Welcome to Momentum, a motorsports podcast powered by High Gear Success. I'm your host, Heather Wilson Schiltz. Here we share the stories and strategies that keep the world of motorsports moving forward. And today I'm chatting with Kane Wagner, owner of Appalachian ADV and host of the Appalachian ADV Community Podcast. So Kane, thank you for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me. Good morning. Yes. ah So you are just coming off of hosting the Fool's Ride a couple of weeks ago. So kind of give us the background on that event and if you've recovered yet, because planning an event is no joke. Well, there's no time for recovery if you've seen my schedule for the year, but I'm definitely at the best I can be at this point after such a big event. starting with the Fool's Ride is kind of, that is basically how I tried to start in this whole thing. The Appalachian ATV experiment started as a Fool's Ride. So back in 2020 is when I kind of launched my events. End of 2019 started the website. And my intention was to have my first official fool's ride in 2020 of April. But COVID happened. Mother Nature decided she didn't want me to do that. So we delayed it. I kind of did it in the summer instead. And I kind of called it something different since it wasn't April anymore. em But the benefit of that was it gave me more time to prepare, more time to kind of like get my feet under me and It actually helped because the actual first fool's ride, the guy that we've put, that hosts the event for us, he didn't host that very first event. did it at a state park. So between that first event and the actual first fool's ride, I'd become friends with the guy's name's Jim. Everybody knows Jim. uh He basically said, just have it at my house instead of at that park. And it happened to be five minutes down the road from the park. So was a perfect transition over to that. So first fool's ride, officially we had, I think, maybe 35, 40 people. In this past year, we had 150 actually show up to the event, plus my base camp crew and Jim and his wife and a few other folks that kind of come and help us out. So it's definitely grown to be kind of the flagship event for us, especially having it early in the year. We got a lot of people that are trying to get warmed up for the year and then what we try to do is give them as much as we can Well, in April is a tricky time of the year in the Midwest because you never know what weather you're going to be experiencing. Of course, yeah. That's really why I wanted to do it early in the year too. um I've been going to Wailin Wayne for a while and their event is kind of later in the year and it's also an Ohio event. So my goal was to kind of maybe offset that this time of year up in Northeast Ohio in particular, you can have 40 degree swings in a single day. And we've had a fool's ride where we had, you know, rain, snow, sleet, a little bit of hail and then the sun comes out and you get kind of too hot. And then it starts snowing on you again. So that was part of the draw for me was we have some excellent riding up here, tons of dirt and gravel roads, some really good dual sport opportunities. But that terrain can be a lot harder this time of year because it's wet, it's muddier, it's cold. You're dealing with the rain and all this other things. So it's definitely been a very rewarding experience and it has helped me expand Appalachian ADV into other things. And that was kind of the goal from the beginning was kind of diversification of event types and then getting people to have interest in what we're doing and come back to all of those different events, including coming back to the Full Drive area. Okay, they've been to that a few times. I want to check out your Wildcatters event or I want to go on one of your tours or one of your clinics. And that was kind of the goal was to build a community around it and have the events feel more like a reunion, you know. that just has to have motorcycles with it. Kind of walk us through like the layout of the Fools ride. Is it self-guided? Do you have tours offered there? are people camping in tents? Are they bringing RVs? Sure. Yeah. So for the fool's ride, my buddy Jim's place, he's got about 90 acres of property and a good portion of that is kind of open grass area, rolling hill kind of a thing. So camping wise, it's pretty much all rustic, but it's first come first serve. You could show up with an RV, you could show up on your bike and throw a tent down. You could just pick whatever spots you want and you're good to go. So camping wise, it's pretty open. Like I said, it is rolling hills, so there's limited amount of flat spots, but everybody seems to do okay finding a place to sleep for the weekend. um And in years past, we would start the event um kind of like maybe Thursday night or Friday morning. um But this past year, we actually started Thursday morning and it goes until Sunday. And we have rides pretty much every day from Thursday to Sunday. And what I do is I build about dozen routes for the event, we'll say. And some of those are just straight adventure dual sport and gravel stuff. And then we have two different variations of dual sport style routes. So the dual sport moderate is more like big bike friendly. So you can take an ADV bike on those trails. And then we have a dual sport hard, which is small bike only. There's a limited number of guys that can ride a big bike on some of that dual sport hard stuff. So for the riding, Before the event, I sent out about six event newsletters with just tons and tons of information. And one of those includes a GPX file of all the local POIs. And it also includes all of the ADV routes. So like the dirt gravel road rides. So if people are interested, they can join a guided ride on those. I have a bunch of guys and girls that help me lead and sweep those adventure loops. I have a lot of people coming from clinics that aren't really interested in the. The hard stuff yet, so we have a place for them to go. And if they're not really great at navigating, they can also jump in a guided ride and follow one of our people around Fools Ride territory. For the dual sport style riding, we don't put those out as a GPX because it is some pretty technical riding. There are certain spots if you make a wrong turn and you get yourself into a valley, there's no way out of that valley except for a really, really terribly hard way. So we don't want people to get into a spot that they get lost or get themselves stuck in a position. So for all the dual sport riding, we kind of guide those, but we do offer generally there's about three or four people that'll lead adventure rides. I've got usually three or four that'll lead dual sport moderate rides. And I got a couple of guys that'll lead a dual sport hard rides. then like the interesting attraction this year, if you've heard of that, you're from Ohio, if you heard of the monkey boys, My buddy Brian Marsh also rides a monkey and he likes to ride just like those guys So the three of them I helped them put together some routes and they did like an ADV loop 120 miles on like monkey and Grom style bikes and We put together like a dual sport moderate style track for them to use and It was interesting scouting that out. I used my son's you uh know TTR pit bike to help them kind of put those routes together, but that was, it was a ton of fun. We also put together a dual sport hard. And I think that was a little bit too much for most. So I don't think they actually even did that one. And then we had this little bike Enduro timekeeping Enduro at base camp where me and the monkey boys set up a nice little course, just off camber turns, a couple of cone weavers, figure eight type stuff, a big mud pit you had to go through. And the point of it was not so much how fast can I go through it? It was me. The Monkey Boys, my buddy Matt, kind of come up with like an average speed. We just did a nice easy going pace and whoever the top three people closest to our pace kind of won a prize. we had a special contributor this year to Fool's Ride Motosport. They actually provided some door prizes specifically for the little bike Enduro, which was interesting. So that was, that's kind of like the general overview of the riding of the weekend. uh Thursday, have a, know, smaller groups go out. We only do really one adventure ride, one dual sport moderate ride. And then on Sunday, it's kind of the same way. It's a shorter loop just to get people a little bit more if they want it. I've always touted it as a rider's event. Like the little bike thing was new for this year, but previous years, when people would get back to camp, they were a little tuckered out. We made sure that we beat them up enough out there and put them enough challenges in front of them that They didn't really want to do anything except eat dinner, hang around the bonfire, tell stories. So, you know, that's, I kind of felt like that was better. We're trying to bring the community together. We're all eating dinner in the fool's barn. It could fit everybody at the place in that everybody's got a seat at a table. You can sit in there and hang out. And then afterwards people go and hang out at the bonfire. So my goal was to like promote the riding and then promote the community aspect when we're at base camp more so. I feel like you can always tell like how challenging a ride was or just how exhausting it was for people based on how they show up to like dinner or activities afterwards. If there's like a lot of people, if they're kind of lagging or they're like off to bed early, you know, everybody is exhausted, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you can definitely tell. Yeah, the other thing we've done the last couple of years, speaking of stuff at Basecamp, my friend Josh Hudson, he is a medic. he's like wilderness first aid kind of a guy. So he built a program specifically for like adventure dual sport riders. getting first aid out in the wilderness. So the last couple of years, I've teamed up with him to actually do that presentation at a couple of my events, including the Fool's Ride. And he did it again this year. And I tell you, each time he does it, it gets better. He's kind of a really, he's got an interesting personality. He's really funny. So he presents the material in a way that people really enjoy it. And then after his little PowerPoint pitch, which is shorter, He actually has people come up around a table and he's got all kinds of goodies to play with. Like this thing starts bleeding on the table. How do I pack it and do all this stuff? So it's been cool to watch that kind of stuff grow out of the stuff that I'm doing as well. Like people wanting to add to the event. let me try doing this thing. It's kind of been a fun part of it too. That is really cool. I've sat in on lots of different motorcycle first aid type trainings and it definitely can be a little bit different of a skillset than just your traditional first aid course. So that's really cool that people are getting, access to that. another thing that you talked about aside from just the event is, clinics. So kind of tell us how you started doing clinics and what your motivation behind it was. I was in the Air Force. I was active duty for four years and I switched over to Guard and Reserve. By the time I went back to some tech schools and did a bunch of annual tours, I served about six years on active duty and I retired out of the Reserve in 2015. And I had purchased my first motorcycle in about 2011-ish and I was living in Columbus at the time. So my friend got me into it and we kind of started riding together. Took the MSF basic rider course. And as soon as I started riding, I knew this is something that I can do. I think as a living, I just don't know what that is yet or how that works. So I concentrate on learning how to ride the bike, teaching myself a bunch. did do like the Pine Barrens course. I did the MSF basic rider course. So I took a little bit of instruction, but most of it was just me. starting to kind of put together my own little spring training. And before I started riding and right around this time that I started, I was actually coaching football as well. So I coached football for about 10 or 11 years. I played through high school. I played a couple of years in the Air Force. I went to Europe and actually coached like a junior American football league in Italy. besides the coach and one player, all the other kids didn't speak English and I didn't speak Italian. So that was interesting. it made me think about it differently. Like how do I tell them to do these techniques without being able to talk to them? So just all of those experiences. And on the civilian side, I was a laboratory scientist. So I worked at Ohio State Medical Center. I worked at a bunch of different hospitals in the area and I was always kind of like one of the main trainers. So. All of those things that I had done in my life, I tried to roll into this motorcycle thing. And I always knew at some point, maybe I want to try to do a clinic or some kind of training thing. When I first started the business, it was more focused on like rallies and tours kind of a thing. And as I got to know people and see what kind of riders are in the region and kind of what skills they're looking for, that little spring training thing that I developed for myself, I tried to tweak it into a full day clinic, it really made me think about what am I trying to tell people and how am I gonna do it throughout the day? So the end of 2022, I had connected, by that point I'd connected with the dealership up in Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania, street track and trail, recently purchased and now they're called Lakeway Power Sports, So I had a connection with them. They were extremely supportive of what I was doing. And I went to the owner, Dick, and I'm like, hey, I'm thinking about putting together a clinic and I'd like to do them here at your shop because he has this huge open space and there's a bunch of great dirt and gravel roads in the area and a couple little dual sporty style spots. So looking at the train that I had, thinking about what I wanted to kind of tell people, and mostly what it is, is giving them experience, building up their confidence and showing them that the bike can do the thing. They just have to let it happen sometimes or not fight it. It was kind of mostly that aspect and trying to break down each individual technique into steps so that it's easier to kind of tell people. So I've put together this clinic, put it out there. uh dirt cheap, just trying to get people to show up so that I can kind of experiment on them. And I think that was one of the first things I told them when they showed up was, thanks for coming to my experiment and hopefully this works. So it went really well. We just did a one day, I kind of did a bunch of stuff on the property and my goal for these clinics was break it into two sessions, whether it's a one day or two days. So the first session is, let's talk about the theories and drills, let's go through the techniques, let's display how to do them and let's get people to try to get their body to do what their mind's telling it to do. Cause that's usually what happens is they understand it. It's just getting that body to move in the way that they think that it's moving. So we did a, you know, skills and drills kind of there on the property and then using some of the real world terrain in the area to say, okay, now instead of this little block or these little cones, those trees are now the cones. So you just did it at the base camp. around these simple little cones or over the simple little log that's not really a log. Like you can just roll the bike over the thing. Now it's a little bit bigger and there's a couple trees there, but it's the same difference. So that just building that confidence in people and showing them that they could do it and then letting them know that it's okay if you fall. Like if, especially if you come from street riding, your bike hits the ground. It's like a big deal. It's not a big deal when you're on dirt and gravel surfaces. The terrain And the traction is the hugest difference. So it's kind of baked in that the bike's going to hit the ground, you're going to fall and you have to pick it up. Just making them know that it's okay that that happens and being there to support them and help them pick the bike up. And coming from team sports, I always, even from when I started doing those first rallies and the tours, part of my riders meeting thing and throughout the day, as we're going out there in the woods is we're a team. your best friends are now standing around you in the circle. And by the end of the day, we're gonna be high-fiving and cheering each other on, and we're gonna be laughing about when we fell over, and we're gonna go through an experience that's gonna help you feel more comfortable on your bike. It's gonna actually bond you to the people that went through the thing with you. And it helps strip away a lot of that stuff that's out there that likes to try to divide us. like, people put aside politics, they put aside... who's got more money than who, like they put all that stuff aside. When you put helmets on and gear and you ride motorcycles, everybody's kind of the same in a way. So that was a big push for the clinic was help build a community, give people a place to try it. And if they like it, great, they can come back out to another clinic or they can come out to the fool's rally or they can come to some other thing. Cause we'll have something for them as they progress through their skillsets. Well, and I think adventure riding is such an interesting segment too, and a very diverse segment because you have people that come from different backgrounds of riding. You have the people that have never ridden before. You have the people coming from the dirt bike or enduro background that are looking for something a little more laid back. Maybe you have the people that come from a street background that have no dirt or off-road experience. So it's a very interesting segment. And I can imagine that training riders in that is. like challenging in different ways because based off of their past experiences. Yeah, for sure. that's up until this year, I kept the clinics small. So would be five people in me and I don't separate adventure bikes and dual sport bikes. So I say, bring whatever you got. We're all going to do the same drills. For me, I sit more on my little bike than I do on the big bike, but you still have to stand on the little bike and vice versa. You have to know how to do both things on both bikes. So having a smaller number of people there with me, It allows me to like almost semi-customize the specific drill to even that person. So if they're a street rider, I could say, well, on the street, you're used to doing this, but on the dirt and gravel, you actually got to do this instead. trying to like find where they're coming from and then build it around that. then, okay, that person in front of you is a street rider. Watch how they just do this. Okay, see how where they did it wrong? Now, when you go out there, instead of leaning the way, they'd lean the opposite way. So it's about using everybody in there as a training tool. And it is challenging for sure. And I can't say that the very first clinic I did was as good as maybe the last clinic I did this past weekend. But that's the point for me too, is to build my skills as we're going through this, as a communicator, as trying to break down that drill, the physics of it, what people are doing, watching how people go at it. If I know this person is coming from the street, I'm seeing that they're kind of going at this thing a certain way. And that other guy was doing the same thing because he comes from the street. But this guy was a dirt biker and he's doing it this way. So then I can try to use those connections to try to form a better way to communicate what I'm trying to tell people. the last few years, pretty much I would have maybe one weekend off like every six weeks or so from March through October. My wife was getting a little annoyed with that. and what was taken the most days were the clinics since I like to keep them small. So I had my friend Tom McConnell, who is a excellent rider, professional photographer. He's done a bunch of the 24 hours of Appalachia races and he's been riding since he was a kid. So I asked him to come on board as, as a coach with me. And this year is the first year we're doing it. So we have 10 riders and me and him and it's worked out amazing because He comes from a different perspective than I do. He was a dirt rider growing up. He's done racing. He's done that kind of side of it. And I'm more from the street side through the adventure bike and then taking the adventure bike into the trail. And then, you know what? Dual sports are a little bit easier to get a little bit deeper into the woods. So then I went to the dual sports. So we came from opposite sides to the point we're at now. So having him there to bounce things off of or... to say, well, I do things this way because of this, but Tom likes to do it a different way. And I'll let Tom explain why he does it the way he does it. And then maybe that'll click for people depending on which way they're coming from. adding Tom and having that ability to like pick his brain and watch him grow as a coach too, it's been probably one of the most rewarding things that I've done is start the clinics and get the clinics moving. And now having Tom there and being able to really, you know, even after the clinic's over this past weekend, him and I, like most of the people, it was too cold. It was like 30 degrees at night. I was the only idiot camping, you know, in the back of my truck. Everybody else is out in a hotel. So Tom stayed out with me for a while and we would just sit down and break down the clinic and talk about what happened throughout the day, specific riders, what they were doing, how they were hearing what we were saying and how they were. trying to do the thing. So it was really nice to like be able to sit down with somebody else at the end of that too, and do that assessment after action report kind of a thing, which is something I would kind of do by myself after the old ones, but having somebody else there too throughout the day. And then at the end of it to like work on, okay, what did we, what did we learn from watching these guys do this stuff that we're trying to get them to do? So it's for me as a scientist, I've always been, it's a constant learning, constant experimentation. constant reassessment of the things you're doing. So it's been super fun and rewarding. The whole thing for sure, but the clinics, just watching the new riders click and by the end of the weekend, having confidence, you can see them as a group become really good friends and then, oh, I'm gonna go to the Fool's Ride too, I'll see you there. And then they go and ride at the Fool's Ride together. Like it's such a rewarding thing that I can't believe that, you know, so far. 2026, know, from 2020, I'm still going. So something's somewhat working, but I have to pinch myself sometimes, you know. You mentioned being out in the cold. was out in the cold this past weekend too, doing a different type of clinic or training. I guess you could say I'm in the midst of training a new cohort of street bike instructors for the state of Ohio. And I've been teaching those classes. This is year 12, which is like crazy to say, but I've been training for probably training new instructors, probably for 10 of that And every year the group teaches me something different or I have to make an adjustment. And I think the best teachers do make adjustments and are constantly like evolving and assessing things to make things better. And especially with just different learning styles and the way people are, different personalities. I'm a person who likes things like very cut and dry and like I don't like a lot of things open to interpretation. And so I'm like a big person that wants things documented and I want processes. Some of the other trainers that I work with are a little more flexible, I guess you could say, on interpretation of stuff. so It's been interesting to see the different students and how they're learning that they want more information. They want it to be more concrete or they're a little more like go with the flow. So, um, yeah, it's, it's been interesting this year. I have a lot of military guys actually in the class or like former or current military guys, and just kind of a different group of people, than I'm used to training. it has been like the first weekend. think it was like nice. And in the sixties and the last couple of weekends, I was literally teaching in like my Columbia ski pants because I knew it was going to be cold. was going to be like 30 degrees at 7 a.m. and I was not about to be cold. So yeah. was was snowing on us this past Saturday in the morning as we're I'm doing the introductions and just kind of talking to people about what to expect. It started to snow on us. And it's May. Like we should not be having this weather in May. Exactly. Yeah. for me, like going back to what you were saying there, military training, like I find a lot of military folks kind of attracted to this adventure dual sport. There's a lot of crossover, I feel like, in mentalities and what you get out of it's basically team sports, know, anything like that. And for me, like I went through, I was a senior enlisted um So I was like an E6 and then I decided to get commissioned. So I had a ton of like leadership style training in the Air Force. And then on the civilian side, as I was doing that on the military side, I was also kind of climbing the ladder on the civilian side and it was a laboratory supervisor, head trainer, and then I was eventually a lab manager. So it's a lot of like management assessments and management skills and thinking about what you're saying to people and how it's affecting them. And I definitely try to take as much of that as I could to apply it to what I'm doing with the bike. I just put a post out this morning on social media kind of saying similar things. I don't try to say to people, this is how I do it. This is the best way to do it. It's where are you coming from? What are you trying to get out of the thing you're doing? What bike you on? What's? Where do you plan on riding this the most and trying to figure out what they want? And then I can say, well, I like to it this way. This person does that. They like to it this way. And then Tom, he likes to do it this way. So trying to give them better guidance based off of them instead of me. It's kind of been like what I've learned over the last couple of years too with these clinics. Going back to events, what's kind of the reality behind building out those routes and organizing rides that people probably don't see? Yeah, the event itself is kind of like the Super Bowl for sure, but you don't see the long season it takes ahead of it to get to that Super Bowl. There's a lot of wins and losses. There's a lot of administrative work. So in the past, I've basically done, and it's all small scale, like three rallies, two tours, 15-ish clinics. I do group clinics and private clinics. So by the end of the year, I'm doing 25 events plus I'm going to a few friends events. I might be at 30 events throughout the year, but for me to do those 25 of my own There's a ton of administrative work that has to occur generally over the winter for me to be able to do those things so there's certain permits you need From like my PA wilds tour that you know, it's through the DCNR. I need to have a bunch of permits So there's the charter process through the AMA to get the insurance and the insurance process, then the permit process. And then you're going back and forth with all these entities multiple times. And for me, I just, I stopped doing an event called, it was Allegheny Jamboree. And this year to replace it, we're doing what's called the Wildcatters Adventure Rally. Similar-ish location, but I moved it out of the National Forest and over to private land, but it's covering DCNR lands again. So now I have another event that has to go through that DCNR permit process. And for each of my events, I build like an operations and safety plan that could be anywhere from eight to 15 pages long. Map overviews, where are they all the hospitals are at, where the fire departments are at, the riders meeting style notes, like the background of the, background of my organization, the background of the event, what we're trying to accomplish, what kind of routes we have, what difficulty level the routes are, where the hospitals are at compared to where the base camps are at, like. It's a huge process. But that ops and safety plan is what helps me make the sanctioning and insurance processes and the permit processes go smoother. So I put a lot of work in the front end when I'm at the point of doing those permit style processes. I already have all the information. I just need to put it into their format and get it over to them. And then with the DCNR, they want a GPX track of where I'm going. So I have to make sure that I have all of my routes pretty much set over the winter and know where I'm gonna go on what day. Like for the PA Wilds Tour, it's four different loops and each loop goes in a different direction from camp. So ah the one year the DCNR ranger was basically like, well, this particular state park is having an event on the day you're trying to go through there. I know you only got 12 to 15 people, but can you just do that one on a different day? So even though I planned the event to have it in a certain way, I have to adjust and say, well, instead of that, they will do this thing, blah, blah, And then on the other hand, in the past, I've had a range reach out to me and say, your route goes over this bridge, there's construction on that bridge. If you get on that road, the detour is actually to turn around and go 25 miles out of the way to get back to the other side of that bridge. He's like, but I'll tell you, do this, this, this instead, and it'll get you around that thing without the huge detour. So there are pros and cons obviously to anything. doing it for so many years, you build some level of relationship with the people that are doing the process so it gets smoother and smoother every time. Until they add more rules and regulations or things that they want information on, then you got to figure out how to do that. But just like for the fool's ride. I don't have to, but for me to make sure the event runs smoothly, the routes are the main attraction to me. I have to build these routes and I try to, I mean, we're covering a lot of the same roads. There are certain chunks I'll take out each year and put it in different years and I'll move things around, but I like to reorganize those routes every year. So the amount of time on the computer to do those edits and then the amount of time to actually go out and ride each ride. we did about, I want to say it was like a dozen routes this year. So at some point in time, I have rode all dozen of those routes. The dual sport hard, didn't do their single track pieces, but I did do everything else except the dual sport hard single track stuff. So that was a lot of days. And sometimes I have people come out and help me and run it with me. But sometimes I go by myself because when I'm out there, I'm multitasking. So. I had a clinic before the Fools, maybe two weeks before the Fools. I had the Fools ride, then I had a clinic the weekend right after. So for me to get my head straight around, OK, I got the Fools ride and the clinics. I can't concentrate on one or the other. have to do both. So I'm out there scouting by myself on the Tenere, the Fools ride stuff. And I was physically thinking about and practicing the techniques that I'm going to try to show the people at the Level 1 clinic. your brain has to be going in multiple directions all the time and over this winter with adding that new wildcatters event that took and is still taking time and effort. I actually developed a little bit of carpal tunnel in my wrist from having the type so much there's just so many aspects and that like my buddy Josh, I mentioned he's he's. become like basically our event medic. He comes to almost everything we do. He'll either do the presentation or at the tour, he's actually just in the group with us making sure if somebody does get an injury, I'm wilderness first aid certified, but he's a legit medic. So between the two of us, can generally assess and patch people up. So having those plans in place too and thinking about all those aspects. And then for a lot of these events, especially the Fool's Ride, it's been attracting more and more attention. This year, I kind of post it to previous people for a week. So it's hidden to the public for a week. Two weeks after I made it public, it sold out. So that event has gotten fairly popular. The early clinics have gotten fairly popular. And I have a lot of collaborators and sponsors and I call them friends of whichever the event is. There's a bunch for the Fool's Ride. So having to communicate with all of them, figure out what it is they want to promote or send to me to give away or all these things. So it's a lot of moving pieces. And I try to spread the events out in a way that they're not super close to one another, because that makes it a little harder for me to manage it by myself. I don't want to say I do everything by myself because I do have my family as my base camp crew. So my mother and my wife and my cousin Jackie, as much as she can, will come out and actually do the food prep, the serving, the cleanup. And we've started a volunteer program. So people that have been to multiple events a lot of times, or new people that don't know anybody, they'll sign up to volunteer and help for this last fool's ride. We do six meals. So for each meal they volunteer for, I give them a 5 % discount to anything. in the future, whenever. It could be three years from now. You can use that discount code. And if 30 % off of a private clinic is $300, that's a pretty significant amount of money. I want to make sure that I'm building the community and showing my appreciation to people for their help or for showing up. And all the people that I have helped me lead rides or scout rides, it's a lot of people. They're involved to help me make this work because they're interested in what I'm doing and what I'm trying to do. People just love to help and that's what I love about this community for sure. You have built such a recognizable brand too with Appalachian ADV. Do you feel like that was intentional from the beginning that you were trying to build the brand or did it just kind of evolve naturally over time once you started kind of organizing everything? Yeah. So I definitely like, it's always in my head, When you're the military, you learn, like there's Air Force core values. So you, get that into you when you're learning management skills through the hospital system, like they're baking some things into you. So there was always a part of that there. And I knew that eventually I would have to evolve that more. like actually think about and push that a bit more. But the initial push for me was I wanted to do this word of mouth. I wanted it to be more of, I just went to this thing and it was so cool. I want to bring a friend with me the next time. Like I wanted it to be more of that as opposed to me like saying, Hey, this what we're doing is awesome. Come, come, come see what we're doing. So I always wanted to be a bit more of that. And when I first started doing this, I was a manager in the lab still. I was basically supplementing the event and paying for some of the initial ones through my hospital job. So it was more about getting it done, doing the things and kind of having that personality to them, and just getting people's interests and treading water. That was kind of like the initial was I just need to be able to do enough to tread enough water so that I'm not drowning and that I can actually make this work and see how it works. see where I need to make adjustments and be flexible. For me, as a scientist, flexibility and not being stuck, I want it to be this exact way and it has to be that way. I wanted to be more flexible and kind of flow with it a bit more. So after a few years and feeling more established, then I started to really think about, all right, what am I trying to tell people? So really early on, I did come up with like the mission and vision thing, you coming from the military or when you work in management, there's always like, what's our vision? What's our mission? What's our blah, blah. So I kind of always had that there. And I kind of used that initial thing that I came up with as like, all right, what does this mean now? Like I said all these words and these things, but what am I actually trying to get at? And that's when I started breaking it down. And the last couple years, couple few years now, it was community. like, there's people coming out to these, I've got the same guys and girls. showing up to multiple things. They're becoming friendly with my family because my family's at a lot of these things. That's a community. Like we're building a community somewhere. And there is, especially I think regionally, there is like an ADV and dual sport community. I know you're friends with a lot of the same friends I am, like the guys that run a 304 Detour, know, James and Trevor and the tallboys guys. Drew Faulkner, you know, does Red River Scramble. Like Chad Warner does Wailin Wayne. Kissel guys at the soggy bottom like. We all talk to each other and we're all, for the most part, I don't feel like it's competitive. Yes. We're all like, I think the 304 Detour is an awesome event. Red River Scramble is one of my favorites. Like Soggy Bottom, the couple of times I've gone there, it's been super fun. So, and when I go to those events, I see this logo on people's hats, shirts. The same people are going to their events that are going to mine and vice versa. And if we can support each other, great. So that was another push for me. You know, as event organizers, I feel like... we're not really keeping secrets or trading secrets. It's just we're not getting in each other's way. I want people to enjoy this and come back to me eventually. But I'll do the same thing with the training side. Like BJ Hessler from DC Dirt Camp, she's a great instructor. I will say to people, you should go talk to her because she's going have a different perspective. We might do the same things, but she's going to. Maybe say it differently or show you a thing differently or spend more or less time or I'll do the same. But please come back. I'm not telling you never to come back. But that's, think for me is a bit better way to do it as opposed to corporate cutthroat kind of a thing. So building up the riding community, building up the event coordinator community, and then even like the sponsors and event supporters, So to me, like community has been like the biggest push the last couple of years. Correct me if I'm wrong too, I've listened to several of your podcasts, but I think your sign off is have fun, take chances. um Am I right in that? Yeah, that's the main one. I've got more that end up coming out, but that is definitely the main one. So how did that phrase come about? Have fun, take chances. And what does that mean to you? So before I even thought of Appalachian ADV, like me and the guy that kind of got me into the riding and then a few other people that I was friends with that started riding, we called ourselves the Latter Day Shunpikers Adventure Motorcycle Club. Very unofficial, just play on words, just being a bunch of young-minded but old idiots, basically. And I was watching the show Ride with Norman Reedus. So the guy from Walking Dead and Boondock Saints. the very first episode, and it's more of a street riding kind of a thing, I just interested because his motorcycles. The very first episode, I can't remember the guy's name off time right now, but he was out riding with the dude and he was about to go on a Pacific Coast Highway and they had traded bikes. And the other guy was like, you should just keep the one you're riding. Like I know it's a custom bike and it's very expensive. He's like, just go out and use that one. And somewhere in there, he said, have fun and take chances. And when I watched that scene, I actually like, I paused it. I'm like, that was really cool. I went back to the beginning of the scene and I just watched it again. And as soon as I heard him say that, have fun, take chances again, I'm like, what he's doing and what they're talking about is kind of the essence of motorcycling. Here in the US, it's more of a hobby. It's more of a thing you do to have fun. People definitely use them as commuters, but like a majority of the people that have them, it's kind of to have fun. And for me, adventure and dual sport, if you want to progress as a rider or if you want to get better, if you want to go into places that people don't normally go to, you have to take chances. So to have fun, you have to take chances sometimes. And for me, that doesn't mean safety third. em means exactly. Each individual rider has to assess those things. Like you want to have fun, you know you have to take chances, but you probably should be worried about your safety sometimes. If I'm always worried about safety, you'll never even ride the motorcycle because it's a dangerous thing. Two wheels is unstable naturally. for me, it was not like, don't be safe. It is just know when you're going too far or know when you just need to stop and have somebody help you or know when to just say, I'm not doing that. Like I don't ever force anybody to do anything. I kind of tell them, this is what it is. This is how you could try to do it. This is maybe the technique you want to assume. This is the line you want to take. But that's up to you completely. And if you don't want to do it, and you don't want to turn around and go back to where you came, I'll jump on the bike for you, or somebody else will, and we'll take the bike to the next place. And then you can have fun and take chances at a different spot, and maybe this isn't your spot to do that. So for me, it was always a very good battle cry as we're here to have fun, and to do that maybe take some chances. But I'll tell you, I think The lawyers and the insurance people probably don't like that saying. Well, tell us what's next for Appalachian ADV and where people can connect with you online. Yeah, so the website is going to always have the current lineup of things we're doing. So it's appalachianadv.com And from the landing page, it accesses pretty much everything. So you can go straight to the events, straight to the clinic page. I have a link to the podcast. And I've written a couple dozen articles. So I have those linked on there too. And recently, trying to help support the community, I've opened up my website to guest articles. The guy Josh I was talking about has written a great article for me. And my friend Ed, who's been with me since the beginning, helped me lead a lot of the ADV rides. He's also a writer. And I mentioned earlier that I kind of open up the ticket sales at the beginning of the year to people that have been to stuff before or who have gone to the website and signed up for the sporadic newsletter. So generally speaking, I'll keep a registration link hidden so that only people on the newsletter can get a ticket for about a week. And then after that, I open up to the public. So people are interested in what we're doing and they know stuff sells out quick. That's generally the best way to. kind of keep tabs. Social media wise, I have Instagram, I got Facebook, have YouTube channel, that kind of stuff. um Yeah, so that's probably the best places to find me. Thank you for joining me and thanks to everybody for tuning into Momentum. This has been a production of High Gear Success. If you want to connect or recommend a guest, head to MomentumMotorsportsPodcast.com. Until next time, keep the momentum rolling.