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Iron Butt Ride
Rick Dashner RikkiDee’s Big Adventure - 09-16-2001
This story is about the Great Lakes Gold (GLG) ride I performed August 22-24, 2001. The GLG is a new Iron Butt Association (IBA) extreme ride involving circumnavigation of all 5 Great Lakes in 50 hours or less on a motorcycle.
Eddie James (http://www.amadirectlink.com/features/Eddie.htm) was the first person to accomplish this ride and he worked closely with Michael Kneebone to have it inducted into the IBA as an official ride. A big thank you goes out here from me to Michael and Eddie for taking the initiative to make this an official IBA ride. You can learn more about endurance riding at http://www.ironbutt.com/. Official endurance rides for the IBA are strictly documented through the collection of receipts and witness signatures. Completion of a Saddle Sore 1000 (1000 miles in 24 hours) or the Bun Burner BB1500 (1500 miles in 36 hours) is the way to obtain membership in the IBA. It is also a mandatory prerequisite to qualifying for an IBA extreme ride.
My own membership into the IBA was achieved by accomplishing an SS1K while encircling Lake Michigan a couple years ago. Since then I’ve done several 24-hour rides. Much of my LD has seen me bumming around Ontario lately getting to know the roads and driving customs of our good neighbors up there. It was while circling Lake Huron one night that I began contemplating the two remaining lakes Erie and Ontario (there’s lots of contemplating during a long distance motorcycle ride). I’d wanted to ride the Northeast since getting my Valkyrie and a 24 hour bike ride was a good excuse. But those lakes are small in comparison to the others. Small enough to require looping them both at once in order to feel some sense of accomplishment I figured. But what personal accomplishment is there in that if it involves no progression of my personal endurance riding skills? I’d been planning an extreme ride and felt that I was skilled enough to be capable of a 50cc (coast to coast in 50 hours or less) but the 50cc is customarily performed between the Jacksonville, Florida area and San Diego, California. Just getting to and from the end points of this ride is a feat (and no small expense) in itself considering where I live. This led me to wondering how looping all 5 lakes would compare to a 50cc.
I contemplate the idea the rest of that summer and during the following off-season added up the miles using Mapquest. The ride was over 100 miles longer than the Southern 50cc route! Considering that the 50cc times being turned in were well under the 50-hour allotment I felt that the 5 lakes ride could be performed in 50 hours. I was intrigued at wanting to find my own personal wall and had never made use of the Iron Butt Motel on any previous ride. “The Wall” is a personal endurance limit beyond which a person can not continue. The Iron Butt Motel entails stopping to sleep on a picnic table, a piece of sidewalk, or even on the bike itself for very short periods of time in order to continue on in a safe manner avoiding the pitfalls of having the wall collapse on them.
I posted my “5 Lakes in 50 Hours” brainchild to the LDRiders mailing list (http://www.ldriders.org/) for open discussion to see just how crazy this sounded to others. Confirmation from fellow LDRiders would be reassuring. Turned out that only one person was willing to entertain the idea as feasible. Neil Dolson not only opened a dialog with me about the ride but he actually deemed it feasible enough to attempt it himself. Some of the difficulties being pointed out to me by “The List” were that half the run was on two lane roads, the availability of fuel “up there”, border crossings, cold weather, wild animals, construction, currency exchange, and the extra distance. The ride does entail a relatively high degree of challenge but it was also looking to be a lot of fun. There are routing decisions to be made and exercises in navigation are especially appealing to me since that is another test of riding skills (maps are for sissies). I know how Columbus must have felt telling people the world was round after the response from the list but it did not shake my confidence that it could be accomplished in 50 hours nor that I would attempt it. Neil completed the run early in the riding season. My preference was to wait for the relative warmth of August (no electric clothing). Neil’s ride is at http://www.execulink.com/~dolsons/Bike/5l50/GLGOLDREPORT.htm.
I get three days off from work every other week and all summer long my plan was to do this ride during those three days off in the second half of August. One week before the ride my 14 year old reveals that school begins on the day I want to leave! The ride is off. Then thirty-six hours before the scheduled start of the ride I get a babysitter out of the blue and it’s back on! That is some emotional roller coaster ride and leaves very little time for the serious preparations I should have been making that previous week.
I like sleeping in late and taking off about noon when I ride long. It helps me revive 18 hours into a ride when that Sun dawns on me the next day. My girl Julie lives in Griffith, Indiana 4 miles from the starting point alongside I-80/94 so I was sleeping there when robo-dog conveniently woke me up at 1030 the morning of the ride. No problem I don’t like to feel rushed and I need the extra time for the Aleve to take affect on the headache I woke up with. Two Aleve are magic and last for 12 hours. Waking up with a headache is standard operating procedure for me anytime I sleep in late due to my back problems and this is no concern for my ride. I play around with some E-mail, check the weather, drink some coffee, and eat the world’s greatest roast beef stew for breakfast. Ohio appeared rainy on the radar and the predictions were for a big cloud to settle onto Michigan and dump big rain. It appeared this cloud might be blowing into Ontario by the time I got over that way and Julie decided to run out and buy some rain gear and neoprene gloves for me. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. Geesh, some people just have no confidence in greased leather ;) Turned out to be a great idea (she’s got a million of them). Those gloves worked fantastic on the cold nights to come. We’d gone shopping for food and tire plugs the night before. Ended up taking along a bag of cookies, beef jerky, sunflower seeds, and gummy bears to sustain me for two days.
LD is not about high speeds. It is about average speeds and keeping those wheels rolling. High speeds would only burn gas faster and cause more stops. Stops eat up time. Especially the way I ride and not just because I was running a stock 5.3 gallon tank over 1520 cc and six carburetors but because almost every stop I forget the darn fuel receipt until filling out my logbook and taking a second walk into the station. My average speed for the 2586 miles was 54mph. There are many tradeoffs in LDRiding. On this run a speeding ticket was not to be one of them.
The witness signatures were obtained the night before and I begin the 4-mile ride over to the gas station alongside the 80/94 on-ramp at noon. This is Gary, Indiana and they bill themselves as the murder capitol of the world or some such thing so I was not surprised to find this to be a pay in advance pump. I was not into returning for any change so I just dumped a straight $3 into the tank and took off Eastbound on 80/94 heading counter-clockwise around the Great Lakes with a start time of 12:15pm on 8/22/01. This got me about 80 miles down the road into Elkhart on the I-80 toll road. I got a tip here from the attendant that the freeway was blocked 30 miles up the road due to an accident. She thought that it would be cleared up before I got there however and I did not want to document any detours. She was wrong. It was a semi-truck tip-over and it cost me 1 hour and 15 minutes during which I traveled 3 miles. 4 miles later I was on the Ohio turnpike and the big black cloud I was going to beat out before the accident began to drench me. I stopped for fuel 20 miles into Ohio (West Unity) and put on my new rain gear. Crossing into the Eastern Time Zone added an hour to the clock. It wasn’t a very encouraging start but quitting was no option. On I rode.
My next fuel stop was Elyria, Ohio. This was where I connected to I-90. Took off the rain gear even though it started raining again as soon as I left the gas station, but screw it, I got greased leather! I saw the clock reading almost 7pm and this was the worst maze of wet roadways ever. Trying to get back onto 90E! Directional signs were totally absent and this place was busy, cars everywhere and all moving to someplace in a hurry. I began making turns that just felt right. A left, a right, a right, another right… It worked! I could hardly believe I made it back on the Interstate. Navigation is a freaking art form for sure.
Shortly I was into Cleveland. This was my first time through Cleveland. Interesting place. Especially the dead man curves at each end of the city. I’ve never seen an interstate highway’s speed reduced to 30mph for a curve. Tricky stuff. I ran 90E out of Cleveland into the first night and made a pit stop in Harbor Creek, Pennsylvania (just east of Erie) where some construction had slowed everything to a stop. If I have to walk I might as well fill up too.
At the New York state line 90 turns into a toll way again. Didn’t get to see much of Buffalo because of the dark but the roads reminded me much of my home state of Michigan. Stopped for gas in Pembroke west of there and hightailed it for Syracuse where I connected onto 81N. Once on 81N I stopped on the outskirts of Syracuse in Cicero. They don’t know how to give gas receipts there unless you ask for them in advance. So I bought some bubble gum to get a receipt and took the time to figure out that I was 12 hours into my ride and 25% of the mileage (650 miles) was complete. This rate of travel encouraged me. I could make the finish in 50 hours at this rate. What made me really happy though was just to be going in some direction other than east. The Big dipper was glorious in upstate New York that night and I saw several falling meteorites. Coming out of Cicero I noticed many cars parked on the shoulders of the highway. That’s no coincidence in my book, it means only one thing to me, the law is on a rampage here. It was not long until I spotted him busy with a customer on the side. I was more than happy to continue running the speed limit to the Canadian border even though the road was extremely deserted. Headlights in my rear view about 10 minutes later didn’t concern me much but I sure was surprised when that trooper blew by me like I was standing still. Some minivan was playing backdoor to him but I wasn’t signing up for that game. I did not know the road and did see an extremely large deer on a hill looking down at me. There was another cop about an hour further up the road taking a nap in the median around Watertown. I-81 is not the place to make up lost time on this ride.
I’ve never crossed at the Thousand Islands Bridge before. I tried an exit to get a gas receipt for corner documentation. The exit sign said gas but there were no lights anywhere and I wasn’t into an exploratory expedition. That threw me off and I forgot to get a bridge receipt. Then all of a sudden there is this little guy in this little booth and until he started asking me with his little voice about weapons I did not even suspect that he was a border guard. I thought another bridge toll or something. Those borders sure know how to sneak up on a guy… Nice easy questions though for that time of the morning (0230)… Where you from? Huh? Where you from? Oh, Michigan. Where you going? Huh? Where you going? Oh, Over towards Thunder Bay, just touring the Great Lakes. Any weapons? Huh? Any weapons? Nope, not a single one. Have a good ride. Huh? Have a good ride. I can ride on in this direction (me pointing into Canada)? He just nodded in the affirmative. Hey, thanks! Hahaha, I didn’t even feel pressured to lie to this little guy with the little voice whose lips I had to read.
This is where my route differs from the others who have taken this ride before me. I hooked a left onto the 401 and shoot down into Toronto. No problem keeping a decoy in front of you on the 401. Even the semi-trucks get into the act. Stopped in Kingston for gas to document the corner. Found out what happens when the exchange is closed and you use American money. Gas stations don’t worry about the current rates. They just give you a standard 30%. That’s pretty optimistic of them. So I used my brand new Visa card for about half of the Canadian stops. I didn’t call Visa before the trip to inform them of my ride and was worried they might shut my card down if I used it too much but things worked out fine. Nice thing about using the card is you don’t forget your receipts. Took two more Aleve in Kingston as my headache was returning. On I rode.
Never entered Toronto from the East before. Let’s just say it sucks bad. I missed my turn onto the 400N. You can see the signs for it on the outer 4 lanes but there was no way to get over to them other than 5 miles back. So I took the next exit, looped over the highway and got back on in the opposite direction. Stayed to the right and made the 400N in short order. I’ve been here and done something similar to this before. The freaky thing about that time was I didn’t exit soon enough and ended up parked in an airport pickup zone. Even the locals fall prey to this one. The 400N is also a bit of a raceway (daylight dawned along through here) until about halfway to North Bay where ongoing construction slows you down with lots of dump trucks and water trucks. About here it got damp again, not rain, more like a heavy mist. Like driving through a cloud. It was very gray overhead. I fueled in Bradford (1000 miles into the trip) and Huntsville, and then finally turned onto 17W upon reaching North Bay. I‘ve got friends in Sturgeon Falls but I didn’t stop to say hello. It was too early in the run for sleep and I really didn’t expect the dawn until North Bay. I felt that I was 3 hours behind schedule but probably wasn’t. On I rode.
I’ve been down this section of 17 many times. Not much to it for me. When I am on familiar roads the miles go by quickly. I fueled in Espanola and Bruce Mines. Took a break in Bruce Mines and ate some cookies washing it down with some nasty tasting lemonade. Sat on a bench in the sun and relaxed while watching some seagulls for about 15 minutes. This was 1370 miles and 24.25 hours into the ride now. My previous best run on the Valkyrie for a 24-hour ride was 1375 miles. I could have gone further on that previous ride but have no idea how much further since I had reached my destination. This is where I like to be, exploring unknown frontiers. On I rode.
I elected to run 17 through Sault St. Marie and up into Wawa since I had not traveled that road in 20 years and wanted to remember what it was like. Beautiful scenery but a big mistake for anyone trying to minimize travel time. Should have taken my usual shortcut. The construction stop in town was long and stoplights hate me. Once out of town that road goes nowhere in a hurry. It follows the undulating nature of every cove all the way up to Wawa. Well I love the twisties, beats droning down a flat highway any day and I knew early on into the ride that there was no sense in trying for any kind of low time. Not far into the section I came upon a motorcyclist riding an old stripped down Magna who didn’t want to be passed. He was pretty stripped down too, T-shirt, shorts, tennis shoes, and no gloves. A couple coves down the road he realized he couldn’t make me disappear from his mirrors and that I was using him as bait so he slowed down to get a look at me. We traded places a few times and ran a couple uphill torque contests. Maybe a new set of plugs would help him some? Hehe, naw… He must have just liked the sound of my six-cylinders from back there better? At one of the construction stops we got to talk and he asked me if I was going around the lake. Yup, I told him, all 5 at once. Told him I’d been riding 28 hours non-stop. He hung back a bit further after that. Can’t imagine why? He disappeared after awhile, hope he turned off on purpose? A few more construction stops to Wawa where I stopped to gas up. Used the phone for the first time to call Julie.
I was feeling really down. My headache’s back again. It is almost 5pm and I’ve got the whole width of Lake Superior to go. I wanted to be in Thunder Bay by dark to stay on schedule and here is this sign saying it is 770km! Geezus, I think the gas stations up here are solar powered and close with the setting sun. It’s cold and it’s windy. The prevailing speeds aren’t all that low but 120kph can get you a talking to. Add in a couple more gas stops and it is going to be… Midnight before I reach TB? Yikes! To top it all off I take a look at my rear Metzler and see a wear bar! A FREAKING WEAR BAR??? No way! I do the math, only 11,000 miles on this set? What’s up with that? My last set went over 18,000 miles. This can’t be happening. I consider getting a hotel room but it is a fleeting thought. That’s not really an option. I have to ride this bike back now. Can’t just park the bike and take a cab. Besides I have to get back to my job. Vacations aren’t allowed except with advance notice. The chips are stacked pretty high. I’ve gone 1550miles, another 1000 miles to finish in the Gold. My SS1K took 21 hours. I know that distance is nothing extraordinary under ordinary circumstances. I’ve painted myself into a corner here. I’m not sleepy and standing around is wasting time. Julie says I sound frantic. I’ll pick up an hour when the time zone changes and that 1-hour cushion can be my sleep when I hit the wall. 50 hours is 50 hours! Julie was really glad to hear from me I think. I take two Aleve. And ride on.
Heading west across the north shore I stop at every gas station in case one comes up closed. 58 miles to White river, 56 miles to Marathon, 47 miles to Terrace Bay. It might sound like a big waste of time but this section was really twisty and I luck out because the locals come out here to play roller coaster. They are really good at it too. I burn lots of gas in these short distances trying to keep up with them. The frequent stops had a lot to do with reviving my spirits… Or is it the Aleve? Hehe, I believe the twisties helped a lot also. I was feeling like a million bucks by the time I came out of those hills. I was truly blessed. Here is how I know this: Two semi-trucks racing each other up hill around a blind curve suddenly appear right in my face! The inside truck was half on the paved shoulder, the outside truck about 3 foot over into my lane across the double yellow line. If there was 6 inches between the trailers I’d be surprised. I’m running downhill in the left tire track of my lane, a steel cable for a guardrail and I can’t see the bottom of the ravine. No time to alter my speed, no time to alter my course. I tuck my left shoulder and elbow inside the arc that the left grip is cutting through the air and feel the rush as they ROAR past. They were pedal to the metal all the way and never let up in the least, just as I never blinked an eye over the incident. That’s got to be a sign of something! I ride on.
There’s fuel in Dorian at 9:10pm about 30 some miles before Thunder Bay. I spend all my Canadian money to fill up and hope to make the border on that. The sun goes down just as I am entering Thunder Bay and it is dark as I exit the other side on my way to the border. I feel like I am on time again but the ride to the border is in the dark and can’t see my surroundings. Don’t remember it being so far. I’d sent an Email to my friend Jerry Schmitt the night before I left. Jerry is on the LDRiders list and lives in Superior, Wisconsin. He offered to let me rest at his place and it really seemed to me like the appropriate place in the ride for such activity being over the 2000 mile mark. I told him my estimate for arrival in Thunder Bay was about dark but I badly misjudged the distance between there and Superior. I got to the border at 9:30pm with the time change and still had the whole Lake Superior shoreline of Minnesota to go. I tried to call him but over $4 worth of change for the phone wasn’t very practical and I figured I could be there quicker if I quit wasting time counting quarters.
What I thought was a two-hour ride down highway 61 turned into 4 as the northern half of that road is pure torture. Very abusive! I had to stop every 30 miles just to stand next to the bike and catch my breath for 10 minutes. I’ve got 44,000 miles on those stock shocks and am also still using a stock seat. No fun at all. The southern half of 61 down to Duluth is brand new black top and that’s a nightmare in the dark. On a bike it feels like you are flying through space. The jarring my bike took on the northern half must have altered my headlight’s aim because nobody wanted to dim their lights for me and I couldn’t see the road. That section was a mess of curves! Great fun in the daylight I am sure but I feel lucky to have negotiated that it in one piece. It was my first time coming into Duluth at night. What’s up with all the red lights? You must be able to see that from the moon! Can’t imagine what it is for, have never seen anything like it. Kind of hard to describe but from the looks of it they erected a mountain in the middle of the lake and draped it in red lights. By the time I get to Superior I figured I’d better call Jerry (0100) just to let him know I was ok. Woke him up and we discussed the distance to Chicago. I rest about a half-hour here talking to Jerry on the phone and swallowing down about 2 or 3 sips of hot coffee while shooting the breeze with the gas station attendant. I caught a whiff of his cigarette and found out that coughing was a whole new experience since tangling with that washboard of a highway called 61. Coughing produces a very sharp stabbing pain across my lower back and through my spleen. I wasn’t yet sleepy and so decided to proceed down 53 towards Eau Claire. I ride on in search of my wall.
One-hour south of Superior I was feeling worn out. The cold was getting through to me. I’d been awake for about 40 hours and was 2100 miles into the ride. My eyes were too fuzzy to focus on the odometer numbers. I wasn’t sleepy but decided to take a try at my first Iron Butt Motel to get my sight back. Came across a gas station where there were a bunch of trucks parked. Out back was an old picnic table in the deep grass. The tabletop was rotted away but the bench was solid and I laid on that. I put on my rain gear as extra warmth, set the screaming meanie (a count down timer) on my chest for twenty minutes and closed my eyes. Ten minutes later I checked the meanie. It was working properly. I reset it for twenty minutes and closed my eyes holding my bike key in my hand inside my coat pocket. I didn’t trust the meanie to wake me up but it did and I went to get on the bike. No key! Geesh, back to the deep grass and feeling around till I found it. No problem, I found the key, got back on the road again and made it down to I-94 and ran that as far as where I-90 connects. This was about three hours later at 0530 and it was still dark. I got sleepy, bad sleepy. It’s the wall! It came on real fast at 41 hours into the ride, 43 hours since I woke up. Taillights were jumping around in my vision. I wanted to make the next exit but it was touchy. I hung back from the few cars on the road and tried not to let them lose me. The white lines seemed to be jumping at me and construction drums in the distance took some figuring out before I knew what they were. Finally, the exit! That was tough. I pulled into the far corner of the gas station parking lot, set the meanie for 30 minutes and fell asleep on the tank bag. 40 minutes later somebody is telling me to shut the door on my way out. Yeah sure, I always do… Wait a minute I am already outside and there is no door to close. As a matter of fact there is a motorcycle under me with a really weird noise coming from the bike which I’d never heard it make before. Oh yeah this is a ride. It’s daylight! The back of my left hand is itching bad and I see that there is a small slice of meat missing from it. Must be a grass cut from the lost key search. I’m almost afraid to look at the clock to see if I have blown the whole ride. The weird noise coming from my bike was the meanie and it has been sounding off for 10 minutes. Ha, only overslept 10 minutes, no problem. I fuel up (totally forgetting my gas receipt in Tomah, Wisconsin) and hit the highway. Feeling pretty good. A few yawns but very much wide-awake. I can see the odometer again. There is no doubt I will finish the ride within 50 hours. I ride on.
The rest of the ride should be a cakewalk. I connect to I-39S and follow it down through Illinois tailing people that act like they knew where they are going. Lots of police presence along this section but they aren’t keeping busy. When I get to I-80E I am back on a familiar road. I notice at a fuel stop in Morris, Illinois that I am hearing things. The compressor on a large air conditioner at a restaurant sounds like 3 heavy metal bands all playing a different song at the same time. Weird! There is construction along this section but it is of no concern because I know I am close to the finish and there is plenty of time. Yeah right! About 12 miles from getting my finish receipt I-80 turns into a huge parking lot. It is supposed to be 4 lanes wide but the vehicles are about 7 abreast and it’s a big free for all. I play that game for about a mile during the next half-hour. It’s very hot, the sun is beating down. I am wearing full leathers and lose my patience. I take the shoulder to the next exit and ride the side streets over Julie’s house where I unload my bags and relax for a little while. She swears that there are no radios on in the house but it sure sounds like a talk radio show blaring in the next room to me. Julie is rushing me to get the finish receipt, so off I go. It’s only 4 miles and no problem. I throw in one dollar of gas at the pay in advance pump for a receipt that has a time stamp of 12:09pm on 8/24/01. Upon my return I ate the last of the world’s best roast beef stew (leftover from the start of the ride) and take an hour long steamy hot shower. Jumped into bed and wrapped up in an electric blanket for about 6 hours. Woke up and got my witness form signed. The ride is done.
Physically speaking my tailbone was bruised for several days thanks to that beating I took up on 61 along the shore of Superior. I expected much worse (if not outright failure) because my conditioning for LD has seen better days. I just didn’t get very much opportunity to do a lot of LD riding this season. My bad back didn’t cause me any problems with performing the ride but I did tweak something in my neck while parking the bike in the garage afterwards. I expected big trouble over that but whatever it was that happened actually had me feeling better than normal over the next several days. I didn’t use any sunscreen during the ride even though I had brought it along. I didn’t have time to waste applying the stuff considering my already long fuel stops and it always finds it’s way into my eyes after a few hours causing me to stop as it burns like pepper. After the ride my cheekbones were lit up like Rudolph’s nose. My nose/upper lip/chin were scabs. I think this was from following traffic and being sandblasted by the dirt raised up rather than just being sunburn though. A full-face helmet would have avoided this and would also have helped with noise reduction but then I’d have been forfeiting that added aspect of endurance. Well that wouldn’t be any fun now, would it? ;)
Endurance riding… It’s the cure for what ails you! Ride till ya puke!
2586 miles per odometer
28 fuel stops
47 hours 54 minutes
Rick Dashner
Coleman, Michigan
‘97 Valkyrie
SS1K, GLG Pending |
