Canada Coast to Coast -- Sleeping..?

Marc11

Premier Member
IBR Finisher
#3
You can ride up and ask for a room, if you know in advance you can use sites like Hotel Tonight or Booking.com to reserve a room at a target city or there is always the iron butt motel, open 24*7 and always has a room.

I usually sleep in full gear if time is short except for my helmet, showers are time I can be on the road or sleeping. No one cares what you smell like on the bike.
 

Gerry Arel

Premier Member
IBR Finisher
#4
I think it really depends on how well you can adjust to multiple long days on the road. I think targeting motels at key time/distance points would be how I'd approach it. On multiple day rides I like to ride at least 18 hrs the 1st day (maybe 20 depending on weather), motel for 4 hrs, then likely 16-18 travel and 4-6 rest hours daily based on need.

It does take me time to wind down no matter how tired I am so my routine is to jump in the shower then hit the bed. If the rom is 'questionable' then i redress in my base layers and gear up as soon as i wake up.
 

kwthom

=o&o>
Premier Member
IBA Member
#6
I think it really depends on how well you can adjust to multiple long days on the road. I think targeting motels at key time/distance points would be how I'd approach it.
Agreed - and it's my preferred method, which has worked well.

As far as time allotted for rest...your body will definitely let you know if you're not getting enough rest. :D
 

Patrick Ford

Premier Member
IBR Finisher
#7
Hydrate.....Hydrate... then drink more Gatorade, eat something, you can wash all the salt out of your system with lots of water and not eating. Ask my daughter how we know this. If it's hot, I mean really hot, get a bag of ice and put half in your water jug and pack the rest of the bag flat and zip your jacket around it. Seal the jacket except for the left cuff. Lift your arm into the wind until it gets cool then keep it out of the wind until you need it again. . Eat something just after dark, if I tell my self I feel good I can go with out eating, I will pay for this about 0300 by not being able to ride until dawn. We are all different, you have to figure out what works for you. Have fun and be careful.
 

Greg Rice

Premier Member
IBR Finisher
#8
I ride until I am ready to stop and every ride it is different. You never know how you are going to feel until to start riding, some times you can ride all day and all night and other times you can barley get out of town.

I have a couple GPS on my motorcycle that has hotel / motel POI's and when I know I need to stop to sleep I locate a hotel / motel in my GPS along my route and then use my Bluetooth headset to call and book a room before I arrive. If there is no vacancy I try the next hotel in the list until I find one that has a room.
 

Marc11

Premier Member
IBR Finisher
#10
Lower than the USA for sure. 100-110 KM per hour are common, not too sure about way mid West Canada. In Ontario radar detectors are illegal, you should check other areas to be sure.
 
#11
What kind of speed limits do you encounter on a cross Canada ride?
Maritime provinces, divided highways are posted at 110 km/h, LE will usually tolerate 127-128, Ontario and Quebec, subtract 10 km/h from this. In higher traffic metropolitan areas, stick to the hammer lane, follow traffic (I´ve seen 150+km/h on hwy 407 in Toronto on a Friday afternoon-- wasn't missing my KLR here). This is what has worked for me. Use at your own peril.
 

EricV

Premier Member
IBR Finisher
#13
That's a good question @FLHXHS The C2C ride has some interesting facets. For the US version it's common for riders to ride a BBG, sleep and finish it up after the rest stop in a hotel. The Canada version is longer with more time allowed and lower speed limits.

Plan your route. Plan your stops. If you're going for the Gold version you have approximately 15 hours off the road to plan in, at maximum. If you ride 16 hours, rest for 4, you're sleeping 3 times in the process. That's not un-reasonable, but it's also not most people's normal sleep rhythms either. Ideally you need to find a rhythm that fits with your normal sleep pattern. Do you know how many hours you normally sleep in each sleep cycle? A sleep cycle is from laying down, going thru REM sleep into D state, (deep, non-dreaming), and back into REM before waking. Most of use do this multiple times in a normal 'night's' sleep. I sleep in 3 hour cycles. When I did the Ten-n-Ten rally I rode 20 hours, was off the road for 4 and slept for 3 hours, then repeated. I never set the alarm clock, just got up when I woke up.

You need to identify what your sleep patterns are. And consider the overall time frame you want to aim for. I've done a lot of endurance rallies and know I can usually ride continuously for 30-40 hours with an Iron Butt Motel nap if needed. Based on that, I could not do a C2C w/o a solid sleep break. I don't know what works for you, but suspect 16 hours on the bike will not put you ready for sleep. For many, that's about what a SS1600Km ride would take. It's roughly 5860 kms coast to coast staying in Canada. That would leave you about 1100 km on the last segment of your ride. When you leave is going to play a significant part in where/when you stop. And how easy it will be to get a room. Trust me, an actual bed and shower does amazing things for sleep quality and for establishing a repeatable rhythm.

Based upon your suggested 16/4 pattern, if you started at 0600 hrs, you would be off the road at 2200 hrs the first night. 10 pm is not an un-reasonable stopping time. However, that puts you back on the road at 0200 hrs, (2am), and off the road the following leg at 1800 hrs, (6pm), when it's still light and you likely won't be able to drop off to sleep. Up again at 10 pm for the third leg putting you in a position of riding thru the entire night period which is more stressful and fatiguing. That ends the third leg at 10 am. A nearly impossible time to get a room unless pre-planned and far outside any semblance of normal sleep routine. And now you're starting the final leg at 1400 hrs, (2pm), and need to ride for another ~1100kms to finish.

I would suggest that instead of looking at it from the standpoint of how many hours you want to ride and sleep, you look at it from a more traditional standpoint of when do you want to get on the road and when do you want to get off the road?

Some prefer to ride darkness at the beginning of the day and quit for the day at nautical twilight or within a couple of hours after. Darkness naturally brings sleep to many of us. If you started at 4 am each day and rode until full darkness, give or take, with a pre-planned hotel stop you could get more sleep between legs. 4 am to 10 pm is 18 hour days. Sleep/off the road for 6 hours gives you plenty of time for a shower and sleep/eat. Back on the road at 4 am. A repeatable rhythm. You need to decide how far that time frame will get you each day and what your goals are in terms of doing the C2C in 75 hours or 90 hours. It's not a bad thing to plan for 75 hours with the fall back of still completing it in 90 hours. A C2C is not a walk in the park for either time frame.

Just my thoughts on this. It's your ride and your plan. The old saying is "Plan the Ride, Ride the Plan... until you re-Plan."
 
#14
What Eric said. Routine. Most humans are creatures needing this, present company included. I like to think of myself as a tough old bird, able to go long hours (I guess I am, been working 15 hour days every day since February on this darned covid thing), but I need my regulai-ish allotment of zzzzzz, and it needs to be in my regularly scheduled time slot. It can be shorter, but if it isn't sometime in the 10pm to 5am space, I won't be able to function very long. This could have negative consequences on a motorcycle, at highway speeds...
 

Marc11

Premier Member
IBR Finisher
#17
Some of us have slept next to our motorcycles...some more than once on the same ride....hotels can be hard to find at o'dark thirty in some places. Some of us have slept in rest area parking lots, behind office buildings and they on park picnic tables to name just a few....isn't that bad unless the temps are below freezing.
 

EricV

Premier Member
IBR Finisher
#18
Using the Iron Butt Motel is about timing and opportunity. It can be a real restive stop, or just a waste of time. It all depends on what you are feeling and the location. If you feel safe and relaxed about what's going on, it can be awesome. If you're stressed and not comfortable with the location, it's likely not going to be restive.