The SS2000 is a 2,000 mile ride that must be completed in 48 hours. Standard rules apply, get witness forms signed on the front and back ends and receipts for all stops in the middle.
Let's put things in perspective. 2,000 miles in 48 hours means you need to average 41.66 MPH if you use all 48 hours. Being human, I elected for some sleep. If we take an 8 hour nap, we need to average 50 MPH, using all but 8 hours for riding. I like to eat and my bike likes a full tank of gas every 250 miles, so, allowing 4 hours for all that, we need an average of 55.55 MPH. Then, there's Monkey Butt to contend with. This is the Saddle Sore / Bun Burner aspect of riding a motorcycle. It is not the miles that causes Monkey Butt, it's time in the saddle, so getting out of the saddle helps a lot. I thought the best plan to accomplish this involved us leaving at 3pm on a Friday, riding 500 miles, sleeping, riding 1,000 miles, sleeping and finishing the last 500 miles with a photo finish at 48 hours. This schedule works out to 500 miles every 8 hours and a need to average 62.5 MPH for each riding hour. This is perfectly doable. Paul and John agreed with the plan.
There was a little wrinkle in this whole thing: weather. Initially, we considered doing a triangle with Denver Colorado and Phoneix Arizona being our two far corners, but heavy snow covered the Rockies potentially making the route hazardous. We opted for a straight shot out I-10. The super-slab provides higher speeds and better chances to bank time for unfortunate occurrences. I also wanted to go this past weekend vs. next weekend because the weather was going to be good and what would happen next weekend was anyone's guess. If I didn't get this ride in, I would have to wait until Fall. That put John in a bind. His wife bought tickets to a show on Saturday evening. He still planned to go with us on Friday and ride with us until he had to leave to get back for the concert. Fantastic dedication!
We weren't quite ready to leave yet. Paul had one bike with a tire that wouldn't make the ride and the other that was in need of 12,000 mile service. He's also a highly dedicated rider, went into beast mode, and knocked out his service during the evenings. Carolyn probably hates the fact that I took her husband away from her for a few evenings leading up to an event that would take him away from her for a weekend. This is unfortunate and I'll have to make amends somehow, Paul and I are looking forward to a trip from Prudhoe Bay Alaska to the tip of South America soon. Carolyn will need some convincing and I don't think I have much currency with her right now. Any recommendations from my loyal readership of 2 people would be most welcome.
This all gets us to game day. As planned, we got our witness forms signed and exited the parking lot at 3pm. We went straight to the Shell station, got gas, checked the time on our receipts, 3:11 pm, and hit the Interstate. Traffic was a little messy. Fortunately, we were in California and could split lanes. We must have been doing that for about 30 miles before we were in the clear and up to the speed limit, or thereabouts. Temps were in the high 90's in the desert and falling with the afternoon sun, which, for our viewing pleasure, was positioned perfectly in front of us. Cars became shadows, but when the sun was low in the sky, the traffic was sparse.
There would be no dinner for us. We had 500 miles to make and as it was, our arrival time was looking like 11pm. The time lost splitting lanes does not get made up the speed limit is exceeded by a substantial margin for a long period. We weren't willing to do that. John was in the middle, with Paul up front. John could not pair his Bluetooth headset with ours, so we couldn't talk with him. When we were ready for fuel, I rode up alongside John and gave him the standard signals that we were going to take an exit 10 miles away for gas. Interestingly enough, John was not getting gas mileage like we were and went into his secondary tank (mounted on his back seat and plumbed into the main tank). Maybe this is because he was loaded down with gear like we were, and carrying an extra 5 gallons of fuel (40 pounds). Our fuel turnaround was a perfect 10 minutes and we made it to Wilcox Arizona at about 22:20.
James was the desk clerk at the Holiday Inn Express and he had rooms. I asked for 3 rooms and was going to pay for them all to move things along so we could sleep, but hotel policy said he had to do it all manually. He gave us $20/room off the regular rate. The room was nice enough and no electrical outlet sins were committed; the outlets weren't hidden behind furniture. I plugged in everything, stripped, brushed my teeth, set the alarm and air conditioner and crashed. I don't remember anything until my alarm went off at 6. At 6, I grabbed a quick shower, dressed, packed and was walking to the door when Paul knocked. He and John had been up since 4:30 am. Now, Paul I can understand. This was his first Iron Butt run and could easily not understand that the sleep cycles are just as important as the ride cycles. John on the other hand, has no excuse. He's done more IBA runs than I have and knows the value of sleep. Paul would not hear the end of this for many miles of our morning ride. Breakfast was at the hotel. Like all hotels, they had a really crappy continental breakfast. The difference for this hotel was they had these little "omelettes." I do mean little. They were pre-made and who knows what was in them, but sandwiched between 2 bagel halves, I had a bagel sandwich going for me. The plan from here was that John was going to ride with us for an hour and turn around. Paul and I would continue on to Odessa.
First stop out of the hotel was gas. We were low. There is a ton of value in separating gas stops from hotel and meal stops, but it didn't work out that way for this stop. With gas in the tank, water and granola bars in the back seat bag, we were off. John made his turn around in Lordsburg NM. Paul and I continued on and had no plans to stop until we needed gas, which we calculated to be in El Paso Texas. Paul and I were always calculating. IBA runs are all about the clock, the odometer and building time by staying above the average 62.5 MPH needed. Unnecessary fuel stops equate to time wasted. That said, fuel management is something of science and art. Sometimes it's necessary to stop before leaving a major city, particularly in western Texas. In western Texas, fuel stops can be 50 miles or more apart. Fueling at El Paso virtually guaranteed that we would make Odessa Texas on the next tank. That didn't happen in actuality. We decided to stop at the junction of I-10 and I-20. The 80 MPH speed limit in that section of Texas was causing us to burn fuel faster. So, we made a quick stop for fuel and got back on the bikes, headed for Odessa. Our plan was to travel about 25-30 miles more than we had to in order to make sure we had the required mileage for the ride, regardless of whether they used a mapping tool or our odometers for verification. Odessa wasn't exactly like I thought it would be. There were no easy on / easy off restaurants around, so I selected one on my GPS that was close by. It ended up being an authentic Mexican restaurant with outside seating.
The outside seating part was a little unfortunate. Being up on the mountain was a little chilly. The highest altitude we hit was about 4500', but the temps dropped down into the 60's and there was a stiff gusting wind hitting us from the left. It's great to have a big fairing, but it doesn't help much when the wind is coming in from the side. The food was good. I had some soft-shelled tacos and Paul at a chimichanga. It wasn't intended, but, in less than 30 minutes, we were back on the bikes. It seemed to take much longer to get out of Texas than it took to get in. Maybe this was the first sign of fatigue. We were 500+ miles into a 1000 mile day. We decided to stop just past the split again for fuel to make sure we'd get to El Paso. When we got into the city of El Paso, my headset died. Paul and I were just discussing dinner plans. I happened to see a Cracker Barrel sign that said exit 11, 19 miles away. I know Paul likes Cracker Barrel and noting the full parking lots at the restaurants around us, I realized that something on the outskirts of town would be better. I led us there and before you know it, we were eating dinner. Dinner was well timed because the sun was right in our eyes and traffic was fairly heavy. Getting off the road was a good thing.
I put my headset and phone on charge with my XP-3. This is a fantastic battery that will charge my gadgets and jump start a dump truck if necessary. It's a fantastic little device. Dinner was a chicken salad. I only ate about half. Eat too much and your pancreas goes into overdrive making insulin and you feel tired. We had 300 miles ahead of us and it was night. Feeling tired wouldn't have been good. We probably kept this stop down to a half hour or so, but it didn't matter. We knew we were going to get the 300 miles in and have plenty of rest before we had to get up for the next day's finish. I called the same hotel to book a room. James answered and remembered me. He had me squared away in no time.
We needed one gas stop to get us there and we decided to make that halfway or more away from where we were. Right after our fuel stop, I got a check oil light. I thought it might have been because I took off so fast from the gas station and turned my bike off, paused a moment, and turned it back on. The light dissappeared and I was comfortable riding the next couple hours without pulling the dip stick. On the way, I took the opportunity to remind Paul about the importance of sleep. Paul assured me that he would sleep until my alarm went off and I assured him that if he got out of bed beforehand, I'd knock him out.
We arrived and quickly got our stuff off the bikes. Our room was ready and they checked us in very quickly. I plugged everything in, brushed my teeth, set the alarm and went to bed. Half an hour before the alarm went off, Paul got up to do his morning routine, proving that I would not actually knock him out. I'm sure he knew he was never in any danger. I'm sure he was just as excited as I was to finish this ride up. I wanted to check the oil, but the bike has to be warm to the point that the fan comes on, and that wasn't going to happen. It was only 60 some degrees. I checked the dipstick and it was reading low, so I added oil, being careful not to add too much and overfill the tank.
At our next fuel stop, I let the bike idle on the center stand until the fan came on, turned it off, waited the obligatory 1 minute and checked the oil. It was bone dry. I put in about half a quart to get the oil level between the min and max lines and saved the rest. The pump wouldn't let me get past the loyalty card prompt, so I had to go in. Fortunately we were at a stop that had a Denny's. I asked Paul to get us a table while I got fuel. This stop wasn't supposed to be our food stop, but the delay was too much and I thought it best to consolidate stops. We got some breakfast and headed out. The next half hour or so was spent talking about all the potential issues that could be causing my bike to consume oil. All 2 of my loyal readers will recall the posts about my oil issues.
After passing Phoenix AZ, it was getting hot. I needed to reduce layers and asked Paul to stop at the next rest stop 6 miles away. Then I thought better of it and asked him what he thought about me stopping and finding him on the Interstate when I was finished. Paul also thought that was an interesting idea. I ran into the rest area, shed my jacket, stowed it, reloaded some water and took off to rejoin Paul. It wasn't but 12 minutes later that I ran up to him.
From there, we would need another fuel stop and wanted it to be in Arizona. We did that, crossed the border and went through the agricultural check point. We always get waived through these things, even the customs check points. In Mexico, we got stopped and searched at all of them, but not here.
The California desert was 98 degrees or more the whole way. It seemed like every breath of hot dry air sucked the life right out of my body. Water? I was drinking like a fish, but there was no keeping up. It was just hot. The pavement was probably something like 120 degrees. Did I mention how hot it was? It was hot.
We pulled into Redlands with over an hour left on the clock. I convinced the two young ladies at the gas station to sign our witness forms and with that, we were done with that trip. Paul had more riding to do to get to Riverside, but I was only about half a mile from my apartment.
Now, I'm off to get the paperwork together! Here are the maps.
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