Prologue
Why would you want
to do that ? It's been almost a year that I've been preparing for this
ride and it's still the most difficult question to try to answer. Let's
start from the beginning...
I've been riding
motorcycles since my first moped I inherited from my mom when I was 10 years
old. I've had a streetbike ever since I was old enough to get my license.
There's something about the way riding makes me feel and allows me to go into my
own little world that I can't quite describe. But anyways, that's not what
this story's about, let's get with the program...
Over the years I've
enjoyed riding some long distances and have several 1000 km days under my
belt. It was early in Spring 2001 that my riding buddy Paul talked to me
about the Iron Butt Association. I had read stories about the Iron Butt
Rally and knew that it was about a group of madmen that would go about riding
around the USA practically non-stop just 'because it's there'. Paul told
me that they also had some rides that anybody could do on their own time.
Log on internet, check out their website, Hmmm, SaddleSore eh ? 1 000
miles works out to about 1 600 km in 24 hours... Called Paul, he's
interested. We set up a tentative date after checking out our schedules,
June 16th seems fine for both of us. Here's the short version: it
went well. If you're interested, dear reader, in the longer version, check
it out here.
We both found the
SaddleSore 1000 to be fairly easy, although I was more enthused than Paul right
afterwards. I remember him saying something about it being neat that we
did it but it was enough for him for a while. I felt quite the opposite
way.
During the rest of
the summer I already had plans to go for the FAST phase II track school in
Ontario (I live in New Brunswick). After this, I decided to do some more
'Iron Butting' on the way back. I planned a nice route that would allow me
to do a Bun Burner 1500. From Ottawa, up to Chibougamau, down to Sept-Îles,
sleep, then go back to Quebec City, where I would meet with my wife. Let's
just say that things didn't go quite as well as I hoped. With the
miserable fuel range of my bike I managed to run out of gas in the middle of the
'Parc de la Vérendrye' around 4:30 AM. Well not quite 'run out of gas',
as I punctured my rear tire with about 10 km of fuel remaining in my tank, so
technically I ran out of tire before running out of gas. Tire repair kit
? what's that ?. Managed to buy some gas from a car that was stopped
in a rest area and rode the 40 km back to civilization on a flat tire.
Handling was 'interesting'. Actually the bike handled better at 90 km / h
than at 40, so I rode at a decent clip. Of course the 4 bike dealers
in Mont Laurier didn't have any tires in stock wider than an 160, so I had to
bunk down in a hotel for the night and wait for one to be 'rushed' up.
That was the end of that. I vowed I would be back !
The rest of the
season came and went and before I knew it, the time had come to put the bike
away for the winter. When you can't be out riding, what do you do?
You plan rides, of course... Next year I would do...
Bun Burner Gold
I had plenty of time to plan this
one. I would do everything I could to avoid another DNF. I actually
enjoy planning rides but even I think I went a bit overboard with this
one. I simply had too much time on my hands. It seems that a lot of
my idle moments would turn into BBG planning sessions. Let's break down
the planning into various categories, shall we... Come on and enter my
little world of obsessive / compulsive thought processes...
-
The Route: During
our SaddleSore we chose a great route. It had us start on 2-lane
highways for the first 400 km, then some 4-lane riding for only 200 km, then
a nice twisty road from Quebec to Chicoutimi for about 200 km before we
headed back. We managed to finish it in about 19 hours with about a
one-hour stop halfway for a sit-down meal. It was clear that the BBG
needed to be taken more seriously. My first idea was to simply ride
out on the Trans-Canada Highway for about half the distance, about 1 200 km
then turn around. This was canned because I knew that going through
Montreal would be hit or miss, with the traffic in there and the perpetual
construction zones.
Second idea was to jump across the
Maine border and simply interstate-it all the way. This was appealing
because speed limits are higher in the US than over here. Here only a
select few highways have limits of 110 km/h where most are 90 or 100. A
few routes were looked at but in the end I figured that it would be just
WAAAAY too boring to do the whole thing on the interstates.
Third idea and the winning one was
to tag on an extra 800 or so km to our SaddleSore route. Easy choice
would be Fredericton to Halifax NS, which is about 400 km of newly-divided
highway. Figures run through Microsoft Streets & Trips 2002 show
2527.1 km or 1 570 miles for the trip. Perfect. Of course more
routes come and go across my mind, one in particular is a 4-Capitals tour
(Fredericton NB, Halifax NS, Charlottetown PEI, and Quebec City QC).
Distance would have been about right but I was a bit concerned about the
travel to Prince-Edward-Island when on a tight time schedule. Naw, let's
go with the SaddleSore plus Halifax one,
Page 2
, Cut to the chase
