Twisty course SS1K on a sportbike: leathers, dragging knee, and one very crooked horizon (video).

IBA ZX-9R

Well-Known Member
#1
I didn’t know any IBA riders before my first IBA ride in 2017 and other than those on here, I still don’t know any. The ones I’ve heard of in my area I’ve never run across and the riders I looked up to when attempting my first, all bowed out even though they had talked openly about trying it one day.

By my first successful IBA ride, all of the distance rides I had been on prior to it were 50% twisty or sweeping roads and 50% highways. After all, I’m a sportbike rider and I’m always wearing a full race suit. The highway portions were always the toughest on my body, locked into a few positions bone joints aching without relief no matter what I tried while super-slabbing. I hated the highway portions and loved the curvy portions.

The freedom to plan my own route meant I had to include as many miles of twisty roads as I possibly could string together. Success hinged on that fact alone. And since I knew of no other IBA ride that included the Pacific Coast Highway (CA-1), let alone hwy-36 or hwy-70, and probably for good reason, the prospect on riding all of them in one day grew my appetite.

The video is a near complete before-during-and-after time lapse of my second successful attempt. It began in the moonlit darkness at 1:25 AM in Reno, NV, where I proceeded to get my witness verification at a pub that was open at that hour and officially began at 1:45 AM with my first fuel receipt. The first leg of this ride was a 217 mile non-stop in the darkness to get miles under the bike in relative safety of a freeway, then arrive at Bodega Bay, CA, around dawn, where the adventure of tilting the horizon began in earnest.

The history and beauty of the ride are captured in 16:9, but the exhilaration of riding a twisty course for a dawn-to-dusk full day cannot be explained or captured in pictures. It was different, in a very good way.
 

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#2
Congratulations on completing the ride and thanks for the ride report and video

Doing SS1Ks on 2 lane roads does add to the challenge.

-Mark
 

Scott Parish

Premier Member
#3
Nice job and congratulations. I don't have the time to watch the video; but having rode many of those same miles - I know how beautiful the scenery can be. Bodega Bay is one of my favorite stops when heading through Northern California. I never thought to get a witness statement from someone at a bar around last call.....hopefully they recall signing if the IBA calls... :)
 

IBA ZX-9R

Well-Known Member
#4
I'm no barfly, but the people that work at the one I went to are like extended family. We're to the point we can be rude and honest without worry. The IBA could call them eight months from now and they'd verify my crazy hours (#1: ~2:15 AM -- #2: 1:35 AM) and that they verified my odometer, no question about it.

The craziness of having done an IBA ride is part of what makes doing them that much more special, the minimum requirements are so astronomical! It's nice knowing that when you look around a room or wherever there's a group of riders congregated, that you're one of the elites, having successfully completed one of these rides. And until you complete one, you earn a new respect for those crazy IBA riders who've gone beyond the minimum.

Do watch some of the video though. And if you do, I think you'll be rewarded if you can watch from 7:30m to 16:00m, the part that comes in just as the sun lightens the pre-dawn sky. Then again, I've been told by many who've watched that section of the video that it's enough to give them a headache, with all the left and right hairpins. :D Same for hwy 36. Sensory overload. Boom! (head exploding!)

Something about viewing the horizon at an angle while doing a SS1K, just makes me smile and want to do it all over again.
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