Thursday, November 10, 2011

2011 Iron Butt Rally Report

It's now early November, 4 months have passed since I successfully completed my first Iron Butt Rally. A big thank you to all the volunteers and the Rally staff who go through months of planning and work so we could have all America as our playground for 11 days.

Just a little background....

I don't recall when I caught the Iron Butt bug, it seems like I've followed the rally forever. I know I've read every daily update on the rally website, but the first I followed live was probably only 2005, so really not that long ago. I do recall being very excited that Shane Smith won it on a Honda ST1300, the same bike I was riding at the time.

Despite an interest level that was bordering on addiction, I didn't finally enter my first rally until summer of 2010. Not sure what kept me from getting to the start line, I'd looked at events like the Northwest Passage Rally but if I recall the dates conflicted with a quarterly meeting I have every August. Finally in 2010, I was planning to be in Southern California to marshal at the Pebble Beach US Open, when I found out the Cal 24 rally was being held the weekend before. It seemed like fate, so I threw my name in the ring and entered my first rally. At the time I thought it was the beginning of a plan to ride the Iron Butt Rally by the time I was 50.

Just a bit ahead of Schedule...

In addition to the Cal 24, I also ran the 5 day Spank Rally in 2010. Despite a crash I had a decent finish and was reminded of a valuable lesson, never give up. I went through many highs and lows over those 5 days. Following the crash I considered pulling out of the rally and heading home. Mostly thanks to the encouragement of my wife Patti, I decided to keep going and was astonished when I cracked the top 10.

I discovered I really enjoyed the rally game and so when the email came announcing that entries were open for the 2011 Iron Butt Rally I sent in my application. As I filled it out, I honestly didn't think I had any chance of being drawn for 2011. I thought I'd throw my name in, see what happened, but had read of many who had tried numerous times before finally getting the invite. So you can imagine my surprise when an email arrived from Rallymaster Lisa Landry that began...
Congratulations! Your application was drawn for entry in the 2011 Iron Butt Rally!

All I could think, OMG what have I gotten myself into? I was thrilled and scared s**tless at the same time. I was going to get my opportunity a full six years ahead of schedule.

Getting to Seattle...

There are many excellent write ups on bike and rider prep, I won't go into any detail on those subjects, but just getting to the start line ended up being a challenge. I had decided that I didn't want to rally with my ST1300, so I bought a left over 2009 BMW R1200GSA. Following my SPANK experience I felt the bike was just a bit too tall for me and decide to upgrade the suspension and go to a set of lower Wilbers shocks. Somewhere between that upgrade and pulling the bike out of winter storage in the spring of 2011, my Tire Pressure Sensors quit working. Not a huge deal, but since the bike was still under warranty I decided to take it back to the dealer to fix.

The first visit didn't produce a fix so the dealer ordered a new controller and put everything back together and told me they'd call when the part arrived. I informed them of my desire to have this rectified before I left for Seattle and they suggested we book an appointment the week prior. The designated date arrived and the new controller didn't, so I resigned myself to riding without the sensors. I'd just have to resort to a good old fashioned tire gauge. As fate would have it, the piece would show up later in the week and I would break a cardinal rule in LD riding, never make changes to the bike prior to a major trip. Against my better judgement I took the bike to the dealer the weekend before I was to leave for Seattle. They had booked me in for Monday with the promise I could pick the bike up late in the day. I was planning to stop in Cranbrook, BC for a couple days work before heading to Seattle for a Friday arrival.

Monday afternoon came and since I'm over 2 hours away from the closest BMW dealer I called them to make sure the bike was ready to go. "No we need a code from BMW and since they are back East they've closed now for the day" came the reply. I was starting to wish I'd listened to that little voice in my head that told me to wait until after the IBR to deal with the issue. "We'll get to it first thing in the morning, it'll be ready tomorrow." Since I couldn't arrange for a ride on Tuesday, I ended up having to book a one way flight on air miles and have my daughter pick me up at the airport. Not ideal but I still thought everything would be fine.

Air Canada workers chose that Tuesday to begin job action, so my 45 minute flight was delayed almost 2 hours, but I would still make it to the dealer before closing. I tried numerous times to get through to the service department but I kept getting voicemail, no call back so I hoped that the bike would be finished and waiting for me when I arrived. Not only was it not finished, it was still in pieces and the mechanic had left for the day. I started to wonder if I'd be riding my Honda in the rally after all.

Needless to say I was livid, but other than cussing out some part time service writer there was little I could do but grab a hotel room and come back in the morning. It would be Wednesday prior to the biggest ride of my life and my bike was still in pieces and I was no closer to Seattle. The shop finally admitted that the new module was also not working, and they had finally determined that it was not getting any power. They obviously didn't check that when I had it in the first time, or we could have saved ourselves all this frustration. In the end I had them put everything back together and I headed back for home about 1pm.

Fortunately I had pretty much laid out everything I wanted to take prior to leaving the afternoon before. I was 20 hours or so behind schedule and mad at myself for not listening to my own better judgement, but at least I was on my way....

Seattle... getting ready for the start

The trip to Seattle was routine, a quick stop in Cranbrook for work, overnight in Spokane and an easy ride out to the Pacific Northwest. Want to take a moment and thank the service team at Eastside Motorsports. I had arranged for a new tire to be shipped to them and installed on Friday afternoon. These guys were fantastic, about half a dozen riders had made similar arrangements and I'm sure they all got the same great service. If you find yourself in need of a dealer in Bellevue Washington, give these guys your business.

Saturday was the day to take care of the details. Tech inspection, check insurance, camera, waivers and the odo check. There's something about messing up the odo check that messes with your head, and I was one of those that didn't get this one right the first time either. Luckily I managed to get back out right away before an accident shut down the freeway, I got it right the second time around.

Saturday night the Eh! Team got together for dinner. Peter Delean, Perry Karsten and Darren Hicks from Ontario, Jacques Titolo and Jennyfer Audet from Quebec and me, the lone Albertan, were the Canadian contingent known as the Eh! Team. We were asked on more than one occasion if were a bowling team of some kind, little did those people know what we and our fellow riders would face over the next 2 weeks.

Sunday morning the rookies had the last of the pre-rally functions to perform and then wait for the banquet that evening. I fuelLed up the bike and did some running around grabbing some Clif bars for leg 1 and shipping some extra items I would not be needing back home.
Both Saturday and Sunday there was plenty of speculation about the "theme" of the rally. Based on the art work I was pretty sure that it was going to be a 48 state based event. Woulda, coulda, shoulda, Sunday could have been spent looking a little closer at 48 state routes, but again for some reason I didn't trust that little voice inside my head.


Just a little added Pressure...
My "guess" at the theme would be confirmed at the banquet that evening, and to add just a bit of pressure since I was feeling so totally confident (not!) you can imagine my surprise when my name was called first to come forward and collect our rally flags.

Rider #1 is an honour normally bestowed upon a previous winner, or someone who has distinguished themselves in the Long Distance community. This year numbers were handed out based on the rider's home state, since I live in "Alberta", the honour in 2011 fell to me.

Leg 1


Waiting for the 10am start was tough, after months of prep we were so close to "go time" and you certainly could feel the nervous energy. I was lucky enough to end up with a spot next to Alex Harper; Alex was one of two riders who attempted the 2009 IBR in the "Hopeless Class" on a Suzuki Rotary RE5, the same bike that had won the inaugural Rally. Alex and I had met at the Cal 24 the year previous, I admired the determination he showed in the 2009 IBR. A quick riders meeting, some small talk and best wishes with the other riders and before I knew it we were underway.

I had planned a pretty conservative first couple of days, perhaps a little too conservative. I only have a couple of regrets from the ride and it might sound strange to some to say after riding almost 10,500 miles in 11 days, but not pushing myself a little harder is one of those regrets. The big rocks or must have capitals for me on leg 1 were Madison Wisconsin, Lansing Michigan and Harrisburg Pennsylvania. I opted out of going for Boise Idaho on the first day; looking back it was one capital I really should have gone for.

Otherwise Leg 1 really went off as planned. The only real opportunity to ride with someone came later on day 1 when Perry Karsten and I met up around Pasco, Washington. It was a beautiful evening as we motored our way north and east before splitting up just before Spokane. My only real animal scare was on day 2 after gassing up in Sheridan Wyoming, instead of backtracking I decided to continue east on I-90 and loop up through South Dakota and then just catch the northwest corner of North Dakota. As I had just got back up to speed coming out of Sheridan, I noticed something dark on the highway in front of me. There in the middle of the overpass, coming at me full speed was the scruffiest deer I'd ever seen, fortunately there was nobody beside me and I was able to scrub off some speed and avoid bambi.

At the opening banquet, when the 48 state theme was revealed I admit thinking I'd wished I'd brought my ST1300 instead of the GSA. I had bought the Beemer expecting to have to pound out some gravel miles chasing some bizarre bonus location. This IBR was going to be all about pounding out the miles and the ST certainly does that with less effort than the GSA. But low and behold I did find some gravel on leg 1 when trying to find my way around a detour on I-29 on day 3. Much of day 3 was wet and overcast, and south of Omaha the Missouri River looked more like a lake. Many of the riders were trying to catch a corner of Kansas just opposite St. Joseph Missouri and ended up hitting the I-29 detour on the way south. My plan for day three was to make this loop South and then head back North to Des Moines and hopefully end the day in Madison, Wisconsin to grab the first of my high point capitals the next morning. So the quicker I could get back to the interstate the better. I was just considering if I should have stuck with the marked detour when my gravel road seemed to go from decent to goat path, and then back to deep, loose gravel. After years of dirt bikes, my fall in the Spank rally still has me a bit nervous in the gravel.

Day 4 was almost my undoing when I realized I'd driven through Indiana and the only receipt I'd collected was from a couple of Indiana toll roads. I noted a town when I collected the first and assumed that was where the toll station was located. But when I checked the backup receipt as I was entering the details into my rally passport after picking up Lansing Michigan, I noted it had the same city listed as the other receipt, the location of the head office nowhere near either toll station. Rather than tempt fate and hope that one would be accepted, I detoured 45 minutes back into Indiana on my way back south to pick up Kentucky, disaster averted.

I picked up Harrisburg, PA without much trouble on day 5, and had a pretty easy 450 mile ride coming into the first checkpoint. I'd hit all my targets on Leg 1, but wasn't happy with myself after losing some pretty easy points at the table. I'd changed camera modes to get a night shot in Pierre South Dakota at the end of day 2. Unfortunately I didn't notice that this also changed the resolution size of my photographs, and so I ended up losing 250 points for the wrong resolution and another 25 points for failing to mark the end time of my rest bonus in the rally booklet. 275 total penalty points on leg one, and unfortunately they would not be the last.

Leg 2....
Despite getting early into the checkpoint and being fairly certain of my route for leg 2, I didn't get away as quickly as I wanted following the riders meeting for leg 2. I had never ridden in the East and this was the part of the rally that I was concerned about messing up. I could just see myself forgetting one of the Eastern states like Rhode Island, or getting overestimating how far I could travel in the heavier Eastern traffic.

Following the 4 am riders meeting I went back to my room and double checked my plan for the second leg. I knew I wanted to get into Jacksonville early on Monday as a number of us had tire changes planned at the same location. I had visions of being last in line at the shop and having to wait, losing valuable rest time, so again I planned a conservative leg, paralysis by analysis set in and I didn't hit the road until 6:15am.

After a great ride through Vermont and quickly snagging the capital in Concord New Hampshire, I spent all of 5 minutes in Maine, only grabbing a couple of gallons to get a receipt and document the state. It was cool to ride past the gardens in Boston, home to the newly crowned Stanley Cup Champion Bruins. Hey remember I am a member of the EH! Team, far be it for a Canadian to miss a chance to mention our favourite winter pastime. As far as a rally decision however, Boston and Providence were both a waste of time for the points involved. Traffic tie ups, people everywhere in Boston and a pair of GPS's that wanted to go different directions at the same time cost me a couple of hours, all for 70 points.

The highlight of Saturday however would be driving past New York City. It's one of the few big cities in North America I haven't been to, and while you don't get to see much from the freeway in the dark, it was still pretty exhilarating. Had some trouble grabbing my picture in Trenton New Jersey as the Capital building itself was hardly light up and across the street, the neighbourhood also wasn't one of the better one's I'd been through, again it wasn't worth the points.
Sunday was day seven, Dover, Annapolis and Richmond were all pretty good points, and other than the dome at Annapolis being covered for construction, all were captured without much fuss. I was worried about getting credit for this photo since there were so many trees in the way. As a backup I brought a copy of a news story to scoring which indicated the building was under renovation. It turned out not to be a problem, really the only issue on Sunday was another small mistake that cost me points. I ran into another rider and asked if he'd remembered his call in bonus. He replied it needed to be done by noon, so he'd done it hours earlier, great had I written the times down wrong? I needed gas so I double checked the rally pack. Sure enough, in my over analysis back in Cheektowaga I'd transcribed the information to my tank bag sheet wrong. Instead of Midnight to noon, I'd written noon to midnight. Easy points lost again.

Somewhere in the Carolina's I grabbed a bag of Ice and rode with it inside my Aerostitch. While it was great to cool off, the melting water made its way into my waterproof boots which would be an issue later that night. On my way into Atlanta I could see the sky was showing the first signs of serious rain since I'd left the flooding in the Dakotas. The traffic reports for Atlanta were describing downed power lines and trees across roadways. I decided to push on as Atlanta was really the only high point bonus I'd planned for this leg. I missed most of the storm, but I was soaked from the melting Ice from earlier in the day, I was chilled as the temperature dropped from the passing storm. Luckily there was a parkade across the street from the Atlanta Capital building. I changed socks and dried up; I was hoping I could still make Jacksonville before calling it a night.

South of Atlanta I caught the storm that had caused all the issues in the city. In no time I was cold and wet again and the thought of another three hours into Jacksonville didn't seem that appealing. I stopped in Cordele Georgia and had one of the best sleeps of the rally, including a great 4 poster bed to hang all my wet gloves and socks from. I'd spent about 45 minutes in the downpour hoping to break through on the other side, naturally the next morning was gorgeous and warm with not a cloud in the sky. I laughed at how I normally would have pushed through the rain and been miserable, instead I had a great ride into Jacksonville and was still first in line for my tire change the next morning.

The guys at the shop in Jacksonville were also great, I was feeling guilty when I heard that the mechanics normally had Monday's off, but all three had been called in to help get our tire changes done in a timely fashion. Turns out all three were happy for the extra work; the shop was going to close up for good at the end of the week, another victim of the recession. Thanks to the number of us that booked in for tires or service these guys all got an extra day of work. I heard they really did a great job later when a number of riders all showed up around the same time; I've thought of those guys often and hope all have found some decent paying work.

Scoring went without any problems this time, and other than the call in bonus which I knew about already I didn't leave anything at the table. I think by 1 or 2pm I was back in bed, unfortunately I think I arrived at the checkpoint too rested as I was awake again well before my alarm. I was pretty sure I knew what would be the big points on the final leg, and thought I could be set for a quicker departure than in leg 2.

Leg 3...

Rider's meeting at 10pm, back to the room for a quick review of the bonus listing. I knew I wanted to get West in this leg as quickly as possible. Montgomery, Alabama was worth more points than I anticipated, but Denver, Carson City and Sacramento were all high point bonuses as I expected. Again I started second guessing myself and didn't hit the road until almost 1am. That was the other big lesson from this ride. Just 5 more minutes of double checking never turned out to be "just" 5 minutes. Time that can crawl under normal circumstances, seemed to evaporate while "on the clock".

As it was now officially Tuesday, I was getting into some uncharted territory for me, day 8 onward have been well documented in other ride reports as the time when mental errors started to catch up with riders. As it was I'd never gone beyond a five day rally, fortunately it seemed like I was fine once I was out of the hotel and back on the bike. I decided to opt just for a fuel receipt in Tallahassee rather than fool around with another night time shot. I detoured north to Montgomery Alabama and grabbed that capital just as the sun was rising. My plan was to head back south to grab Baton Rouge, before heading back north to pick up Mississippi and Tennessee. However as I approached the I-55 turnoff the thought of getting Baton Rouge lost its appeal. I wanted to be sure I didn't forsake the points in the West by wasting time chasing smaller point capitals.

Thing was by driving that far South again, I probably wasted an hour by not going for Baton Rouge, instead I should have made that decision earlier and gone straight west from Montgomery. Who knows, had I done that I might have not realized I would have still needed to dip into Louisiana at some point and probably blown the whole rally right there. As it was the ride was interesting and I marvel at the construction of Interstate 10 through the swamps, it was as interesting as interstate riding gets.

I was hoping to pass another big barrier that day. My goal was to make it to Oklahoma City, which would have marked my first 1500 mile rally day. However by the time I left Little Rock Arkansas I wasn't sure I had it in me and I ended up stopping early in Henryetta, Oklahoma. I thought there was no sense in pushing myself so hard that it cost me one of the big point capitals yet to come, but that mistake was yet to happen.

Leaving Henryetta the next morning after an all too brief 4 hour stop, I realized about 35 miles down the road that I didn't recall opening my topcase to stow my laptop. A quick pull over revealed that I had in fact left the almost new computer behind. I still had the hotel phone number handy from my call to check vacancy the night before. Since it was early still, the front desk clerk agreed to check my room to see if he could find anything. I agreed to call back in 5 minutes and began to look for a place to turn around. I figured he would find the laptop and since I really didn't need it for the rest of the rally I planned to make arrangements for them to ship it to the border crossing near my home. When I called back I realized it wasn't going to be so simple, "No sir, I'm afraid I couldn't find a laptop in your room." Great, it wasn't even really mine, since it was a company machine. I decided I'd better turn back; it would have bothered me for the rest of the rally. I was still close enough that I figured it wouldn't cost me more than an hour.

Sure enough, the laptop was right where I'd left it on the chair. I'd failed to mention to the clerk that I had it inside a dark sleeve, and he had done the same thing I had when I made my double check before leaving earlier that morning. The cover was exactly the same color as the chair I'd left it on right by the door. It blended in so well we both had missed it, even though I'd left it right where I wouldn't forget it. Naturally the backtrack included about 15 miles of construction in both directions, so I lost more time than expected, I decided to drop Oklahoma City as it was only 50 points and I wanted to try to get back on schedule.

As I passed the Oklahoma capital, the lightning started flashing and my body began telling me that Day 9 was not going to be easy. I had been eating mostly on the bike other than at the checkpoints and maybe two or three other meals. I could tell the Cliff bars, Jerky and trail mix were not going to be enough. I found a truckstop down the road and sat down for a much needed breakfast and about three glasses of OJ. An hour break was what the doctor ordered, at least until I hit the heat in Texas. By 1pm that afternoon I decided the best thing to do was sleep through the hottest part of the day, and since our rest bonus needed to start before midnight I pulled in to Tucumcari NM to get out of the heat.

I woke before the alarm, and felt a thousand times better, even though it was after 8pm Mtn time and starting to get dark, it was still blistering hot outside. Hot enough that while I felt great, the bike's clutch was acting up. Probably an air bubble in the line; I had something new to worry about. I forgot to mention I'd also long blown off the option of going to Denver. Before I decided to rest through the heat of the day, I had estimated I would have ended up in Denver around 4pm. I've been through Denver at 4 in the afternoon and I had no desire to do it on the clock in the Iron Butt Rally. Since I was now riding through the night it also took away the option of stopping at the 4 corners monument and bagging Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah with 1 photo.

I still ended up riding past the monument, but grabbed a receipt for Colorado at Ute Mountain just South of Cortez, before dropping back south through Kayenta and north to Page. I knew this area from the SPANK rally the year before and I was sorry to pass through Monument Valley in the middle of the night.

My altered route also meant I would have to cross Nevada via the Extraterrestrial Highway, without Carson City and Sacramento my third leg would be a bust. Any problems in the middle of nowhere could mean 10 days of riding for nothing. In the end, other than the heat and some traffic slowing me down between Carson City and Sacramento it was another great day. By the time I snapped the shot of my last capital, I'd been back on the road for another 24 hours and 1400 plus miles.

My goal was to get an hour or so south of Sacramento and grab a hotel for 5 hours or so. I figured with 13 hours left to go, 5 hours rest and 5 hours riding would give me a 3 hour cushion before penalty time started. As it was I was out the door after about 3 1/2 hours, I had plenty of time to make the last 350 miles and even with a couple of extra stops, I pulled into the finish well before 7am. Scoring went well, and I finally didn't lose points at the table.

In the end I surpassed all my expectations, finishing in 27th position with 10,496 miles. One of the reasons I had decided not to go after the 4 corners option was because they indicated at the opening banquet that it would require a 10,500 mile ride. I had not pictured riding that far and prior to the rally had anticipated maybe only doing about 9000 miles over the 11 days. Maybe not always listening to that little voice inside your head isn't always a bad thing.

Epilogue....

For the first 8 days of the rally I would tell my wife "When I do this next time, I'll do this or that differently." For the last 3 days of the rally and for some time afterward I wasn't sure if I wanted there to be a next time. Since the finish I realize at the time I was naturally feeling a bit drained. I've decided instead to think of it as a good tired, a term from a speaker I'd heard once at a conference. It's the feeling when we complete whatever it is we set out to accomplish. By the end we are not exhausted, but rather, what Dr. John Izzo, calls “a good tired.”

I'm starting to feel the pull of 2013 already, if I'm lucky I'll be there.

Rod Schween
IBA #418
Lethbridge, Ab
November 12th, 2011

Sunday, November 6, 2011

2010 Spank Rally

My ride report for the 2010 5 day Spank Rally can be found here

Cal 24 2010

My Ride report for the 2010 Cal 24 Rally can be found here

Fire, Water Buttology

My ride report on a trip to California to have a custom seat built at Russell Cycle Products can be found here