To ride 1500 miles (2500 kilometers) on a motorcycle in 36 hours is an activity, which when undertaken voluntarily, requires some explanation. In a world dominated by the pursuit of ease and comfort and the rigid security of the familiar, the choice to just bugger off to suffer discomfort and loneliness and horrid freezing cold seems absurd, ridiculous even.
One might call the Iron Butt ride a midlife crisis but for me my entire life seems to have been a midlife crisis. I have fought the notion of having a career, I have traveled as much as I was able and I continue to struggle with my desire for routine and my occasional outbursts seeking a break from the routine. When I first heard of the Iron Butt Association I thought it was goofy, long distance motorcycle riding for the fun of it. Then I realised if I took on an Iron Butt ride I would be setting myself a goal and attaining the goal would keep me riding during the hours that are darkest (and coldest) before dawn. Last year I took off, on a whim, on a thousand mile Saddle Sore. It seemed easy. This year I stretched the challenge, and let me say here and now this one was not easy. Not at all.
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? 
And so it went, rolling up the Interstate under sunny skies, 85 degrees at 75-80 miles per hour. Traffic was light and so was my heart as we approached a jam. Well bugger, this could wreck a man's attempt to be an Iron Butt. The gods favored me as I found myself at an on-ramp where I consulted the map and figured there was a state highway I could follow. I turned around and rode the wrong way down the ramp where I saw a Suburban pulling a sharp U-turn and so I immediately followed it into the wilderness. 
These weren't state highways but delightful back roads winding and twisting through the countryside. I caught up to the Chevy at a stop sign and explained my predicament to the driver who led me carefully to the open on-ramp up the Interstate. I must have lost five minutes travel time- if that. North Carolina gave me a nostalgia burst as Interstate 77 crossed the wine country we had visited with my sister and brother-in-law this summer. I stopped for a granola bar and a soda at a rest area and admired these relics from a forgotten era:
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.
This bike rider gave me a big thumbs up as he went by. I caught up to him when I realised he was riding Jack riepe's favorite bike- a BMW K75, as described in his blog Twisted Roads ( http://jackriepe.blogspot.com/ ) . It was, I thought, an omen. Of what exactly I couldn't rightly say, but it cheered me up. 
Up hill and down dale, the Blue Ridge mountains ahead, and night was approaching with about 500 miles left to go once I reached the intersection with Interstate 81 North.
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.
I cannot exaggerate how nasty the traffic was on this section of freeway. The tractor-trailer rigs lined up, nose to tail, in the passing lane like elephants on amphetamines and chased each other through the twists and turns as though engaged in a Mad Max rally. The rest of us, the cars and me, cowed in the "slow" lane and watched the parade of behemoths rushing by, apparently to their destruction. How we didn't all die on the way to Harrisburg I don't know but by midnight I had had enough. I pulled off, found a shopping center and stretched out on the ground in another Iron Butt Motel between the Bonneville and the dumpsters. I ignored the alarm and to my shock slept soundly for 90 minutes. I leaped back in the saddle convinced I could ride 300 miles to Binghamton by dawn. Back on the road my vision was blurry and my head ached and I felt an overwhelming desire to drift out of my lane. I had to stop and sleep properly. I calculated that if I were back on the road by 6am I could make my mountain deadline in New York state by ten. I found a Rodeway Inn for $50 and sank into a coma.
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 put my gloved hands on the cylinder heads left and then right in turn, the right hand glove on the downhills to keep us coasting as I let go of the throttle. Then I had to keep stopping to restore some semblance of circulation in the frigid morning air. The Bonneville was running fine, the clock was ticking mercilessly toward the 9:58 am deadline and I was too cold to care.
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.
I put this picture on the ADVRider forum thread titled "Old Structures" and somehow it generated an enthusiastic response from some dude who had actually stayed at this place in his youth during a crazy mid winter trip from Up North on a farting Bonneville that dragged him, somehow, to Key West and back in 1984. Quite delightful to hear from another geezer gumming his grits under a snowdrift somewhere, recalling his impetuous youth. I quite recommend ADVRider if you like pictures of faraway places (the occasional burst of juvenile "humor" can be an added "bonus") especially if you spend hours sitting in a room waiting for disaster to strike, as I do.
Anyway this entry is obviously a product of last week's rip snorting ride through south Florida and I was moved to stop on my way home because Dade County has been making noises about abolishing the community at Card Sound and I wanted to take a few pictures before change catches me by surprise.
Most people who climb in their cages and decide to drive to Key West arrive in Homestead from the mad rush that is Florida's Turnpike and find themselves funnelled onto Highway One and just keep going, which works fine, but there is a Better Way. Card Sound road starts just past the Last Chance Saloon, a dubious establishment offering the last chance for a drink in 20 miles, and aside from that attempt at humor the place looks like a pit without the allure of actually being in the Keys.
Card Sound road is 25 miles long and is thus a few miles further than the direct 18 Mile Stretch, as Highway One is known between Homestead and Key Largo, a place where impatient drivers are constantly hitting each other head on. Granted this is the bucolic route, but thats not to say you can't get up a nice head of steam on the long straightaways of Card Sound Road but the speed limit as you approach the fishing shacks drops to 40 miles per, which you would do well to observe as life is lived rather literally close to the edge on this road.
As the Internet, Satellites and Nextflix penetrate every corner of our modern world people keep nattering on about the good old days, and to hear them you'd think it really was Paradise Lost. If you want a taste of life lived close to the edge stop in Card Sound and take a careful walk along the roadway.
Or not, as the case may be:
While their neighbors tout for business:
If you speak Spanish around here you will do better. Card Sound might once have been a place where English was the premdominant language but not anymore, except perhaps across the county line which marks the end of Dade County and the beginning of Monroe County. 
Alabama Jack's touts in English and offers what it hopes is your first al fresco Keys dining experience. Its not real waterfront dining, because the eating area is on the roadside and the waterfront is a bit...derelict? which you'd think would qualify it as being Keys-funky. Some people claim the food's okay and it offers people a place to stop so I guess they do pretty well by calling their decrepitude "funk."
I hope Card Sound survives a bit longer. It may not be to my taste, being as how I don't care to fish, or to sit in a boat and drink, but it isn't to my taste either for people to get steamrollered out of their lives just because they are too funky, or too poor or simply too bloody minded. I like to take Card Sound Road to avoid the maniacs on the Stretch but also to give a tip of the hat to a bunch of survivors who happened to erect their fish camp on the wrong side of the County line of toleration.
Had they built decades ago just 200 yards to the south they would have been in the Keys, where anything still goes, if you have the fortitude to resist the blandishments of the Almighty Dollar. These guys seem to have what it takes to resist anything, for now. 
The tour guide opened it up for questions at the end of her presentation, and one member of the group asked immediately: 
In 1935 a huge hurricane wiped out the financially ailing railroad in the Matecumbe Keys, killed hundreds of people and the connection to Key West died with that storm, in the midst of the national depression. The State of Florida bought the right-of-way and used it as the basis of an Overseas Highway which opened in 1938, allowing motorists to drive direct to Key West for the first time, without the use of any ferries along the way. When I first rode to Key West in 1981 the trip from Homestead took about five hours on a narrow winding highway. 
In 1982 the the Highway was upgraded and the journey to the mainland was reduced to about three hours along a modern broad roadway which in some places is even four lanes wide. The speed limit varies between 45mph and 55mph, and a lot less than that behind gaping tourists...
They love to look out at the water and who can blame them? 
The views are quite extraordinary if you aren't looking for mountains or valleys or rivers or forests or...all the other natural features one expects to see when taking the scenic route. However this is the only route through the Keys. Most islands are a few miles wide, the inhabited ones, but the smaller islands are generally lumps of rock or mangrove and they can be literally the size of a tennis court.
The waters are for the most part less than six feet deep, often less than three feet deep and on calm days one can look over the edge of the bridge and see the seagrasses growing on the bottom. Because the islands are basically limestone and coral there is not much sand and beaches are a rare commodity. The west coast of Florida has excellent beaches with very flat calm waters and the east coast is one long beach with Atlantic Ocean waves breaking spectacularly on them when the wind is onshore. The Keys are instead an intricate puzzle of land that is not quite dry and waters that are not always deep enough to wet one's ankles.
The tallest bridge on my commute is the highest bridge between Big Pine Key and Key West, and thanks to the deadening effect of photography the fact that it arches fully forty feet above Niles Channel is completely lost in this photograph:
From the top of Niles Channel Bridge one can see miles and miles of...mangroves, a forest of green about five feet tall, I took this picture near the sea level:
Descending into Summerland Key the Highway stretches straight as an arrow through the wide spot that offers gas stations a supermarket, a Post Office, a video rental and a hardware store, boat repair, dock repair, pizza and even a landing strip for people who like to fly their small private planes directly to their houses. The highway takes a curve or two and a bridge or two and there isn't too much variation as Cudjoe Key comes and goes and Sugarloaf Key comes and goes:
And all along the highway, unseen to the motorists, runs the aqueduct pipe, installed by the Navy to supply water to its Key West bases. the modern pipe along the modern highway keeps us supplied with water from the south Florida aquifer, and because south Florida is running out of water they mix in four percent saltwater and keep on pumping stuff that doesn't taste that great to me. I collect and filter my own rainwater at my house and store it in a cistern.
The pipe is hooked up under the bridge and it can get to be a big problem if they both get cut by weather or an accident. Also alongside the roadway are rather ugly power poles, huge concrete structures that march to the horizon and mark the line of traffic from afar. They are rated to withstand 155 mile per hour winds, and to its credit Keys Energy does a great job of keeping the power flowing along them, but boy, they are ugly.
The bridges come and the bridges go, connecting causeway after causeway, across Sugarloaf, past the school and the lodge, all at 45 sedate miles per hour (Florida allows motorists to go 5mph over the limit without getting a citation but most visitors don't know that) and every now and again there is an opportunity for a swift pass:
Then the Saddlebunch Keys come into view, a wide scattering of little mangrove islets on either side of the Highway. These specks are uninhabited, too small and scattered to support human life, and the limit rises to 55mph.
The views can be spectacular especially as the sun drops to the western horizon. What a lot of people don't know is that the Keys are strung out east to west and are only nominally north to south, so the setting sun will hit a Key West bound motorcyclist in the eyes in the evening:
And then finally at Mile Marker 10 the ambling Bonneville reaches Big Coppitt Key, served by the Key West Post Office so people who live here think they are in Key West but there's a ways to go yet!
And then, after Big Coppitt comes Rockland Key where the road opens up to its final four lanes all the way to the Police station in the middle of Key West itself. The last five miles are industrial strength freeway curving across the mangroves and at night part of the highway is illuminated by street lights, just like on they do on the mainland in the big cities.
The water tower marks the Navy base where they train fighter jets which circle endlessly overhead, practicing all those things fliers need to practice, much of it over easily accessible open waters, some of it circling overhead.
and then its round a bend or two more, a few more wide water views and its time to ease off and roll into the urban agglomeration of Stock Island, and then Key West itself starts at Mile Marker 4, and a couple of miles down North Roosevelt Boulevard lies the pink Public Safety building and my ride is over.
When I commuted in California with a choice of routes to and from the Santa Clara Valley I was always actively seeking out a new and different road to travel across the Santa Cruz Mountains. Now that I have but one choice the difference is in my head. Some days I'll leave a little early and meander a bit, take a dead end side road to explore, other days I'll make it my business to pass cars and stay ahead of the pack. Other days I pull over and let anyone who catches up to me pass. I make it my own rule not to leave late and not to be in a hurry. Its a road that demands a certain amount of patience because it is an easy commute, no snow no ice, few cross streets and long sight lines so its easy to get complacent and many no doubt would get bored. I do miss winding curvy roads but you can't have it all.
My Bonneville is ideal for this commute as it pulls strongly from 45mph in top gear, and if I drop a gear or two it will accelerate past anything drifting along in front of me. It is such a pleasure to ride I never view slow moving cars as obstacles, just as interesting challenges, variations on my monorail commute.