a bridge orhere's this structure or turn
left with an arrow that goesleft.
It basically is just a long formwritten book.

(15:15):
So it's about a half an inchthick.
It seems to get thicker everytime, I swear.
And it basically has the overallodometer reading, and then the
incremental odometer reading,and then in written form, what
you're supposed to be doing.
So whether it is in transitsaying, okay, in 252 miles, you
turn left on, you know, whateverhighway it may be, uh, or in

(15:38):
actual TSD competition mode,it'll tell you also, uh, the
speed you're supposed to begoing, how much you turn or, you
know, where you turn or do youstop or, or those kinds of
things.
And you adjust that way.

SPEAKER_05 (15:50):
Yeah, it's pretty intense.
And I always say that the drivenever steals out of the glory,
but it's really the navigatorthat gets you to the finish line
and not driving over theembankment that's around the
corner.
And you're here today to talkabout the TAT, the Transamerica
Trail, but I just have to askyou about another rally you were
in, because I follow you guys onsocial media, and that was the
2024 Baltic Sea Circle Rally.

(16:13):
Maybe Mercedes, you can tell mewhat type of vehicle you were in
for that rally.

SPEAKER_02 (16:17):
Yeah, so Andy and I talked to Volkswagen of Germany,
and I'm dual citizen ofGerman-American.
And the rally starts in Germanyand 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 wheelbaseversion.

(16:37):
That was a different batterypack and whatnot than what North
America was even getting.
At that time when we did thisrally, we have yet to even have
any media drive it or this orthat.
We saw one at the global reveal,but nobody had their hands on it
yet.
So we're very fortunate tobasically camp sleep and drive
out of that for 16 days.

SPEAKER_05 (16:56):
Taylor, the actual host of the podcast and I were
in Norway last June, and we hadseen those peppered everywhere.
And the whole time we're like,oh, that would be so cool to go
and drive that around theBaltic.
And Andy, did you find a majordifference between doing a rally
in a gas powered vehicle and anelectric vehicle?

SPEAKER_07 (17:14):
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it was it was quitedifferent.
Of course, you know, performanceis one thing, but just the you
know, having to deal with thecharge infrastructure.
The Baltic Sea Circle rallyisn't nearly as structured as
the Alcan 5000.
So it's basically you leaveHamburg, Germany, on one day and

(17:37):
16 days later, you have to showback up in Hamburg, Germany, and
there is no real route.
There's no anything that youhave to do.
They give sort of instructionsand whatnot, but we had to do
things like charge along theway.
So that created a much differentscenario than Alcan.

SPEAKER_02 (17:56):
And we had to finish 16 days in nine countries later
in a one and a half hourtimeframe in order to
legitimately finish.

SPEAKER_07 (18:04):
It was a window of one.
Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 (18:07):
And so, you know, all of that and they had daily
challenges and multipledifferent fun little kitschy
things to do.
So but as journalists, not onlywere we test driving and
reviewing the vehicle, the IDbuzz, we were photographing it
and we were doing social mediaon it.
And so we had a whole bunch ofother duties in addition to
trying to do some of thesechallenges that they had, which

(18:28):
were all kind of fun and sillyand quirky.

SPEAKER_05 (18:30):
I love it whenever you guys have an oddball vehicle
because it just proves to theYou don't have to have this
overly built, you know, internalcombustion engine to do
everything.
We are breaking the barriers andyou are able to do these things.
And here you are just regularpeople, you know, crushing those
miles, which is really great.
So you recently did the TAT andyou were in a Subaru.

(18:53):
Maybe, Andy, you can tell usabout the Subaru and how you
ended up with that car doingthis challenge.

UNKNOWN (19:01):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 (19:01):
Yeah, so it was a 2025 Subaru Crosstrek
Wilderness.
So this is their smallest of theWilderness family of vehicles,
which are all a little bit moreruggedized.
It's not just a set of alltrains they throw on there.
It has more ground clearance.
It has a larger differential.
It has a variety of sort ofaccoutrements that are going to

(19:23):
make it more off-road capable.
We had driven that at the medialaunch the year before, and it
was surprisingly capable.
capable.
So the TAT is something that Ihad kind of thought would be
really interesting.
And a few years ago, I metpeople that were doing it in
four-wheel drives, and Ithought, yeah, man, I'd like to
do that.

(19:43):
And so...
Mercedes and I are always kindof looking for the next big
adventure.
And I thought, hey, you know, weworked with Subaru in 2022 and
did the Alcan 5000 summer rally.
I wonder if they'd be interestedin loaning us a Crosstrek
Wilderness or a Wildernessvehicle of some sort.
We figured it would be eitherthe Crosstrek or, but the

(20:04):
Forrester Wilderness was stillthe older generation at the
time.
So we approached them and theysaid yes.

SPEAKER_05 (20:11):
I talked to a lot of people at rallies and such
about, about our particularcross-country rally, and
everyone always mentions theTAT, and people are like, well,
why don't you just do the routefor our rally across the TAT?
And Mercedes, maybe you canexplain to people how long it
took you to do the TAT.

SPEAKER_02 (20:29):
Well, you know, the Transamerica Trail, or as Andy
and I have been kind of callingit TAT, just because it's short
and easy and rolls off thetongue, but it took us 29 days,
and I think it was 300 and whatwas it?
Let me look here.
317 hours and five minutes.
So think about that.
And our longest drive day was 13hours and 40 minutes.

(20:52):
But most of them were anywherefrom nine and a half to mostly
12 hours plus every single dayof those 29 days.
So if you want to do a timespeed distance rally, that might
be a challenge because we,including that, had 39
deviations that I had to figureout.
you know, oh, there is a bridgeout.
OK, we need to turn out of here.
Or there's, you know, lots offlooding, tons of flooding.

(21:15):
I mean, we thought that NorthCarolina was going to be bad,
but Oklahoma was really bad.
Tennessee was really bad.
And we're in Arkansas.
We had two days of severestorms.
We couldn't dodge or outrunwildfires.
I mean, you name it down trees.
It would be one heck of anadventure.
I'll tell you that much if youhad time to be distanced into
it.

SPEAKER_05 (21:34):
Yeah.
And that's exactly what I telleveryone.
And there's always someonewho's, you know, a badass
hardcore guy and he's like noman we can do it i'm like listen
it's so hard from anorganizational standpoint to
organize that with all thedeviations and things closed
from day to day plus peopledon't have the time when we
organize a rally for regularpeople to show up to very hard

(21:55):
to dedicate any more betweeneight and ten days plus on
either side you got to get thereand you have to get home but
anyways i digress uh andy maybewe can do some geek talk here
what kind of tires did you runwhat kind of off-road gear did
you have and camping?
Did you stay in hotels?
Maybe you could just give usyour build overview.

SPEAKER_07 (22:13):
Yeah.
So we wanted to keep it sort ofminimal.
So we didn't go too crazy, butwe knew there were things that
we wanted to add.
So first of all, and they endedup being probably one of the
most key modifications we madewere rally, sorry, were
primitive racing skid plates.
So we added front, mid and rearskid plates to three 16ths

(22:34):
aluminum.
And I, I would have done itwithout the and once we
finished, we really realized wecouldn't have done it without
them because we had 9.3 inchesof ground clearance, actually a
little bit more because we ran aslightly taller tire, but they
took some serious hits andthat's not because we were

(22:56):
driving crazy, it's because thetrails had rocks.
So we changed tires, we went toa BFGoodrich KO2, we went from a
60 series to a 60 series, 65series, getting us about 0.9
inches of ground clearance.
So we'll take every little bitwe can get.
We ran a Rally Innovations lightbar on the front with Baja

(23:18):
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 fromthem, their speedy seal, spare
tire kit.
We ran kind of a crucial bit ofgear.
Whenever you're traveling in asmaller vehicle, which we're

(23:39):
pretty accustomed to doing,anything you could do to add
more space.
And we had a rooftop tent, so wecouldn't put a box or basket on
top.
We ran a rigged supply, ultraswing, spare tire carrier.
And on that, We had a full-sizespare, but we also had our
Maxtrax Extreme boards.
We had a Trasharoo that heldtrash in our laundry.

(24:00):
We also had their SideHackextension, which allowed us to
carry five gallons of fuel.
We shod those tires onto a setof Rika Seeker wheels.
We run those on our personalCrosstrek, although we went to a
17-inch.
We brought an EcoFlow powersystem.
Basically, this was the Delta 3Plus, which is portable power

(24:23):
bank and it had a reallyinteresting bit of kit that we'd
never seen and never used beforebut it's an 800 watt alternator
charger so you run wiring fromyour battery back to this power
bank and as you drive it willcharge the power system and then
at night you can using the appyou can reverse that and it'll

(24:43):
keep your battery on the cartopped up because we're running
this fridge and we turn thisfridge freezer off zero times in
29 days we We definitely ranthat, and it was amazing.
And then just a couple ofrecovery things.
We had a Factor 55 hitch link,which goes into the two-inch
receiver.
Now the rigged supply swing-awaytower carrier goes into the

(25:03):
Subaru's receiver.
And then it has its own receiverthat we were able to plug that
little guy in.
And then, like I said, we wereable 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 haveanother 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

(25:25):
market, but we opted to go withthe extreme just in case.

SPEAKER_05 (25:28):
Wow, that sounds like quite the rig.
It was probably fun building it.
How long did you guys spendbuilding that rig?

SPEAKER_07 (25:32):
So it's funny you mentioned that because We have
built other of our rigs in thepast for even when a
manufacturer helps out.
But they are headquartered.
Subaru is headquartered in NewJersey.
And they said they'll build itbecause we had to fly from
Portland, Oregon with our gearto New Jersey.
So they said they'd build it up.

(25:53):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (25:53):
Yeah, because the Transamerica Trail starts in
Nags Head, North Carolina.
So it wouldn't have made anysense for us to have actually
physically built it or shop outhere and then ship it all the
way over there and us fly allthe way over there.
So, you know, logistically itjust made sense for them to
build it.

SPEAKER_05 (26:08):
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 TATwhen you decided to do the
Shirley, you mess or saw somehistory.
Maybe you can tell us what youfound out about the, about the
trail.

SPEAKER_02 (26:24):
Yeah.
Um, you know, Andy can attest asto how the trail came about, um,
a little bit better than I can.
Um, but as far as what welearned about the trail, oh my
gosh.
And we were expecting every typeof and we hit that, and then
even more so.
We were expecting pinstriping,we were expecting rocky ledges,
we were expecting tons ofboulders, washouts, keeping very

(26:45):
close tabs on the post-hurricanesituation with what's being
fixed, what's not.
As a navigator, I tried my bestto understand the route, which
we both did paper maps andturn-by-turn instructions, as
well as GPX files.
So you could buy either or, orboth.
And we always plan forredundancy contingencies.

(27:06):
So we did both.
And I went through and looked atthe map, where it's going, what
states it's going, and thenbasically analyzed that with
Google Maps or Google Earth tofind out, okay, what's really
washed out.
So I looked at, you know, allthe DMV websites, the, you know,
forestry websites, this and thatto see what road closures there
were.
And some of them we did researchdid in fact happen.

(27:27):
And there were a lot more thatwere, you know, recent that we
were, I wasn't able to findonline, nor was Andy.

SPEAKER_07 (27:33):
The history real briefly was a a man by the name
of San Carrero.
He was a pharmacist actually inMississippi and he loved
adventure riding and this wasthe 1980s and he started mapping
out a route starting inMississippi and then heading
west.
Excuse me, yeah, west.
And apparently he didn't set outto make this big Transamerica

(27:54):
Trail, but it ended up just, hestitched all these things
together and eventually ended upwith this amazing route.
Took him over a decade to dothis.
And so we're very glad he didthat.
I

SPEAKER_05 (28:05):
think everyone in the overlanding community,
whether it be on two wheels orfour wheels, we all benefit from
that vision.
And it's great that it's stillaround today.
So where did you physically pickup the TAT?
I know you went all the way tothe ocean, but where does the
trail officially start on theeast side?

SPEAKER_02 (28:21):
Yeah, so we were in Philadelphia with Subaru
Corporate.
And then we took receipt of thevehicle.
We finished some last minutethings, packed all of our gear
because we flew with all of ourcamping stuff and vehicle
recovery stuff and tools, allthat type of thing.
And it took us, what, aboutseven and a half hours, I think,
to drive down to Nags Head,North Carolina, the official

(28:43):
start.
So we tried to find camping asclose as we could.
Our primary was to tent camp onthe rooftop tent as many nights
as we could, and then basicallystart from Nags Head, North
Carolina, work our way 29 dayslater to Port Orford, Oregon.

SPEAKER_05 (28:57):
Wow, that's quite the journey.
What an accomplishment.
And let's talk about season.
We're now in August, August the4th, 2025.
We're a We started on

SPEAKER_07 (29:12):
June 15th.
16th, I believe.
June

SPEAKER_02 (29:16):
19th.

SPEAKER_07 (29:16):
I'm sorry, June 19th.
We flew to the East Coast on the16th and then drove from New
Jersey.
And then on the 19th, weactually started from Nags Head,
North Carolina.

SPEAKER_02 (29:26):
And basically, summer, I think from mid-June or
late June all the way throughearly September is the best time
to do TAT because the San Juansand Colorado can get snow pretty
much any time of the year.
And a lot of the times, if youwere to try to do spring or fall
or even winter, they're inimpassable and a lot of the
roads are closed.
So that window, and it's ontheir website too, is kind of

(29:50):
the best time to go.
So we try to err on the earlierpart of that.

SPEAKER_05 (29:54):
Let's talk about the other traffic on the trail.
Did you guys see any adventurebikes?
Was there anything pantomime orsilly that you saw?
What kind of other trail goersdid you see?

SPEAKER_07 (30:05):
You know, it's really funny that you asked that
question because we saw nobody.
And I mean, it was like Likeisolation.
I mean, we just couldn't believeit.
You know, when you go throughtowns, because you do go through
these little towns and hamletsand villages and all this, and,
you know, there'd be peoplethere.
But when you turned down thesedusty roads, dusty roads, these

(30:30):
mountain roads, everybody wentaway.
I think, honestly, in 7100 plusmiles, 3100 plus were off
pavement.
I mean, we probably ran into 20people across the entire
country, if that.

SPEAKER_02 (30:43):
And the other thing was, is we did not and we're
hoping to run into other TATriders or TAT people in four
wheel drives or all wheeldrives, you know, which the
isolation aspect of it was quiteextreme.
I mean, Andy and I are used todoing, you know, long distance
endurance stuff, crazy things,you know, being stuck in a steel

(31:03):
box for however many days.
But twenty nine.
of those, I mean, that's thelongest that we've ever been
together.

SPEAKER_07 (31:10):
Yeah.
And, you know, it was justincredible.
We would stop in towns and wehad a thing that just said
Transamerica Trail across theside 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, ohyeah, I did it on my motorcycle.

(31:30):
I, you know, and I did it and Ido sections of it.
And so we would, we would getpeople who had done it before.
But yeah, we didn't run intoanybody along the way that was
actually on the path.

SPEAKER_02 (31:44):
Yeah.
I think the most conversationswe had were, uh, oddly enough at
grocery stores or the occasionalliquor store.
Cause you know, you need tounwind a bit at night here and
there, but, uh, you know, forinstance, food ranch, I don't
even know.
I think it was Idaho, Utah.
Okay.
Uh, there was a food ranch andwe got, uh, went in and he was
trying to find a coffee justcause we wanted to just buy

(32:05):
coffee and not do it at campand, 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, orthe route.
And I hear a An oldergentleman's like, yeah, those
are vehicle recovery boards.
And I kind of popped my headout.
And then there's a couple otherpeople and they start talking
about the car.
And I said, hi, fellas.
And oh, is this your car?

(32:26):
Well, you know, and then it wentdown the whole thing.
And lo and behold, we talkedprobably 15, 20 minutes.
And Andy comes out withgroceries.
He's like, oh, you got anaudience.

SPEAKER_05 (32:36):
You guys are always performers.
I love it.
It's really great.
to hear your reporting on theactual traffic, because in our
minds, we always think that it'sa super highway of awesome
off-road vehicles andmotorcycles, 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?

(32:57):
And was it locked gates?
Was it terrain?
Was it weather?
Maybe just give us an overviewon some of those diversions?

SPEAKER_02 (33:02):
Yeah, yes, yes, yes.
And yes.
I mean, we, we had pretty muchevery type of diversion
possible.
The eastern side, like I hadmentioned, severe flooding, the
storms were dropping as we gotthere.
So we were constantly I wouldsay at least two weeks or so
constantly dodging severe linesof thunderstorms, and also ones

(33:25):
that would pop up like popcornand they would be dropping, you
know, hail.
They'd have 60 mile plus an hourwinds.
They'd have torrential rain thatwould dump inches in a couple of
hours.
I mean, in a rooftop tent in aSubaru or any vehicle, you just
don't want to be in that type ofscenario.
So the eastern side had mud, hadflooding, had washouts, had all

(33:47):
sorts of down trees, a number ofdown trees.
And we thought about if wewanted to bring a chainsaw We
saw then how loaded down wewere, and we're still under the
overall weight rating that'srequired for the car, but But we
knew that, do we want to bringit?
Not.
Okay.
We had a good ax.
We're like, okay, if it'ssomething really big, we're just

(34:09):
going to turn around.
And actually we got past most ofthe downed trees, except a
couple were just way too big,even for the chains that we were
planning on bringing, which wedidn't.
Once we got out more towardsOklahoma, we still had a lot of
severe storms.
That's where more mud came inwith Mississippi and Oklahoma,
which we did not want to getmired in mud.
And then the Western side, onceyou started hitting Colorado,

(34:31):
it's all forest fires.
So we had wildfires and we hadburned areas that they had
sectioned off, especially inOregon.
Then we also had even sinkholesin Oregon.
There were some areas, one road,that we knew based on a rider
that went through and posted acrazy photo of a washout where
there was maybe one foot wideleft of actual usable road.

(34:54):
And he was going to try to passit.
But by the time we left, Iasked, 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 nationalforest three, three, five, three
in the rogue area of Oregon, ifI remember right.
And yeah, we were, we were rightafter sinkhole number what?

SPEAKER_07 (35:16):
Yeah.
The ironic part was thatsinkhole was the last day.
We thought we'd coast into PortOrford, Oregon, but the last day
ended up being quite difficult.
And we had this sinkhole, whichwas ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02 (35:28):
Well, yeah.
And that was after multiplewashouts.
And I told Andy, I said, wetravel, whether it's on-road,
off-road, flying, or any whichway.
If one of us is feeling A littlebit apprehensive or a little bit
like this just isn't the rightthing to do or nervous or
dangerous or something likethat.
It's a non-issue.
We got to get out of it.

(35:49):
We got to figure out a differentway.
And that's when I basically toldAndy 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 wasour last hundred miles to go.
And we had to reroute quite,quite extensively to try to get
around it.

SPEAKER_07 (36:06):
You know, I was like, I think we can make it.
And she's like, no, I don'tthink that's a good idea.
I think we should turn around.
I mean, this is why women livelonger than

SPEAKER_05 (36:14):
men.
Listen, I've been guilty ofmaking a lot of poor choices,
but I'm still here so far.
And, and we have great storiesbecause of it.
So we make the stories and they,and they save us from, from
absolute danger.
There's always a lot ofdiscussion with this particular
trail about, uh, And maybe youcan tell us the mix of where
they named roads, where they forservice roads.

(36:36):
And did you ever run into anyprivate property issues?

SPEAKER_02 (36:39):
Yeah, private property, not really,
thankfully.
But Andy, you can add to this.
But on the eastern side, wenoticed or as the navigator, I
noticed a lot of gaps there.
branch roads, things that werenamed differently.
Hollow.
Yeah, hollow.
There were a lot of hollowending roads, which was kind of
new to us.

(36:59):
But once we got more to thewestern half, everything was
pass, like Geyser Pass, OferPass, California Pass, things
like that, especially in SanJuan.

SPEAKER_05 (37:07):
There's always a discussion of you physically
can't do it because of gates andprivate property.
And you've obviously proven thatit is passable with some minor
diversions.
And Andy, did you experience anywater crossings Did you get any
awesome social media of yousplashing through the river?

SPEAKER_07 (37:23):
First of all, we adhere to tread lightly
principles, so no big splashes,no crazy driving.
We did run across a number ofwater crossings, a lot of them
in Tennessee, Arkansas, thatkind of area, and Oklahoma, and
There were a few that we wouldget to and we'd either walk or

(37:46):
we'd get a stick.
And we were just like, this istoo deep for a Subaru.
I mean, we weren't even on a 28inch tire and it's not our car.
So we were not gonna do anythingthat we could end up ruining the
car, hydro locking, anythinglike that.
Now, we did run across a wholeset of these water crossings

(38:07):
that are big cement slabs Andsometimes there's people there
playing and, you know, families,you know, in the river.
And I had never seen thisbefore, to be honest, in person

SPEAKER_02 (38:17):
and water over.
Yeah, literally gushing overthat cement slab.

SPEAKER_07 (38:21):
Yeah.
And so I pulled we pulled up toit.
I mean, it was only maybe a footdeep.
And We thought, okay, yeah, andthat we could do.
You could feel in some of thedeeper ones that were maybe up
to about the hubs, you couldfeel the water moving, you know,
and it's not something that wewere ever in danger of being
carried downstream by, and Iunderstand these are more

(38:42):
difficult for people ontwo-wheel vehicles than they are
for four wheels, and I guessthey can get slippery and all
that, but we didn't have anyproblem crossing any of them.

SPEAKER_05 (38:51):
Yeah, those concrete slabs are a godsend if you're on
four wheels, but if you're ontwo, it is literally like a
sheet of ice.
And you're like, yeah, becauseit's got growth on it.
And the slightest, you have thewater pushing you one way and
then it's very common to have anice little bath and hopefully
you shut your bike off.

(39:11):
But yeah, we're really impressedto hear that, you know, the
Subaru was able to take youplaces that people traditionally
think it's only for a 4x4.
Maybe you can give us youropinion on the Subaru and the
fact that it was able toaccomplish this.

SPEAKER_07 (39:24):
It was...
Definitely something I found outthat that little Crosstrek
wilderness punches above itsweight off-road.
I mean, we're pretty experiencedfour-wheel drive people with
multiple vehicles that have lowrange transfer cases and such.
And as the driver, I wasregularly impressed with the
capability.
It has X mode, which is acomputer controlled driving

(39:45):
mode.
You can change it to, forexample, the dirt snow.
It's going to sort of deaden theaccelerator pedal, your throttle
response, and let you go alittle bit slower, more
precisely, Kind of like asimulated low range.
Now, it's not going to be, say,an Ineos Grenadier or an FJ

(40:06):
Cruiser off-road, but it doespretty amazingly well.
The first time we everexperienced this, this was in
the Appalachian Mountains, andit was kind of late.
We were trying to get out of theforest, and there was a road
that was super washed out.
And I just, I mean, literallythere was another car's entire
splash guard that had fallen offor been ripped off.

(40:28):
And I thought, well, I mean,it's a good thing we had the
skid plates, but you just kindof would get to these obstacles
and let the all-wheel drivesystem figure it out.
And it's amazing because you canfeel it going, oh, I think we
need to send power to the leftrear.
And it does it.
And it just kind of crawls overit.
So it's not going to be doingthe Rubicon Trail anytime soon,
but it was really quite good onthe Transamerica Trail.

SPEAKER_02 (40:50):
And I think to add to that, um, the approach, break
over and departure angles were,were really quite impressive.
Uh, there were several instanceswhere I got out and I spotted
Andy coming down, especially in,and this is, we've been told
about this and warned about thispart of the road, war loop road
in Arkansas.
Uh, actually if, um, if peoplevisit crankshaft culture on
Instagram, our latest reel onday 12, uh, highlights that via

(41:14):
video.
And you could see me physicallyspotting 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 anyscrapes.
If anything, it was the bottomof the max tracks, just a tiny
bit.

SPEAKER_07 (41:27):
We did get one guy when we made it to a cinnamon,
up cinnamon pass, which was toover 12,500 feet.
A gentleman in a Tundra cameover and he said, how did you
get up here?
And we're like, well, we drove.
He's like, well, you must'vejust dragged your underbelly the
whole way.
I said, no, with a Subaru, likethe Crosstrek Wilderness, go
slowly, pick your lines.

(41:49):
Yep.
And it does remarkably well.
I was thoroughly impressed.

SPEAKER_05 (41:53):
Yeah, I think when you have the underweight or the
vehicle with not the biggestground clearance, there's a lot
more satisfaction to doing likethose passes in Colorado.
And the reaction you get frompeople is usually a little more
kudos because they've got showedup there with their$90,000
highly modified four by four.
And you're like, yeah, I didthis in the Subaru and it's just

(42:14):
as awesome.
So it's a little moregratifying.

SPEAKER_02 (42:17):
Well, and I think Andy and I have a habit of
picking unconventional vehiclesand setting ourselves up for
bigger challenges.
But that for us, it's how youuse it.
Like Andy said, you know, it'spick your lines, all these
different kinds of things.
But, you know, I mean, heck, wetook our, you know, 1992
Mitsubishi Pajero right handdrive diesel all the way up to

(42:38):
the Arctic Ocean for the Alcan5000 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 thattype of stuff.
And again, the diesel and wedidn't have it gel up and like,
you know, completely.
Yeah, but that's for anotherpodcast.
But You know, so again,unconventional vehicles, seeing

(43:01):
if we could succeed.
And if you don't, then youlearn.
But if you do, it's one heck ofa story.

SPEAKER_05 (43:06):
Yeah.
And that's why you're here.
And you were even moreunconventional.
You stuck a rooftop tent on topof this Subaru.
First of all, did it even fit?
And how did you do at night withactual comfort?

SPEAKER_07 (43:17):
So we went with a Thule approach, which is
actually a rooftop tent thatsold through Subaru accessories.
Yeah.
We had not used one of thoserooftop tents before.
We've owned a rooftop tent foryears.
And it was really good quality.
And it fits fine.
They have a set of crossbars andall that for the Crosstrek.

(43:39):
And it worked quite well.
Truth be told, I think if I wasgoing to do it again, I'd go
with something that was more ofa hard shell.
more aerodynamic, might save afew miles per gallon.
But even so, the Thule approachwas quite a bit larger than the
rooftop tent we used to own.
And it was very comfortable atnight.

(44:01):
It had windows and rain fly andhad plenty of room for our
sleeping bag.
We could leave our sleeping bagsand even our pajamas and whatnot
up there and just closeeverything up.
So it's pretty quick to set up.
We got into a real good routine.
And yeah, rooftop tents are agood, you're off the ground,

(44:22):
they're good in winter, or I'msorry, they're good in foul
weather.
and that kind of stuff.
Critters.
You're off the ground forcritters and mud and all that.
So yeah, I guess had we not donethat, we could have brought a
ground tent and put like a cargobox on the top and kept more
gear up there.
But I don't regret the way wedid it.

SPEAKER_02 (44:42):
No, no, I think it was very comfortable.
And of the nights that we didhave, I think there was one,
where was it that we woke up atfour in the morning with just
torrential rain?

SPEAKER_07 (44:53):
We were in Jasper.
Tennessee.

SPEAKER_02 (44:55):
Yeah.
So the fireside kind of remotecamp area.
But when we were there and Imean, it just poured and poured
and poured and poured.
And, you know, the first, like Isaid, the two weeks, I think the
humidity played such a hugerole.
Extreme humidity, dew points oflike middle to upper 70s to near
80 and temps of, you know, gosh,close to 100 degrees every

(45:17):
single day.
I mean, we had every day otherthan one at 90 degrees or above.
And we had six days almoststraight of hundreds and above,
up to 111.
But the first half was allextreme humidity.
So the tent, albeit a very goodtent, didn't dry out.
So we'd had to pack it away wetbecause we didn't have time to

(45:38):
just let it sit out there andget warm up and this and that.
It's just the community killedit in that respect.

SPEAKER_07 (45:44):
We were on the road for 29 days and we camped 23 of
those.
The nights we were in motelswere almost exclusively because
of severe weather.
And we did get a hotel the lastnight in Port Orford.

SPEAKER_02 (45:57):
Because, you know, you have to.
It was the day of celebration.

SPEAKER_05 (45:59):
Yeah, the day of celebration and the day of
having a shower.

SPEAKER_02 (46:03):
Yes.
And the day that it actuallyended up being our 21st wedding
anniversary, oddly enough, too.

SPEAKER_05 (46:08):
You romantic devil, you.
You really know how to treat alady.

SPEAKER_02 (46:13):
I loved every bit of it.

SPEAKER_05 (46:15):
Good, good.
Yeah, right answer.
Very good.
Mercedes, I want to ask you ageek question.
And it says you mentioned, sir,you mentioned earlier that you
navigated partially by GPXtrack.
Could you tell us when you weregiven the GPX track, which
device used to display it?
And when you were looking at theGPX tracks, were you able to get
turn by turn directions out ofthem or did you just follow the

(46:37):
line?

SPEAKER_02 (46:38):
Yeah, that's a really good question.
So basically you buy differentGPX tracks So it's not one big
track because people want it forus.
For instance, we bought theAtlantic Ocean Spur, which is
one of the easternmost section,then the main Transamerica Trail
east to west, then the PacificOcean Spur.

(46:58):
But that comes with severalseparate files in which Andy put
together to kind of stitch andmake one big one.
We had a Garmin try to overlanddevice that he mainly used, and
that showed the route.
I used that somewhat just toverify, all right, here's the
red line, here's the route, thisand that.

(47:19):
So it's a track, not a route.
So as Andy's alluding to, itonly shows you where you're at.
And if you're along the line oroff the line, you can't get turn
by turn on it.
So what he was starting to saywas the turn by turn Directions
I had via paper.
So a lot of you moto guys haveused a roll chart holder before

(47:40):
or maybe many times.
I never have.
So we had to figure out how tobring it up to the car and see
if it fit and, you know, roll itback.
And no, that was kind of a painin the butt for both of us.
But so I had paper maps and Ihad turn by turn directions.
So that's what I mainly used.
And then we also used Onyx.
which was great because then Icould look at trail conditions.

(48:00):
I can look at wildfire issues.
I can look at all sorts ofdifferent things and real life
data of what people have saidabout War Loop Road, about, you
know, overpass and that kind ofthing and go from there.

SPEAKER_07 (48:11):
And I just want to give Mercedes a huge shout out
because as a driver, I'msteering the car, I'm pushing
the pedals and then trying tofigure out when I get off the
trail.
Mercedes did an amazing jobkeeping us on the Transamerica
Trail.
and I would miss the occasionalturn.
Too busy talking.

(48:33):
I don't know how you moto guysdo it solo.
I'm looking at the scenery andthinking about this place and
how amazing it is, and then I'llblow past the corner and go, oh
no.

SPEAKER_02 (48:44):
You got to turn, you got to turn.
Yeah, exactly.
On gravel, but then back up orturn around and then go back.

SPEAKER_07 (48:52):
There's thousands of turns on this thing.
Oh, yeah.
But she did a great job now.

SPEAKER_02 (48:57):
Well, and thank you.
I appreciate that.
But I mean, you've done one heckof a job driving.
I mean, you know, the lines thatyou pick, the slowness, you
listen to me when I'm outspotting.
But I mean, you've got naturalintuition.
And I mean, that really carriesyou far.

SPEAKER_05 (49:09):
Yeah, that's fantastic.
You guys are a great team.
So what's next?
What's the next big adventurefor Crankshaft Culture?

SPEAKER_07 (49:15):
Well, we're going to be doing the 2025 Alcan 5000.
We actually leave, oh, in about25 days for that.
Yeah, it's under a month.
Yeah, it's a big deal.
And so we're actually going tobe partnering with Honda and
doing it in a 2026 HondaPassport Trail Sport.

(49:36):
So that's their new sort ofoff-road centric five-seat SUV.
I was at the launch of thatproduct in Puerto Rico earlier
this year and got to drive itoff-road and on-road.
partially through the jungle andit should be a fantastic Alcan
vehicle.
The three things Mercedes and Ialways say you need in an Alcan

(49:56):
vehicle, summer or winter,power, comfort, And ground
clearance.
And so the Passport Trail Sportshould have that in spades.

SPEAKER_05 (50:05):
Wow.
Congratulations, guys.
That's going to be a greatadventure.
And, you know, maybe you cantell us how the summer rally has
evolved.
I know there's a lot of ADVbikes now entering that.
And to be honest with you, Idon't know how you do an actual
TSD marathon on a motorcyclemyself because navigating is
hard enough, never mind ridingup to the Arctic Circle.

(50:27):
But maybe you can tell us howyou've noticed the the feel get
more diverse over the last fewsummer rallies you've been on?

SPEAKER_07 (50:33):
So this is actually only the second summer rally
we've done.
We did a 2022, but I can tellyou one thing I can definitely
tell you is the differencebetween summer and winter
vehicles is different.
When we did the 2022 summerrally, there were a variety of
at least two or three vintageMini Coopers.

(50:54):
It's probably not somethingyou're going to take on the
winter rally.
You get more of the vintagevehicles in the summer.
And we're told, and actually Ithink we can both attest to
this, that the roads areactually worse in the summer
because the potholes aren'tfilled in with snow and ice.
So there's much greater chancefor getting flat tires.

(51:15):
And knock on wood, we have neverexperienced a flat tire on the
event.
That's us knocking on some wood.
And of course, the route changesevery year.
And or every time we do thisthis year, we're going to be
going up through D.C.
and then Yukon into Alaska.

(51:37):
There's going to be an extremecontrol optional that goes up
into the Northwest Territoriesup on the Dempster.
And we're going to do as muchgravel as possible, which should
be over a thousand miles thisyear.
A

SPEAKER_02 (51:47):
thousand ninety miles.

SPEAKER_07 (51:49):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (51:49):
So we do it all.

SPEAKER_07 (51:50):
Yeah, but it is definitely different.
The winter one is so extreme.
Great word.
It's so extreme.
There's always that threat ofdying.
I mean, I know they have asweeps team and all that, but at
temperatures of minus 45, minus40 Celsius or Fahrenheit, you

(52:14):
really got to to think aboutthat.
And this summer, you know, itcan be hot and there's a lot
more bugs.

SPEAKER_05 (52:19):
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 ridemotorcycles in the Arctic in the
winter, but they're especiallykind of crazy.
But for me, I actually don'thave 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 thewinter rally and I would very

(52:41):
much like to, uh, to do itagain.
So maybe I'll definitely see youguys on the next, the next
winter rally.

SPEAKER_02 (52:46):
Yeah.
And I think, you know, uh, youmentioned RVs.
There's actually not very manyRVs at all.
Um, because we're in so many,when the farther North that you
go and maybe Andy, you feeldifferently, but There are, you
know, we start near Seattleevery year, right?
So we start in Kirkland,Washington.
But for me, it's the long haultruck drivers, you know, the
long haulers that are really, Idon't want to say the concern,

(53:07):
but they own the roads.
Once you get farther north inBritish Columbia, Yukon,
Northwest Territories andAlaska, really give them a wide
berth.
Let them know you're there.
You know, all those types ofthings 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

(53:28):
I haven't really seen a ton ofRVs or like slow campers.
I mean, you might seeoccasional, but.

SPEAKER_07 (53:32):
I think that if you're on the actual Alcan
Highway, you know, the main roadthat goes all the way up to
Alaska.
Yeah, you'll run into a fair bitof RVs and some slower traffic,
but yeah, the Alcan route oftendeviates off of the main road
and you're on, you know, some ofthe smaller stuff.
And I'm with her.
I think I was more concernedabout the semi-truck traffic
than I was RVs.

SPEAKER_05 (53:53):
Yeah, that's often a common discussion with
motorcyclists is these trucksthat go by and they're not
slowing down and fair enough, Iget it.
But on a bike, especially,you're going to have a mouthful
of gravel and so on and soforth.
But But we'll definitely beexcited to see your pictures on
social media.
I'll put the links to all yoursocials in the show notes.

(54:13):
I'm also going to put your statsfor the Transamerica Trail that
are fresh.
This is accurate data.
This is not scuttlebutt andrumor.
This is from Andy and Mercedes.
And we'll put that in the shownotes.
And I want to thank you guys forcoming on the podcast.
And I'm looking forward toseeing your next adventure on

(54:34):
your Honda.

SPEAKER_07 (54:34):
Thanks so much.
Yeah.
It's our pleasure.
I appreciate you having us onthe show.

SPEAKER_08 (54:38):
Is that Jimmy's bike you're riding?
Uh-uh.
It's mine.

SPEAKER_06 (55:13):
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 whatthey both had mics or they're
both speaking at the same mic,but they never stepped on each
other and the audio quality thatthey put out was amazing.
So I thought that was great on atechnical point.

SPEAKER_05 (55:32):
Yeah, I have a big technical briefing before
interviews now.
So it was nice to edit

SPEAKER_06 (55:38):
that one, that's for sure.
Yeah, good.
And the other thing is, youknow, We met Andy and we spent
time with them, whether it's thegas station, fueling in the
transfers between the TSDportions in the Alcan.
In sitting with Andy, he isso...
He is such a techie.
He's got so much, like when hegoes through the interview and
he lays out all the details ofthings he had on that car, I was

(56:00):
like, oh my God, I'm having ahard time following it.
But it was all so dead accurate.
I was really impressed by that.

SPEAKER_05 (56:04):
Yeah, they built the car to their spec.
And then, you know, they reliedon those components and they
relied on that car to get themacross the country.
So you better hope it works whenyou're in the middle of some
hollow and you're high centeredand you're relying on the car to
get you home.

SPEAKER_06 (56:23):
Yeah, absolutely.
They did have good things to sayabout the Subaru.
And also, you know, they arejournalists and Mercedes writes
some great stuff and they dogreat content together.
So I guess one of the things Iwanted to say is that the
synergy between the two of themis what makes that crankshaft
culture and makes them sosuccessful in what they do is

(56:44):
that they have great energytogether.
And I think what's really easyto see is the level of respect
and trust they have for oneanother.
And it comes down to things likeif one of us doesn't feel good
about it, we just bail.
We go, nope, we're not doingthis.
And that's nice that they havethat level of respect and trust
with each other.
And I think that's what makesthem so good at what they do.

SPEAKER_05 (57:02):
Yeah.
And a segue into the nextinterview is they've been doing
that for a long time and allthis stuff doesn't come easy.
It doesn't come, people don'ttrust you with their cars and
publishing things.
you know, your first time out.
They've been doing it fordecades.
And that brings us to the Satishinterview.
And he is a TSD, the TST rallychampion.

(57:26):
Maybe you can read his resumefor us.

SPEAKER_06 (57:29):
I'll try to get through this.
It's a big resume and I'm justtalking about the wins.
So Satish Gopalkrishnan, he issuper nice.
We had a chance to meet andspend time with him and also in
the 2024 OutKamp 5000.
So that's 5000 miles, 8,000kilometers over 10 days.
So it's a lot of driving, a lotof time with you, Aaron.

(57:51):
Sorry.
All right.
So here's his resume and thenwe'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 in14 years and overall first place
in 65 of them.
So get this, it's over 40% firstplace finishes.

(58:13):
So basically it's If Satishshows up at a rally, you're not
going to win.

SPEAKER_05 (58:18):
no and then he has podiumed on almost all of those
rallies so if he shows up to arally he's at least getting on
the podium which is amazing

SPEAKER_06 (58:28):
yeah so yeah and a lot of it has to do with in the
interview you'll understand thetechnical aspect that he brings
to it so it's not like he justgot he shows up and he just wins
you can listen to the interviewand you'll understand exactly
why and what he puts into it soum he has driven with uh severa
she has navigated all but ahandful of them and all the wins
mentioned below have been withsevere his wife as navigator.

(58:49):
So here we go.
This is cross countries.
So these are cross country rallywins.

SPEAKER_05 (58:54):
Yeah, they're not the rallies in series.
So cross country are majormulti-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 nottalking about this.
We're talking about major eventsonly.

SPEAKER_06 (59:09):
Yeah.
So here we go.
Dakshindhare, India, 2011 win.
Desert Storm, India, 2012 and2014, 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 in2024, win.

(59:30):
Targa, Newfoundland, Canada,2023, win.
Press on Regardless, which is inNorthern Michigan, I believe,
and that's in the U.S.
here, and that is a 2024 win.
So these are his championshiptitles.
This is crazy.
All championship wins needpodium finishes and at least
five rallies in the same series.
So India, FMSCI champion.

(59:55):
Indian National Time SpeedDistance Rally champion.
United States Time SpeedDistance Sports Car Club of
America champion.
National Course Rally Champion2021, 22, 23, and 24.
National Touring Rally Champion2026, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023,
and 2024.

(01:00:17):
United States Road RallyChallenge.
This is insane.
2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and2024.
And with that, roll theinterview.

SPEAKER_00 (01:00:27):
Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have
your attention?
I've just been handed anurgent...
and horrifying news story.
And I need all of you to stopwhat you're doing and listen.

SPEAKER_04 (01:00:40):
Cannonball! If you're not a cheap Canadian and
want to buy us a coffee, head onover to buymeacoffee.com.
Or better yet, buy us a case ofSweet Ass Craft IPA.
We'll list it on patreon.com.

(01:01:01):
Links are in the show notes.
Now, back to the rivetingpodcast in progress.

SPEAKER_05 (01:01:07):
Satish, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 (01:01:09):
Thanks, Aaron,

SPEAKER_05 (01:01:10):
for having me.
Excellent.
And where are you today?

SPEAKER_01 (01:01:12):
I'm home in Jersey City, New Jersey.

SPEAKER_05 (01:01:15):
Yeah, I used to spend a bit of time in Jersey
City as a yacht captain.
We used to stop in the JerseyCity Marina.
Have you ever been over there?

SPEAKER_01 (01:01:22):
Yeah, totally.
So I used to rent near themarina until maybe five years
back.
And now we bought a condo on theother side, still on the
waterfront.

SPEAKER_05 (01:01:31):
Nice.
Yeah, it's a great place.
Lots of fun.
And you take the taxi into townfor a big night out.
It was a lot of fun there.

SPEAKER_01 (01:01:38):
Yes.
It's a nice place to live.
Yes, it's close to New YorkCity, but we don't Right, yeah,

SPEAKER_05 (01:01:47):
that's a bit outrageous, isn't it?
So listeners know we met last atthe Alcan 5000 Winter Rally.
That was that last year or theyear before?

SPEAKER_01 (01:01:56):
That was 22, 24, sorry, 22 or summer 24.
So last year, yes.

SPEAKER_05 (01:02:04):
And the Alcan 5000 is a TSD rally.
That's a time, speed, distancerally.
And this was not your firstrodeo.
Maybe you can bring us back tothe beginning where you got your
start in this type of rallying.

SPEAKER_01 (01:02:16):
Yeah, so I've been rallying for about 15 years now.
Most of my rallies are withmy...
wife, Savera.
And as you know, any kind ofmotorsports rally, and
especially TSD, you need twopeople in the cars, right?
There's a driver and anavigator, and she has been my
navigator for almost all therallies I've done.

(01:02:39):
I grew up in India.
I used to live in India until 10years back.
I used to go to this, I mean, Iwas always interested in cars.
I had a car, I would drivearound.
Savera and I were bothinterested in road trips.
And there was this...
I mean, this is like 2008 orwhatever.
So, I mean, these are the daysof bulletin boards and stuff

(01:03:00):
where, you know, you would havean interest and there would be
an internet forum or a bulletinboard around it and people would
come and write and read andshare experiences and stuff,
right?
So this bulletin board was aboutcars in India.
So it's mostly for where to buya used car, new car reviews and

(01:03:21):
stuff like that.
But there was also a traveloguesection.
So people would go to thevarious parts of India, road
trips, and they would sharetheir experiences and stuff.
I used to visit that site oftenbecause I like reading about
stuff.
Anyway, so one travelogue talkedabout going to the Himalayas,
driving around for five days,but it seemed like it was part

(01:03:43):
of a convoy or whatever.
But when I kept reading, no, itwas some kind of competition.
And it was something calledtime, speed, distance, rallying.
And the people, the person whowent, went in their own car with
their spouse.
And it sounded like a funactivity.
I mean, it was...
It sounded fun because they wentto the Himalayas, obviously.

(01:04:10):
For me, growing up in SouthIndia, the Himalayas was in the
north and quite far away andmysterious and stuff.
This guy also went fromsomewhere near where I lived.
So he traveled for like threedays in a car and did this thing
and then came back and itsounded fascinating.
So I read about what this thingwas and I figured these are

(01:04:30):
things called time-speeddistance rallies, and I found
out more, and I actually foundan event that was going to
happen six months from then, andthen I kind of started preparing
for it.
So this is the background, likehow I discovered time-speed
distance rally.
But the event itself was amulti-day, it was a five-day car

(01:04:54):
rally that happened in thedeserts of Rajasthan.
So maybe 80% of the roads, therewere no roads, the tracks were
over sand and over dunes andstuff like that.
And it was a time-speed distanceevent.
So by the time I registered,without even really knowing what
TSD was, there were already 50cars and the entry list had

(01:05:15):
filled up like months inadvance.
So one nice thing that what theorganizers did was they offered
a bootcamp to participantssaying, hey, if you guys want to
know what, a TSD rally is, cometo this place in Delhi, stay, I
mean, you have to pay for theclass and you stay two days and
then go.
So Savera and I attended that.

(01:05:36):
We learned the basics of whattulips are, what time, speed,
and distance are, and what arethe calculations that are
required.
And they gave us thisfour-function calculator, which
is like, I don't know, like$2 orwhatever.
The simplest of the calculators.
But they also showed us how touse the memory functions and
store speeds and stuff likethat.

(01:05:57):
So we did that.
We thought it was cool.
We thought it was easy.
Then we came back to Bangaloreand then I looked around.
So that's the other thing,right?
Once you start some activitylike this and you look deep, you
see that there's a subculture ofpeople that are out there who
you didn't know before and whoyou didn't even know existed

(01:06:18):
before.
So Bangalore had, luckily forus, had a very thriving
industry.
DSD community.
So there were a couple ofmotorsports clubs and they would
do like one day rallies everymonth or whatever.
So we found there was one.
So we went for that.
I did really badly because wethought what we thought was easy
was really hard when we weredriving in the car.

(01:06:40):
But I also met a couple ofpeople and we're also going to
go to the same big event, desertevent three months later.
So we kind of pondered and theyshowed me the stuff they do.
So I also figured the kind ofequipment one needs to do a
rally well.
I mean, until now, I used tothink it was calculation, but

(01:07:00):
no, the most important thing isa trip meter or an odometer that
you can calibrate and adjust andstuff so you don't lose your way
because staying on course is themost important.
Anyway, so that was our start.
I mean, so this was...
15 years back, I found somethingaccidentally on some bulletin
board.
And yeah, we started from there.

SPEAKER_05 (01:07:22):
Well, we have to, it makes me very happy to hear that
you did poorly because everytime I've met you, you've always
been the overall winner.
And not only have you been theoverall winner, you've scored so
few points that every night atthe bar, there is all this talk
about how on earth did you dothat?
But let's go back to India.

(01:07:42):
And you mentioned that youstarted with the calculator and
the a four function calculator.
And it's my understanding thatin a short period of time, you
started writing software to runon a calculator to help you
score better.
Maybe you can talk about yourfirst sort of innovations or
your first programming to helpyou do TSD.

SPEAKER_01 (01:08:03):
I was fascinated by TSD or rallying in general.
Rallying in general is basicallygoing to new places, meeting
people, driving my own car and,you know, Driving in places
which otherwise I wouldn'tdrive.
I mean, initially I thoughtthere was math involved, right?
So I like maths and I thought itwas math.
But it really isn't math, butit's more of automating stuff.

(01:08:27):
And I'm a software engineer bytrade and by passion.
So I mean, I was writing code inhigh school.
So this was very fascinating tome and right up my interest and
aptitude, which is to somehowwrite software or use technology
to make our lives easier in thecar, as in both driver and

(01:08:49):
navigator.
So our first rally with thisfour-function calculator, I saw
Savera struggle a lot, right?
So it didn't feel like, hey, weare going to be driving in the
Himalayas or desert or whateverand having fun.
It didn't seem like we weregoing to have fun at all because
of the stress levels, The amountof effort you had to put in and

(01:09:13):
because of which the stresslevels of the car, you know,
going up and stuff like that.
And when I looked at it, it'sbasically you're given a speed
chart, like distances andspeeds, right?
So a speed chart, you canimagine, is just like an Excel
sheet with three columns.
The first column is the begindistance.
Second column is end distance.

(01:09:34):
And third column is speed.
So if it says 0, 4.5, 30, itmeans go from 0 to 4.5 miles at
30 miles an hour.
And 4.5 to 7, 20 means go from4.5 to 7 at 20 miles an hour.
It's as simple as that.
And this is the data that we hadto enter into the calculator or

(01:09:54):
figure out the ideal time weshould be at at any given spot.
If they tell you that you haveto travel at 60 miles an hour
and you start...
At 8 a.m., you zero your tripmeter and you start at 8 a.m.
At 8.01, you should be exactlyat the one mile mark.
It's basically that.
So we also figured that if wekept doing this incrementally,

(01:10:17):
saying that if we start being ontime every mile or we start
being on time every 0.5 milesand keep reducing that increment
to the lowest number that wecould possibly handle, we could
probably do well.
So how to get this ideal time asquickly as possible, right?
So that was the goal.

(01:10:39):
So I found this calculator thatis a scientific calculator
college kids use.
I think in the US, they use TIand...
asia and india and stuff they uhuse casio i mean it's just a
brand thing but it was it's oneof those slightly bigger
scientific calculators with alarge display and a large uh

(01:10:59):
keyboard where you type in andit was a good device uh for a
bouncy rally car right sonavigator could hold it it's big
enough to hold and once you kindof figured the lay of the
keyboard like you didn't evenhave to look at it you could
feel it and type it and stuffyeah so that was my first
software It was for a scientificcalculator.

(01:11:20):
It was hard to write because, Imean, it's not as easy as web
programming where you havelibraries and stuff like that.
All you could do in that SDK orthe system or whatever was you
could just plot a point.
That's it.
You had an XY coordinate kind ofthing and you could draw one
pixel.
So even making a grid, like anExcel thing, it's like putting

(01:11:42):
pixels together and makingvertical and horizontal lines
and then stuff like that.
It was really hard, but it wasfun.
I also made friends with someteenagers in Germany who were
high school kids and who werereally into it.
And they actually were the...
probably the foremost experts onthe system.
Like they told me like systemcalls, it was practically

(01:12:03):
assembly coding, but it was alot of fun.
Anyway, so I kind of made itvery user friendly that Savera
could now just type in the speedchart and then rest of the
rally, she just had to press abutton which increments.
So from, I earlier said onemile, 0.5 mile, obviously that's

(01:12:23):
too high a number we used to dolike, 50 meters or 100 meters.
So we would be on time every 50meters.
And we had a shorthand betweenus where she didn't ever tell me
the whole distance and the wholetime.
She would just tell me the lasttwo digits of the distance and
just the seconds number and wewould keep on time.
So we went to this desert event,the one I had heard about and I

(01:12:47):
went to boot camp for and stuffusing this system.
So out of the 50 cars, the firstday, I think we were overall
sixth.
After the second day, we wereoverall fourth.
And third day, we DNFed.
So DNFs did not finish.
But obviously, we made quite animpact in that thing.
Like, who are these people whohave just randomly landed?

(01:13:09):
I mean, I had a good car.
End of the day, I had anexpensive 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 itsometimes 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 thesystem.

(01:13:31):
So yeah, so when we came back, Istarted getting inquiries about,
hey, will you sell it and willyou show it and stuff like that.
So I kind of packaged it and Istarted selling it.
There was a time when every, Ithink, And India gets a lot of
teams in TSD events.

(01:13:51):
Like my average number would belike 30 cars.
Big events are like 50, 70 cars.
For the longest time, maybe likeover a period of 10 years, the
top 10 teams in the rally wouldbe using my calculator.
I mean, people started beatingme with my own system, but I
didn't care.
I mean, it kind of helped newpeople get into the sport is

(01:14:15):
also what I feel because youdidn't have to go through the
pains of trying to do like afour function calculator and
stuff.
I mean, this made entering thespeed chart a lot easier, being
on time a lot easier.
now obviously there are muchbetter systems but this is pre
kind of rally app days and alsoin india even though we get a

(01:14:35):
lot of cards and stuff there hasnever been quite an exposure
into what rally computers andstuff like we didn't have access
to those so So for our littleenvironment, this was pretty

SPEAKER_05 (01:14:49):
good.
Yeah, people underestimate howbig the TSD rallying is in
India.
And anytime I looked for someinformation on TSD, it wasn't
too long before you discoveredthat there was a big culture in
India for TSD.
And it's still that way today.
And I would also say that thatwhole middle class is getting

(01:15:09):
bigger.
And with that becomes moremotorsports in that community.
And I think you glossed oversomething that is important
here.
We're talking about the math andwe're talking about
calculations.
But, you know, you went in afull on rally in the desert and
that has driving skill involvedas well.
Were you always into motorsportsas a kid?
Yeah, I used to love cars.

SPEAKER_01 (01:15:31):
I mean, I grew up kind of I mean, most people in
India grow up middle class orlow middle class.
And I wasn't any different.
So obviously, my parents didn'thave cars and stuff.
One of my rich uncles had.
But I would go, he would take meon road trips and stuff and I
would sit in the front and likewhen I found it, it was amazing.
I mean, just being on the road,just even sitting inside a car

(01:15:52):
and stuff.
So I guess I grew up with thatfond memory and this appetite or
like in the hope that one day Iwould 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 haveso many channels or whatever.

(01:16:12):
I mean, it was thegovernment-run stations and a
bunch of private channels orwhatever.
But the programming wasgenerally very good.
And one of the good programs waswas a sunday sports hour so
every day from 4 p.m to 5 p.mand what they would show is
stuff that wasn't regularly inthe olympics order so like

(01:16:35):
tracking everyone knows trackand field or soccer or the
popular stuff but they would domore uh random stuff so i've
seen curling for example insitting in india but one of the
things they would always do isif there was a a rally in India,
they would cover it and do a 15minutes on it.

(01:16:55):
That's how I knew that there wasthis concept of stage rallying
and people going fast.
I always had an interest and instage rallying, but I knew it
was a lot of money and my careerwas in my way and there was no
way I was spending the time ormoney to do that.
and that's why when I got toknow and I didn't know what TSD

(01:17:16):
was even though I knew a stagedrelease I didn't know the
concept of time speed distanceso once I got to know about this
like for me it was this is whatexactly what I was looking for
which is I didn't have to spendas much money as doing stage
rallies.
And I didn't need arally-prepped car.
I could do it in a daily driveror whatever.

(01:17:37):
Specifically, coming back to thedriving well in the desert part.
So it was a desert rally, yes.
It was a six-day event.
The first two days were more inthe plains.
So if you look at the map ofIndia, Rajasthan is in the west.
And west of that is Pakistan.
But in between there, somewhere,there are these salt lands,

(01:17:59):
right?
I mean, that's like a naturalborder.
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 weredriving on hard, flat stuff.
And then we got crossed intoRajasthan and got into sand and
whatever.
So I had DNF'd much beforegetting into the real sand.

(01:18:23):
But I did go and win the eventnext year, right?
So I was so disappointed that weDNF'd.
And it was a stupid, some fanbelt 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 foreverything, right?
I mean, even though I'm not agood car person, I mean, I

(01:18:46):
cannot like fix stuff and stuff.
I can probably change.
I mean, I can change tires, butmaybe probably change...
check oil levels with a dipstickor something i mean that that's
my level of expertise but iwould carry common spares so
that if i did get stucksomewhere i could get some
service person to help me andeven though it's a tst rally and

(01:19:07):
it is my daily driver like inbad terrain like what my car
needed to be get fixed orderlike better engine mounts and
stuff like that i mean that isone part of it and second i also
realized that um Desert drivingneeded some skill, and that
skill could be taught,obviously.
So I actually took a course.

(01:19:29):
So me and Savera went to adesert driving course for a
week.
And it was a really good class.
I mean, they taught us generalfundamentals, but then they also
taught us recovery.
They also, obviously, in arally...
It's between you and yournavigator.
So they would make us go getstuck somewhere and the two of

(01:19:50):
us had to get out and how toself-recover and stuff like
that.
So that was a really goodexperience.
So before the next event, I haddone this.
Yeah.
And we also practiced GPSnavigation.
So this rally was called DesertStorm.
Not the war, but the rallyitself was called Desert Storm.
But they modeled it after Dakar.

(01:20:12):
So they kind of used to call itthe mini Dakar.
So TSD was one part of it.
So there are three majorclasses.
One was a time speed distancewhere we took part.
The other was motorbikes.
They wouldn't be doing TSD.
They were doing go as fast aspossible.
Kind of that was rally.
And they also had cars doing goas fast as possible.

(01:20:32):
So exactly same as what Dakar isnow.
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 medo better in the next few desert
events.

SPEAKER_05 (01:20:50):
Yeah, for sure.
And I think we're starting tosee a theme here.
You didn't just show up likemost of us do at our first TFT
and hope to do well.
It's definitely a progression ofthe technical calculation side
of it, the skill of driving, andalso accumulation of experience.
And then when you finally cameover to the US, I know that you

(01:21:10):
entered the Alcan 5000 summerrally four years ago.
Did you do other rallies here inthe US prior to the Alcan 5000?

SPEAKER_01 (01:21:19):
I did.
I did.
So even in India, these type ofrallies were called
cross-country rallies, right?
So multi-day events, differentkind 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 mycalling, right?
Which is my, as a hobby, I mean,obviously I still had to work,

(01:21:41):
that going to cross-countryrallies.
But then that year, the IndianMotorsports Federation, FMSEI,
decided that TSD is gettingreally popular.
We already have a stage rallynational championship.
We will start a TSD nationalchampionship, right?

(01:22:02):
So that kind of excited me too,because now, There was a
leaderboard and you could be anational champion.
And also they had announced likeabout 12 rounds and in different
parts of the country.
So, I mean, gave me an excuse togo to all these places.
And the difference between thiskind of rally and the ones we
had started doing was that thesewere one day events and these

(01:22:25):
were going to happen mostly intarmac and near cities because
you would want, you couldn'tjust randomly drive away for
five days, then do a one dayrally and come back.
So this kind of event, theflavor was very different from
what what I was used to.
And it had more navigationskills required than driving
skills.
So in the desert and in themountains, like the speeds could

(01:22:48):
be 40 miles an hour, but theterrain is so bad that you had
to be a, the better driversoften won.
But in this case, kind of, Imean, you didn't have to be a
great driver, but you had to bein a great team doing
navigation.
So the first nationalchampionship was in 2012, which
we won.
And the other thing was thatafter each rally, I would keep

(01:23:10):
playing with my calculator app,right?
I mean, the software that I wasselling people, add new features
and this and that.
So doing more rallies helped meadd more features to the thing.
So that was a cycle that Icontinued.
And so we did a bunch of those.
To answer your question, so whenI came to the US in 2014 for

(01:23:32):
work, the first thing obviouslyI looked was what were the TSB
rallies that were happening.
And I found events similar tothose, which are like one day
events, some clubs organizing ahalf a day rally.
Then I also figured there was anational series and there was a
leaderboard and whatever stuffhappening here.
So I thought, okay, that givesme more of a purpose than just

(01:23:55):
randomly going to one.
I mean, I don't mind going torandom rallies, but this kind of
gave me a goal of, okay, I canplan my year saying I'll do
this, that and the other andhopefully be in the podium.
2014 is when we came and westarted rallying here.
22 was when I did my first Lcam.
So between in those eight years,I think we won 16, 17, I think

(01:24:20):
five national championships.
SCCA, Sports Car Club ofAmerica.
SCCA is the federation that doesthe national series in the US
for TSD rallying.
So whenever they had theirnational or divisional rounds
and if I could take time off.
And most of these things, likeyou don't even need to take time
off because you could just drivein a weekend and come back.

(01:24:41):
So we did quite a bit of those.
Obviously, what I missed cominghere was the cross-country rally
experience, right?
So I was looking for one suchevent.
I found Elcan very early as soonas I came here.
2016, for some reason, Icouldn't take time off work at
all.
I knew I couldn't.
I aimed for 2020, but 2020, Iwasn't confident I had a car

(01:25:05):
that I could do winter ralliesin.
But by this time, I'd done a lotof winter rallying here in
upstate New York.
Every year, they have a winterrally series, like six rounds or
whatever.
And I used to do it in mytwo-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 takinga two-wheel drive car all the

(01:25:26):
way to Alaska for 10 days order.
I skipped 2020 and 22 was thesummer edition.
So that's...
what I decided to do and weended up doing.

SPEAKER_05 (01:25:36):
It's definitely an epic cross-country journey, the
Alcan 5000, whether it's thesummer or the winter.
And if listeners are familiarwith a TSD, just because we're
talking about lower speeds here,especially in a winter rally, if
the speed limit on a little backroad is 45 miles an hour and the
TSD says to do 42 miles an hour,well, good luck trying to do

(01:25:58):
that when it's all covered insnow and ice.
So we're really underestimatingthe the driver skill when it
comes to winter rallyingspecifically.
But you know, I wanted to talkto you about how you prepare for
rallies.
Cause a lot of like, I'd say alot of us, mostly everyone I've
ever talked to about TSDrallying, they just kind of
showed up and they're figuringout for the first time, but

(01:26:19):
that's not your case.
You've actually developed sometools and software that you use
to prepare for these rallies.
Maybe you can talk about yourcurrent iteration of the
hardware and software that youcurrently use.

SPEAKER_01 (01:26:32):
So I did use the same calculator that I was
selling in India for the firstfive years.
But when I landed in the US, Imean, When all over the world,
when they say TSD rallies, theconcept is the same.
It's time, speed, distance.
You have to follow a set ofinstructions beyond course and
beyond time.
That's it.
I mean, that's a universal goalof a time, speed, distance

(01:26:54):
rally.
But then there are these subtlerules that are different from
region to region.
For example, US has a thingcalled pause and gain.
So it's not just a speed of goat 30 miles an hour.
At some point, they might saypause for 15 seconds.
Or some other point, they mightsay gain 20 seconds.
These are things I could do inmy calculator, but then it's,

(01:27:16):
you know, again, typing andfeeding and stuff.
So even all these rule changes,rules...
or new features that were therepart of the rally, I would want
to incorporate it to automatestuff as much as possible.
The other thing that was a bigchange for us when we came was
the timing clocks, right?

(01:27:37):
So all of us know clocks ashours, minutes, and seconds,
right?
But no, not in ESD rallies inthe US.
So US, they had clocks thatwould count 100 cents.
So it's not 60 seconds that makeup a minute.
It's 100 cents that make up aminute, right?
So all the timing clocks werelike that.

(01:27:57):
So you had to buy a specializedclock or you had to do the
mental math looking at secondsor you had a timetable and stuff
like that.
So I'm like, wow, okay.
So my app doesn't supportseconds, support sense.
So I should do that.
And then I also came to theconclusion that I shouldn't be
beating up on this assemblylanguage kind of thing that I

(01:28:19):
was working on a smallcalculator.
I mean, why am I doing that?
I mean, the reason I used to dothat in India was because I was
selling it and it made sense toadd more features, customers and
support and all that stuff.
So I decided to go into acompletely new platform.
And when I looked around.
obviously android iphone thatway was one way to go i decided

(01:28:41):
that i would have a server likea real computer or a server
running somewhere and somewhereas in with me portable in the
car initially i thought laptopsor whatever but then i decided
on raspberry pi right raspberrypi is a really small they don't
take too much power so you canattach a battery pack to it and
it'll last like 16 hours andit's a full-fledged linux

(01:29:04):
machine so you can now writecode in any thing you want,
Python, JavaScript, whatever.
So once I decided on that andstarted writing all my Rally app
logic to it, actually it madesense that I was doing that
because now I could havedifferent displays.
So all the logic and code isrunning on the server, but I
could have a display in front ofme as the driver, which tells me

(01:29:27):
how the clock or, I mean, atthat time I wasn't doing how
fast or early, but Like theideal distance I should be at.
The navigator could have thetrip meter thing in front of
her.
And she could have a differentdevice where she could do data
entry.
So all these things wereconnected to each other via this
server.
So when I started, our setup wasSavera had an iPod touch where

(01:29:52):
she would enter speeds and anykind of data, pauses, gains,
time allowances.
Whatever data that needed to goin, she would enter there.
And we used to use a time-wise Bbox for our trip meter.
So alpha and time-wise are themost popular trip meters in the
US.
So I had a time-wise.

(01:30:13):
So that would just show me thedistance that's traveled.
We also came up with this, Ishould have a display because we
knew what the current or thesystem knew what the current
time was.
this display would show me whatis the distance I should be at,
right?
So in an earlier example of ifyou are asked to do 60 miles an
hour and you start at 8 o'clock,when the time is 8.10 a.m., the

(01:30:39):
ideal distance is 10 miles,right?
So this display used to show mewhat that ideal distance should
be.
So while driving, I wouldcompare that to the odometer and
keep those in sync.
So if those were in sync, thenI'm always on time.
And if this one was running low,then I'm running late.
So I would keep looking at twodisplays and drive.

(01:31:03):
At that time, we had threeclasses in SEC rallies,
equipped, limited, and stock.
And this put us in a limitedclass order.
So that's what And

SPEAKER_05 (01:31:13):
now in the Alcan 5000, you're in the unlimited
class.
So what has changed between thattechnology to your current
setup?

SPEAKER_01 (01:31:20):
So I kind of got married to the SCCA way of doing
things because I was doing mostof the events under their flag,
right?
I mean, I did do someinteresting events like the
Alcan, which are not SCCA.
But since 90% of rallies, and Iwould still go back to India and
do some events there too.

(01:31:41):
But since 90% of my rallies wereunder ACCA rules, I would
obviously confirm to what theirclass structure was.
What I really wanted to do was,I want to write software,
because I'm good at that, andsomehow connect a wheel sensor
and derive odometer from that,which this wheel sensor

(01:32:02):
somehow...
being connected to my system.
And this somehow I didn't knowhow, 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, Idon't know, 20, 10 years back
and I never worked towards it.
So I kind of had given up onthat saying that I won't be able
to do it and let's just stay inlimited and keep doing this.

(01:32:24):
But five years back, becausethere was a big influx of rally
apps, like GPS based phone apps,that kind of did TSD.
So there were some that werejust automators, some just
calculators.
Then there were somefull-fledged kind of Rally
computers.

(01:32:45):
And all of them a lot cheaperthan TimeWise or Alpha.
And TimeWise Rally computers areno longer in sale.
So it's not even...
I mean, this was...
People started gravitatingtowards this technology.
And SCCA...
recognized that and said, theGPS folks, they are not able to
compete against thewheel-driven, full-fledged Ali

(01:33:07):
computers, because GPS isinherently not consistent.
That is the problem with GPS.
So we should make a differentclass 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 odometersare software.
So I bought a GPS Bluetoothmodule connected to Raspberry

(01:33:29):
Pi, read slat long from thesatellites and made the
odometer.
So then my setup or my currentsetup is that, which is I have
an odometer that's running offGPS.
And now I can have a display infront of me that tells me how
late or early I am.
I don't need to look at twodifferent displays.

(01:33:51):
I just look at one and it tellsme a plus or minus 0.1.
So that's my current setup.
But I recently, I mean, I'vealways met, seen Mike Friedman
in different rallies.
Mike Friedman is the founder ofAlpha and he lives close to me.
So I met him in a rally a coupleof months back and I said, yeah,

(01:34:14):
if only someone could do me thiswiring thing.
I have this Arduino and I knowwhere the things go, but I don't
know how to solder and stufflike that.
So he offered to, and so I tookhim up on that and he built me
those things.
So now this is a setup I haven'trallied.
I did rally one small rally justto test it out.

(01:34:37):
But I haven't done any bigrallies with it.
But I have a setup where a wheelsensor connects to an Arduino,
which converts analog pulses todigital and sends it to
Raspberry Pi over USB.
And then it is my current systemof doing whatever.

SPEAKER_05 (01:34:56):
Wow, that's really impressive that there's so many
iterations of your in-carcalculation setup.
And you and your wife are afantastic team.
And thankfully, she puts up withyou when she's probably yelling
at you to speed up or slow down.
And trust me, the calculationsare right.
How does that relationship gowhen she's telling you to turn

(01:35:16):
out of street and there's somediscussion in the car?
How do you guys work that out?

SPEAKER_01 (01:35:20):
In regular TSD, which we were used to in India
and most of the rallies we dohere, There's not much of
talking because the timekeepingis done by me because I look at
the clock and go.
Her responsibility is obviouslykeeping me on course, left,
right.
So there's not much yelling andwhatever in that because we

(01:35:43):
generally don't.
It has become stressful.
recently because recently as inthree years back we started
doing these trap rallies i don'tknow if you know the concept but
it's basically and you don't seethis anywhere else in the world
other than the us us calls itcourse rallies or whatever so
it's basically on a typical timespeed distance rally you when

(01:36:05):
you reach an intersection youwould have to be given an
instruction how to leave theintersection should you go left
right straight whatever And ifyou're not given an instruction,
generally it is just follow theprinciple road, which is or the
road that looks more mainroadish than the other roads.

(01:36:25):
You just continue until the nextone.
Or some rallies might say, justgo straight as possible.
If you aren't told anything atan intersection, go straight as
possible.
So in the trap rally, what youdo at such intersections are
defined by rules.
Like there's an 80-page documentACCA has, for example.
But I mean, it just gets supercomplex and sometimes super

(01:36:47):
annoying.
Sometimes it's just, I mean, itgets weird.
I mean, it's a very acquiredtaste but for whatever reason I
started doing that three or fouryears back and that those
rallies are stress levels arereally high where I tell her
that, no, this is the waybecause this is the rule that we
are supposed to follow.

(01:37:07):
And then she's like, oh, really?
Is it whatever?
And that kind of stuff.
And then we lose time becausethis is a timed event.
So there also we have kind ofdivided responsibilities and
stuff and the yelling has comedown a little bit.
But that's where we have themost stress.
But one great thing about Saweraand I think why we do well is

(01:37:29):
that She doesn't care about thecompetition aspect of it.
She doesn't care about winningor losing.
She does care about doing wellin her craft, which is like
course following.
But I care...
only about winning.
So I think we kind of havestruck that balance.

(01:37:51):
I would be happy if I won.
I mean, even if we had lostaway, we had lost two minutes
and somehow scraped through to awin, I would be like, yeah,
let's go have a beer.
But she would obviously bepissed about the fact that we
didn't do well.
So I think we kind of do well asa team primarily because of
that.
Because I have seen teams whereI mean, if both are not

(01:38:12):
competitive, obviously it's notgoing anywhere.
But if both are competitive,then it kind of, there is a,
there's a friction there too.
So, I mean, what are thestrategies in the sense that
even in the car, what to do andstuff like that.

SPEAKER_05 (01:38:27):
And what's in the future?
What are your goals as a team inthe next few years?
Is there any big rallies thatyou're looking forward to doing?

SPEAKER_01 (01:38:33):
Obviously after the Alcan summer, we did Alcan
winter.
This is probably one of the bestexperiences I've had.
That's where I, met you and i'msure you also remember it as a
great rally not just the i meanalcan end of the day it's not
too many competition miles butjust being in those transit
zones in the winter just gettingfrom one place to another you

(01:38:54):
know without falling into aditch was a big deal another
good event we have done a coupleof times in new finland targa
new finland which is again a TSDevent but very high speed where
average speeds of it was Canadaso average speeds of 100 kmph in
a stage but they close down thestages and stuff so it's like a

(01:39:16):
stage rally practically but withTSD kind of thing.
So that was in my, both of thesewere 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 doit, obviously I would want to do
the Dakar classic which is againdesert and it's basically it's

(01:39:39):
not that the cars are notrequired to be that vintage that
it's going to be I don't knowlike not fun I think they love
cars that have taken part in theDakar so like even Pajeros and
the Mitsubishi ones and whichare just still drivable and
great.
So yeah, if I had the money, Iwould do that.
But I don't, I mean, I'm not,I'm not planning or not even

(01:40:02):
dreaming about it.
So yeah, but otherwise there'sno such plan.
I mean, end of the day, it is ahobby.
It's something that we get to dotogether 10 weekends a year.
So I think, I hope that I canstill continue doing that.
And if I can, I would be great.

SPEAKER_05 (01:40:20):
Yeah.
One of the reasons why I wantedto talk to you and, and, and
post this talk is that there'salways these discussions about
how do they do that.
So maybe this will offer someclarity to everyone in the
community that it is a verysimple equation of a whole lot
of work practice and innovationwill, will make you the, the
overall winner.
So I definitely appreciate yousharing those stories and you've

(01:40:43):
always been open.
If someone comes and talks toyou, you just tell them you, you
have to practice and innovateand, and then you can play as
well, even though it can be abit intimidating being in a
rally with you when your scoreis one for a stage.
Sometimes you feel like givingup, but is that, is that really
the advice you would give thepeople is, is simply practice.

SPEAKER_01 (01:41:03):
Practice.
Also learn from one mistakes.
I mean, learn from mistakes,even in the rally.
So I, uh, we have done in thepast too.
And, uh, which is like, youcould go wrong in one TC time
control or the checkpointbecause you did something wrong.
I mean, I mean, that's in thepast, right?
That's, that's one, that's oneof the great things about TSD

(01:41:24):
rally.
Like whatever happens in a, at acheckpoint, it doesn't carry
over to, to, uh, screw youlater.
Yeah.
So it's the same with everyrally.
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 adviceother than when don't just come
out of a rally, not knowing whyyou got a bad score.

(01:41:45):
It doesn't matter how bad it is.
You should still figure out sothat the next one you go to, you
know how you can improve.

SPEAKER_05 (01:41:52):
Yeah, that's great.
And do you have plans to doanother Alcan 5000?
Just so if you are going to doit, I'll make sure I'm not in
the same class as you.
That's the real reason I'm

SPEAKER_01 (01:42:00):
asking.
Yes.
So I was supposed to do thesummer 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 workbecause we are in some kind of
bad work situation where Icannot take two weeks off.
So I've canceled going thisyear.
Yeah, I'm hoping to go back nextyear, which is again going to be

(01:42:21):
a summer.
But I'm really looking forwardto doing the winter and both
Savera and I, but she, she comesto rallies with me.
She remembers some good eventsthat she had fun in.
And, and there are very few ofthem.
And Alcan winter is one of them.
So, so we are hoping to go backin 28 for that.

(01:42:42):
Well,

SPEAKER_05 (01:42:43):
those are my plans also.
I will be doing the seat of thepants class to avoid major
disappointment.
All right.
So we will, we will see youthere at, at the hotel.
hotel in Seattle on our way to,uh, who knows wherever Jerry
ends up, ends up taking us toin, 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 Arcticcircle.

SPEAKER_01 (01:43:06):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hopefully we'll cross each, uh,our paths will cross much before
that.
I mean, it's still three yearsdown the line.
And I see that you are doingadventure bike rallying.
Maybe I'll buy an adventure bikeand do one of your rallies.
Let's see.

SPEAKER_05 (01:43:20):
My friend, if you want to do one, I will lend you
a motorcycle.
It's an open invitation.
I

SPEAKER_01 (01:43:23):
might actually take you up on that.
I mean, okay, great.
I'll remember this, Aaron.

SPEAKER_05 (01:43:29):
All right, you got it, sir.
Thanks very much for coming onthe podcast.

SPEAKER_01 (01:43:31):
Thank you so much.
It was so much fun.
Thank you for having me.

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(01:44:21):
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SPEAKER_06 (01:44:35):
And we are back.
Nice one.
Yeah, really good interview.
One of the things I'd like to dois to tie these two together.
And one thing that stuck out forme was the fact that as Andy and
Mercedes are a really good teamand they have a lot of trust
within one another and a lot ofrespect.
That's obvious.
And you can also sell, you canalso tell that here with Satish

(01:44:56):
and Savera as well.
It's like, um, as he talks abouthow they communicate when
they're, he's like, yeah, wedon't talk very much.
I do the, you know, I do thisand she does it.
She tells me when the turn andyeah, it's true.
It's just chill.
We just rock up and win.
Um, but he's very, you know, Iwas saying that he's very humble
about it.
And, uh, again, that's whatmakes him a champion.

SPEAKER_05 (01:45:12):
Yeah, for sure.
And their work ethic at ralliesis, uh, is obvious they're not
out partying all night andthey're arriving early they've
been practicing you know soanyways practice pays off
discipline pays off and it'sobviously paid off in dividends
for them yeah well done

SPEAKER_06 (01:45:29):
and with that Aaron Pufol, do you have any
Cannonball news?

SPEAKER_05 (01:45:33):
Yeah, like we said at the top of the show, the
final payments are due onFriday, August 29th for the 2025
ADV Cannonball and 2026registration is open.
I set up the Spotwalla backup.
tracking system.
And there were some questionsfrom people about why is there
the Spotwalla and why is therethe GPS Checkpoint app?

(01:45:55):
So let's just talk about thatquick.
The GPS Checkpoint app is usedfor scoring.
It just kind of runs and theorganizers know who has achieved
a checkpoint and when, and thereis a real-time scoreboard, it's
called leaderboard, on that app.
The Spotwalla tracking systemcan use either an app on the

(01:46:18):
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'salso a public map and a rider
resource to see where everyoneis in real time.
It has a resolution of about 15minutes.
So that's the difference betweenthose two systems.

(01:46:40):
Yeah, good explanation.
And we had people down inCalifornia checking some of the
optional off-road sections, andwe 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 howto pronounce it, that epic road
is also closed.
So I wanted to mention somethingabout checkpoints, because you

(01:47:01):
need to collect certaincheckpoints to win certain
awards.
If a road is closed, or it'simpassable, or you simply can't
get the checkpoint, we willobviously remove that mandatory
achievement from getting thataward.
So if you're going for the RoughRide Award or a Checkpoint Crush
Award and you can't get to it,don't worry about it.

(01:47:21):
We'll just take that off therequirement.
However, once the checkpointsare published, they will forever
remain achievable.
So do with that information asyou will.
And I also wanted to mentionthat, yeah, that was number 25
ran some of the off-roadsections in his Subaru,

(01:47:41):
including the Checkpoint Rhythmof Life, which was really,
really cool.

SPEAKER_06 (01:47:47):
Let me just back up for a second here.
So just to maybe beat a deadhorse here.
So is there the possibility thatsomeone can achieve something
that's like, they'll get up toit and it's closed and they
can't act, they can't getthrough it, but they'll actually
get, they'll, they'll get withinthe geofence and they'll get the
checkpoint and then they'll comeback out and then other people

(01:48:08):
will potentially have heard thatit was closed and decided not to
go.
And that person gets the extrapoints, but they had the
backtrack.
I mean,

SPEAKER_05 (01:48:15):
no, what I'm trying to say is, and I'm not
encouraging it is that, youknow, if the thing is closed,
then you just happen to not seethe sign or something and go get
the checkpoint.
Well, that's your business.
Or, you know, if it's, if theroad is flooded and you built a
little, you know, inflatableboat and went and got the
checkpoint, well, good for you.
I'm just saying that thecheckpoint is always achievable.

(01:48:36):
And if you want to go say hey,hold my beer, then go for it.
That's your business.

SPEAKER_06 (01:48:41):
Got it.
All right.
Understood.
You made it really clear whenyou said hold my beer.

SPEAKER_05 (01:48:46):
That's right.
Yeah.
And speaking of, you know,checkpoints, I noticed some
people are taking their strategyreally seriously.
And I wanted to...
Give some advice and stayflexible.
Don't create a in stone GPXroute, assuming that you'll be
able to get everything.
Remember, you could havemechanical failure.

(01:49:06):
You could have a road closure.
There could be severe weather.
You know, you may just be tired.
So If you're creating astrategy, have some latitude
within that strategy.
And you know, you may want tochange your strategy partially
way through the rally.
So that's my advice to people isdon't put yourself in a etched

(01:49:30):
in stone strategy and somethingmay change.
Just remain flexible.

SPEAKER_06 (01:49:35):
Yeah, it's a good point.
And as a follow-up comment onthat, and if you look at, think
about the interview from Satish,if you didn't practice and you
didn't win, there's probably adirect correlation.

SPEAKER_05 (01:49:47):
Yeah, absolutely.
We hear that all the time.
Everyone's complaining at thepub that night.
But yeah, you didn't practiceand we're guilty of that also.

SPEAKER_06 (01:49:57):
Yeah, that's true.
Being at the pub or notpracticing?
Both.
Fair enough.

SPEAKER_05 (01:50:04):
All right.
Well, listen, with that, it's ahuge episode.
I hope everyone stuck around tothe end.
But anyways, I'm going to rollthe outro.

SPEAKER_03 (01:50:13):
Thanks for listening to the ADV Cannonball Podcast.
Please give us a five-starreview on your preferred podcast
platform.
That really helps us with thealgorithm gods.
All hail the algorithm gods.
You can buy us a copy on buymeThank you for watching.

(01:50:57):
Thanks for listening, andremember, don't be an ADV
weenie.
Keep your right hand cranked andyour feet on the base.

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