Ride With Confidence: Derek Hildreth solves your "Is My Bike Ready?" anxiety

I think that it's fair to say that most of us don't ride to get somewhere.

Most of us try to just get back to ourselves, to get back in our heads again.

But there's one thing that has a quiet way of stealing away that feeling before you even

throw your leg over the bike.

Is that nagging feeling in the back of your mind?

Is my bike ready for this trip?

Am I ready?

But most importantly, is my bike ready?

That question hits a little harder when you're planning a big adventure ride or loading

up for a long weekend ride out on the mill and nowhere.

The last thing that you want, and mile 200, is to wish that you'd checked everything

out better at mile zero.

Well there's a solution for all that.

My new friend, Derek Hildrith, is a rider from Belgrade, Montana, who knows that feeling

all too well.

After one too many sessions of scrolling through a mile long notes app, trying to piece

together his maintenance history to make sure his bike was ready to go.

And inevitably he would miss something, like we all do.

Well he did something that every self-respecting engineer would do.

He just built a better app.

And it's great!

It's something called look over.

It's a maintenance tracking app built for riders who take care of their own machines,

whether it's an adventure bike or cruiser or really anything else that you've got in

the garage.

And I'm so glad to have met Derek and I'm excited to share his story with you today.

He's also the first single track hard and thorough rider I've ever interviewed.

I know nothing about that really, other than what I've watched on YouTube.

And it's interesting.

So this was quite an education for me, and I know that you're going to enjoy this very

special interview with my new friend to my north in Montana, Derek Hildrith.

Stay tuned.

Recorded in beautiful, loved one Colorado.

Welcome to Peace, Love Moto, the podcast for motorcyclist seeking that peaceful, easy feeling.

As we cruise through this life together.

Are you ready?

Let's go!

On the Peace, Love Moto podcast, I say it over and over and over again.

But the great pleasure I have had with hosting this podcast for the last three years is meeting

people.

Yeah, I'm a social butterfly, yeah, as for sure, just ask my wife.

But I especially love to meet someone who I feel like we're on the same page.

And sometimes you can find that out through Instagram.

And that's how I have met this gentleman today through Instagram.

And Derek Hildrith is with me from Montana, my neighbor to the north.

And he has got a lot to tell us about what he does in the motorcycling world.

And I was very, Derek and I have been visiting for a few minutes before we have started recording.

And I have never interviewed anyone who is a single track writer.

So Derek is my first.

And also Derek has invented something that's made available to you, the listeners, anywhere

around the world.

And it is very, very cool.

And we're going to get to that too.

But Derek, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for being on.

Ron, this is awesome.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Hey, man.

It's typically what I ask everybody from the very beginning.

So what do you ride?

Ooh, I ride a 2016 beta X trainer 300 to stroke.

Yeah.

And that's that that's that single track riding that you're talking about there.

Yep.

Two strokes.

So tell me about that.

How long have you been riding bikes like that?

Oh, man, my whole life, I've been riding bikes.

We had a we have a family cabin here in Montana that when I grew up, it was all about bikes.

If it had an engine, I was all about it.

So it was four wheelers and dirt bikes and you know, whatever we could get out and get

onto those four service roads.

And I kind of remember like some of my earlier bikes, I had a little Kawasaki 80 that just

threw spark plugs like nobody's business.

We always had to carry like several of them.

And we had a my grandfather bought my grandma one of those Yamaha fat cats.

If you remember those things with the big old wheels on it, just yes, yeah, yeah.

So like, you know, I even driven around one of those things that was awesome.

You know, when I was like, I couldn't even touch the ground on one of those, you know,

and my grandfather, he had a Yamaha TT 350, I think it was an 87.

It was kind of one of those first years that they introduced a monoshock.

And boy, I just remember loving that.

And I think I was that was kind of an official like first bike that I actually learned on.

And then it sat in the it sat in the garage for, I don't know, 10, 20 years or something

like that.

I got inherited it.

So my grandfather, you know, let me buy it from him for a buck or something.

I don't know, just just the title exchange, right?

So I had that.

And that's kind of what re-ignited all of this passion for me is like, you know, it wasn't

running, right?

After being stuck in the garage for so long, the carburetor, you know, that ended up

being the carb, of course, right?

So like old fuel just completely got, I mean, when I took that carb out, it looked like

sawdust was shoved into it.

Like it was awful.

And so it wasn't getting any fuel.

And that was kind of a, I don't know, it feels like a moment.

It feels like for me, it was like, how do I, how do I, when I got that figured out,

it was like, oh my gosh, I can do this.

Like I can work on my own bike and I can work on my own machines.

And it felt so good.

I felt like I had so much pride and joy in caring for my own machines that it was, I just,

it was just like, you know, I got to figure out how do I, I got to keep track of this,

right?

Like I got to start writing it down.

So that's exactly what I did.

I started writing it down in a notepad.

And then actually truth be told, I started writing it down on like Google Keep, which is

like a notes app on your phone, right?

And, and after a while, it just became like this mile long scroll to find anything in there.

And I thought, oh, there's got to be a better way.

I reached, I did a quick search on Google, found a couple of apps, but they weren't right,

right?

Like they were like, there was always something missing.

It was only for Android.

It was only for iOS.

It was, it was only, it wasn't cloud based, right?

Like if I entered in all my data and I uninstalled the app, poof, my data's gone, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So like I was like, you know what, I've got 20 years of software engineering experience.

What, why not try this myself?

I've never developed an app, but I'm going to try it, you know, so anyways, so that's,

I think that's kind of where my story comes in.

You asked me a simple question about what I write and I gave you a long, long history

lesson there.

Well, that's, that's a really, really great segue to a couple of questions.

I've been scribbling notes here as we've been talking, but for one thing, for one thing,

one of the things that you mentioned is that the value of doing your own work.

And I, I talked about this a few times on the podcast, maybe not enough, but in one

of the episodes, I talked, I'm pretty sure I talked about a book called Shop Class

as SoulCraft.

And what attracted me to the book, to that book, I, I, I bought it at an airport, so I was

flying somewhere.

And in a bookstore, it showed an old BMW airhead in a garage, and it's called Shop Class

as SoulCraft.

Oh, I can't, let me try this again, Shop Class as SoulCraft.

And the argument there was that when high schools started replacing Shop Class with computer

class, that it took something extremely, extremely valuable away from a students or a child's

experience, life experience, because they didn't have their hands on something anymore.

They weren't getting dirty, and they weren't looking to solve problems and looking to observe

amazing engineering that goes into these things.

Instead, you're, you're working in this virtual world with a keyboard, a screen, and that's

pretty much it, you know?

So to me, it seems like that you grasp really, really early on the, I don't know what the

right word would be for it, the joy or the satisfaction or the zen or whatever of working

with your hands, right?

I like zen, you know, like that is, and that's 100 percent, you know, that's where I'm

coming from, right?

Like, I'm a software engineer, right?

So it's like, I am on the keyboard, you know, all day, I'm in my little world on this

little 27-inch monitor, you know?

And when I get out in the shop and I get some shop time in, it's just, it is zen.

It is, it's like, I love looking at all the little moving pieces.

I love seeing how they interact together, you know, like the, the real mechanical engineering

of it.

It's just, it's an interesting, yeah, anyway, it's, it's a, it's a really cool world.

I really enjoy it.

Well, and then getting into your app, that's what I love too is now you've created this

app out of a real need that you had because you get one bike as one thing, then you get multiple

bikes, and then you're doing your own maintenance and things, and especially the kind of writing

that you do, where, yeah, you got to take care of these machines that you dearly love.

If you don't take care of them, then they're going to find, they're going to let you know

really fast in the middle of nowhere, they're not happy with you not taking care of it.

So, so yeah, kind of dive more back into what you just, what you discovered that there

was a need for, and you filled the need, right?

Yeah, it was just a need for, like you said, like, you know, just being able to track a

single machine is enough, you know, like, there's a lot that goes on with, you know, some

of these, these Enduro bikes and Enduro racing, and, and us, I love the phrase dirt muppets.

It's, it's a very loving word.

I, I, I mean, in the highest respect, but it's, yeah, like us dirt muppets are out there,

you know, just tearing ourselves their bodies, just, just, you know, just for the joy of being

out there and pushing ourselves or limits, and, and, you know, seeing what we can accomplish,

and we're watching these hard Enduro guys out there, do it name drop, a Graham Jarvis,

you know, or Billy Bulls, and, and we're watching these guys just, you know, going through these

massive boulder fields and doing all these crazy things that we would never think about doing,

but we could go out and try to emulate that a little bit, and, but yeah, so that, I mean,

the need is just, we don't want to be like stranded out in the middle of nowhere, like you can

kind of mention, right? We could get, you know, 20, 30 miles in the backcountry, and, you know,

that'd be a terrible time for, oh, it actually happened to me. My clutch plate, my clutch plate

started going out, and we were like, you know, 20 miles in, and we were in a valley, right?

Like we were, we had to go back up the hills to get back to the truck and stuff, so, and we were

thick in the trees, and, you know, what a time to have that go out, and, and so we got, yeah,

worry about your clutch plates, worry about your oils, your, your, your clutch oil, and your

brake fluids, and your, you know, your, your, your pre-mix, and you got your trans fluids, you got

your, your brake pads, and chain, and, you know, the drive line, and all of these things that,

you know, they, they can and do fail in, in a harsh environment, so, it's a lot to track,

it's a lot to keep track of, and, you know, you find yourself kind of saying, what was the last

time I changed my fork oil, like on my suspension, you know? Yeah. And so this app really helps you

do that, just as you're in shop, as you're in the shop, you get that shop time in when you're,

when I know on, I'm finished, you know, I, I open the app, and I just, I have a cool, like,

feature in there, a little AI feature that I just speak to it, and I say, oh,

something like, hey, today I, today I, I changed the fork oil in the extrater. I went with, you know,

this weight of oil from this manufacturer, and I put in, you know, 500, cc's of fluid,

and I hit done, and it automatically creates that service entry for me. And then I, I,

I move on. And now I know where I'm at, and the other, the other one, if I may, if I can,

can you continue kind of rambling here is like reminders. So say you are out on the trail. And

that was something that, that was another kind of a spark for me when, when I started developing

the app was my, my friends, they were always doing kind of trail side maintenance, right? Like,

we always had that one guy in the parking lot that was trying to fix his, his stuff in the parking

lot, right? You guys are in the saddle. So let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

When we're all dressed up, you know, we got all of our gear on and we're all ready to go. And,

and you know, we, I remember we kind of joked around with, with the, with them a little bit.

We opened up his air, his air, air filter. And it was black is black. He, it looked like he'd

never changed it ever. And so anyways, my, my point being is that when we're out on the trail,

we want to be able to say like, oh, I, you know, like I, I, I just noticed this. Like,

my clutch slipped a little bit today. You know, so then I can right there and it, it,

it's offline. So it, it supports offline mode and so you can do everything offline. But,

you know, sit there, you can put it in there and say, check, check clutch plates when I get back

or check, you know, whatever, right? Check, re, re, redo the, refill the clutch oil, the hydraulic

fluid. And then right there, you can basically kind of, I want to say way into like this mindfulness

piece of it, right? Because then you could be mindful while you're on the trail, you, this moment

that you had, you could continue to like think about it. And it's just kind of as always in the

back of your head while you're, while you're riding and you're trying to have fun with your buddies

or you're trying to have that, that flow state. And it's always in the back of your mind,

like kind of nagging at you. And so like this allows you to just note it, jot it down, put,

take that memory, put it somewhere else, commit it to the app, and then go ride again and, and not

think about it until you're back at home. And the reminder pops up and says, hey, go check this out

before your next ride. Oh, that's, that, that's beautiful. I think it was two weeks ago in an

episode of the podcast where I talked about having something nagging in the back of your mind.

Like I think I was using the analogy, real life for my own work of having a problem that I could

not get resolved. And then I leave on vacation. And for the next 400 miles down the road, it's in

the back of my mind, thinking, what is the, what is it? What is it? What is it? You know, and then

you have this aha moment when you finally settle down that, oh, yeah, here's what it is. But,

but I love where you're going with this because you're absolutely right. I mean, there's a,

especially with the kind of bikes that you're riding and the type of riding that you do and the

importance of really keeping a close eye on that machine, you're bound to forget something.

Unless it's, and I'll tell you my friend, as you get older, you're going to be forgetting a lot,

because that's why these days, but you know, it gets worse. It's a lot worse. I forget everything

all the time. Well, you're going to find yourself in the nursing home soon enough. Believe me,

I feel like I'm weird. But you're right, though. You're right. It, it does lend itself. It

lends itself really, really well to mindfulness because the whole idea behind mindfulness, and

I'm no expert at all. I try to, we practiced it at IBM. That's where I learned it through the

corporate deal where we had, you know, this focus times and things like that. But it was about,

the past is the past. Drop it. Drop what's in the past. The future isn't here yet. Don't even

think about that. But breathe and know that you're breathing that whole thing too. But you and I

know that when we're out on the road, whether you're between Reno and Las Vegas and the mill and

nowhere in the desert or you're up in the woods or somewhere on a single track back like yours,

you don't want to have to worry about, did I do this before I left? You know, and that again,

I'm just another plug for what you're doing. Let me ask you this. Other people, like, dude,

they just literally just take notes. Are they carrying a pen and a grid sheet of paper and

writing down all this stuff with, of course, getting no reminders from that at all.

Right. Yeah. No, that's what I found. I found that, you know, I've asked a lot of communities,

a lot of forums, like, what do you do to maintain and track maintenance on your bike? You know,

some people are just flat out. I don't. Right. Like, I, I just, if it breaks, then I go fix it.

You know, and then there's folks that are in the pen and paper camp that they'd just like to write

their services on a piece of paper and you fold it up and throw it in a Ziploc bag and maybe they

keep it with their bike or they keep it in their writing gear. And, you know, they, they pull that out

every, every time they do something with their bike. And they got the folks that are creating

Excel spreadsheets and trying to track it in Excel. And, you know, then we got the folks that

try to do some apps, right? Like, like, myself, like, I tried to find an app that was going to help me

out with it, but when that didn't work out, I went to a digital, like, digital notebooks.

So we do have that whole kind of spectrum of people and how they maintain their bikes. And,

you know, I think, I, I want to be, oh, I don't know whether, oh, boy, yeah, I want to be,

like, kind of polite about it. But I want to say, like, if this system is working for you,

that's what's kind of important, right? Like, keep doing that system. But I, I think that,

you know, like, my, my app, look over, I think that it really can help with all of that stuff.

And, you know, it's available to you for free for, for one machine. And, you know,

give it a try. We're most definitely, and I'm going to repeat it now too. It's, it's look over,

just like it sounds, look over dot app. And that's the website as well, right? And that's the name

of the name of the maintenance app. Here, I just want another angle. I want to just kind of throw

out as a plug. My wife and I, we keep up with the maintenance on our cars, for example, right?

And I do on my motorcycle too, motorcycles. And I don't sell motorcycles very often. But when I do,

like, for example, I sold a Honda gold wing that I had for years and years and years,

I sold it about a year and a half ago. And the selling point that I had on that bike was that I had

on paper, all of the maintenance I had done. Every all change, when I'd replace the tires,

when I took it in for maintenance, I had all of that written down, including the costs, which was

just for my own purpose. And we do the same thing with our cars. So when we have sold a car,

we have all the maintenance stuff, all the receipts that we got from jiffy lube or wherever else,

we've got all those receipts in there. And it turns in to be a huge selling point for selling

our vehicle, because someone's seen all the receipts. So is that fair to say that that's?

I know we don't like to talk about selling motorcycles right here, because never, never.

Actually, no, you're right. That would be a huge thing though. Like, if you got a bike,

yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, ma'am, this is a great bike. I had taken good care of it. Let me prove it to you.

Exactly. A hundred percent that, yes. I've had that same situation where I lost out on like,

I don't know, 500 bucks in a, in a negotiation, because I didn't have any service records to prove

anything. And this, so that was something that I wanted to be sure was a feature in the app

that when you collect all your services and you go to sell the bike, you can actually export to

PDF and it will generate a really nice professional looking service record for you. Multi-page,

all the headers, everything really, really great looking. And you can hand that right over to them.

And I think that another, like, in the grand vision that one of the features in my roadmap is to

generate like a QR code or some sort of a mechanism for ownership transfer. So like, you know,

you're going to go sell your bike and you, you're like, hey, man, I've been using look over for

all the service tracking. You want to give it a try. Here's this QR code scan it, they get it.

And now they can continue the service, you know, records for that bike and continue that bike's

legacy and that story and the adventures and everything else. So that's, yeah.

That's good thinking, man. I can tell you're a software engineer.

You got that mindset for sure. That is, I would have never thought of that. That's a great idea.

And again, for those, for those listening, again, we're going to have all the information about how

to, how to get this app, how to try it out, but I would encourage you. If you, if you get it and

you try it and you think it's pretty cool, like I do, go ahead and buy it too because, you know,

we talked a little bit about this, Derek and I before I started recording. And the fact is,

is that I have on my podcast, I've been at it for three years. I do it because I love it.

I have zero sponsorship at all. It just costs me money to do that. And that's fine. I can afford it.

It's, I can afford it. But I may start selling mugs. And I'm holding up one right now to the

screen. I know you can't see it online or as you're listening, but I may start selling mugs because

I think they, it came out really, really good. On my mug, I'm going to, this is my sample mug that I

have in my hand right now. I'm, I'm trying to perfect it, but I'm going to make one more change

to it. And then I'm going to make it available to my listeners. If you're, if you're interested,

I hope you would be, I think a lot of us are coffee drinkers. And by purchasing my mug,

if you'd like to do that, when I have it already and everything, it will support the ongoing

expense that's associated with this podcast. So I just want to throw that out for, for Derek.

I'm looking at him right now. Again, he's sitting up in Montana. Two states away from me.

This is a really, really good guy. And he's created something based on a passion for

motorcycle link that we all have. And he's a real smart guy and has figured out, you know what?

Nobody else is doing this or at least they're not doing it really well. So I'll do it. So I would

encourage my listeners, go out there. A link will be in the show notes of how you go, go to it,

learn about it, download it. And if you like it, I would encourage you to buy it. So,

anyway, Derek, do you want to talk about pricing? I know this three years from now, maybe

at a different price or anything right now, but for early to 2026, you want to share what the pricing

is? Yeah, Ron, I mean, thank you for that. First of all, just warns my heart. And yeah, so what I have,

one of the important things that to me is being able to serve the community and kind of give back

something, right? So this is kind of my way of doing it. And so what I've done is there is a

free tier, you know, you guys with the, you can add a single bike to your garage, right, to look

over. And you can track unlimited services, unlimited reminders. And that'll get you the kind

of basics of the app. And then there is a, I have a monthly, I have a annual, and I have a lifetime.

So the folks that are kind of like, oh man, I don't want yet another subscription, right?

The lifetime option is for you by once you got, you know, in perpetuity, right? Like it's,

it's, it's always going to be there for you. Exactly, exactly. All the updates and stuff. So,

you're not going to be locked into some old version or something. You always get the newest stuff.

And then so, honestly, I, it's, it's a 399 a month. And for yearly, it's 2499 per year.

Heck of a deal. Yeah. Thank you. That's great. And especially, again, those of us who ride,

I'm a big mileage person, relatively, relatively speaking. And like the kind of writing that you do,

that's tough on a machine. We got to take care of these things there. Motorcycles are not cheap.

And they're not cheap to get worked on either, you know, if you got to take it into the shop or whatever.

But that is well worth the money to get yourself aligned with something that you literally will

have in your pocket. And you can be sitting in your house and wondering, well, what do I need to do next

without even going out to the bike and it's right there in your pocket, right? Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. For, I guess, approximately the change of a, you know, oil change, cost of an oil change,

kind of helps you, helps you have that and helps you have that, that mindfulness and, and, uh,

just a pride of ownership and stuff too, right? So, um, yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that.

Well, I mentioned this to you before we started recording that, guess where I'm going to be at

at 10 o'clock mountain time in the morning. I'm going to be at Noco or Northern Colorado power sports.

Which is my local BMW dealership. And that's where I have an appointment 10 o'clock in the morning

to take my time for the, for the 40,000 mile, whatever they're going to do. And then again,

back to the app, I know they, they have done maintenance on it. And I know I, I just, in this case,

I've, I've got a local guy that I work with with tires and other minor stuff for the big stuff.

I have a BMW work on it. But as far as what they have done, I have no idea other than if I look

through my pile of receipts, you know, or if I call and ask them and they're just going to give me

printouts and stuff. But if I'd had the app, I could have uploaded all those receipts into that

in all the details. So, uh, I will be doing that going forward. Yes. I love that. I love that. Yes.

That's, uh, that's, that's a, that's a cool little, you know, plug two for, for me is like, you

can upload receipts to each service, you know, like that is something that it supports. You can

upload photos or other documentation, like for the machine itself, you can upload the service

manual, right? So you always happen available to you. Yeah. And, uh, you know, another thought too,

is that you're kind of mentioning you have this collection of notes that there's somewhere

to scatter. Maybe the, the service folks have it at the dealership there. Um, you know, if you

ask for a printout and, you know, you could, uh, technically like, you know, you could write those

out in a, on a, like the plain text file or in a spreadsheet. Um, and then I do have a feature of

the app that has an import. So it's a smart import. Um, and it uses AI to, you know, gather all of the

data from your services and get those imported directly into the app so you can, you know,

get, get using it faster. Very nice. Very nice. Well, hey, Derek, as we begin to wrap up, um,

we had a long conversation before we started recording. I am not a good interviewer. I keep

having the best parts of the conversations. I'm not even recording. But one thing we did talk

about though is this whole zen mindfulness thing and how it's important. It's important because

you got to be taking care of yourself these days. I mean, you work in IT. I retired from IT and

we know we, we're living in a world today that is, man, it is, uh, it's stressing everybody out.

I think that's a safe, well, safe word right now. It is a tough, confusing, stressful, anxious

world right now. Um, but, but you and I discovered that, and we were lucky enough as even as kids,

both of us, we discovered motorcycling in that this is something that takes literally,

virtually and physically takes me to a different place. And that's a very, very good place. So,

do you mind, uh, you know, kind of speaking to your own experience as far as what motorcycling

has, has meant to you? Yeah, I mean, it's been camaraderie. It's been a way for me to stay in

shape, uh, to be, uh, you know, physically in shape to go do this stuff. It's given me a lot of

inspiration and, and, uh, you know, just like this continuous, uh, uh, strive like I, I, I,

this continuous self improvement that that I want to be in, um, you know, not just physically,

but also mentally like I've started tuning in to, you know, peace love moto and, and I just love,

you know, thinking about like, you know, what this is it? You know, like I am in the moment,

I'm practicing being there with my, my friends with my riding buddies, um, on the trail,

on the road, whatever, um, and just being mindful that I'm in play, right? Like I'm playing,

right? Like I'm satisfying that inner child and I'm out there doing what I want to do and not

stuck in an office someplace and, and, uh, you know, I'd come back to work on, uh, the next week

on Monday and I am just refreshed, you know, like I am, you know, I'm, I'm just feeling so good about

things. So, um, that's, that's kind of what it, it, it means to me, you know, that's beautiful.

And, and, and, and we're most definitely, uh, I said at the very beginning and I, I, I believe

this with all my heart that there is just something special about, um, the sport, the hobby,

whatever you want to call it, that we do as motorcycle riders. There's a whole bunch of elements to that.

And when you meet another motorcycle rider, you've got a good friend within about five seconds.

Doesn't take long at all. And, and Derek, that's the way I feel. We are meeting really for the first

time tonight, uh, as we record this and I, I am looking forward to shaking your hand and buying you

a cup of coffee and, and let's go for a ride. Heck yes, I love it. Let's do it. That's great.

Well, Derek, again, thank you for being with us and forever, again, for everybody listening,

uh, look, go over to find and it'll be, uh, in the show notes, the, uh, look over app and also

find him on Instagram and the lookover.app website is there and it is the maintenance tracker that you

need to have a look at and I hope you'll purchase it as well. So, again, my friends, it's really

great to be with you. Thank you so much. Thanks again, Ron. This is great.