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My First Saddlesore 1000 I've been wanting to do an IronButt run for about three years. I never really got around to it, and frankly it's something I have dreamed about. I've spent time reading the stories, I've looked at the tips on the IronButt site and monitored the LDRiders list for a good year. In short, I had done everything I needed to do, except put on the miles. One of the things I had to satisfy in my own mind is why I would want to do this. In many ways, it doesn't make sense. No matter how you look at it, a thousand miles is a lot of miles and doing it in one day is a challenge. There is also an element of risk involved with riding a thousand miles both from a fatigue standpoint and the idea that in a thousand miles, any number of weird things can (and do) happen. For me, riding a motorcycle is indeed a passion but it is at the very least a passion of convenience. I teach at a technical college and parking with a car is a challenge, with a motorcycle, it's easy. I usually ride 10,000 to 15,000 miles a year and almost all of them are commuting miles. It isn't often that I just go out and ride, there is almost always a defined purpose when I ride. The act of simply going out and riding 1000 miles for the sake of riding 1000 miles isn't something that I would normally do. It would make more sense if I was doing it to get from one place to another but the truth is, I had been waiting for three years for that 1000 mile ride and the opportunity simply had not presented itself. I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to cross this bridge, I was simply going to have to cross it and ride the ride, which still doesn't answer the question of why - more on that later. It took a bit of cajoling for my wife to go along with this, she doesn't understand the why, but is beginning to understand and support the need. When she agreed to support me going, she used an analogy that makes a lot of sense (to me anyway). There are things that she does, photography, scrap booking, jewelry making and puppies. I don't understand why she does them, and with the puppies, I actually can't stand them, but it brings her great joy. She understands that we are different and we each have things that are important to us. I don't understand why she needs to do what she does but I love her enough to support her in it. She does the same for my motorcycle rides. The biggest difference is that there is no small amount of risk in the motorcycle ride. I'm still not sure exactly how to resolve that issue in her mind or even my own. One of my good friends, Roger, has similar aspirations and we talked about doing the ride together. We designated May 23, 2005 as the day and I started looking at routes. Roger is a very disciplined man and he was quite serious about simply doing a Bun Burner Gold (1500 miles in 24 hours) so our original plan was to hop on I-90 in LaCrosse, WI and ride to Gillette, WY - which is about 775 miles - and then turn round and ride as far back as we could safely go. This was a pretty well-defined plan until life happened and things started getting in the way. My first concern was that we would get to Gillette and I would simply refuse to turn around. Gillette is right where things start to get interesting, Alt 14, the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway, the Cooke City Highway (the list goes on and on). The more important issue is that I really only had 24 hours to work through this and I couldn't risk being away longer than that, so we decided instead to ride from LaCrosse, WI to Kadoka, SD (550 miles) and then turn around. This route would put me back within 24 hours (almost for sure) and give Roger the option of turning north at Sioux Falls and going to Fargo and back to Sioux Falls to bag the other 500 miles. We also batted around a leave time. Roger and I both rise early (between 4:00 and 5:00) and I thought that would be the ideal time to take off. Roger convinced me to use the adrenaline at the start of the ride when we might otherwise be tired, so we decided that we would leave at Midnight on Tuesday, May 24. One of the reasons we really wanted to head west was higher speed limits but as the day of the ride dawned, the weather report looked terrible. We would have good weather across Minnesota, but South Dakota was to be cold and raining, the entire day. We made the decision to head east and do most of the miles in Illinois. This meant two things; a lower speed limit (65) and a lot more traffic. I plotted a route that would take us from LaCrosse, to Rockford, to Bloomington, to Champaign, to Litchfield, IL. Litchfield was the turn-around point. Niehaus Honda has a pretty good reputation and I've always wanted to visit the dealership. The route was more circuitous than I would have liked, but I had (or at least thought I had) a pretty good handle on what needed to be documented. In the end, I goofed it up and it may cause the ride not to count. See the notes for the details on that one. Our actual departure was closer to 1:00 a.m. and things started out pretty well. I left all of the paperwork sitting on the kitchen table, so I bought a pad of paper and made witness forms. Traffic was light and we were able to ride side by side with the PIAA lights on to scout for deer. We agreed to make a stop at the first exit on I-39 south of Rockford which is just a bit more than 200 miles. After about 100 miles, Roger hit the blinker and pulled off. I stopped next to him and he said it was over - he wasn't feeling well. We had more or less agreed to ride this together but also discussed the possibility of one of us having to bail. Roger assured me that he would be all right and encouraged me to carry on, so I did. I respect Roger a lot for turning around. It took a lot of discipline and courage for him to do so. The good news is that the rest of the ride was simply a matter of execution. In one of the stories that I read, when asked how a ride like this was possible, the rider responded, "Well you really just need to stay on the motorcycle." I'm not sure if that answer was in jest or real, but at any rate, it's pretty much dead on true. There were a few times when I got a little punchy, but when I did, I simply stopped and rested for a bit. If I had felt the need to sleep, I would stopped, pulled up a picnic table and taken a nap, but I never really felt like I had to. I got home at about 6:00 p.m, which was in time to catch a high school softball game, tagged a few more stops to get more miles and called it a day. This of course puts me back at the question of "Why?" Why ride 1000 miles in 24 hours? I can't say that I really know. It brings me back to another question that seems to be at the core of my being, "Why do I ride a motorcycle?" For as long as I have been riding a motorcycle, I have wondered what compelled me to do so. I can certainly stack up a list of reasons, but in the end, there is something inside me that overrides (and overpowers) logic and drives me to swing a leg over the seat. I think the same thing is true for long distance riding. There is really no good reason to do it. To a person who doesn't do it, even a fellow rider, the idea of a long distance ride causes head shaking and comments relative to the level of my sanity. I have to admit that I understand their comments. When I look at it logically, it makes no sense. Logic doesn't always override emotion in me and the truth is that long distance riding is largely a physical and emotional challenge. It's a challenge that I seem to enjoy and want to face. On another note, it was also something sort of "off the beat and path" that I wanted to do. Life is busy, I have a demanding job, a busy family (five children at home) and lots of commitments that tend to keep me hopping. I'm learning that I need more margins in my life and part of that includes doing things that I dream about doing but make no real sense. There are a few other things that I really want to do, I want to run a 1/2 marathon in the fall, I'd like to go on an overnight bicycle ride, I want to take a week-long motorcycle trip, I want to climb Mount Rainier, I want to ride in a long-distance motorcycle rally (pure fun) and yes, now I want to ride 1500 miles in 24 hours. Some of those things may need to wait; time, finances and life will get in the way. Others I can (and arguably should) do. Lessons Learned
Notes Note A Note B Note C Note D Exact Route
Start date: 5/24/05 12:55 a.m. 91846
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