SS1000 on 04/30/2021
I became a member of the Iron Butt Association in 2000 after riding a Honda Shadow 700cc “cruiser” with little weather protection through driving rain just slightly more than 1000 miles. Lessons were learned on that ride, such as you should never ride a 700cc “cruiser” with little weather protection more than 5 miles in the driving rain.
My last ride (prior to the one I’m writing about) was a 100CCC in 2001. It was incredible in every sense and showed me portions of the country I’ve never seen before, but it still taught me a few lessons. Things such as there are deer in the desert, sand storms are real, and sleep deprivation actually exists. I was 28 years old at the time.
From there, my life became a bit complicated with work and my own travels, which took my focus away from the long-distance riding community. I sold my last bike around 14 years ago to make room in my trailer for household junk when I moved from Maine to South Carolina with my (now) wife. She swears that it wasn’t her fault, but I know it really was her my fault.
I purchased a new-used 2013 Harley Davidson Electra Glide about a year ago due to a mid-life crisis and not having anything to do, and while I do believe the best ride for IBA events is a sport-touring or dual-sport motorcycle, those seating positions did not work well for the wife and I knew that she would be more comfortable on a cruiser-based frame. We actually did try a newer Goldwing 1800, but she did not find it as comfy for one reason or another.
After toodling around South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia on my new-used ride for nearly a year, I was getting a bit hum-drum about how boring motorcycling had become. Local folks around my age didn’t seem to want to do rides longer than 100 or so miles and the younger generation seem to buy a motorcycle for its looks, rather than the functionality or the miles that could be put on them. I was also feeling a bit antsy, somehow looking for something I really enjoyed in my younger days, but could actually still pull off 20 years later.
I decided to ask the wife if she would be interested in doing an IBA ride. To my surprise, she said, “Sure!”. Did she know what she was getting into? I mean, I told her some of my horror stories of rides past and the perils of other folks who I’ve known to enjoy these long days in the saddle, but I thought she may be joking. Turns out, she wasn’t.
We worked on conditioning for about two months with our weekend rides getting longer each time, but the major problem is we live in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Flat, straight, no-end-in-sight roads are everywhere, with just a flash of a slight rise in the roadway due to a new layer of asphalt. I also find it ironic that I used to make fun of people living in Florida having to chase interstate off-ramps to simply practice their cornering technique…oh, how the tables have turned!
The conditioning rides did work well for both of us, with me learning how to efficiently and effectively pilot a motorcycle again for long distances, and her understanding all the elements of mother nature including wind, rain, cold, heat, and the smells of dead animals and chicken/turkey farms (just FYI, avoid I-74 @ I-95 on a hot, windy day).
Our last training ride before our scheduled SaddleSore 1000 was only about 480 miles. As most folks know, this is hardly enough mileage to let a beginner have a true feeling of what it takes to complete some long-distance rides, but she was a trooper. I intended another conditioning ride of around 650 miles, but we were unable to squeeze that in, so we planned the route, and decided to ride the plan.
When we left out at 3:05am, we were simply chasing after mountains in order to get a view higher than 28 feet above sea level. Did I mention how flat it is around here? Anyway, the route was simple enough, all interstate to keep the time down, and begin with the lowlands and crappy I-95 first so we don’t have to see it, while saving the nice scenery of the Appalachians for the second half of the ride in daylight. First fill up? Check. Mileage recorded? Check. Trip meters zeroed? Check. I fired up the bike, leaned back and told the wife, “Let’s go get you an Iron Butt!”
Five miles down the interstate I remembered that I had not taken the photo of my receipt with my odometer. Dad-gummit.
We took the next exit, found a fairly new peat gravel parking lot that was poorly lit (albeit lit), and I nearly dumped the bike because of poor planning on the land developers’ part. Who on earth uses that tee-tiny little gravel for an actual parking lot?! Frustrated but safe, I carefully snapped the required starting photo.
The first leg of the trip was uneventful. We were riding North on I-95 in the darkness of morning with the moon chasing us as it dodged clouds here and there. A cold weather front was coming through the area during this time, but there was no rain expected and the temps for the entire ride were expected to be no less than 60-65 degrees.
Our first gas stop was also boring, with the exception of the ever-present gas pump receipt without any location information or time stamp. I thought they would have fixed all these across the nation by now, but I guess they’re still working out all the bugs of simply adding some text to a line of software code while probably still being controlled by a Commodore 64, but I digress.
The second leg of our journey showed us the joy of a sunrise along with the cooler temperatures as the passing cold front began to gently whoosh by overhead. Traffic began to pick up as expected, but we chugged along steady as we had planned. Our second gas stop turned out to be a Pilot truck stop that had served me well in the past, so no surprises are a good thing.
We hung a left onto I-64 in Richmond, Virginia in our third leg and began climbing steadily toward the Appalachian Mountains. The temperatures continued to drop slightly as expected, but the cold front began to throw 30-40 mile-per-hour gusts of sub-zero temps down onto the roadway, which was totally unexpected. I thought we may have to put up with this for a brief 50-mile section of our ride, but soon after, the wind became almost constant, with large gusts indicative of a thunderstorm downburst. In brilliant blue skies, the high winds were ripping off the tips of tree branches and leaves and sending them flying in every direction. Cars were intentionally slowing down due to them being pushed here and there, but the trucks kept their usual steady, unsafe pace since there’s no chance of them getting thrown around (my butt). Our only saving grace was that the wind was coming directly from in front of us (mostly).
We finally reached our third gas stop in Staunton, Virginia, to which we both agreed that the wind had become “ridiculous”, “crazy”, and “insane”. While fueling, my helmet got lifted off of my mirror and thrown 30 feet toward the road as it continued rolling. Two cable company trucks were sitting in the parking lot. One of the drivers told me they had been dealing with outages all day due to the wind, but he also looked at my bike and stated that he had never thought about riding in this type of wind. “I bet it’s tough, huh?”, he quipped. While I appreciated his half-hearted concern, he and his bucket truck full of cable can shove it…but, I mean in a nice way, though.
The fourth leg of our journey proved to be another 200 miles of difficult, with the wind now hitting us from the right as we head South on I-81. Still a bright blue sky, we were happy that the tree debris had eased up significantly, which just means that mother nature has stopped using her comb while blow-drying her hair.
By the time we reached our fourth gas stop, we were somewhat protected in the valleys from the winds, but would still catch a strong gust from time to time. Marion, Virginia is a quant little town with the stupid gas station set a stupid mile away from the stupid interstate. I truly think these cities do this on purpose to get people to drive to their town, which is completely understood, though it’s not very convenient for people on a time clock for their travels. Stupid interstate signs.
The fifth leg of our trip was the exact reason we decided on this route. It was mid-afternoon, the wind had subsided to a steady 15 miles per hour with only the slightest gust here and there, and the rolling hills and sweepers of Tennessee and North Carolina once we turned onto I-26 were fantastic. The day before this trip, I had the motorcycle shop service the bike and put a new set of Michelin Commander III’s on, and I’m here to tell you they were used well. Even though we had spent the past 300+ miles in some nasty wind, our simple reward for that short-lived battle was the curvy green vistas of the Cherokee National Forest. Beautiful.
Weaving our way through traffic-choked Asheville, North Carolina, we found our way back to our home state with a well-known portion of I-26 and the end of the mountains (we were bummed). Our fifth gas stop was in another small town of Inman, South Carolina, and this is where I looked at my wife and could tell the fun may be over. I asked her if she was alright and she gave me that look that told me she would tolerate the rest of the trip, but that she wasn’t going to be happy about it. She had developed some lower back pain, and we all know that it doesn’t go away that easily, and since I didn’t have a syringe full of morphine handy to perform a lumbar puncture, she just took some ibuprofen and smiled.
The final leg of our trip proved that we shouldn’t trust the warmer temps just yet, because about 20 minutes after our last gas stop we had to pull over to put the jackets back on. It’s funny how it gets colder as the sun goes down. It also gets darker for some reason, so on with the amber glasses for the clear visual of the upcoming traffic and construction dodging.
Rolling through Columbia, South Carolina just about the time everyone is either headed home from work on a Friday evening, or heading out to the bar on a Friday evening is always fun, especially with the poorly designed I-26 / I-20 / I-77 interchange thingy they have going on there. “You mean the right lane is used for everything, including through traffic?”. Yes…yes, it is.
The remainder of our flight was pretty clear once through the capital, so we set our sights on the finish point of home. By this point, I was getting a little sore in the saddle, but the wife had been a bit more squirmy than usual back there, which told me it’s getting tough. Kudos to her, though…she’s a trooper!
At our final gas stop, the wife got off the bike slowly and was attempting to stretch out her back. I knew she was having a tough time, but I told her that we only had one mile to go after we get this photo/odometer/receipt thing over with. She said, “Let’s hurry.”. There were three red lights in that mile to our house, and both of us were yelling, “Turn green!” at each one as we approached them.
They kindly obliged and I didn’t have to set down a foot until I was in our driveway.
The ride was worth it, and the wife even stated that she’ll gladly do another one…just not too soon. Please welcome her into the Iron Butt Association family as you did me so long ago!
I’m We’re back! Cheers to the IBA!!
I became a member of the Iron Butt Association in 2000 after riding a Honda Shadow 700cc “cruiser” with little weather protection through driving rain just slightly more than 1000 miles. Lessons were learned on that ride, such as you should never ride a 700cc “cruiser” with little weather protection more than 5 miles in the driving rain.
My last ride (prior to the one I’m writing about) was a 100CCC in 2001. It was incredible in every sense and showed me portions of the country I’ve never seen before, but it still taught me a few lessons. Things such as there are deer in the desert, sand storms are real, and sleep deprivation actually exists. I was 28 years old at the time.
From there, my life became a bit complicated with work and my own travels, which took my focus away from the long-distance riding community. I sold my last bike around 14 years ago to make room in my trailer for household junk when I moved from Maine to South Carolina with my (now) wife. She swears that it wasn’t her fault, but I know it really was her my fault.
I purchased a new-used 2013 Harley Davidson Electra Glide about a year ago due to a mid-life crisis and not having anything to do, and while I do believe the best ride for IBA events is a sport-touring or dual-sport motorcycle, those seating positions did not work well for the wife and I knew that she would be more comfortable on a cruiser-based frame. We actually did try a newer Goldwing 1800, but she did not find it as comfy for one reason or another.
After toodling around South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia on my new-used ride for nearly a year, I was getting a bit hum-drum about how boring motorcycling had become. Local folks around my age didn’t seem to want to do rides longer than 100 or so miles and the younger generation seem to buy a motorcycle for its looks, rather than the functionality or the miles that could be put on them. I was also feeling a bit antsy, somehow looking for something I really enjoyed in my younger days, but could actually still pull off 20 years later.
I decided to ask the wife if she would be interested in doing an IBA ride. To my surprise, she said, “Sure!”. Did she know what she was getting into? I mean, I told her some of my horror stories of rides past and the perils of other folks who I’ve known to enjoy these long days in the saddle, but I thought she may be joking. Turns out, she wasn’t.
We worked on conditioning for about two months with our weekend rides getting longer each time, but the major problem is we live in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Flat, straight, no-end-in-sight roads are everywhere, with just a flash of a slight rise in the roadway due to a new layer of asphalt. I also find it ironic that I used to make fun of people living in Florida having to chase interstate off-ramps to simply practice their cornering technique…oh, how the tables have turned!
The conditioning rides did work well for both of us, with me learning how to efficiently and effectively pilot a motorcycle again for long distances, and her understanding all the elements of mother nature including wind, rain, cold, heat, and the smells of dead animals and chicken/turkey farms (just FYI, avoid I-74 @ I-95 on a hot, windy day).
Our last training ride before our scheduled SaddleSore 1000 was only about 480 miles. As most folks know, this is hardly enough mileage to let a beginner have a true feeling of what it takes to complete some long-distance rides, but she was a trooper. I intended another conditioning ride of around 650 miles, but we were unable to squeeze that in, so we planned the route, and decided to ride the plan.
When we left out at 3:05am, we were simply chasing after mountains in order to get a view higher than 28 feet above sea level. Did I mention how flat it is around here? Anyway, the route was simple enough, all interstate to keep the time down, and begin with the lowlands and crappy I-95 first so we don’t have to see it, while saving the nice scenery of the Appalachians for the second half of the ride in daylight. First fill up? Check. Mileage recorded? Check. Trip meters zeroed? Check. I fired up the bike, leaned back and told the wife, “Let’s go get you an Iron Butt!”
Five miles down the interstate I remembered that I had not taken the photo of my receipt with my odometer. Dad-gummit.
We took the next exit, found a fairly new peat gravel parking lot that was poorly lit (albeit lit), and I nearly dumped the bike because of poor planning on the land developers’ part. Who on earth uses that tee-tiny little gravel for an actual parking lot?! Frustrated but safe, I carefully snapped the required starting photo.
The first leg of the trip was uneventful. We were riding North on I-95 in the darkness of morning with the moon chasing us as it dodged clouds here and there. A cold weather front was coming through the area during this time, but there was no rain expected and the temps for the entire ride were expected to be no less than 60-65 degrees.
Our first gas stop was also boring, with the exception of the ever-present gas pump receipt without any location information or time stamp. I thought they would have fixed all these across the nation by now, but I guess they’re still working out all the bugs of simply adding some text to a line of software code while probably still being controlled by a Commodore 64, but I digress.
The second leg of our journey showed us the joy of a sunrise along with the cooler temperatures as the passing cold front began to gently whoosh by overhead. Traffic began to pick up as expected, but we chugged along steady as we had planned. Our second gas stop turned out to be a Pilot truck stop that had served me well in the past, so no surprises are a good thing.
We hung a left onto I-64 in Richmond, Virginia in our third leg and began climbing steadily toward the Appalachian Mountains. The temperatures continued to drop slightly as expected, but the cold front began to throw 30-40 mile-per-hour gusts of sub-zero temps down onto the roadway, which was totally unexpected. I thought we may have to put up with this for a brief 50-mile section of our ride, but soon after, the wind became almost constant, with large gusts indicative of a thunderstorm downburst. In brilliant blue skies, the high winds were ripping off the tips of tree branches and leaves and sending them flying in every direction. Cars were intentionally slowing down due to them being pushed here and there, but the trucks kept their usual steady, unsafe pace since there’s no chance of them getting thrown around (my butt). Our only saving grace was that the wind was coming directly from in front of us (mostly).
We finally reached our third gas stop in Staunton, Virginia, to which we both agreed that the wind had become “ridiculous”, “crazy”, and “insane”. While fueling, my helmet got lifted off of my mirror and thrown 30 feet toward the road as it continued rolling. Two cable company trucks were sitting in the parking lot. One of the drivers told me they had been dealing with outages all day due to the wind, but he also looked at my bike and stated that he had never thought about riding in this type of wind. “I bet it’s tough, huh?”, he quipped. While I appreciated his half-hearted concern, he and his bucket truck full of cable can shove it…but, I mean in a nice way, though.
The fourth leg of our journey proved to be another 200 miles of difficult, with the wind now hitting us from the right as we head South on I-81. Still a bright blue sky, we were happy that the tree debris had eased up significantly, which just means that mother nature has stopped using her comb while blow-drying her hair.
By the time we reached our fourth gas stop, we were somewhat protected in the valleys from the winds, but would still catch a strong gust from time to time. Marion, Virginia is a quant little town with the stupid gas station set a stupid mile away from the stupid interstate. I truly think these cities do this on purpose to get people to drive to their town, which is completely understood, though it’s not very convenient for people on a time clock for their travels. Stupid interstate signs.
The fifth leg of our trip was the exact reason we decided on this route. It was mid-afternoon, the wind had subsided to a steady 15 miles per hour with only the slightest gust here and there, and the rolling hills and sweepers of Tennessee and North Carolina once we turned onto I-26 were fantastic. The day before this trip, I had the motorcycle shop service the bike and put a new set of Michelin Commander III’s on, and I’m here to tell you they were used well. Even though we had spent the past 300+ miles in some nasty wind, our simple reward for that short-lived battle was the curvy green vistas of the Cherokee National Forest. Beautiful.
Weaving our way through traffic-choked Asheville, North Carolina, we found our way back to our home state with a well-known portion of I-26 and the end of the mountains (we were bummed). Our fifth gas stop was in another small town of Inman, South Carolina, and this is where I looked at my wife and could tell the fun may be over. I asked her if she was alright and she gave me that look that told me she would tolerate the rest of the trip, but that she wasn’t going to be happy about it. She had developed some lower back pain, and we all know that it doesn’t go away that easily, and since I didn’t have a syringe full of morphine handy to perform a lumbar puncture, she just took some ibuprofen and smiled.
The final leg of our trip proved that we shouldn’t trust the warmer temps just yet, because about 20 minutes after our last gas stop we had to pull over to put the jackets back on. It’s funny how it gets colder as the sun goes down. It also gets darker for some reason, so on with the amber glasses for the clear visual of the upcoming traffic and construction dodging.
Rolling through Columbia, South Carolina just about the time everyone is either headed home from work on a Friday evening, or heading out to the bar on a Friday evening is always fun, especially with the poorly designed I-26 / I-20 / I-77 interchange thingy they have going on there. “You mean the right lane is used for everything, including through traffic?”. Yes…yes, it is.
The remainder of our flight was pretty clear once through the capital, so we set our sights on the finish point of home. By this point, I was getting a little sore in the saddle, but the wife had been a bit more squirmy than usual back there, which told me it’s getting tough. Kudos to her, though…she’s a trooper!
At our final gas stop, the wife got off the bike slowly and was attempting to stretch out her back. I knew she was having a tough time, but I told her that we only had one mile to go after we get this photo/odometer/receipt thing over with. She said, “Let’s hurry.”. There were three red lights in that mile to our house, and both of us were yelling, “Turn green!” at each one as we approached them.
They kindly obliged and I didn’t have to set down a foot until I was in our driveway.
The ride was worth it, and the wife even stated that she’ll gladly do another one…just not too soon. Please welcome her into the Iron Butt Association family as you did me so long ago!
I’m We’re back! Cheers to the IBA!!
