Allen, your first SS1K sounds a lot like mine. I did my first SS in August of 1999 on my '99 Kawasaki Concours. I rode 1,019 miles (sounds vaguely familiar, doesn't it?), in 19 hours and 52 minutes. I rode from Fort Morgan, CO, to North Platte, NE, to Murdo, SD, to Gillete, WY, to Douglas, WY, to Cheyenne, WY, to Greeley, CO, to Fort Morgan. A friend rode with me on his Goldwing and we had an unevenfful ride except for about 100 miles of fog and then about 50 miles of hard rain.
I finally got my first BunBurner Gold in May, when I rode the Team Lyle Rachel Strange Insanity Ride. Team Lyle's slogan for that ride is "All the Nevada You Can Ride in 24 Hours." I rode 1529 miles in 23 hours and 48 minutes. The route for that was Alamo; Tonopah; Austin; Battle Mountain; West Wendover; Ely; Tonopah; Fallon; Baker, Alamo (all in Nevada). Team Lyle had sent us almanac information about weather in Nevada on the 16th of May: Avg. Low = 48F; Avg High: 81; Avg Rainfall for whole
month of May = .48".
It was 30 when I left Alamo at 6:20 AM. It got up to 55 at Battle Mountain at noon, but 4 miles east of Battle Mountain the rain started. Going over the mountain passes on I-80, the temperature got down to 38F and the rain didn't stop till about 45 miles north of Ely. I probably rode through 2" of rain and had been ready to quit if it was still raining there. But it wasn't!
I rolled over 100,000 miles on my odometer climbing to Warm Springs Summit east of Tonopah. I left Fallon on US-50 at a little after 10PM and on three of the mountain passes between Austin and Baker, the temperature got down to 18F. I was grateful for an electric jacket and heated handgrips! It was as
GREAT ride, but I don't know if I ever need to do another BBG.
I also did my first Iron Butt-type rally this summer. It was the Big Sky "Working on the Railroad" Rally in mid-August. The idea was that our bikes were our "train." Each train came stock with four cars. You could carry one cargo/car at a time. You got points by carrying cargoes to train stations. You had to get a picture of your bike with your numbered rally flag at the pickup point for each cargo and then you got the points by taking a picture of your bike and your rally flag at a train station. The value of the cargo varied according to that cargo's worth at a particular location. First-time rally riders needed 8,000 points to be considered finishers.
I carried timber from Livingston to Billings, MT; Coal from a mine 35 miles east of Hardin, MT, to Sheridan, WY; coal from a mine north of Gillette, WY, and timber from a lumber mill in Hulett, WY, to Dickinson, ND, a "special Defense Department" cargo from Minot AFB in Minot, ND, to Malmstrom AFB, in Great Falls, MT, and then returned to Big Sky. That was when I learned a lot about following instructions. The number on my flag wasn't visible at the mine near Hardin and I didn't even put the flag in the picture in Dickinson, so I lost about 4500 points that I could easily have earned. I finished with 1,829 miles and 8,110 points, enough to qualify as a finisher but I was dead last in the beginner's group. If I had gotten the points I left at the scoring table, I would have been about 6th out of the 12 Beginner Finishers. The overall winner was Jim Owen who had won the Iron Butt Rally in 2007 (IIRC). He rode less than 200 miles farther than I did, but he had spent 4500 points to buy five extra "cars" and earned
96,000 points. I'll probably do another point rally next year.
