Down to less than two weeks till retirement. Counting in all the use-it-or-lose-it time, I'm actually down to THREE (3) "working" days.
This is good preparation for the Iron Butt ride I'll be doing in the spring.
"Iron Butt", for those of you who don't do motorcycle crap, is a certification program for the so-called "World's Toughest Motorcycle Riders" There are all kinds of certification levels, ranging from "The Saddle Sore 1000", "Bun Burner 1500" (1000 miles in 24 hours or 1500 miles in 36 hours, respectively) and "Bun Burner Gold 1500" (1500 miles in 24 hours) up to the "I don't fucking think so" class of top-end rides, ("48 States in 10 Days", or the "Ultimate Coast To Coast", which is Key West, Florida to Prudhoe Bay Alaska).
Click the logo for their website.
I'm told that at my age, there's no way I'm going to be able to do any of these. Eh. We'll see. I've ridden thousands of miles in my life I've just never bothered to document them.
Assuming I actually manage to get off my ass and do it, I probably won't post any of it here. Or anywhere. I figure the odds are about 70/30 that the naysayers are right and I won't make whatever ride I decide to hit. But, as it happens, I don't much care -- it's just an entertaining idea, not a life goal. Don't get me wrong, it would be cool as shit if I pulled it off, but also utterly immaterial if I don't, and either way it's just for me, not for public consumption.
If I get downrange and decide it ain't gonna work, I'll grab a motel or camp under the bike for a night and relax and go sightseeing wherever I'm at when I call it. Ain't gonna break my heart.
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| Not Me, But Been There, Done That |
So if all this is just for my own amusement, not general consumption, why am I even posting this much about it?
Refer back to sentence #1 above: Down to 3 working days.
Which relates to the one thing consistent with every Iron Butt rider I've ever met (or long-distance bikers in general for that matter): They will warn you about that last 50-100 miles.
Doesn't matter if you've ridden 1000, 1500, or 10,000 miles - that last 50 or so before you get home is absolutely the longest, most agonizing part of the trip.
And I believe it. I recently rode about 1000 miles down from Colorado, not for time, but just kinda loafing around over about a day and a half. And when I crossed the border of the county just next to my home county (about 60 miles to go to my driveway) I hit a wall. I literally had to stop and get off the bike THREE TIMES in that last 60 miles to force myself to go on. Fascinating.
So: Three working days to go after playing the Game every single day of 50+ years, and guess what?
It it is dragging by slower than winter honey. The hours are about a month long and the days are never-ending.
As I said: Fascinating.
Iron Butt. Now there's a good title for a movie. Sort of along the lines of Tropic Thunder. And three days to go - well by now I guess you've hit the end of the road, work wise. At least until they cut your pension or the Great Depression Mark 2 comes along or whatever. I imagine you'll be doing heaps of motorbike riding. Sounds great. (I mean, I wouldn't personally like it, because I'd be afraid of falling off or hitting a roo/grizzly and ending up like a friend of mine who has no foot, but all power to you!).
ReplyDelete'Roos are pretty thin around these parts, and I gotta get further north before grizzlies become an issue, but point taken. The trick being, of course, to not hit shit. I've blasted past a couple of deer at 70- or 80-MPH close enough that I could practically smell their bad breath, but it was my own fault for riding at high speeds in deer-infested regions in the dark. Note that these experiences have knocked 20- or 30-MPH off my dark-riding speed. The "my own fault" thing above is the key feature of about 99% of bad things happening on a bike, if it gets to that. Having finally figured that out, the older I get, the less time I spend with my head up my ass when I'm on the road, so I've got middling - fair odds.
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