WES SILER: We're here at Angeles National Forest riding
a KTM 990 Adventure and a Yamaha Super Tenere.
We're about an hour outside of Los Angeles proper, and we're
going to go ride some dirt.
Welcome to "Ride Apart."
GRANT RAY: Right now we're running at about 36 pounds of
pressure on the tires.
20 to 22 is good for multi-use for all the gravel on the road
to keep the tubes from popping and pinching.
There we go.
Just trying to get some grip off-road, get those tires
squishing down.
WES SILER: We're out here trying to focus on the goal.
Getting a beer at the end of the day with all my arms on.
I did this in one piece, a nice normal, straight arm.
GRANT RAY: You don't have a normal straight arm.
You got rid of that a while ago.
WES SILER: Straight as my arm can be.
GRANT RAY: Wanna race?
WES SILER: No.
GRANT RAY: Come on.
WES SILER: No.
GRANT RAY: Come on.
WES SILER: And don't go burning out in front of me, it
gets [BLEEP]
pebbles in my eyes.
GRANT RAY: Neener, neener, neener, neener.
WES SILER: Just go.
I've just started learning how to ride dirt bikes and this
[BLEEP]
thing weighs like 550 pounds.
Normal dirt bikes weigh like 250.
So this is just scary and terrifying, and it slides, and
the front end does things.
And the whole time, I'm just like, death grip on the bars,
like close my eyes, keep the throttle on and
hope for the best.
So nobody should stand in any direction where I might be
headed, because I'm not looking.
GRANT RAY: No, he's looking, because you can see the whites
of his eyes when he's coming.
WES SILER: So right now I'm wearing Sean's Aerostitch
Roadcrafter.
He's hurt, so I'm borrowing his suit
because it's really nice.
This is as safe as I could be as a motorcyclist.
I'm protected from the weather, I'm protected from
impacts, I'm protected from abrasion.
I have really good armor on all my joints, my
back, and in my chest.
But unlike every other suit on the market, there's other safe
suits, none is this convenient.
This is literally just put all that on, chest projector.
Then here's the trick.
And there you go.
If I had an office, I'd be ready to work in it.
But instead, I'm at my office right now riding bikes.
GRANT RAY: Aw.
That's pretty special, buddy.
Unlike Mr. Fancy Pants over there wearing Sean's suit,
mine is not nearly as fast but it is really awesome.
This is the Long Range from Alpinestars.
It's a two-piece, it's super dry, it's also very modular.
I used to wear something called The Suit by Rocket.
It was leather, but I think I maybe found better with this.
One of the good things about what this suit can do, even
though it doesn't zip on and off fast, is it's
extraordinarily capable in terms of what you need at any
given temperature.
So if I get hot, I can really just peel it off and use the
underjacket for the rest of the day so that I don't have
to carry multiple jackets or anything like that.
This guy's done, and then I've got a down jacket that I can
wear from now on.
And then when you get out here to go camping, they can do
double-duty.
WES SILER: I can carry a nice, big, fancy tent like this.
Key is how much space they can give you for the weight.
So you can see this one's really tall.
I can sit up in it, I can change clothes in it, I can be
inside where it's warm and not too windy.
GRANT RAY: Is that done yet?
WES SILER: Yeah, yeah.
GRANT RAY: There's actually a considerable difference
between his.
He's running the Poler two-man with poles.
WES SILER: one-man.
GRANT RAY: one-man?
Oh, it looks like a two-man.
WES SILER: Yeah, it's big.
GRANT RAY: Fatty.
WES SILER: I know.
GRANT RAY: So I'm running a tent from NEMO.
This is the NEMO Moto which is a one-person.
And I really love certain things about this, one of
which is that there's no poles.
There's a little bladder that connects to the inside, and
the main beam will actually inflate.
And then I just take it down, and I'm done.
From here, you've got tons of room on the inside to be able
to move around and sit up and do, whatnot.
WES SILER: If you think you hear an animal, you can call
me and I'll get out and I'll look around and
I'll keep you safe.
GRANT RAY: No you won't, you'll just sit there and cry.
WES SILER: Once time in the Adirondacks, Grant and I got
into a fight with a bear.
So now we're just scared [BLEEP]
of bears in the outdoors.
GRANT RAY: We did not get into a fight with a
bear, you big liar.
WES SILER: Well, we ran away from one.
GRANT RAY: There, that's a little bit
more like the truth.
WES SILER: So now we carry-- we don't have it with us
today, but now we carry a flare pistol to shoot at bears
in case one scares us again.
Because we're [BLEEP]
girls.
GRANT RAY: It sits basically here, like this.
Is that what I'm supposed to do?
But it must have done this, come under, and then I just
grabbed it and [INAUDIBLE].
KTM has one of the best tool kits when they [INAUDIBLE].
But this one's just a little bit touch over and it
literally has everything you possibly need to work on a
motorcycle right now.
Well, basically we're just keeping the lines off the
[INAUDIBLE] so that if I need to stop there's brakes.
We're just taking off some of the plastics.
This guy was still on, and that is a really good recipe
for a puncture as well.
So we're just taking off everything and kind of
cleaning it up and getting it back up to par as much as we
can so we can keep going.
You can stand back just a little bit.
WES SILER: Ugh.
GRANT RAY: All right, open up the other side.
WES SILER: [INAUDIBLE].
He does a jump as he's [BLEEP]
passing me.
He's just a [BLEEP].
And then we get down there, he's like I hope I
didn't scare you.
GRANT RAY: I'm getting comfortable on it.
WES SILER: Good.
The suspension's great, especially if we don't land
anything, especially when we take some bumps.
But I'm scared anyways, because I'm scared off-road on
a big bike like this.
And to have the stand going like that, I'm going to back
off a little bit.
GRANT RAY: How's the compression on the rear?
WES SILER: It's good.
I've got the pre-road run weight way up.
This thing has great suspension.
Unlike most motorcycles, it was actually has something
called damping, not just springs.
GRANT RAY: So, you didn't die.
WES SILER: I didn't die, which I feel very fortunate about.
Last-- what was it, June, Sean?
It was June, I fell off--
SEAN SMITH: That was July.
WES SILER: OK, last July, I fell off a
sidecar up by Big Bear.
And you can probably see my arm is still
crooked as a result.
And that was off-road.
I've been a little timid on the whole
dirt thing ever since.
And it's fine on a 250 or whatever dirt bike.
That thing outside weighs 550 pounds.
SEAN SMITH: It weighs 636 pounds.
WES SILER: It weighs 636 pounds,
which is a lot of weight.
GRANT RAY: Did your voice just squeak?
WES SILER: Yes.
Because I was terrified the entire time.
Really, really, like probably [BLEEP]
my pants terrified.
GRANT RAY: What did you think about traction
control in the dirt?
WES SILER: Traction control was great in the dirt.
On a big heavy bike like that, you just want to throttle out
of any trouble, and with traction control, you just
open that throttle.
You're not going to get into any trouble because it just
drives you forward, not much sliding.
It is switchable traction control.
You can switch it off, you can switch it to a
less sensitive mode.
I had it in the most sensitive mode, because I need help.
I left ABS on, too.
GRANT RAY: I think for me at the time right now, there's
going to be that one bike.
It's probably going to be the 990.
I don't know a whole lot of motorcycles that can do that,
that can allow me to really start going quickly in the
corners on the canyons and the pavement and then immediately
transition that into corners on dirt and sand and grit and
rock and going to the [INAUDIBLE] as well.
It just does everything, it's really special in that sense.
MALE SPEAKER: Tell them about the catheter.
MALE SPEAKER: Oh, the catheter, yeah.
MALE SPEAKER: Before breakfast?
MALE SPEAKER: Before breakfast, yeah.
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah, lay it on us.
MALE SPEAKER: OK, so I wake up after surgery.
It's like 5:30 AM in the recovery room, and I'm about
as aware as you can be after coming out from general
anesthesia.
Six and a half hours of surgery, like they cut my
wrist and my arm and my leg all at the same time.
And there's two guys that are like moving around me and
doing stuff.
And checking things out, and cleaning up the last things.
Just kind of handling loose ends that the surgeons didn't
really take of.
And so somehow this guy, he's on my right-hand side and
there's a catheter.
There's like a tube that goes from here to here, and like
it's taped on my leg right there.
So there's a loop, it's real short, maybe like
six to eight inches.
And his hand is on my inner thigh and he gets it
underneath the catheter.
And then someone says something to him and he goes
like this and turns around real quick.
And it slides up and is looped around his elbow.
Mind you this was only six to eight inches
long to begin with.
And I watch as it stretches out to about two feet long.
MALE SPEAKER: And how do they ensure catheter retention?
There's a mechanism for that, right?
MALE SPEAKER: So the way a catheter works is a silicone
tube that has another tube inside of it with a little
inflatable ball in the end.
That inflatable ball is like inside your bladder.
And so I screamed and [BLEEP]
yelled as loud as I could.
Which was like [BLEEP]
you, you [BLEEP]
little-- oh my God, this hurts so bad.
It really was the worst pain I'd ever experienced in my
life, and that was the best I could muster.
MALE SPEAKER: Dude, that's so sick.
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah, and the guy's like huh?
Oh, [BLEEP]
yeah.
And then he turns around and he's like oh, it's cool, I'll
just put it back in.
And so with one hand, he grabs it, he puts four fingers
around my [BLEEP], and he takes the catheter
and just shoves it.
It was like ah!
Yeah, it was terrible, I did not have a good hospital
experience with that.
All-around bad time.
MALE SPEAKER: The nurse came in later and asked you what
your pain level was, and you were like it's a four.
And she was like, well, what's a 10?
And you were like, well, let me tell you.
MALE SPEAKER: I'm feeling super weird right now.
MALE SPEAKER: Why?
MALE SPEAKER: I don't know.
MALE SPEAKER: [INAUDIBLE] right there.
MALE SPEAKER: Like how weird?
MALE SPEAKER: I don't know.
MALE SPEAKER: Like deja vu, or like someone put
acid in your drink?
Go to the bathroom.
You look like you're going to throw up.
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah, you do.
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah, go to the bathroom.
MALE SPEAKER: See, this is why you're not supposed to talk
about catheters and shit before breakfast.
MALE SPEAKER: [INAUDIBLE].
I feel like that's the last time we're ever
going to see him.