It is the fate of all of us to end up on the scrap heap, one way or another, whether we be machinery or people. That thought was reinforced when I came across a new piece of trash on one of my dog walks, someone's formerly treasured ride in the mangroves. I wondered why anyone would disassemble a scooter and toss out the carcass as though it were merely a fish skeleton but I took this as an Awful Warning and reminded myself I am not ready to go out to pasture jut yet. Thanks to good genes and lately tons of sweaty exercise I am feeling quite well thank you, strong and surprisingly fit which is as well as I plan to ride to Canada next week. Unlike this poor scooter which is never to be ridden again:
You can check out their web page for details but the Iron Butt Association is one of those groups that I was pleased to join despite the fact they were quite willing to have me for a member. I made a couple of rides a decade ago and enjoy membership number 39,523 in an organization that now boasts more than 60,000 riders. The idea is to cover a long distance in limited time and do it safely all while recording each step of the way to prove you did it. Then you get a licence plate holder "Toughest Rider In The World" (very funny) and a certificate, but only when you have satisfied their volunteer examiners that you completed the ride you claimed. Everything is documented by the rider during the ride as you can see I was ready for my 2010 ride to the Catskill Mountains of New York. I carried my paperwork in the top box and signed off each stop during the 36 hours I spent in the saddle:
I put the gas station receipts and any restaurant or store receipts in the envelope and numbered them with each stop to prove I was there. This is the extract from my first ride, a 1000 mile "Saddlesore" in 24 hours the basic Iron Butt qualifier to Lake City and back, completed in a leisurely 21 hours:
That was on my 900cc Triumph Bonneville and now I want to try completing 1500 miles in 36 hours all the way to Niagara Falls. I plan to leave Saturday morning at ten and arrive in Niagara, New York (not Canada!) before ten pm Sunday. This time I won't be riding my late lamented Triumph but instead my new to me 200 cc Burgman scooter. Which fact makes this trip an adventure on a machine viewed as a beginner bike or merely a city commuter. I want to see how well the scooter performs on freeways and in hills and how much I enjoy riding what has turned out to be in fact my perfect commuter bike. In the land where cubic capacity rules all choices, and size makes a man manly, my choice of ride may seem eccentric or effete, but it is in a sense a quest to seek out my motorcycling origins. The Burgman is actually a sensible machine, with a wind tunnel tested windshield, large seat, easy controls, ample storage and long foot boards in a seating position protected from the weather. What it has in common with my first rides forty years ago is it has a small engine .
My first two motorcycles in the mid 70s were fire engine red Italian 350cc sportbikes and I rode them all over Europe and North Africa with luggage lashed to them and me crouched over them full of youthful bravado and joy. These days I see solid citizens riding huge machines with all the latest technology disdainful of "small" motorcycles never mind scooters which are beneath consideration as travel machines. Yet when I was a youngster when motorcycle touring was becoming popular among the middle classes everyone rode what they had and they had fun. A modern rider would look at my 1974 MV Agusta 350, a push rod air cooled twin with drum brakes and ask themselves who in their right mind would go touring on this? I did, happily! I knew no better...and it cost me less than half a million lire lightly used.
The question becomes why do an Iron Butt at all? For me the answer is simple: I like a challenge and this effort pushes me far out of the Keys and in a hurry. I leave Saturday morning and by Sunday night I'm peering into Canada I hope. Great, right? Well, think of it as kinetic energy with the Iron Butt ride hauling me in a hurry to the top of a very steep slide. After I get to the top all I have to do is let go and slide gracefully back down to Key West...and I plan to take four days touring to do that part of the program! Monday morning with the Iron Butt complete, the paperwork and receipts properly mailed in the stamped envelope I took with me, I have no more obligations to the world or anyone else. I ride for me and me alone. There I am: let loose on North America with all 18 horsepower of Suzuki bliss with no one to answer to. That's worth an Iron Butt right there. With any luck I will have decent weather in August and so I have planned a zig zag ride home visiting friends as I go.
I have bought a mounting kit for my new iPhone 8 because even though the Iron Butt ride up is all Interstates necessary to maintain a high average speed,and easy to track, the way back will require me to insert the "Avoid Highways" option in my Google maps. I plan a meandering ride across Pennsylvania to see Steve and Virginia to meet Eric and then South Carolina to make an overnight stop Wednesday in Savannah before returning to Florida Thursday for lunch with Bill in Jacksonville. I am really hoping this will be a fun way to explore the Burgman's capacity for all sorts of touring, fast and slow, mountainous and not. The phone will make touring easy, I use it in the car on all trips, but on the Burgman it will ride on this unobtrusive clip showing me the way.
All of this riding involves getting ready, making the scooter a tourer and me a long distance rider. I am confident I have put in enough miles since March to learn the scooter's foibles which are: none. So now I am busy checking the few additions I have purchased specifically for the ride. The phone holder was a big one as I have never previously had a navigator mounted on the bike. God knows why not, they are brilliant devices. The Quad Lock is sleek and clean and comes with a waterproof cover for the phone. $100. ka-ching!
Tire sealer to reduce the chance of a flat. $12, and there is enough in one bottle for two applications. I should ride with this stuff all the time, so this is another reason to appreciate the Iron Butt program as it forces you to make sensible preparation decisions good for daily riding. ADVRider forum members who ride off road swear by this stuff. I will also carry a puncture repair kit and an electric air pump, just in case.
In my cavernous under seat storage I will carry my waterproof Frogg Toggs and a bag of street clothes as you have to look respectable when you are out in the world. Nowaays self standing underwear is a memory of ill laundered youth so I feel an obligation to carry some spares.
I also bought a tail bag ($70 ka-ching!) to put my camera and my man purse and some water and some snacks and make them easily accessible...
When I park the scooter I can easily unstrap it, take it by the handle and walk into the hotel with it. Its said to be rain resistant but I will line it with a garbage bag to keep the contents extra dry.
In addition the bag has some bungees on top and I'm thinking of carrying a peace-of-mind bottle of gas there. Sometimes on these Iron Butt rides you are tempted to push just a little bit further before stopping (unless you are in pee agony...) and this 30 oz bottle will give me an extra 20 miles with careful riding if I run the 2.8 gallon scooter tank dry. I ran the Bonneville dry on my first Iron Butt and it took some quick thinking and sloshing the fuel tank to get the engine started and into a gas station.
So that's the plan: leave from home just before ten, get my first gas receipt up the road which will give me my official start time and then ride to the Turnpike as fast as I can, where I shall settle in to ride I-95 from Fort Pierce, I-26 from Charleston, I-77 through Columbia and Charlotte to Wytheville, Virginia. Then US Highway 19 at Beckley West Virginia, then take I-79 to Pittsburgh and Erie, and I-90 to Buffalo and I-190 to Niagara. Piece of cake...Hoping for few road works and no accidents...I am a funny guy, because there will be all sorts of unexpected nonsense along the way and I know it already.My friend Webb who intelligently limits himself to driving sailboats says he's worried for me dealing with other drivers. He has a point, but like him on the water I shall rely on my experience and common sense and hope for the best. The thing is I am looking forward to this madness as much as Webb is looking forward to casting off and going sailing on the dangerous deep blue sea. Weird people, we are considering we could stay home and watch Netflix..
For an opposing view there is this essay by a rather splendid American writer who lives in Wales, one Chris Cope. He's a pretty good novelist and I support his motorcycle page with money, but he is an idiot when it comes to the Iron Butt, he rode in the cold and rain and fog of a Scottish summer:
Doing an Iron Butt Ride was Utterly Pointless.
My wife thinks it's goofy but she is the woman who ditched her legal career in California and took off sailing with me and two large dogs to Florida on a whim. In six months we had rented our Santa Cruz home, moved onto the boat, organized our lives and disappeared south to Panama. Riding an Iron Butt seems boyish. but not life challenging to her. Besides she doesn't envy me the journey when it is undertaken not as a leisurely tour, but as a rigid piece of bookkeeping with extravagant goals. She made me some sandwiches which I stuffed in a saddlebag and I ate the first one in a foggy freezing Interstate 95 rest area outside Jacksonville in the early hours of October 10th, just about 8 days ago. The chemical vending machine coffee warmed me, the candy bar gave me an energy boost and the sandwich reminded me of home. It was a bittersweet meal, eaten while squatting on the sidewalk looking at my Triumph and wondering what the hell I was doing.
The dawn brought with it the promise of warmth and none too soon. I left home at ten o'clock at night planning to ride the warmer regions of Florida in darkness while crossing the Carolinas into the mountains of Virginia before the sun went down. So far so good even if it was colder than I had expected.
To complete an Iron Butt you pretty much have to ride the Interstates to get the job done. I don't find them particularly scary for the most part, just boring, and it's that potential for boredom that makes an Iron Butt ride liberating. I don't need electrons, I eschew radios and while I ride the long miles I live with my thoughts. It is an activity very much like sailing in that the daily rules of living are suspended, my presence on the road needs no explanation, my life is suspended between daily routine at home and the successful completion of the ride. It is a most excellent adventure, which at age 52 reminds me of my epic rides of my youth through Europe and Africa on motorcycles far less suitable than my modest Triumph Bonneville.
Throughout the Iron Butt ride I had but (!) one mechanical glitch. On that first night while looking for a gas station the front brake suddenly started rhythmically snatching when applied. I feared the ride was over in Edgewater, Florida, home of the Boston Whaler boat factory it turns out. The front disc was burning hot so I stopped under a street lamp and one of Edgewater's finest lit me up. I never disclosed my occupation but we chatted while the disc cooled and she told me about marrying a European (like me...sort of) and visiting Holland and so on and so forth. The disc gave me no more trouble for the rest of the trip despite my worrying about if for a few hundred miles so whatever corrosion had built up in the caliper had apparently been burned off forever.
To get the coveted Iron Butt certificate one has to document the ride. My wife witnessed my departure from my home on Ramrod Key, I filled up with gas at the Ramrod Key Shell and marked that receipt number one obtained at 9:58 pm October 9th, 2010. The fourteenth receipt I obtained in Binghamton, New York, at 9:38 am October 11th 2010, about 1517 miles later. And all the way along I noted my breaks, my stops, my gas receipts to mark, indelibly my route up the Interstates for the benefit of the Association which will study my route with a fine tooth comb. When they say I rode a Bun Burner they mean the ride is certified. My top case, with my man purse inside, was my office with a manila folder and an envelope for the numbered receipts:
I am quite familiar with Interstate 95 and I find myself quite fond of the creeks and rivers and estuarine marshes of the low lying coast of Georgia between Jacksonville and Savannah. The sun came up as usual and I couldn't resist a quick stop to photograph the scene.
Photographs from an Iron Butt ride must perforce include lots of road shots, gas stations and motorcycle pictures. It is an imperfect way to illustrate the ride but from the seat of a 2007 Bonneville it looks a bit like this:
I had no real idea what to expect on this ride. I knew I couldn't do it in 24 hours a so-called Bun Burner Gold, in Iron Butt-talk, but I had no clue how I would feel after spending a day and a night in the saddle with the prospect of twelve more hours to go. My Bonneville is essentially stock, with luggage and a windshield added and that's the way I like it to add a certain simplicity to a ride that can be swamped by technology on motorcycles that more closely resemble cars than the elemental machines I like to ride. Honda Goldwings and Japanese sport tourers or of course phalanxes of BMW tourers line up to dispatch impossibly long and complex Iron Butt rides. I like my motorcycle that more closely resembles a horse and buggy than a spaceship.
A nap was in order in South Carolina south of Columbia on I-26 where I pulled off the freeway and found this perfect spot alongside a side road. Long distance riders call it the Iron Butt Motel when a rider collapses across his bike or on the floor alongside it for a quick nap. I spent thirty minutes here, napping, eating another sandwich and reading a motorcycle magazine to take my mind off the ride for a moment. The electrical junction boxes made ideal companions, silent and not the least inquisitive. The tall weeds made for a perfect outhouse. I resumed the ride confident I could do what needed to be done, even though I had little idea what was in store for me. Lunch was another brief pause in some bushes where I set up the camera and tried to look cheerful for the distant pose. What a fun way to spend one's weekend away from work...fun for a masochist perhaps? 
I took this picture near Yadkin North Carolina, at 72 miles per hour indicated. Half past five, 90 degrees and 850 miles from home. Hum-de-dum-de-dum. 
As promised more Interstate pictures on a lovely sunny afternoon, my kind of weather.
I did a weird thing when I reached the Blue Ridge Parkway at Virginia's Fancy Gap, I ignored the dictates of the Iron Butt to stay focussed on the ride. This piece of the state looked nothing like the Virginia everyone recognizes, horse country with mansions and pastures and post-and-rail fencing. This part of the state looked like nothing quite so much as the wild and woolly corners of Western North Carolina, where my sister-in-law lives outside Asheville, just off the Parkway. Because of family connections I know I will never get to ride the Bonneville around Asheville, I will always be forced to visit by car, so I took twenty minutes and got some pictures of the Bonneville on the Parkway. Just to say I did, and here's proof:
Night started to set in just south of Roanoke. I wanted to pull off and sit in front of a fire with Sandra T and her organic farmer but I had a date with destiny up the road and as the shadows lengthened I came to understand that I-81 is a death trap, and could not be avoided.
Getting dressed at ten minutes before six I noticed my three year old motorcycle boot was showing signs of wear and tear. Like the Bonneville this boot has 43,000 miles on it and perhaps it's time (unlike the motorcycle) to pull out my spare pair from the closet when I get home. It occurred to me in the darkness that this trip was wearing us out.
Fuck shit bugger. It was cold on Interstate 81 climbing into the mountains above Scranton. It was beautiful and stark, the Bonneville was pulling like a dray horse up the hills, cresting at 80 miles an hour in a blizzard of freezing air. My teeth were chattering, partly from the cold and partly from the anticipation of failure. The clock on my handlebars ticked on and the miles never seemed to diminish. I kept hoping the sun would warm me up but the temperature never reached 60 degrees (15C). I hated this portion of the ride, and I swore I would never ever do this again. Fuck shit bugger. I swore to myself laconically and repetitively through clenched teeth.
I reached the city limits at 9:30 and though I knew nothing about the city, I knew enough that I had to reach a particular gas station I had checked previously on Google Maps. The distance was apparently 1517 miles from my home and I wanted those few extra miles as padding to make sure the Iron Butt checkers accepted my ride for certification. Thus it was I skipped the downtown exits and pushed on over the river and around the bend for an extra few miles in the pale sunshine (thank God it wasn't raining!!) before finally pulling off the freeway for one last gas receipt.
Receipt in hand I asked the attendant where the cop shop was as Iron Butt rules require a witness signature to put you where you claim to be at the end of the ride. Amazingly she knew where it was, not one in a hundred people in Key West know where I work at the police department..." I go there to get fingerprinted to sell tobacco and alcohol in New York state," she said patiently when I expressed amazement at her knowledge of her town.
The front desk deputy at the jail looked at me like I was a lunatic but he was game, as I slipped him a Key West police shoulder patch, the "trading card" of police agencies the world over. With all the paperwork complete I set out for a Greek diner I had seen on my way in where a grumpy New York waitress served me ham and eggs and potatoes and hot coffee till I felt I was ready to burst. Outside in the parking lot I stunned three French Canadians who were admiring my Bonneville by answering their queries in French. Then I went downtown wondering what to do now. I passed a Pack Mail office and I ducked in and photocopied my receipts, mailed them off to Naperville, Illinois for processing by the IBA scribes, such that well before noon my Iron Butt ride was over and the papers were all filed and on their way. Amazing! Even more surprising was the welcome parade the town put on for me as I arrived downtown.
Somehow my energy levels were back and it was clear to me that staying the night in these mountains would not be a Good Thing for one of my delicate constitution. The talk in the diner was of rain to come in the night and temperatures were much colder up here than even back in Harrisburg or Roanoke. I decided retreat was the better part of valor and with my newfound energy from all that breakfast I got out of town and aimed my long suffering Bonneville at the nearby Catskill Mountains. There was time enough to ride some twisties on my way south. So we did, my Iron Butt Bonneville and me.