Even I'm Not This Crazy!

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you may be swept off to."
Bilbo Baggins

Even I'm Not This Crazy!

posted 06/22/04
Everything is "Extreme" these days. Sports, makeovers; we can't seem to get enough of watching people risk life and waistline going out on the edge. Of course we do this from the comfort of our favorite easy chair in front of the extreme HD gas plasma 42" TV so I'm not sure what that says about our willingness to take real risks.

I've watched a few of these shows and while I know that they are supposed to all be in a genre called "reality TV," I have a few questions that are unanswered. Apparently it's "real" if you eat bugs or dangle from a crane that's had more safety checks than a fire-training seminar. While these stunts may be scary or repulsive, there's darn little risk involved.

As I said, these are just stunts. Real reality is all around us if we'd just take notice. How about the husband who brings home a new sports car just after his wife's complained that they don't have enough money for her to buy a used dryer to replace the one that broke last winter? Now that's an "Extreme Marriage" and a man who likes to live on the edge.

Or how about the woman who dates her best friend's boyfriend one night and then goes out to lunch the next day with that soon to be ex-best friend? Good thing that there aren't too many women in the NRA or things could get bloody! But eating bugs that are nothing but protein? That's not extreme, that's just an alternative diet.

For all this though there is one pattern that emerges from the copious research that I've done on these shows (I've watched three so far). The subjects don't reflect reality! They are young, fit, and generally good looking. No overweight, average looking baby boomers here. I know that a lot of what is done in programming is designed to attract a certain demographic age group so I have to assume that all the young fit, good looking kids are at home watching TV and will eventually turn into large inert blobs of protoplasm.

But now I'm happy to say that I've finally found an extreme sport for old farts like myself. It doesn't require bulging muscles though being in shape does help. Looks aren't a factor because you will be wearing a 'mask'. There actually is a definite risk and finally, not everyone is willing to do this. It's called the Iron Butt Rally.

The concept is simple: ride your motorcycle a long ways and collect extra points for side trips. At the end of the ride, he or she with the most points wins. Simple so there must be catches. To start with, the rally covers 11 days… and over 11,000 miles! It also has one of the most diabolical rally masters in the western world. I'll ride in almost any weather except an ice storm. I'll ride long distances in hot weather. I'll ride hard and fast. But 11,000 miles in 11 days? Even I'm not that crazy!

It was summer and the days were long and the road called again. After a chance to rest up from my Monterey trip with my Fearless Wife I decided that I needed a change of scenery. I wanted to watch the start of this Iron Butt Rally to see what the long distance obsession was all about. Along the way, this was also a ride to visit with friends from the CBR list. I've been a member of this internet list for five years and of the hundreds on it, I've only met a dozen or so face to face.

What I hoped to do was organize a "Convergence" with some of the western list members and ride the roads of Montana after watching the rally start in Missoula. When all was said and done though what with jobs, vacations, and families, only one was able to make it, my friend Linda Tanner from the Washington DC area. Since she works with many of the long distance competitors designing and making custom gear for them, she wanted to be at the start to take pictures of them using her gear for advertising purposes.

I say Linda is my 'friend' but we'd never met except on-line. Since it was going to be just the two of us, I e-mailed and asked if she would like to change the program and instead of riding Montana make it a "sea to shining sea" ride back with me and come out to Friday Harbor. She gave an enthusiastic "Yes" as she wanted to meet my Fearless Wife and she'd never been riding in the Pacific Northwest.

I left on the Redeye on a cool august morning that promised hot weather east of the mountains. The morning rush was building north of Seattle just as I peeled off to head down I-405 and skirt the traffic. I turned east on I-90 and headed into the rising sun. As promised, it was warm but not scorching as I droned across the state. This is a good freeway trip. The pass is pretty and the gorge stunning. Then there's that strip from George to Spokane… Hell is not all old-fashioned brimstone and fiery pits. I'm sure that some parts are long straight, flat roads on hot days. And Ritzville is in the middle of it.

I cleared the Idaho border around 4 PM and finally started up into the mountains. There was variety here and just in time to keep heat-induced sleepiness at bay. The road rose up and started to twist a little. Idaho is a skinny state though and before I'd gotten too used to it, I popped out into Montana and was immediately engulfed in a smoke bank. It's August. It's the West. And of course, it's burning. Naturally the TV crews would be out in their yellow shirts breathlessly intoning stories of danger and damage while looking for the perfect leaping flame to shoot against. The west does this every year. Is this really news?

Missoula was doing its best to imitate LA on a really bad air day as I coasted down into a sea of smoke and ash. Visibility was down to one mile and flames could be seen against some of the most distant hills when there was a break in the smoke. I pulled in to the motel at 8:30. Linda was at the pre-ride dinner so I took a swim and cooled off waiting for her. The previous week I had found out that there were no rooms to be had in the area of the Rally due to contestants and family showing up so Linda had offered to share and have a roll away brought in to her room for me. I picked up the key she had left at the motel desk and went in to hang up my clothes.

I've done a lot of traveling and shared rooms with friends but I have to say that putting my clothes in a closet with a stranger's blouses and riding gear was an eerie feeling. Once, I sat in my car in a parking lot and after having trouble getting the key to work it dawned on me that this was a total stranger's car that just happened to be the same make, model and color as mine. As I suddenly focused on the unfamiliar gear in the back seat a profound feeling of "not belonging here" settled in and I couldn't get out of the car fast enough. Now, I felt like a burglar in Linda's motel room.

She showed up an hour later and we introduced ourselves, trying to get past the awkwardness of meeting someone you know really well for the first time; a contradiction only made possible by the internet. As we got ready to turn in, I teased her and told her that she was my first on-line date and that I hoped that she wasn't one of those women who lure middle-aged old squids to their rooms for tabloid "thrill-kills." She replied that "No" she wasn't but that she hoped that I wasn't one of those middle-aged men who snore!

Damn, how did she know? I admitted that while I had never heard myself snore, I probably could confess to purring like a large cat. She promptly put in the earplugs that she uses to block out the sound of 18-wheelers on the freeway, rolled over, and went to sleep. Ah the comradeship of the road!

The next day we wandered down to the beginning of the rally. The bikes were parked in a cordoned off section of the hotel parking lot. They had all undergone inspection the night before for things like oversize gas tanks (11 gallons max!) and safety checks on mechanicals and tires. This later was crucial as modern motorcycle tires are designed for grip not long life. Sport bikes get only 5000 miles to a rear tire and heavy touring bikes maybe only double that. Many of these bikes would change tires somewhere along the way.

Most of the riders had formed support groups from Internet brand lists like my own CBR-list. They would have teams waiting at key cities around the country to service the bikes while the riders grabbed short naps. This is a big change from the first Iron Butt rally run in the pre-internet dark ages of 1984. In that ride, participants serviced their own bikes and then slept!

At the start we had 60 minutes to go and I interviewed a few riders to try to understand "Why?" All were dedicated motorcyclists and rode constantly. Most were detail oriented and had intimidating amounts of electronics on their bikes. Many were technologists and had multiple cell phones, GPS's, radios, and map plotters on board. Many bikes resembled something out of sci fi movies with remote tanks, hoses, and pumps, wiring looms running over the surface of the bike. I started to think of the bikes as "transportation shuttles."

A few were remarkably eccentric like Leon and his 250cc Kawasaki Ninja. This bike is so small that it fits into a special class for older and smaller bikes that don't have a ghost of a chance of finishing. It's called the "Hopeless Class!" His bike was cobbled out of seven different bikes that he had assiduously scrounged from friends and junkyards. The completed bike was sprayed with RhinoHyde truck bed liner and looked like a stealth fighter in it's muted flat black. The night before, I'd spotted Leon in his room at his laptop looking up weather and plotting the best course to the first checkpoint.

At the banquet, all riders had been given their instructions to the first checkpoint: Primm Nevada. The path to this location was easy but it was the bonus points that really mattered. To upgrade their finish awards from bronze to silver to gold. To win over-all high point and be in the top ten, riders would need bonus points. These always involved side trips for extra miles and bit of a scavenger hunt mentality that would challenge their fatigued conditions as the Rally continued. Sometimes all that was needed was a gas receipt or a picture of the unique numbered towel in front of the named attraction. Riders had received this towel at the banquet along with their instruction packet. Leon's bike was too small and too underpowered to be expected to keep up in this hunt for extra points hence his inclusion in the Hopeless class along with some larger but older and less reliable bikes. Reliability is at a premium here. You can finish the rally on a different bike than you started on but the point penalty will take you out of any chance of being a top finisher.

Thirty minutes to go and the air buzzed with tension as the riders almost vibrated in place. The top riders had positioned their bikes at the exit from the lot to get that little jump on the competition. They would be let out one at a time and those in the back would be starting 40 minutes behind the leaders. The final meeting is called for 'riders only' in the parking lot and I step back.

Suddenly there is a louder buzz as if a hive had been stirred! Remember that Diabolical Rally master I mentioned earlier? He decided that the troops needed tuning up so he reversed the order of the start by designating the other entrance to the lot as the start. Those eager individuals who had maneuvered their bikes up to the head of the line the night before now found them starting at the back of the pack while the older, hopeless bikes left first. "Go under dogs!" I'm thinking. Not that those 40 minutes will make a lot of difference over the course of the Rally but this was typical of the type of challenge that the organizers do to keep the riders thinking and alert.

The bonus points are another example. The ride form Missoula to Primm NV in 36 hours wasn't a big challenge. Linda and I could have done it on our bikes with no special preparation. She'd already ridden her BMW out from Washington DC! But the bonus chasing was what took time and careful planning. To finish high you need bonus points but there are more bonus locations that you could visit in the time allocated. The instructions contained 10 pages of bonuses. Some in single digit values for things like gaming chips from certain casinos. Some valued in triple digits like the picture of a fake animal at the La Brea Tar Pit museum in LA! This is a long way off course and any attempt top collect these points has to be carefully calculated. The check points are only open for a single two hour window and if you miss a check point the penalty is almost too large to make up.

Another of the bonuses along this first leg involved stopping at a bar in Gerlach NV and asking for Joe. Joe would then give you an exact latitude and longitude in the middle of the Black Rock Desert. This is a large dry lake no roads as you drive out on the hard pan. At your designated location you would find the object you had been assigned, put it in your packet and take it back to Joe who would sign off on the paper work and away you go, a few hundred points richer. God help you if you break down on the desert though if he didn't, the vultures surely would.

The most famous bonus was the one on the Sunnyside Washington to Buxton Maine leg of the 2001 rally. All that was needed was a picture of your bike sitting in front of the Arctic Caribou Inn located in Prudhoe Bay Alaska. From there riders were allowed to head straight for the final checkpoint in Madison Alabama. Three riders tried it. Two were late to the final checkpoint because of it but one rider; Bob Hall made it and won the Rally with 12,247 miles and 1,048,769 points!

Linda and I stayed until the last rider departed and then headed out towards Lolo Pass. We were taking it easy as she had cracked a couple of ribs in a tip over accident at the start of her trip days before. We would take two days to get to the Island instead of one and go the scenic route up past Pullman and then across the state on Hwy 2. I felt that this would give her a good sample of our scenery. At my place we would follow the Rally on the Internet as daily updates were posted. After her visit with us, Linda rode back to Missoula to witness the finish and then back to her home outside DC. Her version of this trip is posted on her website at: http://customtankbags.com/ Click on "adventures" and you can read her version of the trip.

I never did fully understand what drives these folks to endure this type of riding. I don't understand marathon runners either but I suspect that there is a common thread connecting both groups. Like contestants wanting our 15 minutes of fame we compete to say we've done it, to set ourselves apart form others. We hope it's noticed but for some there is something else that makes them compete even if no one else was watching. I think Leon would ride just for the fun of it and on this ride he would prove that the Hopeless class isn't always so hopeless. He was one of the 94 finishers. Paul Taylor would win with 11,451 miles and 98,569 points. Leon would place 12th with 11,186 miles and 70,049 points. Yeah, go Under Dogs!

The Old Squid

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