 Hi, my name is Ken Condon. I'm the host of a new show, Riding in the Zone. We're going to take you on a journey into the world of motorcycles. Everything from flat track and road racing to riding the open road. We'll introduce you to people and happenings in the motorcycle and community. We'll also give you insights on how to be the best rider you can be. Whether you love the speed and grace of the racetrack or the freedom of open spaces, Riding in the Zone will be a window into the wide world of motorcycle. Hey everybody, this is Ken Condon from Riding in the Zone. We have another great guest in the studio today. I want to introduce you to Paul Pelland. Hey Paul. How are you Ken? I'm doing pretty good. So you're here in the studio because you have a really unique involvement in motorcycling that I've been really impressed with and really kind of keeping up with. Can you just sort of give us right away what you do as a motorcyclist and how motorcycling really helps you to fulfill that goal that you're aiming for? Sure. Right now I am traveling the country as a patient advocate for people that have MS. I was diagnosed with MS 13 years ago and at the time I was a long distance rider. I had been competing in a lot of endurance competitions and things. And when I got diagnosed, I pictured myself in a wheelchair in a few years and so I sold my motorcycles. I quit riding. And went about seven years before I realized that I was doing pretty well. I went on medication for MS and doing pretty well. And I wanted to find something I could do to give back to the community. And I decided to start riding again and realized how much riding really kind of helped my disease state. How much I loved riding and how important it was to do things you love. So about six years ago or seven years ago I decided to document a million miles for MS. And so I traveled the country by motorcycle sharing my story to other patients and hopefully trying to convince them to find something in their life that makes them happy. You've heard of this as moto medicine, is that right? I do. I truly believe that every minute I'm on the bike, every mile that I spend doing what I love is putting my disease at bay. You know, riding a motorcycle to me is like breathing. I think I started riding motorcycles when I was 21. I had been on a few of my relatives dirt bikes years before, but it was... My first motorcycle was actually somebody owed me some money and instead of paying me 50 bucks they traded me a beat up old Honda CB554 actually that hadn't run in 15 or 20 years. I cleaned it all up, got it running and jumped on it and went off down the street. I was on the bug and within a year or so I bought another bike and another one. I believe that actually riding a motorcycle can actually do that for a lot of different conditions and health issues and I really think it can be part of people's therapy. And I suppose with other people they're not going to necessarily take up motorcycle and that's really not your point. When you go around the country and you're giving these talks they're really for not only MS people, I suppose maybe it is mostly for MS sufferers or loved ones, but you probably inspire them, I would imagine, to find whatever it is in their lives that really gives them their medicine. Sure, yeah. I make it clear I don't expect everyone to go out and buy a motorcycle. It'd be great, but no, it can be anything. It can be knitting. It can be flying kites. I'll never forget a woman in her probably late 70s in Brooklyn, New York stood up at one of my meetings and said, you're right, Sonny, you're right. She says, I used to play pool when I was younger. I'm going back in the pool halls and now I'm going to play pool. So yeah, it's just find something in your life to make more important than your disease. Got it. So now tell us a little bit about your journeys that you've had. You've done, what, 300,000 of your million that's your goal? Yeah, I think I'm just about a third of a million, about 328,000 or 29,000 so far. I started off basically just riding to MS events around my house after work and things like that. Eventually I kind of talked my way into being one of the presenters at some of these events and being able to share my story. And that kind of snowballed into me traveling all over the United States. I started basically on a Yamaha Super 10 array and I rode the first one for 172,000 miles. Which ended up in the barber museum, right? It did. That's pretty impressive. It did. Yeah, I'm still kind of blown away with that. I had decided to try and do a fundraiser and set a world record with it. And the bike, you know, it finished. It had 170,000 miles on it when I started. But it finished, it set the world record and then the next day it decided it needed a nap. A little nap. So it was retired to barber and yeah, it's on display there exactly as I rode it. You know, filthy, dirty with all my accessories on it. So it is really cool. It was actually during an iron butt rally that I had my first attack. I didn't know it at the time. My hands had gone numb, tingling. I had bouts of confusion, lots of memory issues. And it was shortly after that event that I was diagnosed with MS. I sold my motorcycles. I bought a convertible. I had MS. I was diagnosed with a disease that would put me in a wheelchair in five years, I thought. Slowly I started to miss motorcycles and I started to miss riding. And I drove to Daytona and back to New Hampshire in three days. And that's when I realized that I could still ride. I could still do the long distance and how much I loved it. How much I felt better after getting off that bike. I tried to figure out what I could do to help others with MS. How could I use what I know? How can I, what's my story? How do I fit in? How can I give back? And it dawned on me that I was sitting on it. The ENSA was a motorcycle. And that's when I decided that I would document a million miles for MS. The bike being here tells the story that I'm trying to tell across the country and about MS and about people with challenges in life and about disability and about still being able to enjoy life and still being able to do things you want to do. I think that's, I think that bike tells that story. So just so everybody that doesn't know, a 10-ray, a super 10-ray is a 1200 sort of adventure bike. It's been, you know, it's sort of been a staple of Yamaha for a little while. It's a really pretty versatile machine. It is. And, you know, when I first started this million mile thing I thought write a letter to the different manufacturers and they'd be throwing motorcycles at me. Well, it doesn't work that way. Eventually I realized I wasn't going to get any factory support. So I decided to buy a motorcycle. I thought that would need any factory support. And the Yamaha was a, you know, it had reputation of being pretty bulletproof. So to me that's important. I don't tend to do the right maintenance when I'm supposed to. And, you know, I'm all over the country. So I don't always have time to do the maintenance when it's supposed to be. So I was looking for something that I could really, you know, beat the snot out of. You kind of did. And then so replacing it made some sense. Did Yamaha help you with the second time? The second bike they did help me out. I got it as a three-year leftover. So they gave me a really good deal on it. And I outfitted it pretty much exactly the same way as the first bike. For me it made a lot of sense because with my cognitive issues from the MS I knew the first bike inside and out. So getting the second bike and everything is the same on it made it easier for me to work on it and to add all my accessories and electronics and things and remember where they are. The orientation was, and it was really outfitted. I saw it at the New York show, the motorcycle show. And you've got extra fuel. You've got all the electronics that help you kind of keep in touch with where you are. Do you have weather information? Well, I use my phone. I have apps. I have a big iPhone, the bigger ones. And I'm able to call up different weather apps so I'm able to see what's going on. Which is important for you because you're riding, you're around. I mean this is craziness. When I saw that you ride from New Hampshire where you live, wherever you're going, usually south in the wintertime, but you're riding through sometimes the beginnings of snowstorms. Yeah, I've gotten caught in a few storms. There have been times I haven't been able to make it home or I've had to get a hotel even 100 miles from my house because it was a foot of snow. Yeah, it's important and keeping track of the weather and traffic too. I travel across the country quite a bit and I'm kind of not dilly-dallying. I'm pretty much point A to point B. I've got to do a talk in California. I've got to get out there and get back. And of course being on the road is expensive also. I'd love to spend 20 days going across the country and back, but the reality is I don't have the funds to do that or the time. I want to talk about funding, what you're doing for sure, but since we're on the topic of motorcycles, now you've got the touring version, the Yamaha Star, right? So that's a completely different machine. I imagine it suits you pretty well for the long-haul, but long-haul hauls, right? Tell us about that. Well, so Yamaha has been kind of following me. I put just under 300,000 miles on the two tenorays. So they saw that I was kind of getting a lot of people following me and asking me my advice and things. We had been watching and I knew that they were bringing out a new long-distance luxury touring bike. And the night that they introduced it, they called it a transcontinental luxury touring motorcycle, the new Star Venture. And I actually texted to a couple of the guys at Yamaha and I said, transcontinental touring bike. I said, I think I might be the right person to put on that bike. What do you say you loan me one for a year? I'll put 100,000 miles on it. And they actually were pretty keen to the idea and it took a little while, but in June they actually donated one to my million-mile journey. That's really awesome. So I mean, I think for Yamaha and a lot of manufacturers like that, the PR that they get from getting somebody like you involved, it's priceless stuff and sometimes it gets missed that they can really get a lot of bang for their donation. Yeah, and if you read the stuff that I wrote about when I was riding the 10-rays, I talked about what things happened or whatever or a lot of things happened in 300,000 miles. And so I'm pretty honest. I'm a fairly honest guy. I tell it like it is. I like to add some humor into my stories and I think that Yamaha could see that it's a raw story and what happens with me and the bike is going to be good PR for anybody that's on board with me. So let's talk a little bit more about your goal, your journey. The million-mile thing, that came from a store, actually from something you heard that really triggered that idea of million miles. It does. I had been going to patient events where they have basically a free chicken dinner and they'll have a doctor put on a slideshow and then they have a patient kind of give a little inspiring talk about their life with MS. And I was at one of these events and somebody in the audience had asked the doctor, you know, when's the cure? When's the cure? And the doctor said, well, to be honest with you, I think a cure for MS is a million miles away. And I didn't think much of it at the moment, but later on I said, well, a million miles. You know, that's far, but I know people that have ridden a million miles and documented it, and that was kind of the beginning of thinking about how I could give back to the community. Originally, I was going to try to do 100,000 miles in 100 days to ride 100,000 miles, 1,000 miles every day for 100 days. And I was explaining this to somebody and they said, Paul, that's awesome, but what are you going to do next year? And I just said, wow, that's, you know, I do want to make this a longer term commitment to MS community. And that's when I put everything together and said, you know what, I'm going to start from zero and I'm going to document a million miles traveling to MS events. And so then when you're at these MS events, you become a pretty, you speak. I mean, that's really one of your things. It's inspiration to try to get people to look beyond their disease. I do. I've actually done over 250 patient events all across the United States. As far as Alaska, as far as, you know, I travel to California five, six times a year. I've never flown, I'm always on my bike. And then you had your license plate before was no car. No car, yeah. That's commitment. Yeah, it's important to me that I'm living my story. My story is about, you know, I found motorcycling again and I found how much it's helping my disease and part of my therapy. And so it's important for me to ride to all these events. Last year, I spent 160 nights on the road. I rode 80,000 miles last year. You must have a really supportive wife. I mean, because I know you're married. I do. My wife is, she's an angel. I mean, this is, you know, this was not part of the deal when we got married. This was some crazy idea. I concocted and we had no idea where it would go. You know, it's been financially, it's been a burden. I was traveling so much, I tried to work part-time and then just about two years ago is when I realized that if I'm going to do this, I have to do it full-time. So I've really been on the road the past two years full-time and it doesn't, it doesn't quite pay the bills. So that's another thing, the funding this. So I want to make sure that we get that information out there. You have the MS 5000. Sure. That's every April? Usually, it's actually, this year I changed it and it's actually running right now. The MS 5000 is something I started and basically it's the MS Walk for bikers because we're bikers, not hikers. But it runs 50 days and riders sign up and what they do is they try to document riding as many miles as they can over the 50 days while collecting donations from their family and friends. And over the past five years, the MS 5000 has raised over $110,000 for MS and each year it's kind of growing and 100% of the donations always go to a charity. I've never wanted other riders to donate to me. I think some people hate me because I'm on my bike all the time traveling all over the United States. I get a little of that too. So I've never asked for money from me. It's always been, any donations I collect always go towards a charity. I believe that what I do between my speaking and I do keynote also addresses for different even motorcycle events, seminars. I write, I'm starting to do more YouTube and stuff like that. And I believe that that stuff can be supported by sponsors and advertising and stuff like that. I think that that's where, and speaking fees, where I can earn enough income to continue. You do have the website is Long Hall, Paul. LonghallPaul.com. Also Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. Pretty much Long Hall, Paul. One word, no spaces. Otherwise you get a country western singer. Long Hall, Paul. We should probably get together. But no spaces. Long Hall, Paul, you'd be able to locate me and you can sign up for my blog. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. And actually subscribing also to your website gets people to follow you, follow along with you on your trips, right? Sure. I have live tracking even on my website. People can go and see them right here in the studio. It helps my wife too to be able to know where I am. Sometimes I'm 18, 20 hour days on the bike and it's not always self-service. So the tracking is nice, but people, yeah, they can find me. And I believe starting next year I'll be traveling to a lot of different Yamaha dealers and that'll all be posted where people can meet up with me and learn about my journey, my thoughts on the new bike. I've only got 14,000 miles on it in the past couple months. So I'll have 50,000, 60,000 miles by beginning the next summer. So it's a way that people can meet up with me and learn about what I'm doing and become part of my journey. That's awesome. What else would you want to share? These are motorcyclists in our audience and non-motorcyclists. Hopefully, you know, somebody might be family of motorcyclists and we have no idea who we're going to stumble across our show here. What would you want to share with them? Well, first of all, motorcycling can be fun, exciting. I think, you know, for me it's been, motorcycling has been therapy through different parts of my life, going through a bad marriage, bad divorce. Motorcycling was actually what I used then to get me through that and then with the diagnosis of MS, which, you know, I'm doing great. I'm on medication. I look pretty good. Most of my symptoms are hidden. And one of the things I want to make clear that not everybody who has MS is like that. There are a lot of people that are definitely suffering every day with symptoms, numbness, tingling, burning, weakness, inability to walk, blindness, bowel and bladder issues. There's a lot of symptoms that people with MS have that we're all different. Every one of us is different. So just because I look pretty good today doesn't mean this is the common face of MS. It's gotten better over the years with the medications, but there are still people who medications don't work or were diagnosed earlier before the medications that really have progressed, you know, to the point of really not being able to do a lot of functions, everyday functions. So, you know, we definitely still want to cure and I just think that it's important to note that everybody with MS is different and that's why I'm fighting. I'm fighting for the people who can't ride, who want to ride. I get a lot of people contact me who used to ride and now they have balance issues and things and I try to, you know, figure out what they can do and there are a lot of options out there for three-wheelers and different things now today that's more and more. So it doesn't always mean you have to give up what you love and also for people who have MS in other groups, you know, if somebody's a ballerina and they get MS and they can't walk anymore, it doesn't mean that they have to, maybe they can't be a ballerina anymore, but they might be able to help teach in a school or be a mentor or something. They can still be involved in what they love to do. With me, I used to compete in endurance competitions. Well, my memory is so bad, I can't do that anymore. I cannot run a long distance of rally anymore, but I can still ride. And so that's part of my message, too, is that find some way to get involved in what you love. Don't give it up for good, you know, find a way to get involved. Yeah, that's awesome. The thing about that you talk about, I'm a safety and skills guy and you just mentioned something about limits and we all have limits, not recognizing them, but not letting them hold you back and not letting them stop you from what you can do. And that's a big message that I try to also, you know, share. Right. When you talk about the sort of ability for others that have more limitations than you do, we do have, you know, this K&M Spider sort of solution now. Also, speaking of Yamaha, they've got the three-wheel thing, the Nikon or Nikon or whatever it is. Nikon. Nikon. Yeah, the thing with the Nikon though, it actually doesn't balance on its own. It doesn't lock. You don't put a lock on it. No, it's really more geared towards high-speed riding and being able to push your limits in the corners. But it will fall over if you, yeah. I remember they had some, there was a little older where you actually, when you came to stop, it locked so that you could put your... I think there's an Italian Aprilia makes the MP3 and I think that one has kind of a lock in the middle. Yeah, the Nikon is really built and I was confused too and I get excited about this stuff because I know people who are looking for that type of thing. And they said, no, this was really built as a high performance, being able to push yourself into the corners and things like that. It might be a great bike for training for the track. There's a student of mine, street student of mine, that sold his, what do you have? I forget, I was an adventure bike and then he bought one. And so he's like all excited about it. He's asking me, what do I think about it? And I said, I don't really know. I'm really bringing it down. I want to ride. Yeah, I haven't ridden one either. Well, that's awesome. So again, I wonder if we're going to wrap this up a little bit. And I just want to point out everybody to go to longhaulpaul.com. Paul's got all sorts of information. He's got videos. If you want to donate, please do. There's an option to donate to the MS5000. You go there, you can select one of the many, how many riders are involved this year? There's my memory. I think it's like around 60. So it's quite a few. There's a list there. You can actually donate to a particular rider who I know a few of the people on that list. So there are a lot of options there. But I also recommend that you subscribe to Paul's channel, his YouTube channel and really kind of keep up on this. Because this is as far as a motorcyclist, if that's what you are, this is something that really brings motorcycling into it a whole other realm of how it can be this motor medicine. And I think a lot of us relate to that. You know, when we're in that funk or whatever, we get on a bike as long as it's not a distracting funk. And we can go out there and really it kind of can be a therapy, right? It is. I mean, even with the new bike, I've got five different sources of music and everything I could possibly want is on there. And I find myself, you know, on a 10, 12-hour day, never turning it on. And people say, you know, you listen to music? I said, no, I actually don't. What do you listen to? I'm not sure. My, you know, I feel like I'm in sort of a zone. I'm in a mindfulness state. And I'm able to kind of relax. And, you know, I don't close my eyes or anything, but almost like a meditative feeling. And I'm not thinking about work. I'm not thinking about home. I'm not thinking about family, friends, enemies, nothing. I'm just riding and being in the wind. And having just the then and now. And that's exactly how I feel about it. Riding in the zone was based on that idea. I often don't say I'm my best self on a motorcycle because it does put you in that sort of meditative space. All right. I want to really thank Paul for coming today and sharing his message. And again, I really encourage you to go ahead and go to longhaulpaul.com and check out what Paul's doing. It's quite fascinating. Thanks a lot for coming. All right. Have a great day, Paul. Enjoy it.