The Long-Distance Road to Lisa's Triple Digit

It started with a simple question.

“How many motorcycles do you have?”

“Well, how many is too many?”

“I don’t know. Four? Five?”

“So, let me ask you a question. How many pairs of shoes do you have?”

I hesitated.  That seemed like a personal question.  I mean, sure, I like shoes.  And I have some.  Well, more than some.  I had a closet that could house a family of refugees and there were a lot of shoes in there.  What the hell does this have to do with motorcycles and why all of sudden do I feel guilty for always having the exact-right pair of shoes for any occasion?  I’m a woman.  That’s what we do.

“I’m not sure you can have enough shoes,” was my response.

“Well, I’m SURE you can’t have enough motorcycles,” was his.

This exchange occurred during a phone conversation in June of 2006 just a week or so after I had met Eddie James at a charity motorcycle ride in Alpharetta, Georgia.

Eddie James, Iron Butt Rally Rider No. 71 and founder of TeamStrange Airheads Inc.

At the time I knew little of this man other than I thought he was very attractive, super-intelligent and stand-up-comedian funny.  We were in the “getting to know you phase” which involved many long phone conversations because I lived in Atlanta and he lived in Hendersonville, North Carolina.  At that time I thought this would be a long-distance relationship, if it continued.

But what did I know of distance?

Eddie knew how far far was.  And he didn’t want to scare me away by disclosing that information too soon.

Thus the coy answer to a simple question.  I was on the verge of jumping into a relationship with a man obsessed with motorcycles and riding very far distances for fun.  I didn’t know that was a thing.  But I was about to find out.

Less than two months later I found myself sitting in the showroom of BMW Motorcycles of Atlanta at 5 a.m. staring down some of the strangest-looking characters I had ever seen.

Eddie had enlisted me to help with scoring at the checkpoint for TeamStrange’s Butt Lite IV.  I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

One by one a dirty, road-worn and bone-tired guy in an astronaut suit would sit in front of me.  I would ask if he was ready to score.  “Yes.”

I’d then ask for the scoresheet, receipts and photos.  In those days riders still used Polaroid cameras to document the bonus locations.  They had to write the date, time and odometer reading on each one.  Most of the time the photo quality was horrendous.

After a while I got the hang of it.  I’m a process person.  Scoring was a process.

Later that morning I hopped into a minivan with Eddie, John Pedrow and David E.B. Smith.  The latter two I had just met the night before.  We were headed to Niobrara, Nebraska, and the end of the weeklong rally.  It was my first time in the “rally van.”  I still wasn’t quite sure what we were doing but I knew I liked it.  At some point I was lying on the floor of the van in a six-inch-wide space attempting to take a nap.  I couldn’t remember having more fun.

On the way to Niobrara we made a few stops: Jack’s BBQ in Nashville, Tennessee, the Superman statue in Metropolis, Illinois, the Chain of Rocks Bridge over the Mississippi near St. Louis, Missouri, and my personal favorite – the Elvis Is Alive Museum in Wright City, Missouri.  It was closed but the fact that it existed at all was good enough for me.

It should be noted that while at the Chain of Rocks Bridge I had my first-ever encounter with Jim Winterer.  He was there to claim the bonus just minutes before we arrived.  The riders had to park their bikes and walk about a quarter of a mile on the pedestrian bridge to the center to take a photo of a Route 66 sign.  One rider, whose name I can’t recall, decided walking would take too long so he rode his bike out to the center.  Imagine his surprise when he saw the rally master standing there as he drove up.  He was so shocked he dropped his bike right there at Eddie’s feet.  Jim, who got to witness the whole humiliating episode, quickly claimed the bonus and high-tailed it back to his VStrom. 

Eventually, we made our way to Niobrara, and rally headquarters at the Two Rivers Saloon.  I had heard so much about this place and I could hardly wait to finally get there.  To say Eddie loved Niobrara didn’t sum it up adequately.  Like many other things, he was obsessed with the town, the Two Rivers and many of the people who lived there.

It’s isolated.  Ninety miles from the nearest interstate and 40 miles from the nearest Walmart, it sits on a bluff overlooking the confluence of the Missouri and Niobrara rivers.  It was famous for two things: explorers Lewis and Clark once camped on the riverbank there, and the town had been moved not once, but twice by the Army Corps of Engineers.  It was also the home of Danny and Arlene Liska, pioneers in the long-distance motorcycling world.  This is what brought Eddie there in the first place.  But that’s a story for another time.

We were there to score riders at the end of their grueling rally. They would be arriving the next day.  There was work to do.  That night volunteers and rally staff gathered in the bar of the Two Rivers and did what long-distance motorcyclists do; they told stories.  They talked of past rallies and crazy bonus locations.  They laughed at each other’s tales of trials and tribulations. I listened to their accounts of horrible weather conditions, worse roads, suicidal deer and experiencing amazing sunsets and sunrises. And all of it done while riding tricked-out, “farkled” motorcycles to every place you can think of in North America.   In general, describing experiences that very few people on the planet ever experience.

As the newbie, I said very little.  I just listened in awe.  Over the last two months I already had heard many of Eddie’s own stories.  He had a million, at least.  I knew by this time that he and I were kindred spirits.  But now I was in a room full of people with the same kind of stories.  I wanted to contribute but what could I say?  I once drove from Buffalo to Atlanta without stopping to sleep?  Big whoop.

But even though I had nothing to contribute, I knew I was right where I belonged.  I had never felt as at home as I did with these Strangers in that remote bar in the northeastern corner of Nebraska.

I had finally found my people.

In a Matter of Seconds …

On Dec. 6, 2009, the world stopped turning.

That evening Eddie was killed in a stupid, avoidable accident because someone did something stupid and avoidable.  He was 46 years old. 

By then my conversion into a long-distance pillion was complete.  We had purchased a 2007 Goldwing and had put 86,000 miles on it.  We were planning our wedding for the following June.  We had many rides behind us and even more planned ahead of us.

And I had begun planting the seeds of riding in the Iron Butt Rally together.

But he was gone.  Just like that.  In a matter of seconds everything changed. 

I’ve written extensively about my grief and the slow process of healing I went through.  I won’t retell it all here.  The blog is still there with every excruciating detail.  It isn’t pretty.  Pain that deep never is.  I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.  But we’ll all probably go through it at least once in our lives.

While I mourned the loss of the greatest influence on my life, I also mourned the future we wouldn’t have.  And I mourned all of the rides we would never go on.  And I mourned the fact that I would probably never ride in the Iron Butt Rally.

Oh, I had offers.  My phone rang one night and there was John Ryan.  Late night phone calls were common with John.  He had a crazy plan.  Why not enter the rally with him as a two-up team?

I couldn’t stop laughing.  Did he think I was nuts?

“John – riding 11 days with someone I’m in love with would be hard enough.  Spending 11 days with you would be horrible.  No offense.”

“None taken.”

And then he went on with the sales pitch – “It would be great.  I don’t need much sleep so I just keep the wheels turning while you do all the navigating.  When you get tired, take a nap.  Everyone will love watching us ride together!  Especially since we aren’t a couple!”

“Yeah, OK.  I’ll think about it.”  Which I did for about 30 seconds.

And then John was gone too. 

What the …

I kept really busy.  I took over TeamStrange after Eddie died and had grown the number of events we were putting on to about 10 per year.  I also founded “Eddie’s Road,” a nonprofit that raised funds for victims of child abuse.  The TeamStrange events raised money for Eddie’s Road. As long as I kept busy, I could manage the grief.

But I still wanted to ride.  I didn’t want to just organize events.  I wanted to participate too.

Eddie had given me a beautiful 1984 Honda Ascot VT500 for a Valentine’s gift in 2007.  Within weeks of getting it I went out and got my motorcycle endorsement and learned how to ride.  And discovered I had a serious balance problem.  Meaning that I don’t have any balance.  I still managed to not drop that bike which is good because it’s beautiful and I never want to hurt it.

After Eddie died I bought a Honda Silverwing.  For some reason, I thought its more scooter-like design would make it easier to ride.  I dropped it three times during our first outing.  What the hell?  I was also experiencing a lot of hearing loss at the time.  After getting me all checked out I found out I had degeneration of the tiny bones in my inner ear that was causing the balance issues, among other things.

A decision was made.  Stick to bicycles, maybe get a little skinned up if I fall over.  No more motorcycle riding for me as the pilot.

And my dreams of riding in the Iron Butt Rally were over.  Or so I thought.

Maybe Not Lonely, but Still Alone

Dating after the love of your life dies isn’t for sissies.  For four years I was pretty sure I was going to spend the rest of my life alone.  Well, partner-less.  I had a wonderful circle of family and friends and I wasn’t lonely.  Besides, I really enjoy my own company.  So time spent alone never felt lonely to me.

But there were still those times when I wished I had someone to share stuff with.  Like watching the sun rise over the Grand Canyon.  Or staring at millions of stars in a national park in Zambia.  Beautiful experiences, to be sure.  But sometimes you just want someone you love to be there with you to share it.

A few potential candidates wandered by.  But I could tell this wasn’t going to be easy.  I felt very strongly that if I were to get in a relationship again the person had to meet some very tough criteria.  First, I had to feel that Eddie would approve.  Second, he needed to “get” the whole long-distance motorcycling thing.  And then of course, he had to be really funny and really intelligent.  If such a person never showed up then I was OK with it.  Granted, I had suffered a horrible loss but I had managed to create a pretty nice life.

Enter Jim Winterer.  The quirky guy from the Chain of Rocks Bridge.

Over the ensuing years post-Eddie, Jim and I ran into each other all the time.  There were rallies, parties and bonfires; we hung with the same crowd so it was rare NOT to see one another.  Sure I lived in Atlanta, Georgia, and he lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, but we were both Strangers. The social interactions were frequent and fun.

On March 1, 2014, we were both at a party at Connie and Randy Gabrick’s house in the Minneapolis suburb of Lakeville.  Another mutual friend, Tammy Wanchena, also was there.  Tammy loves to play matchmaker.  And she decided Jim and I should start dating. It was 20 below zero outside that night, but things were starting to warm up nicely at the party.

After some great emails and phone calls – we began a relationship, “long-distance,” of course.  Two years later, I sold my townhouse, half of my belongings and moved to Jim’s home in St. Paul. Right on cue, we drove through some great snowstorms on the ride north.

I never doubted for one minute that Eddie would approve.  He loved me.  He loved Jim.

Jim has a long rally-riding resume. He began competing on a single-cylinder Yamaha SR500 as a “hopeless class” rider in the 2001 Iron Butt Rally, which he finished with a silver medal, and later moved up to a nicely equipped 650 Suzuki VStrom. By the time we started dating he had been in five Iron Butt Rallies. He didn’t finish two, once for transmission issues in 2003 and once for a freeway crash in 2011.  He also has completed countless Minnesota 1000 rallies, and of the TeamStrange’s eight Butt Lite rallies, he’s been in all but the first two.

He was a solo rider, but made adjustments.  He removed the fuel cell from the passenger section of the VStrom and installed a backrest off an 80s vintage Honda so I could be comfortable.  I was pretty happy on the back of the VStrom and we started talking about doing rallies.  We did a Minnesota 1000 and a Team Lyle and it worked great.  But serious rally bikes need extra fuel, and with me in the VStrom’s passenger seat, there wasn’t room for a fuel cell too.  

We put in our application to enter the 2017 Iron Butt Rally anyway and got drawn.  But it was clear we were gonna need a bigger bike.  We started paying attention to posts on the LD Rider internet discussion board for any rally-ready bikes for sale.  And then we hit pay dirt.

Dave Hembroff had decided to sell his 2008 FJR 1300.  Normally, an FJR wouldn’t be considered a great bike for a two-up team.  But this one was special; it had a “Frankentank.” A 10-gallon tank had been put where the stock tank used to live.  It was done so well you can hardly tell it’s not stock.  Except that it’s big, and solved perfectly our need for extra fuel.

I already was a friend of Dave and contacted him immediately. We made plans to head to Indianapolis that weekend to see the bike.  We brought the checkbook and Jim rode the FJR home.

The work of making it “ours” began immediately.  I knew quickly that a new seat was required.  Dave’s wife is about as big as a minute.  I am much bigger than a minute.  The seat felt like I was straddling a fence.  We ordered both front and rear Russell “Daylong” seats and never looked back.  Jim spent two weeks completely rewiring the bike; we installed two sets of auxiliary lights from LEDRider and among other farkles, wired the FJR for three GPSs and two sets of heated clothing.  

Two of the Garmin GPSs were up front for Jim to see. A third one, for me, was installed with Velcro to the back of Jim’s Aerostich Darien riding suit.

Here a tweak, there a tweak.  We thought of everything.  We’d go for rides and find something else that needed a tweak.  We made lists, spent money like crazy, practiced our route-planning skills over and over and over again. One Sunday afternoon we packed a small container of gas so we could figure out exactly how far the bike would still go after the gas gauge landed on “E.”  Heck, we almost made it to Mankato, Minnesota, a good 60 miles from home.

And then my back went out. I was exercising regularly. I did Pilates at least twice a week and had joined a gym. We hiked and biked. And all of a sudden I had back pain that was 12 on a scale of one to 10. This was April. I HAD to get this figured out and quick.

An MRI showed I had scoliosis.  I had no idea.  But that wasn’t the problem.  I had pretty severe arthritis in my lower spine and it had wreaked havoc on all those little bones back there.  Physical therapy and a more gentle style of Pilates was the treatment plan.  Oh and opioids. Yuck; I still have those.

My spine specialist was fascinated by this Iron Butt Rally thing we were doing.  He could see that I wasn’t going to let this stop me from being at the start.  We needed a foolproof plan to get me pain free for 11 days.  So, on Tuesday, June 20, six days before the start, I had a steroid injection in my lower spine.  They say this will stop the pain for six to eight weeks but he cautioned, with my plans for those 11 days, it may last only three weeks.  It lasted two and a half.  By the finishers’ banquet at the rally’s end, the old pain was back.  I didn’t care.  The injection served its purpose.

Meanwhile, I had another medical issue going on.  One week before the start I was experiencing sharp pains from my left side (under my arm) into my chest.  Was I having a heart attack?  And how was I going to tell Jim that I was having a heart attack right before the Iron Butt Rally?  I kept the pain a secret for a couple of days hoping it would just go away.  Of course I was Googling heart attack symptoms when Jim wasn’t looking.

I finally had to come clean.  This was not going away and I had ruled out “gas” as the cause.  I went to see my internist.  He quickly ruled out heart attack and blood clot.  Whew.  He said it really sounded like shingles but I didn’t have any rash.  Hmmmm … .  He said to watch for the rash and to call the minute it showed up so they could get me on anti-viral meds ASAP.

We were set to arrive at the rally hotel on Friday, June 23.  That Thursday night, as I sat reading, all of a sudden there it was.  I had shingles.

By 8 a.m. I had a full-blown rash on my left side and was on the phone to the doctor.  I had the prescription by 10 a.m.  At 1 p.m. we left for the hotel.  Great.  I get to start the IBR with shingles.

Finally, the Big Show

After all these years of being a part of the LD world, I was going to be one of “them.” I was going to be in the Iron Butt Rally.  It was surreal.  Going through registration, tech inspection and the odometer check was so much fun.  I just soaked up every minute of it.  You couldn’t wipe the grins off of my face, or Jim’s.

We could not have been more prepared or more mentally ready.  I had one of the most experienced LD riders in the country as my partner.  Jim is extremely easy to be around.  I’ve only seen him angry twice since we’ve been together.  It takes a lot.  He smiles all the time and never sees a problem … just something that needs fixing.  If we were going to have any mental breakdowns on this ride it would come from me.  But just having that awareness was enough for me to keep it all in check.

I didn’t come this far to let anything emotional mess it up. 

They unveiled the official rally poster.  It was covered in animals.  I liked it immediately.  Who doesn’t like animals?  But we were a little nervous.  The rally’s route master was Jeff Earls and he had a reputation as someone who loves puzzles.  What kind of puzzle would he put together for us?  In just a few hours we would find out.

A North American Safari

That Sunday night, we all sat in the banquet room waiting for the rally packs to be handed out.  We got our rally flag and number.  This would identify us throughout the rally.  As a two-up team, both the flag and I had to be in every photo we took.  No. 06    We liked it.  Short and easy to remember.

Leg One would begin at 10 a.m. on Monday in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and end at 10 p.m. on Wednesday in Allen, Texas.

The puzzle wasn’t totally clear yet.  There were five categories of bonuses: Air, Land, Water, Prehistoric and Mythical.  The puzzle part for leg one was to visit and claim three bonuses in a row of the same category and earn double the listed point value for the third bonus in the string.

String became a very important word to us over the next 11 days.

Once dismissed, we all ran to the elevators and our rooms to begin planning our routes.

We had the laptop all ready to go, with an HDMI cable so we could view the screen on the large, flat-screen TV in our room.  This rally was designed to throw a wrench in the plans of many riders who used spreadsheets and custom programs to figure out a winning route.

We use EZBake and Street & Trips.  EZBake is an Excel spreadsheet with wonderful macros that was created by Curt Gran.  Curt was a Stranger who passed away in 2012.  Many of us still use his tool to sort and organize rally bonuses according to their point values and time availability. That data is then transferred to our Streets and Trips mapping program, and eventually to our GPS devices.  Curt’s EZBake creation turned what was once a mind-numbing six-hour job into a half-hour job.

The wrench that Jeff Earls created was the five additional categories that EZBake was not designed to accommodate. We didn’t have a perfect solution to fix the monkey-wrench problem, but decided to look at the five classifications separately to figure out the best three-of-a-kind string and patch the route together from there.  There probably were at least 107 ways to parse this data.  We didn’t waste hours of precious sleep time trying to find every possible route, just the way that made sense to us.

By midnight we had a route we felt good about.  The trick was completing a string with the highest point value as the third bonus in order to get the most points.  Not as easy as it sounds.

An aside: Jim knows his rally abilities very well.  He has done this many times and knows about life at the edges of human endurance, including how many miles one can reasonably ride over a given period time while including gas stops, bathroom stops, bonus claiming and sleeping.  He errs on the side of a more conservative approach which suits me just fine.  Without Jim to keep me anchored I would be the classic case of someone biting off more than I can chew and being totally burnt out by the middle of the rally.

As we stared at the map on our room’s big TV, our eyes took us north of Winnipeg, Manitoba, to the world’s largest mosquito that would be the perfect end to an “Air” string.  The skeeter’s double value would garner us 3,416 points for the first string.  It included the Belgrade, Minnesota, crow for 235 points and the timed, group-photo bonus at the world’s largest prairie chicken in Rothsay, Minnesota, for 1,203 points.  Yeah, you would want the group photo to end the string but that wasn’t really doable, so we headed to Winnipeg. 

Now it was time to quit planning and start sleeping, something always hard to do on the night before the start of an epic life adventure like this. Before turning in, I wrote our bonus-by-bonus itinerary, complete with projected arrival times, in little waterproof books, one for each of us. These itineraries are incredibly valuable during the rally and let you know if you are on target to hit your goals.

The Start of the 2017 Iron Butt Rally and Day One

Monday morning was even more surreal than the previous three days.  First, it seemed like we spent an awful long time waiting to leave.  We had to be at our bike at 8 a.m. for the final odometer reading but we weren’t allowed to leave until 10 a.m.  It was the longest two hours of my life.

I just wanted to get moving.  Standing in the parking lot, posing for pictures, checking, re-checking, and triple-checking every single thing on the bike.  It was excruciating.  I was relaxed as far as the rally was concerned.  I’m just not a patient person, so let’s go already!

I had imagined what it was going to be like when Dale “Warchild” Wilson pointed at us to leave for almost as long as I had heard of the Iron Butt Rally.  What happened was 10 times better than I could have dreamed.  Dale has the reputation of being a bit of a hard ass but I found out a long time ago that he is one of the nicest people you could ever meet.  I just love him to death.

During the riders’ meetings earlier, Dale twice explained the process used to get more than 100 pumped-up motorcyclists out of the parking lot quickly but safely. As he works his way down the line of bikes, he points at each one twice: first to get ready, and second to go.

We were among the last 20 or so to leave.  But when it finally was our turn, Dale did not point at us like he pointed at the other bikes.  Instead, he smiled, gave us a little bow, and gestured with his right hand to go … kind of like when a gentleman gestures for a lady to go ahead of him. 

The unexpected gesture threw Jim off for a split second, but then he realized Dale was just having a little fun.  Jim revved the FJR, let out the clutch, and we were on our way.  That gesture, and that moment, will always be among my favorite IBR memories.

The local law enforcement had the roads blocked for us all the way to Interstate 394.  It was just the coolest thing ever.  I think I was laughing the entire time.    We headed northwest out of the Twin Cities to our first bonus in Belgrade, Minnesota, 105 miles from the hotel.

On each leg of this rally there was a high-point bonus for a group photo.  To get those points, you had to arrive before a certain time, check in with rally staff, and pose for a group photo with your fellow riders and your rally flag. We had to be in Rothsay, Minnesota, at the World’s Largest Prairie Chicken, before 2 p.m.  We made it with no problems.  And now it was time to head to Winnipeg, Manitoba, to finish our “Air” string.

It always makes you feel better when you see other riders doing similar things to what you’re doing.  It gives you that reassurance that you didn’t totally mess everything up when planning the route.  As we made our way to Komarno, Manitoba, we saw quite a few other riders.  At the World’s Largest Mosquito, at least three riders arrived there about the same time as us.  Whew.

From there we retraced our steps back into the United States.  Getting into Canada rarely causes a problem but we kept hearing horror stories about cantankerous U.S. border agents who want to strip search your motorcycle and ask a million questions.  Apparently, two senior citizens from St. Paul, Minnesota, don’t come across as very threatening to national security.

On our first of four crossings into the United States, the agent did ask a lot of questions.  “What were you doing in Winnipeg?”  Jim, who is a well-trained talker, goes into this whole explanation of us going up there to take a photo of the World’s Largest Mosquito as if this happens all the time.

“Well then, can I see the photo?” 

“Sure!” says Jim as he fishes the camera out of his Stitch pocket.  He turns it on, finds the photo and hands the camera to the agent.

“Huh!”  The agent hands the camera back to Jim and says, “OK, you can go.  Be careful and watch for the deer.”

Thankfully Jim didn’t offer to show him the flame-throwing auxiliary lights we use just for that purpose.

We headed south to Fargo, North Dakota, got a room for about four hours of sleep and just like that, Day One was over.

Day Two

The Screaming Meanie … basically a screech alarm mated to a countdown timer … woke us up in its usual obnoxious way.  I have a love-hate relationship with these nasty little critters. This one, in particular, has a long provenance. Some years back, Eddie had one that went missing.  I was headed up to Asheville, North Carolina, to visit him one weekend when he called to ask me to stop at a truck stop and buy him a new one.  Done.

After he died it sat unused for a year or so.  At some point Jim posted that he was in need of a Screaming Meanie.  Well, I just happened to have one.  I packed it up and mailed it to Jim, never suspecting that it would annoy me again every day of the Iron Butt Rally.  Life is strange.

Day Two would be spent in the Dakotas and Wyoming.  Our first stop wasn’t part of a string. The Enchanted Highway is a stretch of road leading into Regent, North Dakota, which is home to a collection of massive scrap-metal sculptures.  Our job was to find a giant covey of pheasants.  We found them and got to wave at Martin Little as he was arriving.  Now to work on a string of three Prehistoric-category animals.

We arrived in Lemmon, South Dakota, right on schedule and photographed the bonus of a cowboy riding on a scrap-metal triceratops.   As we headed out of town, Jim asked me to use my GPS to scout for gas ahead because we’d need to refuel in about 50 miles. 

The GPS on Jim’s back said there wouldn’t be any gas on our remote route for almost 150 miles. That couldn’t be right.  I checked it again. Yikes! I relayed the information and Jim quickly made a U-turn and we headed back to Lemmon for a fresh load of fuel.

Since we were stopped I went ahead and did our call-in bonus for this leg.  This is one of the seemingly simple ways to get points without having to actually ride somewhere.  During a specific time window on a specific day you call in and leave a message with the following information: name, rider number, current city and state, the last bonus you scored, the next bonus you’re heading to.

Sounds so simple.  Unless you forget something.  Or lose track of what time zone you’re in.  Or as the rally progresses, can’t recall what day it is.  Or you have crappy cell coverage and your message is unintelligible.  This has bit many, many riders in the butt.  I was determined we would not lose points because of the call-in bonus.  We didn’t.

I also let the rally master know that we were having a terrific time and shared the “no gas for 150 miles” story because I knew she would appreciate it.

So with the gas gauge needle safely on “F,” it was back on the bike to get the mammoth statue in Hot Springs, South Dakota.  So far, so good.  It was a beautiful day, not too hot and we were in some of the best and remote places in America.

With the mammoth in our rally bag, we headed for the next bonus - something called the Fossil House - near Medicine Bow, Wyoming.  As the end of our Prehistoric string, it was worth over 2,000 points.  It was a daylight-only bonus and our GPSs had us getting there at 7:30 p.m.  Plenty of time. What could go wrong?

As we made our way southwest on Highway 34, headed for U.S. 30 North, we could see a line of nasty, churning black clouds straight west.  The wind was picking up.  We went through a few showers but nothing too bad.  We turned right on U.S. 30 toward Rock River.  Jim again wondered what the gas situation was up ahead.

Hmmm … not much according to the GPS.  As we entered Rock River, one of those sad, tiny towns found across the West, our hope of finding gas appeared dim.  Then I spotted something; a derelict building with some equally derelict gas pumps out front had a barely readable “Open” sign in the window.

We pulled up to the circa-1970 pumps.  No paying at the pump here.  I walked inside to see what I could find. It was an amazing cross between a tiny convenience store and someone’s house.  It was dark and I heard someone making their way from the back of the building.  An old guy was shuffling in my direction.

“Hey!  Can we get some gas?”

“Sure.  I think pump two is working.  If not, try three.”  I passed that on to Jim through our Sena Bluetooth headsets.  Yep – pump three was working just fine.

I saw a restroom and made my way for it.  As I came out I could hear Jim talking to the man about the weather.

“If you’re heading north you better watch out.  It’s going to be nasty up there.”

We only had about 20 miles to go to the bonus, then we’d turn around and come right back, heading toward Laramie, Wyoming.  We thanked him and headed north.

With clouds black as night immediately to our left, powerful gusts were approaching scary-strong levels and it began to rain. This is where Iron Butt riders earn the “world’s toughest motorcycle riders” phrase on their license-plate backers.  

As we left the city limits, and with absolutely nothing out there to break it, the wind was easily 60 to 70 miles per hour. The bike stayed leaned at about 45 degrees for the next 15 or 20 miles.  I spent the entire time whispering “don’t let us fall” over and over and over.  Jim kept the speed slow enough and dug in.  The wind tried to push us toward the right ditch but Jim and the FJR weren’t having it.

Luckily, we had the entire highway to ourselves and finally, after what seemed an eternity, the storm passed and we could just make out the Fossil House up ahead. As its name suggests, the small house was built entirely of large fossils glued together with cement.  We made it while there was still daylight and finished our string. 

Now it was time to head south to Colorado and take advantage of the sleep bonus.  We earned it.

Day Three

We took our sleep bonus (you get big points for sleeping – YAY!) in Canon City, Colorado, about two miles from our next bonus.  We got up at 4:30 a.m., got a good receipt from the nice people who ran the EconoLodge, and made our way over to the Pueblo Community College to wait for the sun to come up.

We found the stegosaurus sculpture easily and determined the best angle to get a photo that would prove it actually was taken during daylight.  We were in a canyon so it meant taking a picture that included some sky in the background.  We waited a few minutes to make sure it would be light enough, got the shot and headed east.  We needed to make it to Allen, Texas, for the first checkpoint by 8 p.m. that night.

And we needed to finish this Prehistoric string.  Our next stop was a brontosaurus in Boise City, Oklahoma.  From there we headed to Canadian, Texas, for “Aud the dinosaur” who sits high on a hill overlooking U.S. 60.

Our GPSs said we’d get to the Allen checkpoint at 7:01 p.m., or 59 minutes before penalty points would start.  We headed southwest only stopping for gas.  At our last gas stop just down the block from the hotel, I noticed my GPS (a Garmin Nuvi) was acting a bit strange.  I turned it off as we were done for the day and didn’t give it another thought.

We pulled into the parking lot and were a little surprised to see so many bikes had made it in before us.  But we weren’t late so that’s all that mattered.  Our odometer reading was taken, we parked the bike, grabbed everything we would need for scoring, and went in to officially stop the clock with our buddy Bill Thweatt.

They had actual real food for us, so we each fixed our plates (that’s Southern for placing food on the plate), found a quiet table and did our paperwork for scoring. We really looked forward to the buffet grub they served us at the rally checkpoints. Once underway, we never stopped at restaurants; instead, we lived on a combination of protein shakes, trail mix and lots and lots of water.

It was our goal (aside from actually finishing the rally) to “not leave any points at the scoring table.”  That’s rally talk for no penalty points, no screwed-up bonus photos, all receipts in order, and everything claimed in the proper order.  We were scored by Cletha Walstrand.  She spent a few more seconds than I would have liked staring at our daybreak photo at Pueblo Community College.  I held my breath until she finally said, “Yes, it’s daylight.”

Whew.  We checked into get our room, went upstairs, set everything up for the next round of route planning, took quick showers and went to sleep.  Next up, the rider meeting at 4 a.m. where we would get the point values for Leg Two and probably a new twist to the “string puzzle.”

Score: 14,192 points;  2,808 miles;  53rd place.

We needed to step up our game.  But we had two more legs to do it.

Leg Two – Day Four

That damn Screaming Meanie woke us up right on schedule.  We headed downstairs to get some breakfast and find out what was in store for us on Leg Two.

The new puzzle sounded pretty simple.  The goal for this leg was to gather four animals from different categories with the fourth being worth three times its value.  For example, get a string with animals in Land, Prehistoric, Air and Mythical categories, and the value of the fourth bonus would be tripled.  If you happened to get a second Land-category bonus before the Mythical-category bonus in this example, the string would be broken.

Yeah, it sounds simple all right.  Until you’re staring at your screen attempting to put those strings together.

We studied the placement of bonuses and the point values.  Nothing was jumping out at us.  We tried a couple of routes but still, nothing seemed to work very well.  What were we missing?  Our eyes kept taking us back to northern Colorado and a moose sculpture near Gould.  While Colorado is nice, we weren’t thrilled about going back there on Leg Two.  But Jeff had said it would be quite possible to visit some of the same bonuses more than once (but on different legs).  And if we returned to Colorado we would wind up back at Pueblo Community College with that stegosaurus statue as part of a new string.

Our plan was to leave the hotel no later than 9 a.m.  At 8:15 we still didn’t have what we considered a good route.  Finally, we knew we’d just need to go for it so we decided to head back to Colorado.  Ughhh … that meant another sweat-drenched slog through boiling west Texas.  But here we go.

We pulled out of the parking lot at exactly 9 a.m. and headed west toward our first bonus of the day.  We made the decision to not sweat too much about getting strings and to pick up as much as we could on our way to Colorado.

Before we even got out of the Dallas metro area I realized my GPS was not operating properly.   To be more specific – it was toast.  We pulled into a parking lot to troubleshoot it.  At that point it could have been a number of things: the GPS, the cord, or the fuse block.  We moved on down the road hoping to find an auto parts store with electric-contact cleaner so we could spray the connector and rule out corrosion.  That didn’t fix it. Then we removed the seats to test different cables.  Nope. We moved some stuff around in the fuse box. Nope, nope and nope. Eventually, we determined that the plug in the back of the GPS was simply worn out and not repairable.

As all this was going on, the day was getting hotter and we weren’t making any time and certainly not claiming any points. Even though it was early in the rally, it was clear that my ability to use the GPS to help route on the fly, to look for gas, food and lodging, and to try different route possibilities, was a huge advantage. Not only did it allow us to work as a team, it was huge fun. We were going to have to find a new GPS.

Our second bonus stop was in Lubbock, Texas, where we knew we could find a Walmart or maybe a Best Buy.  We’d shop for a replacement there.

We claimed our first bonus of Leg Two – a giant steer statue along U.S. 380 in Throckmorton, Texas, and made our way to Lubbock.  It was hot.  Before long the thermometer showed 104 degrees.  Each gas stop involved soaking down our shirts, splashing water on our faces and refilling our Camelbak bladder.  It seemed to take forever to reach Lubbock but that probably was because without a working GPS, I was bored.

We finally found the Columbian Mammoths bonus in Lubbock.  I couldn’t resist running through the lawn sprinklers just to get some cooling water on me. I tore myself away, got back on the bike and we went looking for the Walmart that was a few miles away.

Did I mention it was hot?  Even going into the air-conditioned store didn’t seem cool enough.  Luckily, we found a helpful salesperson in the electronics department and within 20 minutes I had a new Garmin Drive 2 GPS.  It was the same size as the now-dead Nuvi and seemed to have a similar interface so I wouldn’t have to spend much time getting acquainted with it. It also fit in the clear, waterproof case attached to Jim’s back, and used the same power cord.

After paying for the new GPS, we headed to an in-store McDonalds where we’d fire up the laptop to transfer all the rally data (more than 300 bonuses) into the new unit.

We got a lot of stares from the locals mostly due to our jackets and pants.  More than one person asked us the question we got most on the rally: “Aren’t you hot?”

One helpful man made a genuine effort to help us, “You know it’s 105 degrees out there, right?”

“Yes”, we smiled and high-tailed it out of there as fast as we could.  While it was worth it, we lost four to five hours total between trouble-shooting, shopping and loading the GPS.  We wouldn’t get that time back and it was going to hurt us on the back end of this leg.  More on that later.

Next stop was Santa Fe, New Mexico.  We made it there right at sunset.  Rallying gives us these wonderful opportunities to enjoy some of the most spectacular sights our country can provide.  Watching the sunset over the mountains outside of Santa Fe turned what had been a frustrating day into one of those “highs” we all talk about.  We found the cute little burro statue right in downtown Santa Fe and kept moving.

We headed up Interstate 25 to Trinidad, Colorado, for what I thought was one of the neatest statues we photographed during the rally: a huge cage with a canary in it to honor mine-safety canaries.  On our way into town, just a couple of blocks from the bonus, we were stopped by a police car heading toward us.  He didn’t care for our lights.  Oops.  Jim didn’t realize the auxiliary LED lights were on.  Sorry, officer.  It won’t happen again.

We decided to keep driving up to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to take a sleep break.  Our next bonus was daylight-only, so we would be positioned to get it first thing in the morning.

Day Five

We had a really big Day Five planned.  It turned out to be even bigger than we thought.  We were now working on a string – what would turn out to be the only one we’d get for this leg.

We fought a bit of rush-hour traffic and some very hyper carpoolers to get our string’s first bonus, the Hercules Beetle.  Then it was back to our favorite stegosaurus, that daylight-only bonus in Canon City, Colorado.  The sun was shining brightly this time, so no worries about that.

Now we would head west out of Canon City over the mountains to Crested Butte, Colorado.  The ride was spectacular.  The weather was perfect.  As the day progressed it became obvious to us that we were trading points for a dream-date of motorcycling. 

Twisty, turny, high elevations, unbelievable views.  And very slow going.  After capturing the Dragon and Knight bonus, it was time to head north for that moose.

For hours on end our route to the Moose Visitor Center was one continuous curve, often marked with 15 mph and 20 mph caution signs. The moose, made entirely of strands of barbed wire, was worth 2,796 points as the last bonus in our string, but we had spent almost the whole day to collect 3,922 points.  Was that good or bad?  We had no idea.

Now, headed back to Denver to pick up two more bonuses, we skirted the very top of Rocky Mountain National Park.  The roads all day had been nonstop, post-card unbelievable and the little State Highway 14 we were negotiating was just as stunning.  But by now we were both tired of the twisties and yearned to see an interstate again.  Jim was exhausted but persevered.

And I was watching the clock and working on other routing scenarios. The Iron Butt Rally is not about how many miles you ride but how many points you collect. For each rally, organizers determine how many points are required to be considered “a finisher,” and at this point I was worried we might not hit that level.

Not finishing was not an option. We needed to regroup. We had less than 24 hours to get back to the Allen, Texas, checkpoint.  We needed to build in a little time so we could get our rear wheel changed, score, eat and get some sleep before the start of the monster, five-day Leg Three.

I began running the numbers and decided we could knock off four of our planned bonuses if we took the full eight-hour rest bonus which was worth six points per minute.  That would give us 2,880 versus 2,490 points if we did the other bonuses.  Granted we could have taken a shorter rest bonus and still got some of the points from those bonuses, but there was no way we could do both.  With the miles we still had to go, the timing was not working out.

As we made our way through Fort Collins, Colorado, for the second time in this rally, we made the decision to grab one more bonus just north of Denver and then start heading east on Interstate 70 to Kansas.  We got the daylight-only serpent bonus in Arvada, Colorado, with some daylight left.

We stopped for the night at the Colorado-Kansas border to start the clock for a full eight hours.  We splurged on a Subway sandwich on our way to the hotel.  It was the greatest thing I’ve ever eaten.

Day Six

We had two things to do this day: stop at the Troll bonus in Wichita, Kansas, and make it down to Allen, Texas, before 8 p.m.  Actually, our plan was to get back to Allen by 5 p.m. so we’d have time to change the wheel, restock our provisions, get through scoring, eat some dinner and get more rest.

I’ve joked many times that my least favorite road in America is Interstate 70 through Kansas.  Well, that was before I went through west Texas two days in a row.  I-70 is now in second place. Yay Kansas!

In our effort to scale back on the end of this leg we had decided we just couldn’t manage to get to the second group photo bonus near Tulsa.  Oh well. 

Around noon we arrived in Wichita to find the Troll in the Pipes.  He’s located under a grate in the sidewalk near the river-walk park area.  As we pulled into the parking lot there was a couple standing near a Harley. They waved to us like we were old friends.  As we jumped off the bike to find the troll statue, they began telling us about the other riders who had already been by.

Now, there is always a lot of talk about whether or not to engage in conversation with people when you’re stopped.  Stay focused, don’t waste time, etc.  But to be honest, we were both genuinely touched that Rocky and Pam had taken time from their lives to welcome us to Wichita. So we fully engaged with them.  We decided that the only way to get a successful photo of the troll, me and the flag would involve me lying flat on the ground. Rocky captured the whole ridiculous scene with this photo.  We’re now Facebook friends!  Thanks Iron Butt Rally. 

On to Allen, Texas.  Somewhere in Oklahoma we got stopped in gridlock traffic.  It was hot and no one was moving.  Waze to the rescue!  We just happened to be near an exit and the Waze app on my phone gave us a perfect detour around the jam.

Traffic all the way to Allen was heavy.  We didn’t pull into the checkpoint until almost 6 p.m.  We didn’t want to stop the clock until we swapped our rear wheel for another one with a fresh Pilot Road 4 tire.  We pulled the bike into the parking garage to find our friend Ron Messick all ready for us.

Ron had volunteered to bring our spare wheel, tools, food for Leg Three, clean clothes, etc. down from Minnesota.   His truck was loaded with the same for a few other Minnesota-based riders.   Jim went to work on changing the rear wheel, something he had practiced in our garage many times before the rally. I was in charge of packing our food and clean clothes for Leg Three.  We were done within about 30 minutes.  We went in, stopped the clock, found food, and got ready for scoring.

No points lost “at the table,” but not a lot of points gained on the road, either.  Thank goodness for the sleep bonus and call-in bonus points, but in a word, this leg sucked.  To this day, I am still trying to figure it all out. 

As we talked to other riders later, we learned many had chosen to go to south Texas on this leg, then east and then back to Allen.  We had looked at it as an option but neither one of us wanted to go that way.  That is really the only reason for our choice to head back to Colorado.  While having the GPS die cost us precious time, it seemed inconceivable that five hours would make such a difference.  But the combination of those lost hours, plus one whole day spent in the Rockies managed to really screw up the leg for us.

But that’s rallying.  We had five more days of riding without stopping for a checkpoint, and we had to make the most of it.  But now we knew this was going to be about finishing the rally not how high we might place.

Score: 28,659 points;  5,356 miles; 65^th place.

Leg Three, Day Seven

What twist would Jeff Earls have for us next?  This was going to be a long leg; you can go anywhere in five days.  At the 4 a.m. riders’ meeting, he revealed his next puzzle: a full house.  We had to capture a string of five animals, three from one of the categories and two from another category. The order didn’t matter as long as you had three and two.  The point value of the fifth bonus in your string would be multiplied by four.

As we stared at the TV in our room it was obvious that the big points were up in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.  We knew Newfoundland was out of reach for us.  But could we make it to Nova Scotia?  We had made a decision that we weren’t going to let the search for strings keep us from scoring points.  In other words, we’d get bonuses as best we could and if a string was doable, great, but it wasn’t going to rule our lives.

But one string seemed to be calling out to us.  Not like that damn barbed-wire moose.   It was Alice.  Alice in Wonderland.  There was a perfect string right there on the island of Manhattan.  Any other time I think we both would have chosen to avoid New York City like the plague.  But the Iron Butt Rally does weird things to you.  We looked at each other and smiled.  We’re going to the heart of New York.

This time we were out of the parking lot by 8:30 a.m. heading east.  We would ride all day before we would get our first bonus at the Coon Dog Cemetery in northern Alabama.  I knew this place; we’d used it on a Butt Lite Rally.  We were rested and excited that we would be riding for five days without having to worry about making a checkpoint.

Somewhere in Arkansas we stopped for gas.  There was a guy at the pumps on a Suzuki VStrom, similar to Jim’s other rally bike.  He was just standing there, not pumping gas, not eating, just standing.  I gave him a nod as I headed into the restroom and to buy water for the Camelbak.  I could hear Jim talking to him – no wonder we’re in 64^th place, right?  We never meet a stranger.

I was quickly on my way back to the bike and passed Jim on his way in.  “Hey, that guy is doing his first Saddlesore!” A Saddlesore is a carefully documented 1,000-mile ride in less than 24 hours. Completing one of these rides is a major right-of-passage in the long-distance riding community. It gives you street cred and is how you become a member of the 60,000-plus-member Iron Butt Association.  New IBA members are assigned a lifetime five-digit member number. Coveted one-, two- or three-digit member numbers are reserved for finishers of the Iron Butt Rally only.

Well, attempting one’s first Saddlesore was certainly worth talking about so, as I poured water into our Camelbak, I asked him how his ride was going. He was really excited, meanwhile, to meet someone actually riding in the Iron Butt Rally, which is sort of like doing 11 Saddlesores in a row. We wished each other good weather and success.

When we finally arrived at the Coon Dog Cemetery we met four other riders there.  Again, that feeling of relief.   One other way I was feeling relived was by checking on the public “Spotwalla page” from time to time.

In addition to sleep and call-in bonuses, another way to earn points toward your score is to use satellite-tracking on your motorcycle. During the rally, anyone can go to an web site, Spotwalla, to see the location of all the rally bikes. You can’t tell who the rider is, just their location. The entire time we were heading northeast toward New York, I could see a lot of bikes either just ahead or just behind us.

We headed through Chattanooga, Tennessee, never one of my favorite places to drive or ride.  But we made it and turned north on Interstate 75 toward Knoxville, Tennessee. We stopped for our eight-hour rest bonus near Bristol, Tennessee, lining ourselves up for a timed bonus nearby the next morning.

Day Eight

The first bonus of the day was the Backyard Dinosaur Park in Bluff City, Tennessee.  This was one of those places where you really wished you had time to stay and explore the whole thing.  The owner created 40 dinosaur statues in his backyard with interpretive signs and even had the musical score from “Jurassic Park” playing through speakers all over the park.  As we pulled in, there was Craig Brooks.  Yay!  Rider sighting!

We found the stygimoloch, snapped the photo, waved at Craig and headed to Virginia.

I love Virginia.  I was born there but don’t have much memory of it.  But I think it’s one of the most beautiful states and we saw the best of it on Day Eight.  There is a slightly disturbing sculpture in Point Bank, Virginia, of a cow being hatched from an egg.  And while that was fascinating it was nothing compared to the route we took to find it.

Let me set this up – Jim is 5’7”.  The FJR is a pretty big, heavy bike, especially when fully loaded and topped off with 10 gallons of gas.  I’m 5’5” and not what you would describe as “petite.”  Jim had trouble touching the ground on the FJR and the brilliant Lisa Landry had a really great solution to our dilemma:  have new soles put on his boots that would add an inch so he could easily touch the ground.  It worked!  So, while Jim looks a little funny clomping around in his KISS boots, they get the job done.

Because of this height issue, we had been avoiding gravel roads if possible because it was just really tricky for Jim to get his feet down without all of us going down too.  Which brings us back to Point Bank, Virginia, and the weird cow.

In order to get to the cow we had to traverse 20-plus miles of a very twisty and very steep gravel road.  And when I say twisty, we’re talking hairpins on steep inclines.  It was during this stretch of the rally that I was extremely thankful that my partner has 40 years of experience competing in the off-road motorcycle sport of observed trials, a discipline that rewards good balance on tricky terrain. He aced it.  We found the cow, worth 1,975 points, and continued northeast.

We quickly picked up the bulldog bonus at George Mason University and the crab in Martinsburg, West Virginia.  It was time to start working on our first string of Leg Three.  It would consist of two mythical-category creatures and three land-category animals.  The first was a dragon (although I think it looks more like a serpent) next to a restaurant in Duncannon, Pennsylvania.  From there we headed to Morristown, New Jersey, to get the seeing-eye dog statue right in downtown.  By now it was dark and Morristown was busy. 

What day was this?  By now everything was referred to in what day of the rally it was.  Nothing else really mattered.  Well, one other thing mattered. When is the 4^th of July? 

Once we had decided we were headed to Manhattan we knew we wanted to plan it so we got there late at night.  We also knew we didn’t want to get there on July 4^th.  In Morristown we found a little gas station where we could fill up before heading into New York.  Several men, whom I assumed worked there (it had a garage for repairs), came over to ask us questions about the bike, our clothing, the gas tank, were we really from Minnesota, you know, the usual questions.

As we explained what we were doing, we told them we were heading into Manhattan.  They had some strong opinions (it is New Jersey) about our plan.  They told us we picked the absolute perfect time to go into the city.  After 10 p.m. things quiet down.  And by the next day the place was going to be a madhouse.  Roads would be closed all over the island for July 4^th festivities.  So, with the blessings of the locals, we got on the FJR and made our way to the Holland Tunnel.

Using the GPS and smart phone in my office (the back seat of the FJR) I had researched this portion of our route down to the exact spots where we would hope to park.  Our route master is an evil genius and he assigned the point values so that you would want to claim the Wall Street bull statue last as it was worth 2,042 points.  The lion at the New York Public Library was worth 2,041 and the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park was worth 1,972.  There was one other bonus in Manhattan but it was “daylight-only” so that wasn’t on our list.

After my research, we decided to lose some points and pick up the bonuses by riding south to north.  This was probably a case of really overthinking things so it cost us 210 points.  We had no idea what we would encounter in New York so we decided to play it safe and chose a fairly easy route that took us out of the Holland Tunnel, right a few blocks to the bull, then up FDR Drive, over a few blocks to the library, then up Madison Avenue to 77^th Street at 5^th Avenue right across from the entrance to the park that was closest to Alice.  Part of our plan was to not be rushed.  Once we grabbed the three bonuses, we’d head north out of New York City and find a motel room for a short sleep. It didn’t matter how long it took us and that was good because all of the people we encountered turned out to be super friendly and talkative.

As we neared the bull we started looking for a place to park.  It was after 10 p.m. but, being New York, there were people everywhere.  Jim backed the bike into a spot about a half block from the bull.  As we were backing in a couple stopped to look at our license plate. 

“Did you ride that from Minnesota?”

“Well, sort of.  We were in Texas yesterday.”  So, they wanted to chat.  We were polite but told them we had to go take a picture of the bull.

When we got to the bull you couldn’t even see it because of all the people on and around it taking pictures.  I squeezed into the crowd and Jim waited until there was enough of the bull showing to confirm we were there.  Bam!  One down, two to go.

We made our way north on the FDR for a few miles and quickly found the New York Public Library.  It is such an iconic building but I wasn’t going to waste too much time taking it in. With our rally flag in hand, I posed by the lion statue.  As I smiled at Jim, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a group of tourists watching us. They all started taking photos of Jim taking the photo of me.  We waved at them, jumped on the bike and headed to Central Park.  Now, just one more to get our string.

We drove up Madison Avenue and turned left on 77^th Street.  We found a parking spot in front of an apartment building.  I took my new GPS with us to help find the statue.  As we got closer to the park we realized it was not very well lit so Jim ran back to the bike to get the flashlight.  Following my GPS we went looking for Alice.  When Jim turned on the flashlight we were disappointed to find that the mighty Fenix TK-40, one of the most powerful flashlights money can buy, barely came on.  We hadn’t used it the whole rally and it had fresh batteries.  WTH?  We never solved that mystery.

The GPS wasn’t being really helpful either.  It seemed we were right on top of Alice but she was nowhere to be seen.  About that time a group of teenagers were walking toward us.  I suppose most people would be nervous wandering around in Central Park in the dark but we were on a rally so being afraid never even popped into our heads.

I called out to the kids and asked if they could tell us where the Alice In Wonderland statue was.  One of the boys said, “It’s really hard to find in the dark.  I’ll take you to it.”  Then he turned to his friends and told them to go ahead and he’d catch up with them.  As we walked with him for a few hundred yards we told him what we were doing.  He couldn’t have been nicer or more polite.  Soon, we were standing in front of the very large Alice statue.  We thanked him for helping us and he returned to his friends.  We quickly took our photo and headed back to the bike.

We decided to take a few minutes, drink some water and have a snack while I looked for a motel room up the road in Connecticut.   As we stood by the bike munching on granola bars and a banana a man walking his dog came out of the apartment building.  He looked at us, the bike, saw our license plate and asked if we had ridden all the way from Minnesota.

And that was the beginning of a fascinating conversation.  His next question was whether we knew the Dayton family. Well, our governor is a Dayton so we said “Yes, but not personally.”  He went on to explain that his family was great friends with the Daytons and that he would visit their lake house on Minnesota’s Lake Minnetonka every summer when he was a kid.

He had lots of questions about the rally and where we had been.  He told us about growing up in New York City.  He used to live in the same building as Richard Nixon and one of the Rockefellers.  This came up because the dog he was walking was a pug and I commented about how much I liked them.  Then he explained that Richard Nixon loved pugs and always wanted to pet the one he had at that time.  So, I have something in common with Richard Nixon.  The man told us his mother had been a model for Ford Models.  The thing that was interesting about him was that in no way was he bragging or name-dropping.  He was just sharing stuff about himself and wanted to know all about us too.

It was probably the most surreal moment of the rally.  Here we are standing in front of this ultra-expensive apartment building, steps from Central Park, talking to this obviously wealthy New Yorker about long-distance motorcycling and Richard Nixon’s love of pugs.

New York had been a huge success.  We had completed a really big string, met nice people and our plan worked perfectly – right down to the parking spaces.  As we got on the bike and waved goodbye to our new friend, I told Jim, “We have to come back on a vacation. I want to explore every inch of this city.”

We headed north through the Bronx looking for Interstate 95 and Connecticut, where we had a motel reservation just off the freeway.  It was just past midnight.  Our plan was to take about four hours of rest before continuing through New England enroute to Nova Scotia.

There was just one problem.  My new GPS didn’t come with Canada maps on it.  I didn’t have time to download them from Garmin before we left Texas.  When we stopped in Tennessee the night before, I had purchased the Canada maps online and started the download process before going to sleep.  When we woke that morning, the download hadn’t worked.  Garmin had loaded updates to the unit but not the maps.  So, we’d have to give it another go.  Before going to sleep that night in Connecticut, I set everything up to download the maps again and double-checked that it was working.  Or so I thought.

 Day Nine

I woke up to the sound of Jim’s finger’s clicking on the laptop keyboard.  I saw that he had the Streets and Trips mapping program open.

“What are you doing?  What time is it?”

“I woke up thinking that we can’t manage to make it to Nova Scotia.  I’m looking for another route.”

“Do you need me to help or do you want to see what you come up with first?”

“I’ll do it first then I’ll wake you up to see what you think.”

Great.  I rolled over and went back to sleep.  He woke me up a bit later and I got up to see what he had come up with.  I really trust Jim’s judgment when it comes to knowing what is doable and what isn’t.  He’s done this so many times.  If he thought attempting Nova Scotia was a bad idea then I wasn’t going to argue with him.  We had other options.

A new plan was hatched.  By now we figured we had plenty of points to be rally finishers … barring some unfortunate incident … so now we just wanted to grab what we could as we started to make our way back west to Minnesota.

I wrote out our new route itinerary carefully in our little waterproof notebooks, packed up and headed to Massachusetts to find the Dr. Suess Lorax statue bonus.  Easier said than done. The coordinates took us to a wall.  We could see that over the wall was an area full of Dr. Suess sculptures but we couldn’t figure out how to get in.  There was a locked gate.  We started walking around the block to find the entrance to the park.  After a bit, I suggested that Jim go back and get the bike while I tried to find the entrance.

I kept walking around the block and eventually came to the main entrance to the park with lots of nice empty parking spaces.  I had to remind myself that it was July 4^th.  I could see the Lorax statue from the entrance but Jim hadn’t made his way yet.  He was out of range for our Bluetooths.  So I waited for what seemed like forever for him to find me.  He did.  We got the Lorax photo and off we went.

We headed up to Vermont and reached the east side of the long and narrow Lake Champlain. It was the 4^th of July and the Lake Champlain Marina was busy with picnickers, boaters and tourists.  We pulled up to what we thought was a parking hut to see where we could park.  Turned out it was the booth where you paid to get on a ferry to go across the lake. 

We explained we weren’t riding the ferry but were looking for a granite monument dedicated to a lake monster.  The woman in the booth had no idea what we were talking about, but pointed us to a nearby parking area.  We parked and started asking everyone we passed if they knew where the monument was.  While we weren’t the only ones who weren’t from around there, we were the only ones dressed in full rally gear. With everyone else in bathing suits and shorts, we certainly stood out in the crowd.

There was a Segway tour rolling past us.  Of course the tour guide would know what we were looking for.  We politely interrupted his tour and asked about the monument.  He seemed delighted to help us and pointed the way.  I turned around at one point and all the Segways seemed to be following us.  We found the monster monument and made our way back to the bike.

We had lost time looking for these last two bonuses and our next bonus was timed.  It was going to close at 5 p.m. and it was already 2:30. Our route had us heading way north to the top of the lake then coming back south and west to get to the bonus in Saranac Lake, New York.  The bonus was worth a whopping 2,409 points but getting there by 5 p.m. probably was no longer doable.  If we could only get around the lake faster … hmmmmm … .

Ferry?!  We were standing right next to a ferry.  Duh!  I ran over to the lady in the little booth to find out when the next boat left.  “In about 20 minutes and you better hurry if you want to get on it. It’s about an hour ride.”

“Jim, hurry up and bring the bike over here,” I told him via our headsets.  “It leaves in 20 minutes.”

Jim pulled up on the FJR, paid the whopping $20 for the bike and two people, and within a few minutes we were being loaded onto the ferry.  A group of Harley riders was crossing with us and we all were parked together at the front of the boat.

Jim found a spot to lie down to take a much-needed nap.  He hadn’t slept as much as me since he woke up fretting about Nova Scotia.

 The Harley guys were downstairs, standing by their bikes, so I went down to chat with them.  I explained we were riding in the Iron Butt Rally.  One of them said he wondered if that was what we were doing when he saw how the bike was equipped and how we were dressed.  I told them we needed to get to Saranac Lake before 5 p.m. and would they mind if we got off the ferry first to save time.  They were fine with it but they were skeptical that we’d make it to Saranac Lake by 5.  “You’ll be cutting it really close.”

Great.  I then went over to the ferry guy who would be waving us off and asked him if we could get off first. “No problem,” he said. I went to wake up Jim as we were getting close to the other side of the lake.

As the ferry approached the dock, we were on the bike with the motor running. The second the ramp was lowered we waved our thanks to the Harley riders and ferry crew and were on our way. And then we hauled ass to Saranac Lake.  It was 50 miles away but our GPSs said it would take an hour and 15 minutes to get there.  It’s difficult, and foolish, to try and beat the GPS prediction on twisty and busy two-lane roads, especially on a national holiday. But we’d do our best and see what happens.

The bonus we were hoping to nab was a giant fly that was part of a carousel.  As we rode west I watched every single minute tick away on my GPS’s dashboard screen. And as we got closer to Saranac Lake, the GPS predicted we’d arrive 11 minutes late. Sure enough, it was 5:11 p.m. when we arrived at the park where the carousel is located.

We jumped off the bike and ran to the door of the carousel building.  It wasn’t locked.  We went in and sure enough there was the giant fly just waiting for us to take his picture.  We walked over, I held the flag and Jim snapped the photo.  About then a lady who worked there came out from the back.  We asked if it was alright that we were there.  She was fine with it.  She was just getting ready to lock up.

Jim wanted to call Lisa Landry to ask if we would be able to claim the bonus.  I said, “I know exactly what she is going to say because I know what I would say if this was my rally.  No points.”  “Call her anyway.”

So I did.  I made sure she knew that it was Jim’s idea to call because I knew what she was going to say.  And that’s what she said.  No points.  The time posted in the rally book was 5 p.m.  We arrived late.  No points.  These were the first and only points we would lose in this rally but they were some big ones.

Oh well.  That’s how it goes.

As I sit here months after the rally and recollect those 11 days it occurs to me that from Day 9 to Day 11, we were a bit out of it.  I guess that’s normal.  We didn’t act like we were that tired but looking at our ride during those last couple of days it strikes me that we were kind of scattered.  I’m not sure I understand why we made some of the decisions we did other than fatigue had set in.

And here is a great example – after losing the points in Saranac Lake we headed up to the Canadian border to go to Ottawa.  That had been part of our plan and it made sense.  But now we had to figure out how to complete the full-house string without the fly bonus.

Our new route had us picking up the giant spider in Ottawa, and then coming back through New York to the shark girl in Buffalo.  From there we planned to make our way back into Canada to Sault Saint Marie to get the hairy-fish bonus to finish a mythical and air combo.  We left Ottawa, traveled south and stopped for a rest near Syracuse, New York.  After some sleep I saw we had made a mistake in the plan.  Oops.

Day 10

As I was reviewing our route I saw the error.  We had too many mythical-category bonuses in this string.  The shark girl in Buffalo and the furry trout in Sault Saint Marie would give us four mythicals instead of three.  And here we were in Syracuse, New York, when we should have been somewhere in Ontario on our way to Sault Saint Marie, Michigan.  Damn It!

Now we had to ride right through Buffalo, bypassing the shark girl, and make the long slog up to Sault Saint Marie.  But now we had a new problem.  Remember when I said we needed to load Canada maps into my new GPS?  Well, that never happened.  I needed a micro SD card to hold the maps.  We found one at a Love’s truck stop but we couldn’t get the new GPS to recognize it. Bottom line: we had to dump the idea of loading new Canadian maps into my Garmin.

Meanwhile, our Zumo 665 decided it was tired, shut itself off, and wouldn’t wake up again.  We didn’t have time to troubleshoot yet another GPS glitch so we ventured into the wilds of Canada depending only on our oldest GPS – the mighty 2720 Street Pilot. And this is why you need multiple GPSs.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

When we had looked at our new route – minus shark girl – on Streets and Trips on the laptop, from Syracuse it had us crossing into Canada but heading due west to Detroit, then picking up northbound Interstate 75 as the fastest route to Sault Saint Marie, Michigan. Apparently, the ancient 2720 GPS didn’t get the memo about that faster route. It, unfortunately, had other ideas.

As we crossed into Canada for the third time on the rally, I started to get sleepy.  I hadn’t slept very much on the back of the bike during this rally but now I couldn’t manage to hold my eyes open. After a bit I woke up and looked around.  We were in really heavy traffic.  And then I noticed signs for Toronto.

Toronto!!!  What were we doing in Toronto??

“Jim!  Why are we in Toronto? We’re supposed to be in Detroit!”

“This is the shortest and fastest way the old 2720 is sending us.”

We pulled out of the traffic, got off the highway and found a place to park so we could reassess.  By this point we were committed to the 2720’s slower route up Canada Highway 400 and around Lake Huron.  Luckily, we still had time to make the critical furry-fish bonus in northern Michigan but not without making frequent use of Canada’s handy passing lanes.

So we spent all of Day 10 grinding across Canada to Sault Saint Marie where we needed to photograph a furry fish hanging on the wall of Antlers Restaurant.  We arrived there around 5:30 p.m.  A friendly employee pointed us to the fish, we got the photo and wandered back to the parking lot.   

At this point we had about 36 hours to get back to Minneapolis and we still needed to travel about three hours north to photograph a giant goose in Wawa.   We also had one more sleep bonus. We decided to get the maximum number of sleep points by taking the full eight hours. Then we’d get up in the middle of the night, drive up the coast of Lake Superior to the Wawa goose, and then return south, picking up every possible point available on our way to the finish in Minneapolis. It seemed like a good plan, especially because we’d miss long lines at the border by crossing at night.

At this point I should mention that Jim and I have a wonderful relationship.  We never had a cross word between us on this rally.  It was really kind of remarkable.  We agreed on all our decisions, we stopped when it made sense, we made routing decisions together.  We were and are a really good team.

As we stood in the furry fish’s parking lot, I pulled out my phone to start looking for a hotel.  We had been having good luck finding decent places to sleep at good prices.  Jim is pretty frugal and I don’t push him on it as long as we’re comfortable and safe.

So he says, “I saw a place a couple of blocks away.  Let’s just go there.”

The place he was referring to was a total dump that looked like it should be condemned.

I ignored him and kept looking.  I wasn’t having any luck.  There were no motels at a reasonable price near us.  Hmmm.

He repeated his plan of going to the horrible, gross place down the street.  I kept looking at my phone.

Finally, I found a Holiday Inn Express about two miles away that was just yards from the entry point back into Canada. It was $150 per night. 

I looked at Jim and said, “I’m tired and cranky and all I want is a really comfy bed in a nice hotel.  We’re staying at the Holiday Inn Express and I don’t care how much it costs.”  It was clear I wasn’t budging on this point.

“Ok.”  Jim is a wonderful man.  And a really smart one.

There was a gas station next to the hotel; we filled up and got a receipt required to document the start of our sleep bonus. Then we splurged and bought a couple of a gas-station sandwiches for a feast in our ultra-luxurious, Holiday Inn Express room.  Yeah, I know.  But at the time it felt like a five-star resort.

Day 11

The evil Screaming Meanie woke us at 2 a.m. This was our last day.  We had a little over 24 hours to collect as many points as possible and make our way back to Minneapolis.  We were well on our way to have plenty of points to be rally finishers, but still had a long way to go without any issues.

We got the receipt to document the end of our sleep bonus at the hotel’s front desk and crossed back into Canada for the 4^th time.  I am amazed we weren’t flagged on a system somewhere.  But by now we had the whole process down to a science.  We headed north on the gorgeous, winding road that hugs the coast of Lake Superior toward the weirdly named Wawa to find the giant goose and finish our full-house string. 

By Day 11 of the Iron Butt Rally you think you’ve experienced all the challenges you could possibly encounter.  But we had one more and it was a doozy:  dense, heavy fog mixed with road construction. And by road construction, I mean there were no lines painted on the road …  just those little, occasional square reflectors. 

There were stretches where Jim could not see past the front of the bike.  He switched lights on, off, dimmed, etc. trying to get the right mix.  Nothing helped.  We were crawling along. I was on full-moose alert. There were moose-warning signs everywhere.  On a clear day I would have loved to see a moose.  But not now.  As we climbed in elevation, the fog got worse and we continued our crawl.  Parts of the construction involved mucky, loose and sandy spots.  Yay for Jim’s off-road trials training!  Finally, we reached Wawa and that high-point-value goose.  Another string complete!

The sun was starting to rise and we were hopeful that the fog would lift as we made our back south on the same road.  Or at least in daylight the fog might not be so bad.  We were pleasantly surprised by one of the nicest rides on the entire rally.  We watched the sun come up and the light shimmering off the lake.  The last of the fog had burned off.  It was a beautiful morning. We had the road to ourselves. Woo-hoo.

Back in Sault Saint Marie we made our final border crossing and headed south toward the Mackinac Bridge.  I had never been on it before so I was really excited that my first time would be during the Iron Butt Rally.

As I sat in my office on the back of the bike, studying what was coming up, I realized we were on our way to putting another one last string.  We were going to pick up three bonuses in the Michigan mitten – two waters and one air.  Now if we could just manage to find another air and another water on our way home through Chicago, Wisconsin and Minnesota … .

We picked up a trout and then it was on to a giant grasshopper.  On a beautiful country road a bee managed to find his way right into my helmet.  He didn’t seem too happy about it and neither was I.  He stung me right on the end of my chin.  I quickly lifted my face shield and proceeded to slap myself in the face until the bee fell dead on my lap.  Owwwwwww!!!!  Jim couldn’t see all this and was yelling in my ear, “What’s the matter?  What’s going on??”

“A bee stung me on the chin.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“NO!  Keep going.  It’ll be fine.”

When we stopped at the giant grasshopper I took off my helmet to assess the bee sting.  By now it was pretty swollen and when I looked in the mirror my chin made me look like Kirk Douglas.  We had some Benadryl in our first-aid kit but I didn’t want to take one if it would make me sleepy.  The last time I fell asleep on the bike we wound up in Toronto.  But it hurt and was really swollen so I decided to take my chances with the Benadryl.  We moved on to hunt for fish heads sticking out of the ground.

This one was a little tricky to find.  The GPSs kept telling us we were at the bonus location but we couldn’t see them.  Then Jim caught a glimpse of something looking like a fish head behind a nearby water tower.  We found a little road down to a parking lot next to a park and there they were: really strange concrete fish heads sticking out of the ground.

It was time for fuel so we stopped at a convenience store for some gas, food, water and to study the bonus map. I still wanted to figure out how to get a string out of these Michigan bonuses even if the effort wasn’t worth a ton of points.  The final bonus in the string had a multiplier of four, so even a small bonus had the potential to be worth more than a 1,000 points.

The temperature was in the 90s and neither one of us was looking forward to our obvious route of plowing through a Chicago rush hour as we made our way around the bottom of Lake Michigan. While studying the map I noticed a dotted line that crossed the big lake. It was another ferry, running from Muskegon, Michigan, over to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We were only 30 miles from Muskegon!  I quickly checked the ferry schedule and one was leaving in a couple of hours.  We weren’t sure if we could get on it but it was worth riding over to see.

Even better, as I looked at the GPS I saw a bonus in Milwaukee that was just across the street from the ferry terminal. Lady bugs! They were only worth 152 points but I didn’t care; they were an air bonus we needed for our last string.

We arrived at the Muskegon ferry terminal.  Jim pulled into a line of cars and motorcycles and I went in to see if we could get on.

                                                       

The man at the counter was really nice.  I told him we wanted to get on the 4 p.m. ferry.  “Do you have reservations?”

“No, we just thought we’d give it a try.”  I could tell by his expression that this was probably a futile effort.

“Do you have a trike, side car or trailer?”

“No, just us and a Yamaha.”

“Hmmm … let me go in the back and check on something.”

He came back in a couple of minutes and said, “OK, we can squeeze in one more motorcycle.”

I let out a sigh of relief and so did Jim who was listening to the whole exchange through our headsets. The counter man typed our ticket information into his computer and said, “That will be $269.”  Yikes.  I pulled out the American Express card and just like that we had tickets for the high-speed, two-hour ferry ride across Lake Michigan. 

We had about an hour before we left.  We spent it eating some snacks and getting to know a couple who had just moved from Edina, Minnesota, to Ohio.  There was also a group of Harley riders who Jim started talking to as they were loading all the vehicles on the ferry.  It turns out these guys had made their reservations a year in advance because it’s so hard to get on this ferry.

Luck is a HUGE part of this rally business.

We settled into the ferry’s comfy reclining seats and enjoyed some cheese, grapes and air-conditioned peace and quiet. Because we were going to be pulling an all-nighter on our ride back to Minneapolis, I wanted Jim to sleep as long as possible.  But having worked as a sailor on Great Lakes iron ore ships years ago, he was fascinated with the ultra-modern ferry and stayed out on deck visiting with our new friends, the couple from Edina. Finally, I went out and retrieved him.  I politely explained to the couple that he really needed a nap.  They understood and he got about an hour of sleep.  Luckily, he can sleep anywhere and on command.

While Jim was snoozing, I pulled out the laptop to see what other bonuses we could nab on our way to the finish.  Our tentative plan had us heading north to Rhinelander, Wisconsin, for a bonus worth 568 points but it wouldn’t be part of a string.  Then all of a sudden I noticed a bonus near LaCrosse, Wisconsin, right on the Minnesota border.  I clicked on it and saw that it was a W – a WATER category bonus.  That’s exactly what we needed to finish our string.  It was worth 256 points but with the multiplier it became 1024.  When Jim woke up I told him about the fish in Onalaska.  Yay!

We pulled into Milwaukee.  Getting the bike off the ferry was a bit of a production so Jim handled that and I met him in the parking lot.  We headed across the bridge into downtown Milwaukee, turned right and found the lady bugs crawling down the side of a building.  

Now to find our way out of downtown to Interstate 94.  Our GPSs were totally confused so we followed road signs but they were as confused as the GPSs. We turned around a couple of times and even asked a motorcycle cop who was next to us at a stop light.  He wanted to know how we liked the FJR as he was thinking of getting one.  We told him we loved it and to go buy one.  He gave us directions to the interstate but we still couldn’t manage to find our escape route out of downtown Milwaukee.

Fatigue?  Perhaps.  Finally, we found an entrance ramp and made our way toward Minnesota.

The weather app was going crazy on my phone so I started studying on that.  It showed a terrible band of thunderstorms rolling from west to east and we were headed right for them. It looked like we’d meet up around the interchange from I-94 to I-90.  I was even getting text messages from my brother-in-law in Maryland warning us of the weather.  He was watching both the weather and our satellite SPOT tracker on his computer.

We usually take rain in stride. But we were being extra cautious as we got closer to the end of the rally.  We didn’t want anything messing this up.  We had more than enough time to get the final water bonus and then make our way back to Minneapolis.  As the storm hit we decided to pull off and pamper ourselves with a Subway sandwich.  We sat in the dry Subway, enjoying our sandwich, as the storm rolled through.  I watched it on my phone and when the coast was clear, we got back on the bike and continued west.

We arrived in Onalaska around midnight.  The fish was right next to the Mississippi River and the mosquitoes were terrible.  Ah ... we were close to home and the Minnesota state bird was welcoming us back.  But we had our string!  We crossed the Mississippi and were heading back to the barn.  Our GPSs had us arriving at the rally hotel around 2:30 a.m.

We were ready to be done.  There was a bonus – the Minnehaha bunny statue – not far from our house.  It was only worth 86 points and it was daylight only.  We ride past that bunny all the time when we’re out on our bicycles and we both really wanted to claim that bonus for no other reason than we love that bunny.  As we headed back to the Marriott we hatched a plan to go to the hotel, sleep until 5 a.m., get up and go get the bunny, then come back to stop the clock and get scored.

Two hours later we pulled into the parking lot of the Marriott and the rally finish line.  I had heard stories from other finishers about how this feels.  We were coming in pretty early so I didn’t expect there to be anyone there to welcome us.  I was wrong.

There were seven or eight people including friends like Ron Messick, Brett Donahue, Minna Case and Donna Kennedy.  Some people held signs and they were all cheering.  It brings tears to my eyes just remembering how great that felt.  We did it. 

We made it back after 11 days with us and our motorcycle intact.  We had enough points to be finishers.

We parked the bike and collected our stuff to go check in.  We told those gathered that we weren’t done and about our plan to claim the bunny in the morning.  You could see the skepticism in their eyes.   Brett, the third-place finisher in 2007 said, “It might not be worth the risk to ride over there in the morning.  See how you feel after some sleep.”

We went upstairs and set the Screaming Meanie for 5 a.m.  That would give us time to get over to the bunny by daylight.

I woke up before the alarm.  I shook Jim.

“We are crazy if we go get that bunny.”

“We are?”

“We could get stuck in traffic, the bike could break down, God forbid – we could have an accident.  It isn’t worth it.  If something happened our whole rally would be at risk.”

I could tell Jim was still thinking it would be a fun thing to do.  And it would have been.

Finally, he agreed. We got up, went downstairs to stop the clock and get scored.

The rest of that day was SO much fun.  All the pressure was gone.  Now all we did was exchange stories and welcome the other riders back.  As with every rally, several people were not going to make it back to the finish but thankfully, everyone was safe. 

We stood out in the parking lot with some of the TeamStrangers drinking beer out of a cooler in the back of Brant Moteelall’s truck.  And we told more stories.  Everyone agreed we made the right call about not getting the bunny.

That night at the banquet we waited anxiously to hear Lisa Landry call our names.

We finished in 66^th place overall with 74,597 points and 9,526 miles.

I was disappointed.  And then, like many before me, I kind of went into a bit of a depression.  I had heard this might happen but was surprised that it happened to me.  It lasted a couple of weeks.  I was really sad that it was over and I just wanted to be back on the bike and back on the road.

Being in rally mode, for that many days in a row is a thoroughly unreal experience.  Nothing else exists.  You are completely cut off from the real world.  Nothing matters but getting the next bonus.  It’s the most wonderful feeling!  And I didn’t want it to be over.

Eventually real life kicked back in.  With a few months to ruminate, I am really happy with our finish and with the fact that we didn’t leave any points on the table.  After missing the giant fly by 11 minutes we just regrouped and figured it out. Perhaps not as elegantly as we could but we managed.  GPS issues were the most major thing we had to deal with.  You always second guess your routing choices.  I’m still hung up over Leg Two.   I’m not sure if going to south Texas would have been a better choice but we’ll never know.

After 10 years of dreaming, death, grief, a bad back, shingles and one bee sting – I finally got my three-digit IBA number.

I am the 573^rd person to complete the Iron Butt Rally.

Thank you Eddie James and Jim Winterer.  Because of the two of you I’ve done something very few people have done.  I love you both more than I can express.

And thank you to my siblings – who couldn’t understand my determination to compete in this event but who supported my desire to do it.  I know there was much fretting as they watched our SPOT tracker.  I’ve been on that side of it and totally understand the stress involved in watching that little motorcycle moving across the computer screen.  Or not moving – which is worse.

And thank you to the long distance motorcycling community for welcoming me with open arms and giving me friendships that will last long after I take my last ride.