Pirate John's Ride Report MTF  50CC/100CCC Iron Butt Association Ride

The first 2,400 miles ...

At the bottom of the page I want to thank my friends and sponsors who have helped me, not just on the 50cc, but generally over the years.  Without your help and contributions I would never have gotten this far.

And here are some links that you might find amuzing --

Photos from this trip at http://www.fototime.com/inv/026829AF06F4104

Details on the Franken-K, a muchly modified K1100RS BMW at http://www.fototime.com/inv/BBA42EF164A2EF4

^^^^^^^

Lemme see ... it's been almost three weeks since I returned from the West Coast.  The feeling has come back into most of my body.  Many of my compatriots were out riding competitive events the weekend after the 50cc; as for myself, I went out hitting the local pubs in celebration.  I noticed last weekend as I rode across the Vilano Beach Bridge into St. Augustine that I *still* have not quite gotten my inner ear back in order.  You've got to laugh!

But(t) to start at the beginning ...

50cc.  Coast to coast in 50 hours or less.  On whatever motorcycle you want to ride (*NO*, the event is not restricted to mopeds and other 50cc bikes, despite the name!)  An insidious invention of the Iron Butt Association; check out www.ironbutt.com

Now, lemme say this about that (to quote the late Richard Nixon) ... I get a kick out of the Ironbutt Association and the whole LDRider community.  A buncha good natured guys and gals who run up big miles on their motorcycles.  People with a sense of humour.

A motorcycling writer that I respect (are you listening, Mr. Higdon?) once wrote that we really shouldn't write about fatigue, high speeds, or dangerous stunts when discussing Ironbutt events.

So we'll conclude this tale in about another 2 paragraphs.

Just kidding.

Just for the record it is, indeed, possible to ride from coast to coast in 50 hours at legal speeds and with a reasonable amount of sleep.  I inadvertently demonstrated this when my inner ear went weird early in this ride and it became uncomfortable for me to ride much over 60 mph in a cross wind.

So I must say that I admire pholks who can ride a 50cc.  Or a 100ccc, even.  Or any of the other Ironbutt Association events.  This ain't an undertaking to take lightly.

But(t) I digress.

My own, sordid, personal tale follows.

Originally, I had planned to take a leisurely vacation to central Mexico.  Then a friend turned me on to some good-natured scoundrels who were planning a mass 50cc attempt.  After suffering from pretty damned near terminal bronchitis during the previous year, I thought long and hard about doing a 50cc and decided that I'd give it a stab.  After all, you never can tell what the future would bring. 

Central Mexico would wait.

The Robomantis went into the garage.  The Franken-K came out of hibernation.

The K's a great bike for these kinds of events.  She just needs a better pilot ;)

Early in 2002 ol' John decided to get back into shape for long distance riding.  A few longish trips, a few misadventures.  Some mods to the 'K.  The big day arrives.  I'm prepared ... not as well prepared as I'd like, but I can realistically do this.

And preparation's important.  You don't just hop on a bike and ride across the USA.  Well ... you don't when you're an arthritic olde pharte like me, who wants to do the trip in 50 hours.  Let's put it that-a-way.

I told my bestus friend, the Merry Widow, that I thought the odds were 7 out of 10 that I could ride coast to coast in 50 hours or less.  Decent odds, but I had so much invested in this gig, emotionally and financially, that I felt like I **HAD** to be successful.

Despite what I thought was intense preparation I was still at home, 2 miles from the start, making last minute additions to the bike at 20 minutes before the scheduled start. 

I arrive at what I thought was the scheduled time to find that most of the riders had already left.  And friends, including the designated witness, were not really happy that they had been hanging around aimlessly to see me start.

Oh, boy.

A kiss, a hug, a handshake or two.  Credit card into the fuel pump to establish a time ... start the timer on the bike's dashboard ... and I'm off.

I'm lucky, because I live very near the starting point.  In fact, I'm the closest Iron Butt Association member to Jacksonville Beach, which is a popular endpoint for these coast-to-coast adventures.  And I know the local roads.  So I'm down the road, at an impressive pace.  Old bicycle racing stuff: shake out the cobwebs early and then settle in.  And make some time when you can.

I pass a rider.  He doesn't look happy.

I pass Alan.  He waves and smiles.

(A word here: Alan Leduc organized this shindig, and I'll be forever in his debt.  He did an excellent job.  Alan and crew plotted out *EVERY* exit from coast to coast, and warned us of places where there was no 24 hour fuel.  He also devised several schedules, of which ol' John followed the 184 mile between stops schedule religiously.  Alan done good!)

I'm getting ready to pass another rider and he bops off the Interstate just before I catch him.  I realize that he's most likely following a 140 mile schedule.  Looking down at the exit I see another motorcycle refueling.

Ah, technology ...  I have a GPS and I've programmed all of the stops, and the places without fuel, into The Box.  All that I have to do is to follow the arrows.  It sounds so simple when I say it like that.

That's the good news.  The bad news is that after about the first hour my cruise control quits working.

I felt that the cruise control, at least this early into the 50cc, was critical.

This wasn't good.

At precisely 180 miles the first fuel stop comes up.  I almost miss the exit.

Get to the Exxon station.  Fuel up quickly.  Run to the men's room.  And now ... pull the bodywork off the bike.  What in the hell is wrong with the cruise control??

The answer's obvious.  And simple.  A vacuum line has popped off.  But, dammit ... when I installed the cruise control I managed to hook the vacuum line into the least accessible place possible!

Tools come out.  Alan rides up, smiles and shakes his head.  Maintenance this early ain't good.  He's fueled and gone.  Alan's a textbook example of how a stop should be done; quickly and efficiently.  And I'm still screwing with rerouting that vacuum line in case this happens again.

Dammit.

(A quick word on the electronic cruise control, manufactured by MotorCycle Setup Pty. Ltd., and Australian company, and which you can read about at http://www.mccruise.com/ .  Frank and his brother have been very, very supportive of my 50cc attempt, and their product is excellent.  It's above excellent; this one was custom made for a K1100RS.  And in thousands of miles of testing I had no trouble whatsoever.  And I've had no trouble since.  It's just that when there's trouble, it's inevitably at the worse possible time, right??)

Back on the road.

Immediately it starts to rain.  Which I had expected.

Now, rain in Florida is not necessarily a bad thing.  It keeps the heat down.  And knocks the dust off the 'gators and water moccasins.

It rained.  The weather is getting cooler and at the next fuel stop a change of jackets is in order. 

And the winds pick up.

It's raining, and I'm running at speeds under the limit.

I keep plugging on.  I had expected it to rain until about New Orleans and that turned out to be an accurate prediction.

But man, was it getting windy!

And that's about when it happened.

Going into Mobile, Alabama you cross a long, long causeway and bridge.  Many miles across Mobile Bay.  One of the other guys would later comment about how scary those crosswinds were when crossing that long, long bridge.

Honestly ... I think that I was too scared to notice.  And I'm starting to have balance problems whenever I get hit with a crosswind.

Around Slidell, Louisiana the rains stop but it's still surprisingly cold.  This is about 500 miles into a 2,400 mile trip.  I'm OK ... but not comfy.

There are high bridges at Lake Charles and Baton Rouge.  The kind that ships pass underneath.  I hate high bridges under the best of circumstances.  Gotta concentrate.  Look out for those slippery-as-snot metal gratings ... stay near the center.  Don't look over the edges, but concentrate on the median.  The leftmost lane would be a good place to be, John.  I breathe a sigh of relief whenever a bridge is crossed.

Lake Charles marked the 750 mile point from JAX Beach.  I was looking at my timers and I was slightly ahead of schedule for riding a BBG (Burn Burner Gold, or 1,500 miles in 24 hours).  Slightly ahead ... but not by much.

So far, so good.

Floriduh ... Alabama ... Mississippi ... Louisiana ... and then Texas.

Ever since I owned a truckin' company, which was over a decade ago, the roads around Beaumont, TX have been pretty crappy.  They haven't changed much since then.

I'm beginning to realize that I'm just not comfortable at higher speeds.  As in, riding at the posted speed limit.  Forget those ultra-legal speeds which I had thought that I might use to get me across country if necessary.

The cross winds have whacked out (a medical term) my inner ear.

Whenever I get off the bike I'm walking like one leg is longer than the other.  I feel like I'm wearing out my tires on one side only.

This ain't no fun.

And on top of that, Texas and I aren't getting along.  All of that pavement, of different textures, is driving me nutz.  And whoever sold Texas a hundred grooving machines should be shot.  Later I was to concede that Texas pavement wasn't really that bad, just different.  But the damage was done.

Houston rolls around.  I pull off the ramp where the GPS sez that I should and can't find my fuel stop.

Now I'm tired.  I'm about ready to get back on I-10 when I see the service station, hidden, on the other side of the ramp.  Bop on over.  Now the pump won't take my card.  I walk in, thinking this is a waste of time, and can't quite seem to make the Pakistani gentleman at the counter understand what I want.  Grrrr ...

Tired and cranky.  That's a bad Pirate.

The sun's going down and I'm only 14 hours into a 50 hour ride.  And either my eyesight is failing, or my headlight's failing, because I cannot see very well.  60mph is about the fastest pace that I feel comfortable with.

It's amazing how quickly that I'm willing to accept that my eyesight isn't what it used to be.

(In San Diego I was to discover that the little switch to adjust the angle of my headlight was in the wrong position.  Funny.  As simple as that.  And to add insult to injury my large driving light was blowing fuses like mad and I didn't trust it.  Ironic, considering the hundreds and hundreds of miles that I had ridden at night to prepare for this journey.  All that preparation, and my lighting was merely mediocre, and the cures were relatively simple.)

San Antonio arrives.  It's about midnight local time.  I've covered about 1,100 miles of the 2,400 required.  I'm a few hours ahead of Alan's schedule.  And I know what happens from this point; we go out into the desert.

I dunno if you've ever been in the Southwestern desert before, but I'll give you a hint.  You've never seen so many miles of nothingness in your life.

And I wasn't crazy about my odds of getting a motel room at 4AM in the middle of nowhere.

So I checked into a Motel 6 for a few hours sleep.

5.5 hours sleep, to be exact.

No dinner and no breakfast.  I was out the door before the wake up call came.

Back on the road, and boogying out of San Antonio at 4AM.

Well ... Alan had routed us around a bypass to avoid traffic but at 7AM on a Sunday I was willing to take I-10 right through downtown San Antonio. Unfortunately, the scheduled fuel stop was on the bypass.  Something that didn't dawn on me until my warning light came on.

Sometimes you just have to love technology.  The new GPS units have a database of the services available at all of the Interstate exits.  I was very low on fuel, and not looking forward to joining the pedestrian class, but Mr. GPS said that 12 miles away was a service station.  Hey I can make that!! 

Imagine my surprise when (duhhhh ...) I looked up at the very next exit to see a big ol' Chevron sign.

Fuel up and go!

The sun's coming up, and I'm amazed at the number of Honda Goldwings that I see.

I've seen it written that the national truck of Texas is the suburban.  That may be true, but from what I have seen the national motorcycle is the Goldwing.

Man, there were Goldwings everywhere.  I met so many that I thought there was a Goldwing convention somewhere nearby.  That is, until I started to catch a group of 'em.  This group was going in the opposite direction.  That's when I realized that all those Goldwingers were just out for a pleasant weekend ride.

And I pressed on.

Then I began to see my first high wind warnings out in the desert.

Now, on top of the "normal" wind warnings, the Weather Channel was predictin' unusually high winds.

Fawkin wonderful.

I'm here in the middle of Nowhere, and I oughta be able to boogie, but 60mph looks comfortable.  And as soon as I start to get above that speed a crosswind will inevitably come along, I'll wobble across the lane, and slow right back down.

Lovely.

Any kind of bridge has become a terror, and any sort of height over about 18 inches is making me jumpy.  An I'm in the hills of Texas, beginning to go up into the western US mountains.

Still, I'm ahead of schedule,

Time to assess the pains.  My left shoulder is killing me.  And my neck hurts.  Hands are killing me.  Thank God for that cruise control.  Where's that aspirin?

A big dawg I'll never be.

But I'm having fun. 

I think.

I haven't seen any of the other riders since that first fuel stop.  And this is what ... fuel stop number nine?  It's been a while.  Does everyone know something that I don't??

Onward.

El Paso comes up.  The Texas roads improve.  I boogie right on up to, oh, the speed limit.  And every time I get rolling a wind hits and I'm suddenly about 10mph below the speed limit.

Tucson comes around.  The sun's going down, and suddenly my Valentine radar detector starts making a noise that I've never heard before.  I look at the display and I see "L" for laser.  Is it the sun going down, or are they testing something at Davis Mothan Air Force Base that I really don't want shining on me?  I'm not sure.

Onward.

I-10 splits off towards Los Angeles and Phoenix.  I take I-8 to San Diego.  For the first time I see signs directing me to San Diego.

Damn ... I'm almost there!  Only, oh ... 400 or 500 miles to go!

It occurs to me that, being a well-traveled old pharte, I've seen every bit of these roads at one time or another except this stretch of I-8.  Hmmmm ...

The sun is down, and I'm cruising along at 60mph again.  Not fast, but I'm about 5 or 6 hours ahead of schedule.  I figure that I'm OK.

I stop at the second to last scheduled stop and start to shoot the breeze with some local riders.  While I'm there one of our other riders shows up.  First guy from this group that I've seen for over a day.

He looks tired.  And he asks me if it's OK if he rides behind me.  I say "sure."  I'm tired,  and with my inner ear on the fritz I'm just taking it easy.

Later he'd tell me that he was suffering from double vision and had only gotten 30 minutes sleep on the whole trip.  Whoa.

So we set out for the remaining 350 miles.  We're both tired, but we'll make it.  Right??

We did a few extra stops.  But we're plugging along.

And then the weather starts to get nasty.

It looks just like a snowstorm.  But that's impossible, right?

We continue.

Damn, it's getting cold.  And windy.

I don't even have any long sleeve shirts with me, but the winter jacket is out and the electric vest is cranked up to full blast. 

Dammit.  It's really cold.  What's going on???

Now ... I always thought that my geography was pretty good.  And I have friends in San Diego.  Hell, I belong to the San Diego BMW bike club and the local Parrothead club.  But no one, and I mean NO ONE had ever told me ... that there's a fawkin' MOUNTAIN RANGE, complete with ALPINE PASSES within 50 miles of the coast!!!!

Here on the East Coast we give our visitors at least 500 miles of warnings before they hit the mountains.  And even then they can usually journey through the passes if they play your cards right.

Not on I-8 going into San Diego.

We went up.  And up.  Through 5,500 ft. altitude.  And it got colder.  And the wind blew harder.

I don't think that I've ever seen a curvier stretch of Interstate, to tell you the truth.

Finally, we hit The Corner.  Picture this.  It's 3:30AM, there's no moon, it's blacker than your wurst nightmare, the winds are blowing at gale levels.  You approach an extremely steeply banked corner ... the kind where you couldn't possibly stop on a motorcycle.  And then the wind REALLY hits.

I got knocked from about 50 mph down to about 35 mph.  And blown from one lane to the next.  I was watching the guy riding behind me; he got blown into the next lane, too, but didn't fall.  That was good.

An Indian casino appeared at the top of the mountain and we stopped to warm up.  This sucked.  My knees are shaking.  I seriously thought about abandoning the ride.  With 40 miles to go.  Check out www.viejas.com in Alpine (love that name!) California to get an idea of this place.  Or at least, what the place looks like in warmer weather.

15 minutes later we had warmed up and it was time  to go.  The clerk at the casino commented that trucks were getting blown over on both sides of the mountain.

Bloody wonderful.

We started to descend.  And we descended quickly.

Cars were whipping by like we were standing still.

I was riding the brakes, maintaining a 60 mph pace.  Which was about the limit of my headlights.  And my nerves.

We descended.  Through 4,000 ft.

Through 3,000 ft.

Through 2,000 ft.

Finally ... we were at lower altitudes and I knew it.  Thank you Lord.  The high winds on descent never materialized.

Stop for a quick break.  And back on the bike.

And follow that GPS arrow to the final service station near the beaches in San Diego.

As we get near the end my companion livens up and races to the front.  He's got the final directions memorized.  I follow him as well as the GPS.  Off the Interstate and onto San Diego city streets.

Success!  The charge card goes into  the pump, and the receipt indicates that I've got over 2 hours to spare. 

Elation, punctuated with relief.  I knew that I could do it, if I just concentrated. 

Back at the motel, there are several motorcycles in the lot.  Alan's bike is there.  We are to later find out that we're not the last arrivals, but pretty darned close.

Now to get some sleep!

At the celebratory luncheon the next day it's revealed that everyone who made it to Jacksonville ultimately  made it to San Diego on time.  Three folks abandoned en-route to Jacksonville, nine folks completed 50cc's, and two guys completed 100cc's (coast-to-coast and return in 100 hours).

Gentlemen ... my hat's off to all of you.  One helluva a tough crew!!

And if poor ol' John -- with killer arthritis, a bad attitude, and vertigo -- can ride from coast to coast in 48 hours then I suggest that most of us can accomplish quite a bit if we put our minds to our goals.  Planning and persistence, not to mention that sense of humour, go a long way!

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Friends and supporters of the ol' Pirate that I'd like to mention:

BMW of Daytona.  Without whom I'd simply be sitting at home rather than riding.  These good pholks have bailed me out several times.  Thanks guys, and especially Norm, who I had the good fortune to meet long before he bought the dealership.  Great people.  http://www.bmwcyclesdaytona.com

MotorCycle Setup Pty. Ltd. of Australia.  Tony and Frank provided me with an electronic cruise control which, because of the arthritis that I've developed, was absolutely critical to this effort.  Their product is great and has worked flawlessly for thousands of miles. Thanks guys!  Check out http://www.mccruise.com/

SouthTour.biz.  There's nothing on the site as I write this, but I expect that it will be up and running in a few months.  Some pals who will be selling many of the products that I used, and many more.  www.southtour.biz

Dessy Hydration Systems.  A South African company, these good people were able to give me something that sounds so simple but I couldn't find anywhere on the American market: a water bottle with a drinking tube which fit into a standard bicycle racing bottle holder.  Plenty of water is a key to avoiding fatigue, and I carried two of these bottles on the trip.  www.dessy.co.za

And not to forget ... my friends at the Broken Spoke Saloon in Jacksonville, who kept me fed and in the proper frame of mind before and after the 50cc.

And finally ... my pal Laszlo at Royal Auto Repair in Jacksonville.  Laszlo is without a doubt the best Romanian Mercedes repair person in Florida.  And when it comes to mechanical advice, Laszlo has always been there for me.  A true friend.  Thanks, Mon!


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