Bear Saddle

New saddle for bear finished today. Huge improvement in foam density. No more engine vibes in the balls from sitting on the pan after 15 minutes. Highly recommend. Moved the hump back 2 inches, new foam, new cover. $125. Money well spent.

Dude's name is Scott and he has an upholstery shop and does a fair bit of motorcycles he says, but wants to do more. Gave his name to JD's Cycles who was looking for a guy.

432 Lower Road, Souderton PA 18964.
267-640-5673

Maintenance log - Bear

1982 Suzuki GS750T

12,000 New Clutch Cable
18,000 New Starter
19,000 Valve check and adjustments and Rotella Oil
20,000 New R/R
20,800 530 chain conversion and sprockets
21,211  Oil Change Rotella 15-40

Maintenance log - Tiger

2008 Tiger 1050 ABS. I need a better way to do this..

3/11 5,500 Purchase. All PO service records on file Eurosports Coopersburg, PA
8/11 9,000 Michelin PR3's
8/11 10,500 Oil change Moncton NB
2/12 13,200 12K service Hermy's
4/12 15,845 Oil change Mobil 1 10w40 Racing 4T
4/12 15,845 Aux Komy led lights and BurnsMoto USB
4/12 16,000 Refit exhaust for better clearance
4/12 16,000 Russell Day-Long install and condition
7/20 20,410  Rear PR3, New sprocket & chain and 19T front sprocket
7/20 20,410  New clutch cable, old fine, kept as spare. oil change Mobil 1 15w-50

I am Iron Butt (Part 5)

The next few weeks passed rather slowly. My daydreams as well as the ones at night were filled with dashed yellow lines blazing by. The Tiger was checked and rechecked and ridden as the weather permitted. It wasn't enough.

A significant amount of time was spent reading about other people's rides, familiarizing myself with terminology and paying particular attention to others who had failed similar rides and why. The reasons really seemed to run the gamut from mechanical to mental. Mostly mental. Many lost receipts or had other lapses in judgement. Those who made it ranged from completely anal retentive planners, to guys who stayed too long partying with their friends and and had to race back to work the following day 1000 miles away. Other than being properly prepared, there didn't seem to be one sure-fire way to fail or succeed.

Wondering about my mental and physical state as the journey would progress consumed a large percentage of my thoughts. Would my butt hold up longer than my programmer hands, or would it be the other way around? Most imagery had me pulling into town late at night the following day 10 minutes short of 24 hrs. Jim assured me that if I did it right and kept my stops to military precision, I should have no problem making it home by 8pm if I left at 2am, which was my plan.

Jim's a good guy. Funny thing was, as I researched ride reports and read articles ad nauseum, I kept running into a dude sharing the same name as the one with which I was communicating. As stated earlier, I am a fan of the GPS since I got my first GPS 12 from Garmin long, long ago. I read articles on trip planning and learned a bit about rally's. (Note to self: remember to read that Ayers book!) Again, Jim's doppleganger. Turns out, my blind cry in the dark for local wisdom landed on the doorstep of the 2009 Iron Butt Rally champion and routing guru, Jim Owen. I felt a bit like a tool. I am still amazed at the time one of the heroes of this passion took out of their schedule to help a noob grow wings. That's pretty rare in most circles. I wouldn't expect batting practice tips from Ryan Howard or tips on breaking down a play from Brian Dawkins. I could expect Jaworski to talk my ear off about absolutely anything, but that's a different story entirely.

As predicted, my googling started running a bit thin. The weather was still cold. Time to break out Against the Wind.

I am glad that I did.

Against the Wind was quite different than I expected, and I loved it. I had read a little about Ron on various websites. "The executive who also rides a motorcycle". Why is that so shocking to people? I've known a couple fortune 500 execs over the years. Most are pretty normal guys, though some are certainly pompous asses. I think the article writers like the subliminal juxtaposition of smart and dumb. They also tout a neurosurgeon in the same regard. I would learn more about said neurosurgeon in the pages of the book that lay on my lap.

The book didn't lay there for long as I ripped though the contents in a few days. How these guys do/did it amazed me. 1000 mile days for 10 days in a row is just unfathomable for someone who struggled through 700 and paid for it the next day. I thought the account was quite well written and riveting. Enough technical detail for my personal taste, but overlayed quite well with the stories of the participants. I would recommend it highly.

Books done. Research done. Tiger done, and done and done. Damn you March, cut me some slack. You are giving me too much time to think, I just want to do.

Then it happened. The heavens opened. Trumpets sounded. Wednesday March 14, 2012. Sunny, highs near 80, lows in the upper 40's. Probability of precipitation 0%. Winds 5-15. Same forecast for Winchester, Roanoke and Bristol, TN. You have got to be kidding me. It's here. I shot Jim an email letting him know my decision. I scheduled some time with my daughter with my ex and wrote the day off the company vacation calendar.

By god, I am actually going to do this.

Yup, part 6 is on its' way.

I am Iron Butt (Part 4)

Step 1 with the Iron Butt thing is clearly the SaddleSore 1000. There wasn't much mental wrestling with the decision to try it. I would attempt and be successful at the entry level task for this tribe. Power of positive thinking goes a long way, even on long hard roads and unfamiliar adventures. Now for the details. I visited my pal Google maps and started ticking around with 1000 mile routes in all directions. The routes mainly focused on places I had not been rather than New England. I can be hard headed and slightly over-confident in my abilities at times. I am rational however, and realize that for most problems it is best to seek advice from the successfully experienced. How would I go about this?

In researching the requirements of the ride, I ran across a "witness list" (every ride needs at least 2 witnesses for it to be official). Assuming that to make the short list, there had to be some experience there, and the list was no where near 50K people long, I decided to make contact with the tribe for the first time. No, I am no Dr Livingston either.

I found 2 names which were situated quite close to me. This would be ideal because getting out of my area has a number of slab options, most of which are heavily congested being situated equidistant between New York City and Philadelphia. I fired off an email to both names asking for advice. I didn't expect much, but if someone responded, it would certainly be a bonus. If they didn't I would widen the net until some soul took pity on a noob.

1 email bounced immediately for a bad address, but that left the potential for the other one in play. I shut down operations in Dream/Goal HQ and hit the sack with head swirling from all I had been exposed. It was a fine, fine day.

Alarm went off the next morning and I rolled over and checked my phone as is my custom. No disasters at work, all my servers checked in without issue, it was a good day. Then I saw the reply. No kidding, a real live person. I immediately shifted gears right back into adventure mode and read an email from "Jim". It could have said "go away" or "you're crazy", or "saddlesores are for the weak noob, get back to me when you do a real ride".

I didn't.

I received a nice email which began with encouragement that this area was a great place to be located. There were a plethora of roads available to do what I wished. There were several route suggestions, along with talk of circadian rhythms and how that relates to start and finish times. There was a discussion on moving averages and gas stops. I eat that type of information up, and it tickled me right in my nerd spot. Then there was the reminder to have fun because "that's the bottom line". This is further confirmation that this tribe isn't made up solely of mindless machines who obliviously blew by the world at a blistering pace. I was grateful and resolved as the pencil marks were removed from "Goal" and re-written in mental ink.

I reviewed several of the options I had been given. Over the next week there was some great back and forth with Jim as I reviewed my options, being careful to hopefully not overstay my welcome, but gleaning as much as I could in the process. Jim is clearly both knowledgeable and accessible. I learned quite a bit and for that I am very grateful.

I finally decided on a route which would take me from my home to Bristol, TN for a total of 1048 miles. A route I had traveled several times in the past to visit my ex-laws, but one that would gain me MD, WV, VA and TN on my stupid little map. It was February in the mid-Atlantic. My heated gloves are fantastic, but realistically it was a bit chilly to hop on and do the virgin attempt with nighttime temps in the 20's. I am generally a patient man, but I knew it would be a challenge converging mother nature with my life schedule in an acceptable time frame.

Patience grasshopper.

Yup, part 5 is next.

I am Iron Butt (Part 3)

"The 50,000+ members of the Iron Butt Association are dedicated to safe, long-distance motorcycle riding." 50,000. That took a little to get my head around. That's the kind of numbers that gather around the Washington, DC reflection pool for a major event. Nearly the equivalent to the number of fans who pack shoulder to shoulder to see my beloved Eagles on a Sunday afternoon in fall. That's a lot of iron. That's 100,000 cheeks.

So who were these people? Could the numbers be right? I felt a little like Will Smith in I am Legend, pondering the possibility of others like me, but not really sure what to do when you actually run into some. I decided to shelve that 50K number for the time being and move on, otherwise I would have been stuck on the possibility of 1K people per state and how that was possible, especially since I have not seen a single scooter from RI yet. I had seen maybe 10 bikes I can remember that stuck out like something from Mad Max with egg crates strapped to them and enough gizmos to make me jealous. OK, global, that makes sense and drops the averages.

I started to look at the list of "Rides & Rules". I felt a bit limp. The lowest number I could find was 1000 miles in a single day. That's almost 50% more than my best which was a conservative guess of 665 from google maps, not counting the side trips. Not only is 1000 insane, the voice that Moses heard on the mount repeated "50,000". Oh wait, there's one for 1500... Then I saw "The soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window", to quote Ralphie's Christmas Story.

"48-10"

48-10. Here I am sniveling about the Louisiana-purchase, and here's an actual category on the internet in black and white compelling people to do the whole shooten-match in 10 days. Add on to that the anchor of my dreams, the great state of Alaska, and one could then consider themselves "extreme". I am no longer Abby Normal. By god, I am one of the constrained. I've found a league where not only am I not varsity, I got turned away at tryouts for the JV.

I closed the website and got back down to work. Analyzing constraints for pay, not for pleasure. I felt like a kid however who saw their friends father's Playboy at too young an age. I couldn't get it out of my head. It seemed wrong on some level, but on another, it felt oh so right.

"48-10"

How is that possible? Is it a hoax? April Fool's was still months away. From what little I read of the website, it was clear that these guys, and quite a number of women, were not jokers. There had to be something more to it. Not many constraints were analyzed that afternoon. The clock played tricks on me like my namesake's character in Risky Business. It was a relief to get home. I approached my pc with Peanut Butter and Jelly in hand and ticked in IronButt.com like it was going to bite me.

"48-10"

Enough of this shenanigans. There has to be a way. Someone had to do it. Turns out several have. Some dude Kneebone, who appears to be a diety to this tribe. did it. Then he had his record beaten by others, then they quit keeping records. Then I found "the list". 78 people had their names emblazoned on the "48 Plus!" list in 2011 alone. It's not 50K, but I would have found that number absurd had it been cumulative since the first world war.

78. At least I had a new number in my head, though in fairness, 48-10 never really left. As I sit here today and type this some months later, I must admit it remains doggedly affixed to my frontal lobe.

The good thing about programmers, and perhaps why the rest of the world finds us a touch off, is that for us to be able to do our jobs we must salivate over large and complex problems. Frequently these problems are items others have found insurmountable, but we are told to "make it happen". (Then the rest of the office takes a nice long lunch and asks if it's done when they get back.) Take a deep breath Joel. This is just another task, albeit a gargantuan one.

First things first. People with gods typically have words of wisdom, tablets, scrolls or some other holy relic which they hold dear. Words of wisdom give key insights into the operations of a culture, and this culture was as foreign to me as the tribes of Borneo. It didn't take long until I found it, the "Archive of Wisdom".

As is customary for me, I like to guess what's behind door number 3 before I open it, and I always pick door number 3. My guess, 5hr energy is your friend, or maybe vague references to meth like "check your crank regularly". Nah, motorcyclists who live to tell the tale aren't that stupid. Enough of this, click it.

There it was, in blue and white. These guys aren't some sort of Mongol hoard, but quite to the contrary. The Archive of Wisdom is something my evangelical grandmother would have been proud of. Don't drink, don't do drugs, don't speed. These guys don't even do coffee for god's sake. I think I like them, though people who don't drink coffee have to be thoroughly vetted. It's like a skinny chef, but worse. Programmers stay up all night and work through the following day when times get tough. Programmers get a stainless steel Keurig put on their desk instead of bonuses, and yes, we are happy about it.

I re-read the scrolls a couple of times to make sure I didn't miss anything. I perused the forum, and started reading various parts of the site to file off the sharp edges of the shock factor of which I had fallen victim for the last 8 hours. These seemed like fairly normal folks. All different walks life, all different ages and gender. They had a secret though. I don't know what it is, but I have no choice but to move forward in my quest for knowledge of this tribe.

iron butt book Google hadn't failed me the first time, nor did it the second time around. Hit #1 was for Amazon for a fellow named Ron Ayers who wrote a book called "Against the Wind". I saw the same last name on the ironbutt website as well. 1-click buy for a used copy. I didn't realize at the time that it was about an actual structured rally for some reason. I didn't even know those things existed. It was an impulse buy for when I ran out of patience with the goog in a week or so. If it was self promoting fluff, the used copy didn't cost me much so no harm, no foul.

Part 4 continues..

I am Iron Butt (Part 2)

Welcome back. If you made it through part 1, you are either a psychologist looking for fodder for your next paper, or, perhaps, there are others out there like me. I'm betting on the prior, but over the last few months, I have realized that I am not as alone in my thoughts as I once believed.

In fairness, the logo of the Iron Butt Association above is not where my journey started. That would have been easier, but it may have proved a little daunting had it been the case. I guess technically the idea started with watching Long Way Round. I've never ridden off road, though I will. The miles were not huge by super slab standards. But two well-heeled dudes had a dream and a passion and they made it a reality. My little girl is 8 and I can't hardly stand to leave her for the week which I ride in the summer. I do realize that those kind of trips are a mental requirement for my makeup and it doesn't necessarily make me a bad dad to take 7 days away. I can't envision taking the months away required to go around the world, nor can my mortgage company. Making that kind of trip a dreamers dream. Maybe in 10 years and 1 Mega-Millions jackpot it will be a reality, but it's not a goal. Goals are things I achieve. Dreams are things that keep me interested between goals.

Long Way Round led me to Jupiter. Not via space travel, but via Ted Simon's excellent book Jupiters Travels, and the follow-up Dreaming of Jupiter. Now don't go all Lloyd Bentsen on me, but I feel a distant kinship to Mr Simon. He picked up and decided to ride a motorcycle, seemingly out of nowhere, at about the same age as I. He had a desire and passion that 2 wheeled adventure allowed him to satiate. He over-packed. He didn't have lots of friends who rode (now he does, seemingly to his chagrin). He is a man with thoughts and feelings, not a machine who simply hopped on and bore down. He had doubts, failures, successes and "moments" about how he fit in to the collective. Through it all, his tires on his Triumph rolled, but stopping where and when he felt to enjoy his journey.

If I am no Jack Kennedy, Charley Boorman, Ewan McGregor or Ted Simon, then who am I? Well, I'm Joel, and I am damned pleased to meet you. So. Riding around the world was out, but the adventure was in. What next? I had heard the term Iron Butt before, but I do not recall it being associated with motorcycles. On a whim, because I knew not having one would be the Achilles heel to the implementation of a dream, err goal, I used my pal Google to see what made an Iron Butt, simply out of jest. "The Goog" on the innerweb doesn't mess around. No sir. "How do I get an Iron Butt" your protagonist types. Iron Butt Association is hit number 1. He clicks, he scores....

part 3 continues the madness..

I am Iron Butt (Part 1)

I am not Iron Man. I am not a Hawaiian athlete, a comic book character, nor the subject of a Black Sabbath refrain. I am a programmer and single dad with a mortgage and a land yacht. I have however had an odd tendency since I was young to try and go a little further, a little more extreme, and push what I believe to be my limit more that what some consider "normal". My mom said I had an iron will. My ex-wife probably used different grammar. Neither were intended as compliments. I don't think Gene Wilder's Abby Normal applies, at least in a pathological sort of way. I just believe that others feel comfortable with constraints whether they are self applied, or externally-inflicted by societal pressures. Constraints generally make me chafe.

I have a number of passions in my life. Although fatherhood dominates the list, I love to fish, pursue whitetail deer and turkey with my bow, be a computer nerd, and try and be a good friend. I find this motorcycle thing to be somewhat transformative (to plagiarize the owner of my company's favorite word). This month marks 20,000 miles and the second anniversary since I first straddled my 1982 Suzuki GS750T. Pulling out of that craigslist driveway in Emmaus, PA for my virgin motorcycle voyage was an excellent decision. The intent was to see if I liked motorcycles as much as mountain bikes, 4-wheelers, and automobiles, all while saving some gas money and letting my truck last an extra 5-10 years.

I did. I do. It may not.

Last year's Cabot Trail trip was an eye opener for me on many levels. I learned much about myself. I also added a number of questions to the list, a list which continues to grow as I ruminate on that adventure. I always knew that I liked to plan trip routes and mess with a GPS, but hated reservations that forced a day to progress past what I wanted, or demanded a premature conclusion. I consider Google Maps a close personal friend. I'm different and I get it.

Fall doesn't see much riding except for commuting to work due to being interrupted by hunting season. This was an exceptionally mild winter allowing the wheels to continue to roll. If there is not ice on the street or thunderstorms blazing on my AccuWeather android app, I ride. Cabin fever was bad as always this year, it started right on time in mid January with the Dakar Rally. I started researching rides in the Nevada desert that would get me the hell out of here. I found some, but it seemed silly on some level to fly to ride. I realized I just wanted to ride and for the grips of winter to be loosed.

It started with a map on EPGSoft.com. I have visited all but 6 US states now and have been to 4 Canadian provinces. That took me 42 years. I started messing around with states I have been on my motorcycle on the epgsoft website. It's kind of a pathetic list, but growing. I noted the states around PA where I have not been and everything with color so far has been north. Weak . There is so much west and south. Could I do all of them on a motorcycle? No way. In planning my riding vacation this summer, the intent was to put a foot in each of the great lakes. 7 day trip, 450 miles a day, 3,150 miles. It could be a good trip. What about 2013? I could go south and do Florida and back, but I spent a lot of time on 95 as a kid going back and forth to S Carolina and it doesn't rock my world. 2014? Hmm, states are flipping color rapidly in Vanna White style in my mental map. I appear to be at my limit for a 7 day trip already. 2014 would have to be a repeat of existing travels. That just doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem fair. I don't want to wait until I retire to explore 1/2 of this country. At this rate, I may never retire anyway. My states visited map on my tombstone will look like a map of the colonies, pre-Louisiana purchase. This will not do.

The life of a programmer involves a world of constraints. The world of Joel and his Triumph Tiger 1050 is constrained only by desire and speed limits. Perhaps it is the yang to my nerdy yin. To make improvement, constraints must be re-evaluated then confirmed, improved, or bypassed. I am too hardheaded to confirm most constraints. Bypassing in this case would involve shipping a motorcycle, flying to meet it and riding back home. It's an expensive proposition and I've been accused of being cheap. I also watched Long Way Round this winter and saw Ewan McGregor's mighty GS come off the plane in Alaska on it's side. It also seems kind of feeble, and I don't have that kind of constitution.

That leaves improved. I got my ever performance award from the PA State Police on New Year's eve this year (in the truck). I don't want to go through that again. Thus, improvement cannot be made with speed. Lesson learned.

That leaves 2 options: If _Weak = True Exit Dream. If _Weak = False then _DailyMileLimit += x.

Now to solve for X. How much is reasonable? How much is unreasonable? How much is safe? Where does the law of diminishing returns intersect on the enjoyment vs tedium slopes? My friends, and people I meet on the road already think I am crazy for enjoying 450 miles in a day for several days in a row. I don't know any other motorcyclists who ride further than I do (in the interest of full disclosure, I really only know 3 other 2 wheelers in the flesh), but the guys at the shop when I had service done thought I was crazy, both here and in Moncton, NB. They have a fairly large population to sample from I would guess. I look at websites for motorcycle roads and people take what I did last summer and take a month off to do it when they retire. Even most of the hardcore riders I met up on the Cabot Trail ended up trailering to Maine or Moncton to do their epic ride.

I'm not the most social guy with strangers, so that leaves me with the internet, and there, I feel more at home. Perhaps that's why I like being beneath my HJC. I am invincible, invisible and anonymous all at the same time, all while learning and experiencing more than I can possibly retain.

Part 2 will cover that cyber-journey and it's path forward.