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Too hot, too cold, too wet. How can you ride in conditions other than the ideal weather?
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Welcome to the Throttle and Roast podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. In today's episode, we'll cover what's probably the most common fear, or frustration at least, for motorcyclists, which is the weather. While it's wonderful to have a perfect day for riding, how many days would you miss on riding if you had to wait always for that perfect day? Here in the U. S. where most of our riding is for leisure, we might often ride only on the If the weather's not perfect, do you not ride? How could you make a few adjustments to make it easier for you to ride even when it's not perfect weather?
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So let's start with when it's wet. Now, this is probably the one that a lot of motorcyclists will struggle with.
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They don't want to go out and ride when it's pouring rain, and it's understandable. We aren't in a car. We don't have a roof over our basically protecting us from all of that weather that's around. So we may be a little bit more hesitant to get out and ride. I want to talk about sort of three main issues that we think of when it comes to riding in the wet. The first one is really about staying dry. Now, if you've ever gotten caught in the rain, and maybe you were wearing leathers, or you had, plain old jeans on, and it just, it soaks right through. And now you are sitting in that clammy wetness, it probably left a really negative experience for you. And you never want to go and do that again. And that's completely understandable. But the real thing is thinking about what is the right gear for you to be bringing along so that even if it does rain, you're not going to have that problem. Now, the first one of you think about is your hands, because your hands are really the part that you're interfacing with the bike the most for controlling the bike, you're moving the handlebars, you're controlling the throttle, you're controlling the brakes, the clutch, all this is being manipulated with your hands. So if your gloves get soaked, it's really going to be uncomfortable and could actually make it a little harder for you even just control the bike. So the first thing you really want to think about is getting a good pair of Gore-Tex gloves. Now Gore-Tex is an amazing fabric, and there's other non Gore-Tex brand that do quite similar. So look for whatever brand of motorcycle gear you're But fundamentally, what it is doing is enabling the perspiration, if you will, that is on your body at any point to escape, but not allowing any of the wetness to come in. So it's, this almost like one way valve type of a material that allows you to not feel that super clammy feeling that you would have if you were wearing, let's say rubber gloves, which would be still perfectly And that same technology can be applied into your riding gear.
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If you're wearing a Gore-Tex riding outfit, whether it's your jacket and your pants, you have that same protection. You don't have to pull over, stop, put on that rain suit, which is really fundamentally just a rubber, rubber suit. You're ready to go all the time. And if you're certainly riding commuting, it probably is worthwhile to get a Gore-Tex suit and ride with that.
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This is actually one of the reasons why the AeroStitch RoadCrafter is such a popular option is it's 30 seconds to pop on for when you're commuting and it is a full Gore-Tex suit. So really, really convenient. You never have to worry about it.
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And in the early days of my riding, I did have originally a rain suit, even though I did have some Gore-Tex jackets. But at the time, what they had was a liner that you had to put into the jacket. So the jacket itself wasn't almost sealed or having a built-in Gore-Tex. It was a separate And that does make it a little bit more of a pain to adjust because now you've got to pull over and put the liner in, or you've got to remember to put the liner in beforehand. And it wasn't as breathable as a lot of the modern fabrics are today. So a rain suit kind of works in the same thing, but you're putting this over your riding gear. And many of them tend to be more of that rubber type of suit kind of a feeling where they are fully blocking all of the coming in, but also all of the moisture going And when you're perspiring, as you would normally do just throughout the normal course of the day, even if it's not overly hot, you can always still have a little bit of water vapor coming off of your body. That has nowhere to escape to. So you start to feel this very clammy feeling from that rain suit. So while it is a good option, and many people will have that with them, you can pull over to the side of the road and throw it on.
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So I do prefer the Gore-Tex and I do find it's the better way to do this. Now, the last one I want to touch on when it comes to how you'd stay dry is really about your helmet. Now, if you're riding around in one of those, you know, beanie helmets that are a half helmet, or you've got a three-quarter helmet where your face is not sort of protected other than maybe there's a little bit of a visor, any sort of moisture or rain is really going to hit you and get you very wet on your head. And that especially at road speeds may not be super comfortable. This is where a full face or modular helmet is probably going to be the best bet to give you the most opportunity for protection in any type of weather conditions that you might run into.
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The next thing we want to talk about is visibility and not visibility in the sense of you being seen, but your ability to see. And if you're used to driving around in a car or in a truck, you're used to having windshield wipers and they're going to clear whatever rain is getting onto the windshield and therefore make it easier for you to be able to see out. Well, on a motorcycle, visor that's on our helmet doesn't really have windshield wipers built into it.
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So you've got to find a way to sort of clear that. Now, the good thing is most motorcycle-specific gloves will typically have a sort of a squeegee on the left index finger to help you clear your visor. So it's just a quick little swish with your finger and just to clear that off. And because it's the hand that is used for your clutch rather than your throttle and your front brake, it's the one that you can probably take off a little bit more easily and be able to wipe that that. Now, there are some, maybe some lower priced gloves, some of the leather gloves that won't actually have that squeegee and therefore they're not going to help you. This is where a good pair of Gore-Tex gloves can help. Now, what I do find is helpful with Gore-Tex gloves is they will oftentimes be a little bit less airflow than you're going to get from, let's say mesh gloves or even a non-GORE-Tex type of a leather glove. So what you may want to do and because they're so compact is maybe you bring a regular pair of, let's say like mesh gloves if it's a particularly hot day. And then you also have a pair of Gore-Tex gloves that you can put on as the weather starts to look a little bit more iffy. And because it's so compact, it's very easy to throw into a pocket or into a backpack or whatever panniers you may have on the bike. And those gloves, of course, will typically have that squeegee to make it easier to clear your visor. Now, another thing that some riders will do is look at some of the water repellent sprays that you can add on to your visor. So for example, Rain-X does make one that's specifically for plastics as opposed to the generic Rain-X for glass that you would use on a normal car's windshield. You want to make sure you're using the plastic one because it's going to work properly with the materials and make sure that it doesn't cause other issues of clouding, et cetera. There are some people who do still find issues with it where it doesn't clear as effectively, but it is another way that you can help to improve your visibility as you're riding there. Now, the last one that will aid you in visibility is really specific to the visor that you buy and more oftenly the helmet that that is associated with it. And this is where you're able to actually add in what's called a pin lock onto the visor. And this pin lock, you could think of it as like a double pane window and this little piece of plastic goes on the inside of your visor and it has a seal around the outside edge. So what it does is it provides a little bit of air gap between this piece of plastic and the plastic from your basic visor. And because of that, there's no ability for it to fog up in that area. And when you're in rainy conditions, this is the more common situation in which you're going to get fogging in your visor. So having a pin lock really, really makes a difference for you to be able to still see as you're riding. Now, if you don't have a pin lock, what you may end up having to do is flip the visor up, get a little bit of the airflow going in, which will typically help to clear some of that fogging that can happen. You may need to wipe it with your index finger again, almost think of like the squeegee in reverse to sort of clear the inside of the visor.
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But if you can, it's worthwhile to invest in getting a pin lock on your visor because it's just going to make it a lot simpler.
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Now, the third category that we want to talk about for riding in the wet is your traction and your handling. And the big thing that you want to do on any sort of motorcycle, and most of the time when you're doing inspections that are required by your local government office, they're going to have some checks that are needed for safety. And this will usually include verifying that you have adequate level of tread on your motorcycle's tires. while when you're riding on a track and having full slicks is great, it's going to give you the absolute most amount of traction that you can possibly get. In the real world where you might run into some wet conditions, you want to make sure that you do have actual treads there and that deep enough to actually be able to allow the water to kind of get in there and avoid the tire hydroplaning The other thing that you can look at is some tires will have. A mixture of the components that are used in the materials that are used to produce the wet. So when you think of different tires, you might look at one which has a little bit more silica. It's a bit better wet performance. This will be another way to give you a tire that rather than focusing purely on absolute dry performance will give you something that gives you a little bit more flexibility.
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Especially if it's a bike that commuting with, this probably becomes a no-brainer and would be really the optimal tire choice for you to handle all of those riding conditions All right, let's switch into the one that is probably the next most almost fearful or avoiding that people will do and this is about cold. And this is why a lot of riders will typically say, "Hey, I only ride in the summer months" and of course in the spring and the fall it's cooler but it's not really freezing and so you may still be able to ride in those other, at least get to three seasons. I ride four seasons so I'll ride even in the winter and we'll get into snow and ice a little bit further on but really when you think of cold, this is about maintaining your own body temperature is really the critical key. So there's three different areas that we're going to talk about for the cold. The first one we'll start with is about wind protection. When you're riding on the motorcycle, the big thing that you're going to run into is wind chill. As the motorcycle is moving through the air, the apparent temperature of the air will feel colder than the actual So the easiest way to minimize that effect is to add in some wind protection. So a very simple one of course is add a windshield to your bike and if you already have a windshield on your bike, consider having a windshield that is maybe taller. I do this on my bike so my R18 for example is the R18 Classic. The windshield can be put on or taken off in about 30 seconds.
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And I only put it on in the maybe early part of the spring and the late part of the fall and then all through the winter.
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Most of the rest of the time I actually have the windshield off But in the winter months I'll put on that windshield again.
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And I modified from the stock windshield that was on my bike.
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And got one that was a little bit taller. It's about three inches taller and it has a little bit of a lip that kicks up so it sort of forces the up above your helmet. So having a little bit of a larger windshield really makes a difference. And on my GS I do a similar thing. So the stock GS Adventure, which is the bike that I have, has a very very large screen and a couple of winglet that are on the provides an amazing amount of protection from the cold you can even change its position. So you make it a little bit higher or a little bit lower. If you have that option on your bike to raise the windshield, this is another way to just give you a little bit more wind protection.
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We talked about of that wet and how it can affect your hands.
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Well, the same applies into the cold conditions. You're going to want to maybe consider adding in some hand guards to your motorcycle. Now, there's some brands, for example, like Hippo Hands, which create a muff that goes up over your handlebars and blocks the wind. Some of them even have a little bit of a almost faux fur lining to give a little bit more warmth. But these make a huge difference in keeping that wind off of your hands. So on my GS, I put it's from an Australian company called Bark Busters, and I put on, they call it the Blizzard, and it's a fully encapsulating sort of a hand guard that goes over my off-road hand guards on the bike, which are also by Bark Busters. And what this does, it just provides so much more protection to keep that cold air from hitting my hands that I'm able to run in much colder conditions. Now, I don't have that on my R18, and this is why my R18, I can, about 20 degrees Fahrenheit is about the limit I can do on that bike, mostly because I don't have the hand protection. If I put hand protection on, I could probably go even colder. But on my GS, I've gone as low as 3 degrees Fahrenheit, which is insanely cold, but I was toasty warm. and we talked about how the helmets can also help you for when it's wet, but a helmet also is really critical for when it's cold, because this is going to keep that cold air from hitting your face. So having that nice full face or modular helmet is going to make a big difference. And between the two, I'd actually say that the modular is probably the better bet because the modular will have a closure around the neck roll area because it actually opens up for you to put the helmet on and then closes in there. So you don't have this large gap for you to pull your head through.
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It tightens it up, which means less air actually comes up over by your neck into the head area and makes it a little bit warmer for you in these really cold conditions. The last one that I'll say that helps for a wind protection would be really looking at your jacket. And if you wanted to augment it, let's say that your jacket has a decent amount of airflow on it already, you could look at one of these windproof shirts. So I use one by AeroStitch that you can just throw on over whatever piece of clothing you're doing, and it's going to keep the wind from penetrating it and provides almost like a little wind protection for you on your clothing. The next one I want to talk about is these sort of thermal layers. So we've kept the wind from hitting us, but how do we keep our body heat from escaping? Well, one of the first ones, and we'll start from the top of your head because this is where most body heat escapes is from your head. Well, you can look at putting on a balaclava and there's motorcycle-specific ones where they're meant to be very thin so they don't take up a huge amount of space inside your helmet. But what they'll do is they'll fully cover your head and typically come down and cover your neck.
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So that little gap that you have between the bottom of your helmet and the top of where jacket kind of comes, there's usually an inch or two sort of space there, and you get this really cold spot right there. So having a balaclava can actually cover that area. And if you don't want to use a full balaclava, there are some options where you can even just have like a neck gaiter So I tend to use those. balaclava is something I'll typically only do when it's like really, really cold. But I find the neck gaiter works really well for most of that. The next one would be your base layer. So your base layer is underneath your normal riding gear. You're going to have some base layers. And some of these will actually be more of a thermal type. So you could think of them as being made out of all synthetic sort of a material.
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Some of them are made out of wool. And it just provides a little bit of insulation directly against your skin. And then whatever you're putting over that as a further insulating layer would be adding on to it. And those other insulating layers might be like, let's say like a normal sweater, there's very Thinsulate type of materials that you could do that gives another layer without it being as thick as you would get with, let's say, a sweater. And when you start to think of the sort of the Michelin man outfit that you could get with having all these layers, including your riding gear, it may be a little hard to maneuver. So these really thin, very space efficient, but thermally efficient type of materials really do help. sometimes you'll put on what's called like a thermal jacket liner. So some jackets will have the normal jacket exterior, and then they'll have a jacket liner that you put on, and they call it a thermal liner for when it gets into those colder conditions. So I actually have a jacket Revit, which is sort of a waxed cotton jacket, and it came with one of these thermal liners. So in the cooler conditions of early spring, winter, late fall, I'll put that thermal liner in and it'll just give a little bit extra warmth to that jacket. So that's the sort of the thermal layers. And you could think of these as really being the passive insulation or passive heating do, because they're really just containing and insulating your natural body heat. And that leads us into the next one, which is when it's getting really, really cold, you may want to augment with heated Now, one of the simplest ones, and a lot of motorcycles will actually come from the factory with these today, especially if you're getting a BMW, almost all of their bikes have these available, would be heated grips. And heated grip is really fundamentally the grip area where you're holding on with your hands will actually have some elements underneath it that you can set at different levels. And it will warm up those grips, keeping the inside of your hands warm, and thus keeping your overall hand warm.
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Works really well, and especially if you're combining that grip with the hand guards, so you don't have the exterior wind hitting the top of your hands, the inside of your hands is being warmed by these grips, it really does help make a difference. Now, if you don't have hand guards, you may want to also augment those heated grips, or if you don't have heated grips, maybe it's your only option would be to get heated gloves. And these gloves will tend to be having a decent amount of insulation on them naturally, that sort of Thinsulate type of material. But they also have heating elements, and this can keep the top of your hands warm. And if you combine them with that heated grip, you've got the inside of your hands being warm from the grip, the outside of your hands is being warmed by the gloves.
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This is what I use in my R18, and it lets me get down to about 20 that's 20 so below freezing.
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But the wind after that point below 20 degrees tends to just be a little too cold. And so you really do want hand guards at that point. The next one is think about keeping your core, because by nature, your body is going to take blood and heat away from your extremities to try to keep your core as warm as possible.
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So if you keep your core already hot or warm by wearing a heated shirt or a heated jacket, this is going to actually allow more of your body flow of blood to get to your extremities and keep them a little bit warmer. So even just if you don't have heated gloves or heated grips, wearing a shirt or a heated jacket can actually make you feel overall warmer, because more of the blood will get out to your hands. actually happen to use one by Warm and Safe.
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I'll put a link to it in the show notes so you can see what those look like. it's really nice because it's a base layer.
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So it goes directly against your skin and then you can have layers on top of it. So we talked about base layers in the sort of passive just a moment ago. Think of this as a active base layer where it's heated directly against your skin. And I found it's just far more thermally efficient than let's say heated jacket that I might put over some base layers. And I may then have an insulating layer on top of that. So I really can contain that heat as much as possible. It works very effectively. you may pair that with some heated pant liners so you can think of these going under your riding pants to just provide a little bit of active heat directly onto your area and you may even augment that with heated socks so you keep your feet as warm as possible your feet will tend to be out in the wind probably doesn't have a whole lot of insulation in it to begin with if it's a Gore-Tex boot which also helps you in the wet they'll tend to be a little bit more wind resistant so that can help you in that cold condition but heated socks really can make a I'd say there's two major brands when it comes to heated gear that about so the first one is Gerbing's you could think of them as the originator of the type of heated gear that we were using on motorcycles and it's very space efficient it can run off of the 12 volt battery source so you can just tie it directly into your bike's power and they've been around forever so you've probably seen them before my first heated gear was actually a Gerbing's heated vest warm and safe though is another brand and this is where I actually switched all of my heated gear from Gerbing's over to warm and safe and what I like with the warm and compared to the Gerbing's is the Gerbing's is it's that type of heated gear so you'd have the jackets or the vest that would go over your other clothing whereas the warm and safe is actually that direct base layer and they do have the jackets as well if you want to have something very similar to the Gerbing's the base layer style I just found is even more efficient in keeping me warm so that's why I personally use the warm and safe but the Gerbing's is not bad there are some other brands but those are the two major brands that you're going to probably hear now I did talk briefly about and mention that we'll talk about it with the cold of really about snow and when you're riding in winter and riding in snow are really not the same thing so I don't want us to confuse that when I say riding in winter is in cold conditions that doesn't mean that there's snow on the ground and that you're having to skid all over the place because of that a lot of the winter will have the roads will still be clear even though there may be snow let's say on the side of the roads you can still ride in those conditions but if you're riding when it's actively snowing or when ice on the roads that's going to significantly reduce traction and your ability to balance the bike on two wheels is going to really compromised and any traction loss could of course result in you falling over so when I talk about riding in colder conditions I'm not talking about riding in the middle of a blizzard so please don't go and do that that's not necessarily sane in any way certainly on a two wheeled motorcycle I don't recommend riding with the snow or ice on the roads but if the roads are and there's still snow on the sides of the road but you know it's either well below freezing or well above freezing you're going to be pretty okay.
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The thing that I would be careful with is if you're riding right around freezing so maybe it's a couple degrees below a couple degrees as you're riding along some areas will have more sun on them some will have less sun and what will happen just from that is it may right around that midpoint of around freezing some of that snow or ice might melt turn into water go across the road surface maybe gets into the shade and now it freezes again and now becomes a black ice situation so I would use extreme caution if there's still snow on the sides of the road and you're riding at right around freezing if it's well below it let's say like five to ten degrees fahrenheit below or five to ten degrees fahrenheit above you'll probably be okay but right in that middle point this is where it's dangerous.
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All right let's switch into the one that is not the one that a lot of people are thinking about But depending upon your comfort level with temperatures, it may be a pretty important one for you. And that's in hot weather. Now, the ironic part about this is that a lot of riders will decide that they only want to ride their motorcycle in the summer months when it might get really, really hot. And we don't have air conditioning on the bike. So our ability to stay cool is much more limited than our ability to warm up. We just talked about heated gear. I can add heated gear and I can ride down to three degrees Fahrenheit and be toasty, comfortable, warm. But when it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit, I don't have a vest that's running AC that can kind of give me the equivalent in the opposite direction. So airflow tends to be your friend for most of the case. So you'll see the same things that we talked about of how you mitigate against the cold. Now you need to invert that. So one of the things, this is why I take the windshield off of my R18 in the warmer weather is I want to get as much airflow as possible. This just keeps that airflow. I'm taking advantage of the wind chill effect to avoid that excessively hot temperature and keep me a little bit cooler. So removing those windshields or using a smaller one to increase airflow and get that wind chill effect to help you really makes a difference. thing that you can do from a riding gear perspective that really helps you in this insanely hot conditions is a mesh jacket and pants. Getting that airflow through your jacket and pants to your body makes a huge difference in your feeling of what the apparent temperature is.
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The other thing that you could look at is looking at some synthetic fabrics for your base layers. And we talked about some of these where they're more of a thermal design. Well, you can actually have some ones that work in the opposite direction.
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They're really trying to shed heat as much as possible, as well as moisture. And the more that they can give you that effective evaporative cooling by wicking the moisture away, combined with a mesh jacket, really makes a difference at keeping you cool. Now, in really, really hot conditions that like 90 degree plus weather and depending upon your comfort level, maybe even in the 80 degree plus weather, you might do this. You might look at getting a cooling vest. Now, a cooling vest will functionally be working as a swamp cooler. If you're familiar with what those are, it's taking advantage of evaporation to help cool you down. And there's usually two variants of these cooling vests.
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The first one really a soaking style where you soak the in water. It absorbs some of that moisture and then will effectively evaporate it out over time. When you put it on, you will be wet as you put it on to your whatever base layers that you have. And you're kind of just sitting in this wetness.
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So it may not be the most comfortable thing, but it does help cool you down. The downside, of course, is because it was just sort of absorbing it. It tends to evaporate relatively quickly and won't last that long.
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So you've got to kind of pull over, recharge it by re-soaking it or splashing some water on if you stop at a gas station, whatever it is. The other one that you can do, and this is what I switched my cooling vest to, is one where it has an internal bladder. So there's usually a little flap or valve into which you can then pour water and it goes into the interior. And now that is still going to do the evaporative, but almost like Gore-Tex where it allows this stuff out, but at a much slower rate, it's going to still cool you down, but it will last a lot longer. And you don't have that wet feeling when you're riding. for those really hot conditions, a cooling vest is the best option to do.
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So we've discussed a few ways to handle these less than ideal conditions. We talked about what you do in a wet situation. We looked at what you might do when it's really cold.
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Why you may want to skip riding in snow or ice. And finally, how do you stay cool it's that really, really hot weather? So the question I'd have for you this week is, which weather do you avoid and why? Share your thoughts through the text, the show link in the show notes, or leave us a voicemail at throttleandroast.com slash voicemail. Thanks for listening.
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I'll talk to you next week.