So, before I posted the "end of the road..." and the final mile tally, etc...

I was in Salt Lake City, my friend Eric had just left me to go back to his family and home in Pocatello ID, and I was trying to decide whether I should do this crazy "Iron Butt" thing.

For those who are unaware, the Iron Butt Society of America presents themselves as "The World's Toughest Riders," and they have a wide variety of quests on which one can go to prove it. In order to join the ranks, one must complete at least their "minimal" challenge, the "Saddlesore 1000": traveling a measured, documented 1000 miles in 24 hours or less. Trips of 1000 miles or more in a day are more common (though still taxing, and not recommended for amateurs) in automobiles and trucks - doing it on a motorcycle, even one specially prepped for the task, is a more daunting undertaking.

The Iron Butt Association of America

The fact that I was considering doing it on a sportbike after an already sometimes grueling trip of 5000 miles or so will be not be lost on my audience, but the IBA really doesn't care. Hard Core is where they live. These are the kinds of riders who regularly remove the passenger seats of their bikes to install additional gas capacity. I promised Bonnie I would NOT become one of those. (We'll see.)

After taking an afternoon and an evening to rest up in SLC, I came to the following conclusion:

• I made it this far - there was no point in not trying
• The IBA goes to some lengths to ensure that everybody stays safe
• No challenges require you to speed; I used to doubt this - but it's true.
• They will not accept any documentation that includes evidence of breaking the law.
• They do not allow you to register a ride before the fact - that cuts down on any pressure of the "peer" type...
• I had enough time to keep to my schedule and NOT do the Iron Butt - I would just have to break it into two relatively long, hard, days, rather than one very long very hard one.
• I trust you all not to mock me too badly if I set out for it and didn't finish.

I had my route ready from the beginning - it was on the original itinerary, to which I have been more or less able to keep. Start in Salt Lake City, UT,  go to Ames, IA. The remaining questions were: where and when to begin. After thinking it over, since I had not done much night riding, I didn't want to be doing it at the end of the stretch, when I would likely be the most tired. Since I was looking at a 24-hour span, I figured putting the dark hours in the middle would be the best plan. So: start off at or around noon, finish around noon the next day.

For the details of the challenge I was attempting, you can go here:

Saddlesore 1000

As you can see, the documentation requirements are pretty stringent. I had had the thought that Eric could be my start witness, but he needed to get back home long before I was ready to start out, so, fortunately, the manager at the gas station/store where I began was happy to be my "start witness". He was actually very nice about the whole thing, and agreed to take a selfie with me, as well. With my first gas receipt (Maveriks in SLC, 11:44a.m., MT) tucked into the top pocket of my tank bag, I hit the road for I-80, heading East.

I made pretty quick work of the rest of Utah, which was actually lovely, but in a low-key, desert-y kind of way to which I had become inured. The regular daily dose of absurdly beautiful landscapes can become debilitating, and blunt one's ability to appreciate beauty when it rears its head. So it took me a second, as I rode into Wyoming, to realize that everything changed, as if on cue, in subtle and not so subtle ways.

Utah is all reds and ochres and sharp contrasts...

Wyoming is more subtle (in the area I was in, anyway) and the chalky colors were fascinating to me.

For one thing, Wyoming is a different color, There is a green mineral in the lower strata of the buttes in Wyoming that renders the whole state a sort of wan, but cheerful easter palette. (please bear in mind that when I speak of a state in generalities like that, I am, of course, only speaking of the portion of the state visible from I-80. I'm locked into a narrow passage, here, and am grateful, actually, that most states (I'm lookin' at you, Nevada) have let the Interstate run through some of the more attractive terrains they have to offer.

You have to blow up the picture, but you can see the faint green at the bottom, the color fo lichen, more than anything else I can think of...

Wyoming is also Big. I mean, freakin' HUGE. My goal, having to get through both Wyoming and all of Nebraska as the main parts of the ride, was to kill off Utah and Wyoming in the first 12 hours, and Nebraska and what I needed of Iowa in the second half day. Things were going well - I had originally planned to ride 40 minutes and rest 20 minutes, rinse and repeat, until complete. It became quickly clear that the rhythm of available gas stations and rest stops was NOT going to cooperate with that schedule, so I adjusted on the fly: 1 hour riding, 1/2 hour resting, repeat, etc. Eventually, what actually worked was simply to ride as long as I could, until pain or the need for gas or a pee made me stop, and then rest for exactly half as long as I had ridden. I stopped in Evanston, WY and in "Little America" which seems to actually be a place name, but also a travel oasis kind of place, with a truckers oasis, a family/car/bus oasis, camping, and even regular rooms. It is also the weirdest thing to see this grove of pine trees rising for no reason out of the high desert. I think I forgot to take pictures there, but here are some from the internet...

In case you think I am exaggerating about Little America being an oasis of green in the middle of the desert...

I planned on two real meal breaks, and the time for dinner coincided exactly with the advent of Rawlins, Wyoming. So to Michael's "Big City" diner I went (no lie)...

This - thing - was outside Michael's Big City Bar and Grille. I think it's... art? Yes, that's real barbed wire.

It was... interesting. But more importantly, somehow, they managed to take an hour to cook a freaking cheese steak, so I didn't even get to eat my dinner. When I asked to take it to go, they were disappointed for me, but obligingly brought me a "to-go" container. Now, I have been wearing my motorcycle armor jacket the whole time in the restaurant - I have the helmet with the audio hookup and the GoPro on the seat next to me - it can't be a surprise that I am riding a motorcycle. (The timing thing, I excuse - I never made it clear that I had a deadline, and should have, as soon as I realized that the one waitress was very overwhelmed... it was a busy night for them, they had customers...) But when they brought me a giant bag with not only the fries I had just specifically said to leave out, but a big bowl of au jus - they have a special idea of what  Philly Cheese Steak is... well, I just left the au jus on their bench outside, and took the styrofoam clamshell and crammed it into the bungee net holding my gear on the back of the luggage rack (remember this - it's important-ish...)

And got back on the road. It's now after 7 pm, and I have been on the road for seven hours, about 5 of which have been actual riding hours, and I have gone about 300 miles. If I make a mere 200 miles in the remaining 5 hours before midnight, I will be right on track. The next stretch goes without a hitch, I am riding with the sun setting behind me in Wyoming, and I have to say, it's kind of pretty, but I am trying to focus, and there is a lot of traffic because of construction on I-80. Single tracking with semis coming at you three to six feet away with a closing speed of 140 mph is a little nerve-racking, and also creates wind artifacts that require concentration.

I hated not being able to spend time looking at this, perhaps catching it just as it went down....

At the Pilot in Laramie, the sunset still lingered in the western sky, even though it was dark for all practical purposes.

By the time of my fourth stop, it was genuinely dark, although there were still signs of the sun setting in the west behind me. I stopped at the Pilot in Laramie, WY, which was weird only because while stopped I received a message from one of my colleagues about a possible workshop at school with Tectonic theatre group, the company that famously did the Laramie Project. A sign? While in Laramie, I ate the first half of my cheesesteak, (by now cold, but still, actually, a fine sandwich), crammed it back into the bungee netting, and took off. By now, I imagine, it is nearly 10pm (I have times on the gas receipts - but I didn't perhaps foolishly, keep time notes on my log entries for each stop) and it's starting to get much cooler, so I put on the first extra layer I have with me - the fleece under-layer.

I stop once more in Wyoming, sometime before midnight, in Cheyenne, at - wait for it - another Little America? I gas up, and add the windbreaker that I hope will get me through the night. I also eat the rest of the sandwich I got from the Big City (tee-hee) and threw the styrofoam clamshell away (the fries were a horrid gelatinous mass) and got back on the bike and drove off again. (paying attention?)

At 12:10 am, I hit the Loves in Sidney, NE. For the first time, when I gas up, the pump won't print a receipt, so I get a duplicate from the clerk inside, and also fill up on a coffee and cocoa. I check the weather ahead, and it still looks like I am going to be able to dodge the growing storms around me - there has been obvious recent rainfall at my last two stops, but I am watching the radar and my timing is working. Apparently, I will, over the course of the evening/morning, miss serious storms, and in one case, a nearby tornado, by less than ten minutes. For the first time, having gotten out of Wyoming on time, and feeling still really fine, thanks to my full day of rest, I think that I am going to be able to do this.

During the next leg, I see a sign in the dark: Scenic Overlook. Now, I am riding through Nebraska. It's dark, to be sure, but I am pretty confident of my assessment of the surrounding terrain, and the word "scenic" sounds like it might be hyperbole. But I decide I am due for a little leg stretch, anyway, so I pull off, somewhere near Big Springs NE. I am really not sure what they think I am supposed to be looking at during the day - it looks like a plain, plains field, going on forever, though there is train off in the distance to the south, but as luck would have it, on this night, the moon is behaving  very scenically. I snap a photo and send it to Bonnie, even though I know (or at least certainly hope) she is asleep.

This really was lovely. I still haven't figured out why this spot is a "scenic" overlook, but, hey...

I get back on the road, and my next stop is in Gothenberg, NE, at 4:20 a.m., at Cubby's Travel Plaza. I expect to be on the ground for at least a half hour, so I go to unpack the charging cable for the FreeCom (helmet audio) because no one wants to be trying to stay awake on the road without tunes.

Okay, now go back three paragraphs, to the end of the graph... what don't you see? I threw out the sandwich package... do you see where I refastened the bungee net before I took off again? Yeah.

Neither do I.

...the top half of the bungee net is hanging limply around the big bungee cord that serves as a backup for the whole "back rack pack." (thank goodness for redundancy...)

Right up to this point, I have been feeling shockingly good. I have been on the road for 16 and a half hours, actually riding for more than ten of those, and I have covered 700 of the requisite 1000 miles - I am on a good pace. But I am sure I don't have to explain the gut-blow that comes from finding you have done something blindingly stupid, and possibly debilitating... I stop and assess the damage - I have lost the GoPro bag, and it had most of the adapters and charging cables for the whole venture in there. I have lost my pillow - no big deal, but it makes me sad, because I liked it... I have lost the Purple seat pad. Expensive, but I was only using it in the first leg of each day, anymore, anyway. And I have lost the Bonneville Salt Flats hat I bought as "my" souvenir. Everything else has been saved by the redundant bungee cord. Phew. (Ask me sometime about why I am so paranoid a packer, and I or one of my closest friends will explain why ALL the semi-formal clothes I owned for a full decade wound up on the side of the PA turnpike one October....)

So:

There won't be any video for a while - oh well. I have to charge the audio - but that's a USB to micro-USB, and I find one inside the Cubby's Travel Plaza convenience store. Now I can charge the audio, and the only other thing that really matters is my trusty iPhone 7, which charges off its own cable on the bike. The rest can wait. Off we go.

Aurora is the last stop in Nebraska - breakfast and gas, at about 7am. I vow to take the whole hour until 8am. I am not sure I can make it to Des Moines (my adjusted destination) on the full tank of gas, but I can get close. Now, since Gothenberg, a lot has happened. 1) I am still adjusting to the stupid loss of the stuff - mostly not essential, but expensive, and it's more my pride than any thing else. 2) Also - remember, I have been in Nebraska since around midnight - and I haven't seen it. Since the sun went down in Wyoming, I have, with the exception of the brief, romantic respite of the moonscape in the scenic overlook, been inside a video game. There are lines to the right of me, there are lines to the left of me, (here I am, stuck in the middle with...) and whizzing past me incredibly fast, and sometime only feet away, are headlights coming the other way. That's it. Some rain, but very little, thanks to my father's insistence I learn trig at an early age, and some cold, but that's it. Dark, speed, and the occasional truck stop for about 7 hours. Frankly, not even a very good video game.

Wait - is that GREEN on the side of the road...?

But, at around 5:45, I sensed that the sky ahead was getting just a little less black than the rest of the panorama, and I drove into sunrise. I say sunrise, but of course, that would imply that the sun rose. Really, I drove into a lovely sort of cloudy greyscape, and a tinge of pink and salmon grew around its edges as the luminance increased. Slowly, I began to realize that I was in a completely different world than the one I had said good night to a few hours before - truly - I could have been home. East Nebraska is much flatter than my stomping grounds of Central and Western maryland, but not nearly so flat as SoMd or the Eastern shore - otherwise, it was a doppelganger for the east coast - deciduous trees, deep green fields, even crops I recognized. It was, honestly, slightly demoralizing, as it felt like the first little signal that this adventure was coming to an end - but at the same time there was the comforting familiarity of "home" - when a little comfort was certainly welcome. As I flew further east into the growing light, I began to wonder if I should pull over and put the rainsuit on again, because it looked as though the sky ahead was growing dar-

Poof. Everything was gone.

What has appeared, in the early morning light as though it might be clouds ahead, had actually been a pea-soup fog bank much closer than if it had been clouds. Every single vehicle seemed to be taken by surprise, and there was screeching, braking: a flurry of cars, semis, and me slowing but not slowing too quickly, putting on our hazards, feeling out the distance so that we could all see each others tail lights, but no closer, and

Phew.

No collisions, no accidents at all, that I was aware of, but that may have been the most hairy moment of the whole trip for me. It was the densest fog I think I have ever been in, and were all going 80 mph. Later, and it would have shown up as white, and we would have known what it was; earlier, and someone might have died, because it wasn't a gradual push into a deepening fog - it was like flying into a cloud. But, every one's luck held out, and onward we went - the fog petered out, before we got into Iowa, which looked even more like home.

It is around 10 am. I am in Iowa, and I am less than two hours away from my goal. And this is when I hit the wall. Like the fog, it came out of no where. One minute, I am feeling great, and the next I realize I don't remember the last 10-15 minutes. I pull over to a rest stop (remember, it's full daylight, by now, and it's sunny again.) It is a perfect, summer day in West Iowa, and I feel like I am underwater. One thing I haven't mentioned is that my dear friends Chris and Mike have both been watching this. They have (along with Bonnie and one or two other familial types) have had access to my GPS, and have been able to track me in real time. Since I launched off on the Iron Butt Run, they have been tracking me and being encouraging, noting my progress, even, apparently, in Mike's case, zooming in on Google Earth to look at what I am seeing, on occasion. They didn't know it, but in the last hour and a half, their encouragement was the main thing that kept me going. I puled into a rest stop, and took serious assessment. I had caffeine, which I hadn't really used since the one coffee the night before. More importantly, I had sugar. I looked at the distance, at my gas, and decided i had made it this far, I would set out cautiously, and singing and reciting the multiplication tables all the way, I headed out for West Des Moines, where I would have definitely have covered a thousand miles, in definitely less than 24 hours, and there was a Motel 6 room waiting for me. Now I had some concern that I was hallucinating at first - but no, there really were giant fan blades on the road with me. Iowa, more in evidence than any other state I went through, is really serious about wind power. I passed two farms, just in the first third fo the state, that dwarfed any I have seen (and I have seen some really big ones in southern IN) and was CONSTANTLY passed on the road by trucks transporting... blades. i don't know what else to call them. I had seen one on a truck, once, on I-95, but ti was a distance way from me. Having them pass right by you is another thing entirely.

You just can't have any idea of how huge these are. Each vane is over 100 feet...

One more brief, not-even-logged stop at a truck pulloff (where I got to take this pic of a windmill) just to catch my breath, and I ran into West Des Moines and the QuikTrip where the manager agreed to be my stop witness - and to take a selfie, too...

12:08pm.

Now, if you remember, I left at 11:44 a.m. ... but that was Mountain Time. This is Central.

11 hours, 36 minutes. 1070 miles.

I have often wondered if there would be any pleasure for me in this sort of riding - riding for the sheer distance and time of it, just to be on the road, the kind of miles that truckers put down. Now that I have done it (badly - for believe me, success or no, this was badly done - wrong bike, sketchy weather, etc.) I can see how it has its own unique charm - it is, really, not about the destination, or even the side show - it is about pure riding. The road slipping by beneath you, the changes in the vistas, the sun coming up on a completely different landscape than the one on which it sank. I would not do this (or, save a few days about which I have already waxed.. poetic?, any of this trip again on the sportbike I had available. But with a sport touring bike, and a little more rest between legs. Sure. I could see doing another serious distance run - maybe for my 60th birthday I'll try the 50CC (that's where you cross the country in 50 hours or less ;-)

Special thanks to all of you who were pulling for me, and to Chris and Mike for buoying me up when I needed it.

next up... deja vu.