Two Meals - True Terror (An Alaskan Ironbutt Odyssey): Liking Biking

The Plan

Elaborating on an idea that inexplicably popped into my head just this morning, I’ve decided – reflecting a propensity on this trip to typically obtain our daily nutritional requirements consuming an uninspiring combination of 'oh-dark-thirty' gas station breakfast fare, plus whatever evening sustenance happened to be convenient; coupled with the incessantly nerve wracking effort required just to remain awake traversing the endless mileage of the Canadian plains – that I shall call this report: 2 Meals – True Terror, and I will conduct the written effort under the guise of my nom-de-plume: Liking Biking. However, unlike my possibly more famous counterpart, I will not cut to the chase with a riveting factually based account of the exciting series of events as they unfolded; but rather, attempt to disguise the comparably tawdry nature of this particular story with an extensive litany of literary embellishment. For those of you aware of such things, a brief, potentially familiar biography of Liking Biking will follow shortly. <o></o>
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Recently having finished my epic South Africa report - if you haven't yet had the considerable pleasure, go to:
http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=446291 - and enjoying the writing experience so much, I thought I'd like to do another. One problem though: no trips upcoming in the near future. So, I thought to myself: 'Phil,' I thought, 'Why not do a write up of my 2006 Arctic Circle odyssey?' Why not? well there's a crap load of AK reports out there already, that's why not - and probably done a lot better than my pathetic attempt is likely to be too. So, to give it a bit of a (hopefully) novel angle, how about this:

The trip itself was 14 days, 12,000 miles, Atlanta-Alaska and back of Ironbutt hell, but what if we'd taken 6 months instead of two weeks? What would we have seen and done differently? This is where I imagine getting some outside help. I post the day's trip report: you FF's chime in with all the best crap that we missed (pics write-ups, you name it), and at the end of the report I conclude either (a) that I'll never even consider another of these two wheeled exercises in masochism again or (b) the rest of you need to quit hanging around so much, or maybe even possibly (c) I need to quit hanging around so much :eek1

Feedback? Any interest, or am I going straight to JM in a futile attempt to defend my manhood. :huh

Hugs and kisses,

Douf







My Route - All the way from good old Jawjaw







While my Partners in crime came from further up the east coast (MA & RI)

being a noob i'm sure if my opinion counts for much but i'd love to read it...

what ^^^he^^^^ said...i would LOVE to read it!

Bring it. That's a great idea actually. Every Alaska RR says "you should check this out!" and well, yours in encouraging it. Cool idea. I'll be heading up there next summer, so it'll sorta work as a Cliff Notes for me too...

Who cares about Alaska! I want to know what drove you to complete 12,000 miles in 2 weeks. Dude.

I guess it was a combination of (predictably) work and the sadistic mofo (Gary) who organized the whole thing. Being a seasoned Ironbutt veteran, at the time - he's all better these days - Gary's mindset was ineivitably that the extent of a person's manhood is measured by the length of his.................trip.
On the other hand, I'd only ever done one thousand mile day (barely) in my life prior to this little sojourn, but happily (naively?) consented to strappin' on the old fuel cell and hittin' the road; and give or take we did five of those suckers back-to-back in the first five days, with a high water mark (for two of us) of 1100+ miles including over 2 hours detained at the pleasure of our Canadian customs friends, discussing the ancient minutiae of our long forgotten alcoholic misdemeanors - I must say those gentlemen are very well researched. Oh how we laughed. And.....sore ass? I think I'd have felt better going fifteen rounds in solitary confinement with a rampantly homosexual Mike Tyson.
I can sense you're already jonsin' to do something similar.

Douf

I love ride reports...bring it on!

Each one is different, the specifics of your route I imagine is different than the others, and I enjoy reading them all.

There won't be one like yours I am sure. I am in....bring it on.
I love Alaska ride reports........there can't be too many.
Let's hear what you got.......................

Douf......with an average of over 850 miles/day...that's not a trip, it's a race. So, you might want to file it under "Race Report".

BTW....what was your daily milage ?

We did a bit over the average/day on the way across and on the way back, with a bit less than average/day whilst in Alaska. you're right though it was - by necessity - mainly in the 800+ region though and FWIW we did a low of 228miles on the main maintenance day of the trip and I did a high of 1400+ on the last day after I had left the other guys in Montana; riding back from just outside Denver to Atlanta - with the fuel cell I could get 440 miles before hitting reserve. It was the first trip of this intensity that I'd done and to be honest it was actually easier than I'd expected. Gary had us fed, gassed up and hitting the road by 5am every morning and after that it just became an excercise in realistic time management. It can't have been that bad, since after they headed back east from MT, having a couple of extra days left, I decided to head south and tag the Mexican border just for the hell of it. However, for reasons I'll discuss in my report, I never made it.

Douf

Thanks GB

Douf

Ummm..... He is a she I believe!

Always have time for another ride report.

Oldrice

Yeah...this is gonna be good.

Have you ever been sat on your bike, riding along, and thinking to yourself: 'How the hell did I get myself into this?' Well - inordinate pack rat that I am, here's a brief presentation of the e-mail trail that became the source of all the subsequent mayhem. What began as a seemingly harmless conversation concerning bike purchases suddenly turned ugly when 'Prudoe Bay' was dropped innocently into the discussion. The rest - as they say - is history; and in retrospect, looking at the 'matter of fact' tone of some of Gary's prose, I'm really not sure how he felt about the prospect of having another inexperienced goober clinging to his coat tails. Amusingly, since I'm obviously so dazzled by the potential of making this trip, there doesn't seem to be any apparent concern on my part when Gary mentions 12K in 12 days either. :eek1


----- Original Message -----
From: Me
To: Gary
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 7:10 AM
Subject: RE: Fun Forward.


Hey Gary,

I noticed you&#8217;ve added a V-Strom to the stable. Did you get the 650 or 1000 version? One of my KLR riding friends just put down a deposit on the 1000 a couple of days ago and he takes delivery on Tuesday, so I&#8217;m sure he&#8217;d be interested to get your take on it. I don&#8217;t know if I mentioned it previously, but I bought an &#8217;01 Speed Triple a few months ago; not very practical but a lot of fun.


Phil


From: Gary
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 8:43 PM
To: Me
Subject: Re: Fun Forward.


Hi Phil,

I got the 1000 . I bought it used w/ 1,800 miles with givi bags and crash bars.Tell your friend most 1000 V-Stroms have a hesitation problem below 4,000 rpm ( mine does). The fix is a power commander, I ordered mine last night.
I sold the Connie with 110K and in aug. I went to N.D. and Montana ( 5,600 miles in 6 days) completing all 48 states on that bike. Now I'm looking to do Prudoe Bay, Alaska with the V-Strom. My goal is 12K in 12 days but i'll give myself 14 for bad weather, next July, aug. My brother Joe is looking for a bike that will be able to make the trip but he's not sure about the 12 in 12.
You sent me a photo of your triple a while back. She looks like a lot of fun!


Gary


From: Me
To: Gary
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 7:07 AM
Subject: RE: Fun Forward.


Gary,

If you want any extra company on the Alaska trip, just say the word! Can&#8217;t say I&#8217;ve done that many 1000 mile days, my best was 1100 with 300 miles of Colorado backroads, but it was on the last day of our trip, so I wouldn&#8217;t be too worried about my enthusiasm level. How hard could it be?! I assume you&#8217;d be looking to do a few interstate days of a good bit more than that, as maintaining 1000/day pace up the Dalton Highway might be difficult. The Alaska trip is the holy grail of US bike trips IMHO. I think the V-Strom would be a pretty good choice for that trip.


Phil


From: Gary
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2005 5:00 PM
To: Me
Subject: Re: Fun Forward.


Hi Phil,

This is the deal. I'm going in July or aug. another ironbutt guy is going and Joe is up in the air, but four people is a lot of people to stick together for 1000 to 1,200 miles a day for 12 days. When I did the Sturgis trip this year with the same guy going on this one, we only ate once a day besides the motel in the morning or gas station first thing in the morning, we start riding 1 hour before the sun comes up and around one to three hours after it goes down ( our gas stops are 300 miles apart and only take 10 min - besides the first one where I have a coffee, which I had to talk him into).and we covered 5,600 miles in 6 days with a lot of sight seeing.
If you had another person in mind to do this ride with you we will have to do separate groups and if we run into each other that would be great but we may not also. It's hard enough to cover these miles alone and a lot harder as a group. One other thing: we have to set up our bikes to have a range of over 300 miles to a tank. I'm putting a fuel cell on mine, My friend peter gets around 350 with his stock tank ( BMW 1200 RT ). Let me know what you think?


Gary

HI ,, It was 11,000 miles in 14 days. Were you riding while I was sleeping....