Posted: 04 July 2005 at 9:23am | IP Logged

Greetings all,

A little background: I am 53 years old and have ridden and owned a motorcycle for most of those years. All of my riding has been commuting to work and short recreational rides, never anything long distance. I think the furthest away from home I had ever gotten myself was ~300 miles.

A friend introduced me to the Ironbutts last year when he told me of his dream to do some very long-distance riding. I looked up the website and read some of the accounts of grueling rides. I found them stirring. Moreover, I knew that I could do the same thing.

The opportunity for a very long ride presented itself through my job. I live in the upper Mojave Desert of California, about 150 miles North of LA. I needed to go to Key West, FL for 10 days with travel done over the weekend. I would have to leave on Friday and be in Key West Monday morning in order to make it work. I told my travel folks not to buy me a ticket … I was going to ride my bike to Key West.

Now, what is the first thing one thinks about when traveling coast to coast on a bike, at least if you have the Ironbutt mentality? The 50CC of course! The plan was laid …

I read the archive of wisdom on the Ironbutt site and used it where I could to plan for the ride. But I had to have more than just the necessary articles for the ride; I also needed to have work clothes, papers, a laptop, etc. Packing would have to be done with care. I don’t own a motorcycle rainsuit, but I have a snowboarding outfit that’s waterproof and some good watertight boots that can double for work attire. I figured I could get along with the boots and a pair of sandals once I got to Key West.

Luckily, I have a motorcycle with a lot of storage. (I ride a GL1800A) Looking over the recommendations, I struggled with one in particular -- the suggestion to carry an electric vest. I have one, but did I want to sacrifice the space it would take up? Would I really need one for a ride across the great American South? In June??

Looking over my packout, I decided to toss it in, bowing to the wisdom of those who have gone before me: It turned out to be a wise decision.

Luggage of any sort was out of the question. I took all of my clothes and folded them. Next, I rolled each article up as tightly as I could and put them into functional bundles. I used bungee cords to compress them and wrapped them with plastic garbage bags. I managed to get all of my clothing, watertight suit, flashlight, extra tools, into the panniers. The trunk held my laptop, papers, and a plastic container with extra bungee cords. I figured that if I had to shift stuff around I could always lash something to the pillion if necessary, but I wanted to generally keep the passenger position empty so I could sleep on the bike.

The plan was to leave my home Thursday night and ride to Huntington Beach where I have good friends with a home about 3 blocks from the ocean. When I told them of my plan to ride coast to coast in under 50 hours, they were gracious enough to offer me a room for the night. I wanted to get on the road after a good night of sleep but early enough to beat the Orange County traffic boondoggle. Once I got to Huntington, I called them and offered to take them to dinner, so we went to Buca di Beppo and had a wonderful meal. I loaded up on pasta, figuring that would probably carry me through lunch the next day. I decided to ask them + our very nice waitress to sign the starting witnesses form. It was getting late and I didn’t want to be riding around looking for a cop. Besides, I had something I wanted to do. After dinner, I told them I would meet them at their house, and I rode over to a drug store where they gave me a couple of screw-top medicine bottles. I then rode out to the beach. All the parking was closed and there was a cop raging around the parking lot. There was a nice young couple there in an SUV who told me he had just given them a ticket for being on the beach after closing! Only in Orange County would authorities figure they could close the OCEAN! After contemplating my options, I rode back across PCH and asked the desk clerk at an RV park if I could leave my bike in front of their office for 10 minutes while I ran over to the ocean to collect a memento. With her kind assent, I hurried across to the shoreline, unceremoniously dipped my bottle into the ocean and beat feet back to the bike before the cop could give me a ticket too.

I awoke at 04:30, showered, had some coffee, stashed the previous day’s laundry and chatted with my friends for a few minutes. After some last minute rearranging, sweet hugs for luck, etc., I was outta there. I had not gassed up the night before as I needed a timestamped receipt in HB. As I headed down Victoria toward the 55 North, the first place I came to was at Brookhurst, so I stopped and filled the tank: It was 06:05 AM, a little later than I had hoped to get out of town, but I figured I could still beat the rush.

My GPS (a Garmin iQue M5 – more on this later) had figured my fastest route to the I-10 as running up the 55 N. to the 91. From there it said to catch 60 and take it out to Banning. Casey, my host, told me not to take the 60 as it could get pretty bad. When I came to the junction, the traffic ahead leading to the 15 looked worse than what seemed to be running eastward on the 60, so I followed the GPS voice prompts and took that. It was a good choice: The 60 was running fast and clear. My intent was to pound out as many miles as I could at 80+ MPH across the Mojave and Sonora Deserts. Traffic out there pretty much runs at that rate and I wanted to take advantage of good weather while I could.

You see, I had this small problem: As I was leaving California, a little disturbance was making its way up from the gulf toward the Florida Panhandle. Hurricane Arlene. Yep, I was riding right toward a hurricane. Talk about bad luck! I knew that if she really turned into a howler, my 50CC was going to be toast. But the weather was in God’s hands. My decision was to press, hard. If a hurricane was going to stymie me, so be it; but Arlene was going to have to show her cards.

The desert run proved to be exactly as I imagined it: fast and smooth with no problems. At each stop I developed a routine: get the mileage, shut off the bike, pop the card into the pump and start the fillup, open the trunk and take out my log and folio, filling in the stop time, get something to drink, use the restroom if necessary, top off the tank, fill in the start time in the log, and get back after it.

I have noticed discussions here about the various ways members take care of their hydration on long distance rides. I do not use a camelback or anything like that. I use R-A-M mounts on the handlebars of the ‘Wing and I have one of their swiveling cup holders. Whenever I was thirsty, I just grabbed a cup full of ice, filled it with water, put a lid on it and drank it through a straw while I was riding. I really like this system. You have to stop for gas anyway, and I found that a tall cup of fresh icewater was really refreshing out on the hot pavement. About the only problem I ran into was some of the cups I got were a little too tall for the holder and had a propensity to tip over. I solved this by adjusting the mount a little lower so that the bottom of the thing would just catch the console forward of the tank. It got a little ungainly pulling out of gas stations with sharp turns, but out on the road it worked well. My bike has a great cruise control so it allowed me to rearrange things on the fly with either hand if needed.

Airhawk Inflatable Seat Cushion: I am going to mention this thing right now. Before I left, while pouring over various accounts of long distance rides accomplished by members, I came across someone who mentioned that he and a riding partner had shared the use of an Airhawk inflatable seat cushion for a long trip, swapping it at gas stops. Well, it turns out that I have this issue with the saddle of my Gold Wing. The seat, while cushy enough, is really not that comfortable over long distances for me. My bike seems to have been built for someone about 5’10” or so. I am 6’2”, and I find the riding position cramped. I can ride with my back straight, a position I very much favor over any sort of hunching posture necessary for navigation on a Sport Tourer, but my knees are bent too much and it feels like I need to be a couple of inches higher on the bike. Well, it turned out that a friend of mine from work had just bought an Airhawk seat cushion for his Venture Star, and it was too big. The front of the cushion rubbed on the new paint job he just had done to his tank. He offered to let me use it, but one good sit down with it on my bike was enough to sell me. I paid him cash, exactly what he paid for it new, so that he could just go down and get the next smaller size.

It turned out to be a very smart purchase. The Airhawk is inflated using a small mouth tube and with it you can basically adjust your height in the saddle. I set it so that I was pretty comfortable and it really helped to take away the sensation of being cramped in the cockpit of the bike. It’s sort of like bubble wrap in that it consists of several bubbled cells, but when you shift your weight, the air traveling between the cells is slowed by some tight little valves in between the “bubbles”. As you ride and scootch your butt around on it, it allows you to take the pressure off the tenderer spots in your nether regions for a few seconds. It helps -- a lot.

By the time of my next stop for gas in Buckeye, AZ, I was in the zone. You get this feeling that you could just ride forever, but it all came to a crashing halt when I spotted the “Waffle House” sign in Eloy, AZ. We don’t have them in California so to me they’re a real treat. I stopped and had my usual Country Ham with grits instead of potatoes. YUM! Yes, endurance riding is a serious pursuit, but as you will see, my philosophy is that if one cannot occasionally step off the bike for a sample of the local cuisine, then one is doing it wrong.

I pressed on across the rest of Arizona stopping for gas only in Willcox, AZ as I knew that I was going to be stopping for food again in New Mexico. I wasn’t all that hungry when I stopped, but I am a New Mexico native with a fondness for Red Chile, something that is really hard to come by out here in California unless you make it yourself. As I neared Las Cruces, I kept my eyes open for restaurant signs. Sure enough, there looked to be something in a place just off the freeway called “Old Mesilla Plaza”. I took the exit and about a mile down the road found a restaurant that seemed a likely candidate. I took my cellphone inside and called the family while eating an excellent plate of Red Chile enchiladas with 2 sunny-side-up eggs on top, a real New Mexican treat!

There were no “fast” looking gas stations at that exit (by fast, I mean modern gas stations with credit card readers that allow you to pay at the pump. Nothing is more annoying than having to wait in line at a station just to leave a deposit, fill up, then wait in line again to pay.) For this reason, I pressed down the road a few miles and stopped again for gas.

Now, I was getting into the business end of the first day of riding. How far could I go? I knew that I must get a good way into Texas in order to have any chance of making it across country in under 50 hours. But I just felt great! About my only worry was the hurricane on the Gulf shore, but I tried to put it out of my mind as much as I could. Worrying wouldn’t help, anyway. I did set my satellite radio (Sirius) with some buttons for the weather channel regional feeds to get updates on what was ahead. As a last ditch, I thought that maybe if it turned into a real monster, I could divert on local roads, away from the I-10 a bit farther inland if necessary and still make it. But that situation was ahead, right now I had to deal with Texas. Man, what a state. It just goes on forever. I don’t know why, but for some reason I like the sensation of crossing state lines. It makes you feel like you’re getting somewhere. Texas is 900 frikkin’ miles wide on the I-10. Worse, it has a speed limit of 65 MPH at night. On the other hand, the roads were good, the cops were scarce, and the West Texas weather was fantastic for a night ride. I hunkered down and chewed up the miles, stopping for nothing but gas and fluids, both intake and output.

Garmin iQue M5: A word about my GPS unit. I decided to get a PDA instead of a strict GPS only device. The PDA still has voice prompts for turns, does autorouting, etc., but it also has all of the other goodies one associates with a small computer. One of the biggest things was Media Player. I have a 1gig SD memory card installed in it, big enough to hold all of the detailed maps I would need for the trip with a lot of room left over for MP3 music. Before I left, I loaded it up with tunes from Bluegrass to Little Feat, many, curiously, were road-themed selections. They just seemed appropriate and were a good choice. But the iQue also has a down side: It is in no way shape or form waterproof. I knew that the minute it started to rain, I was going to have to shut it off. Yeah, ya gotta take the good with the bad, but overall I am pleased with my choice. I live in a very dry climate and out here in the desert the M5 is a good as gold.

There was no rain in West Texas and I had been able to leave the device on for the entire trip. I had reset the trip computer that morning before leaving Huntington Beach, and I had it on that display as I reached Balmorhea, TX where it flipped over to 1001 miles traveled! I pulled off and took some pictures with my cellphone camera and celebrated my small victory with a drink of water! I was an Ironbutt!

Back on the bike, I pressed on across Texas. While I really had no idea how far I could go, I made a personal commitment to myself not to override good sense when it came to matters of safety. I was just going to go as far as I could. My brain begins to tell me it needs sleep when I drive at night by starting to cast weird halos around lights and I also start to see things moving that aren’t really there. I got as far as Segovia, TX. It was 05:00 CDT and I knew I needed sleep. I found a truckstop and rode the bike over to some level ground at the edge of the lot. I put the bike up on its centerstand and using my Airhawk as a pillow, tried to find a comfortable enough spot to sleep. It ain’t easy, but I finally managed to get into a position that would allow slumber. After 21 hours of hard riding, I fell asleep under the stars to a lullaby of diesels. I don’t know about you, but I find their sound calming.

I awoke with a horrendous crick in my neck! I had slept 2 hours. I climbed off stiffly and ran into the truckstop for what had to be the most awful cup of burnt, degraded, Texas Trucker coffee that has ever been brewed. Man, it was just awful, but I drank it anyway as I headed across the hill country towards San Antonio. It woke me up, all right. Hats off to all you truckers out there, but road coffee is the absolute pits; I would find a steady diet of it injurious..

I got hungry so I stopped for early lunch at a BBQ spot in Schulenburg, TX. I had seen the signs and figured a little Texas brisket couldn’t hurt. I downed a plate of meaty goodness with some tea, bought gas across the street and was back on the road towards Houston. News of hurricane Arlene was still not good, with heavy rains across the Florida panhandle running in front of the storm. To make matters worse, my Sirius radio had started flaking out. The audio cable, where it connects to the cradle of the device was making intermittent contact, causing me to have to constantly fuss with the plug. This was a real pain. On the outskirts of Houston, I spotted a Best Buy. I hoped they might have a replacement car kit for my brand of radio. If so, I could just pop the old one off and swap it out. No such luck. After looking all over the store and trying to find someone to wait on me, I finally determined that no replacement cradle could be had there. To make matters worse, it was really tough to get back on to I-10 from that exit; I had to go underneath the expressway and backtrack to get going in the right direction.

To make matters way worst, the traffic had socked in on I-10. I hadn’t closely examined the Garmin route through every city and it had routed me right up the gut of Houston, an artery now clogged with Saturday morning shopping traffic. Crap, it was hot, too! Crawling along at 10 MPH with nothing but a smoggy skyline full of tall buildings and even more traffic ahead was disheartening. In California, when we run into stuff like that we can lane split; Texans aren’t so lucky. I didn’t have any water with me either, so at the first sign of a drive-thru I stopped and got a big glass of ice water. In the line, I took a look at the map on the Garmin and saw that I was fairly close to Houston’s inner beltway, the I-610. So I ducked out of there and took some back streets in the general direction of the alternate route. The Garmin automatically recalcs your route for you if you have to divert, and it did a good job of getting me back to the I-10 on the far side of Houston.  Overall, stopping in Houston trying to fix my radio was the biggest mistake I made, one I wouldn’t repeat if I had it to do over again.

Thankfully out of Houston, I beat feet for Beaumont where I bought gas and headed across a welcomed new state, Louisiana. I had never driven this stretch of road and really enjoyed the sensation of riding across the Atchafalaya Swamp. I marveled at the engineering and determination required to bridge such an expanse of otherwise impassable country. Imagine sinking pilings into that stuff with alligators chomping at your ass and malaria laden mosquitoes fighting over your last square inch of unoccupied bare skin. Quite the accomplishment.

As I approached Jennings, LA, I saw intriguing signs for “Boudin King” restaurant. I liked the name so I stopped and veered a bit off the path to find it. I love oysters, so I ordered a basket of deliciously fried specimens, topping it off with a cold sweet tea and a sample bite of Cajun Boudin, a spiced rice concoction stuffed into a sausage casing. When I was finished eating, I decided to call a guy on the Ironbutt website, Pirate John. He lives around Jacksonville, FL and has volunteered to witness for folks doing the 50CC at the Atlantic. He was most cordial, but also out of town. He said to call him anyway once I got to JAX and he would get me hooked up with a witness.

Yeah, I knew by then that I was going to make it. Pretty much nothing short of catastrophe was going to stop me, and the weather reports ahead were starting to moderate in tone. All they were mentioning was rain along the gulf, no gale force winds.

I hit the rain right at the Mississippi border. The Ironbutt website says to always put on your rainsuit before it rains, but my snowboarder suit is pretty warm once you get it buttoned up; I run hot as a general rule and only wanted it on when I no kidding needed it. I rode into the edge of the rain before I put it on; the next 5 hours of my life were pretty much hell. I stashed the Airhawk so that I could more easily get my eyes below the windscreen and knuckled down in the rain for the longest and hardest part of the ride, the tailings of Hurricane Arlene.

Basically, the biggest problem was visibility. Nature had affixed a filmy layer of scum over every exposed surface of my motorcycle and body. I think even my eyeballs had bug scum on them. I had brought contacts with me, but I didn’t have them in. It was hour after long hour of cringing and craning to see. Probably the worst was around Pensacola, FL. They had a series of temporary (I hope they’re temporary) bridges set up to cross the water around there, with surfaces of metal grate. As far as I’m concerned, wet metal grate bridges are about the worst thing anyone encounters on a motorcycle. I could feel the bike wander from side to side as I crossed them. Talk about squirrelly! I do not recall the crossings fondly.

Eventually, I broke out of the squeeze weather in Crestview, FL, had a bite to eat, and pressed for Tallahassee, but Arlene had taken her toll on me. By Ponce de Leon, I was exhausted. Luckily, I had enough of a cushion of time built up to risk some sleep, so I pulled over at a rest area, found a spot under some trees in case it started to rain again, and slept -- longer than I wanted. Three hours of sleep later, I awoke. There was no coffee to help wake up, and I had a few minutes of panic on the road to Tallahassee. Doing the mental math, I needed to be at the Atlantic precisely 48 hours after my departure from California. Hell, I wasn’t going to make it! My spirits sank as I raced towards the Capitol. Damn, I had slept too long – gooned my perfect ride!

But had I?

Calming down, I thought about it: No, it wasn’t 48 hours -- it was 50 hours! I had to be at the Atlantic by 11:05 EDT. Your brain will do you weird turns if you keep it awake too long, or set out in the morning without giving it some coffee, a blessed fluid in moderation. Nope, this one was in the bag, I finally, sanely, reasoned.

The last mistake I made on the journey was not having a clearer idea what route I was going to take to the beach. I resolved, in the spirit of the quest, not to buy gas and stop the clock until I reached the ocean. I got off on Beach Blvd., a real mistake. There are tons of stoplights on it and it was raining. I had dumped the snowboard suit before I took off that morning, resolving to ride, wet or dry, the rest of the way. Well, it did rain, and I got wet, mostly at stoplights on Beach Blvd. It would have been smarter to go a bit further south and catch the freeway that shoots right out to the beach. No matter. I made it. Elapsed time: 49hrs 18mins. Not a record, certainly, but I learned so much on the ride, what helps and what hurts, that I am convinced I could do it much faster next time.

There was more to the journey. After I got to JAX Beach, I still had to go to Key West. I celebrated my accomplishment with a couple dozen raw oysters and a couple ice cold Buds at a local restaurant (after getting a fireman to sign my form – I called Pirate John again and he told me about a firehouse a block south of the station where I bought my finishing tank of gas – and walking out to the Atlantic to fill my second medicine bottle in a quick and quiet ceremony of pure, sweet, joy.)

Phone calls home, oysters, beer, exultation; back on the road. I hadn’t had a shower since Huntington Beach. Though I desperately wanted to get to Key West to stage for work the next morning, the ride was beginning to get the best of me. I made it to Melbourne, FL. No longer on the Ironbutt clock, I stopped for an iced tea at a Starbucks just off an exit. There was a nice motel within eyeshot. I yanked my computer out of the trunk, brought it in and checked my email. I had not been this dirty since I worked bailing hay as a teenager or as tired since I had worked triple shifts when my daughters were being born.

I succumbed. When I took a shower at the hotel, road grime floated off my skin in little black Lilly pads. My feet smelled like a compost pile and my face was burned bright red with a nice white strap under my chin. My bottom lip was as plump as a baked salmon and I felt like a million bucks.

I slept in pure, radiant, peace.

Next morning I awoke, called one of my coworkers and told him I was going to be a bit late to work, and rode leisurely into Key West at 10:30 Monday morning.

Afterward: You know, I took some guff for undertaking this ride. But every bit of crap I took hardened my resolve to complete it. The more I heard, the more I knew that I was going to knock it out anyway. Well, determination is infectious, folks. If you are still reading this, chances are you and I share something in the way of that determination. If you have a vision to do something like the 50CC, or any other Ironbutt ride, don’t let anyone discourage you. Whether you go alone, or set out with a companion, in the end, it is going to be nothing but you, your bike, and your road. You can do it.

I had only ridden short distances before I undertook it, and when I got home, I had ridden the SS1000, the BB1500, the 50CC, and on a more leisurely ride home hit the Scenic 7 in the Ozarks, (a marvelous, twisty, beautiful, ride) saw an old friend I had not seen in over 30 years, ate at more interesting, regional, restaurants, and just had myself a flipping ball. 

I had the time of my life, answering a calling native to me. The odometer on my bike read 6274 miles traveled when I finally parked her back in her spot in our garage. On the way out, somewhere in Texas, I talked to my eldest daughter on the phone. She asked me how I was doing. I told her, “Honey, I’m a machine.”

I meant it, too.

Damn, I forgot to talk about the electric vest! On the way home, I got to Flagstaff, AZ and it was flipping cold! I had the snowboarding suit and liner on and still I was freezing. My wife had called me in Oklahoma City and told me that our next-door neighbor and dearest friend’s Dad had died the day I left Key West. I had to be in Las Vegas, NV on Saturday for the funeral. I would have been fine if I could have laid-over in Flag, but I needed to get to Henderson, NV that night or miss it. The electric vest saved me. I pulled over, dug it out, plugged it in, and rode myself in comfort down to Kingman where it was once again warm. I rolled into Henderson at 02:00 and made the funeral later that day.

Do not take the advice of the Ironbutts lightly in your journeys. They said to do all the maintenance before you ride. I tried to fix my radio on the road, a big waste of time. They said to take an electric vest. That’s what got me to the funeral on time. They said to …

Oh heck, read ‘em yourself. Here’s my $.02 worth: When you buy gas, walk around for a minute. Riding a motorcycle requires control from every limb. That means you have to keep your extremities pinned in a spot of control. BAD! You have to move your limbs or they will fail you. Walk every moment you can during quick stops. For meals, walk, sit comfortably, stretch, and talk to people if you can. They will refresh you with their company. Eat only good food. Do not waste your time eating crap out of fast food places, unless you happen to like it. Savor your meals and brief companionships. They are electric. Talk to strangers, look at the sights, eat something new and scary, be memorable.

As fatigue and weakness challenge you, look to your joy. After all, what would you rather be doing?

On the bike, I got by shifting my butt up onto the pillion position, kicking my legs out sideways, stretching each arm back to relieve the cramping in my neck muscles, and just moving around as much as I could safely over the long miles. When my shoulders ached, I leaned back and stretched my arms, when my ass ached I would perch it near the tank and take the weight forward, or stand up on the pegs hoisting myself up and back as far as I could go. The pillion, purposely empty, gave me room to hoist my butt onto the upper tier and stretch my legs; It helped much. Mostly, I would advise not letting the pressure of the ride overcome the fun of it. Stop for good food when you can, call home, rig up something to play the tunes you need to hear, and for Godsake’s don’t ride off in the direction of a hurricane if you can avoid it, but if that’s all you’ve got to work with, take her on.

Posted: 05 July 2005 at 6:59am | IP Logged

Good job on a tough ride!

Discussing your resolve and outright determination on this ride, you almost sound like a Texan!