DAY 1 – Curt Gran Memorial SADDLESORE 1000
Lowell, MA -> Casey, IL -> Marshall, IL
4/7/2016
~ 1122 miles
Woke up before my 2am alarm due to excitement and dozed until the alarm actually went off. Had everything laid out already and sipped a cup of hotel coffee while showering and dressing. I limited my caffeine intake during the ride to help avoid extra nature breaks, but I simply cannot get up and going without a cup in the morning. The La Quinta folks were kind enough to let me park the bike under the main awning in front for security and because I expected to be gearing up in the expected rain. However, the ground was still dry as I got everything loaded up and checked out.
I love early mornings before most people are up and was feeling pretty jazzed on my way to the start. Went in for a pit stop and one of the clerks agreed to snap my starting photo as I explained what I was about to attempt. “You’re going how far? All in one day? Well, be safe!”
With picture taken and everything ready, I filled up the tank and carefully checked my vital starting receipt, time-stamped 3:11 AM EDT. All was good and I noted my odometer reading (25,951) on both the receipt and a log sheet I’d decided to keep for all my gas stops, just in case. Off I went, without further ado. My route was in my GPS, but I also had a simple route sheet inserted in the map sleeve of my tank bag:
After the first hour or so, still in MA, there began to be a light misting in the air – not clear if it was fog or actual precip, but it certainly mixed just fine with all the salt chemicals left on the road from the previous weekend’s snow event (the one that dumped inches of snow in SE mass but was gone the next day). My bike was covered in salty nastiness for the first time in it’s life (I’d never ridden salted roads until after a rain). As I entered CT on I-84, I was unable to tell if my headlight or driving lights were working properly or not. Pulled in to a rest area and found that both were opaque with grime from the road. Brilliant as always, I poured some (cold) drinking water from my saddlebag onto the hot halogen lights. Crack! Crack! The lenses of my aux lights both cracked with the temp differential (!), but continued to function.
Too early to be thinking about the laws of physics! Headlight is made of stronger stuff apparently, so no worry there. Wiped everything down with a rag and got back out on the road.
Not much to say about getting through CT and NY, except for realizing at some stop in NY that I’d lost the rain cover to my Kuryakyn tour bag somewhere back on I-84. Apparently, the draw-string wasn’t enough to hold it on and I should have bungeed it. Oh well not much to do about it at that point. The bag *was* supposed to be pretty waterproof on it’s own and I had some spare trash compactor bags in my saddlebags for emergency waterproofing when needed.
The rain started fairly steadily just before I hit PA.
Though my riding gear is waterproof, it was also cold, so I decided to pull on my rain gear proper. I generally don’t mind riding in the rain if caught out, but then again I’m not usually trying to maintain highway speed for 18+ hours! It’s a completely different wet riding experience and one I’ll need to devote a bit more attention to for future rides. My Gerbing heated gloves are NOT waterproof. This was something that came to my attention a couple days before the trip and I hadn’t really come up with a good strategy to deal with it. I bought a pair of those big blue rubber cleaning gloves from Home Depot, but they didn’t fit over my Gerbings. I brought my gore-tex gloves to switch to if needed, but they aren’t really for cold weather. So I wore the Gerbings until they were fairly well soaked and then switched to the gore-tex. Those stayed dry for a while, but they too became saturated and I realized I’d worn the gauntlet cuffs on the outside of my rain jacket rather than inside, so the water probably wicked in from the cuffs. I eventually decided that the small amount of heat output from the Gerbings was better than no heat, being that both pairs of gloves were wet anyway. I began making use of the hot air hand dryers in the gas station bathrooms as my first order of business at each stop. Other than wet hands and a foggy face shield, I was snug as a bug as I made it across PA. Then came Ohio.
A couple hours across Ohio, just before 5pm, I noticed it was REALLY getting cold. It was time for a break, so I pulled off the next exit to a gas station to fill up and warm up. As I did so, I noticed some sleet beginning to hit the windshield, mixed with some lighter snowflakes. WTF!? Rain I was definitely expecting, but not snow! I filled up and went inside for some hot choco while I checked the Weather Channel on my phone. I saw maps that looked like this:
Oh lovely, maybe 400 miles to go at that point, and I could now be running into winter weather. Polar VORTEX?? Who the hell ordered this?! This was my lowest emotional point in the ride, as I anxiously watched the snowflakes whirl around outside, pondering the possibility of abandoning my run more than halfway done though feeling good otherwise. Really, the main thing that worried me was the possibility of the road icing up (though it would have been nice to have warm dry hands too). I received encouraging words via text from my wonderful wife back home, and I buckled down, deciding not to call the ride until ice became a real possibility. I’d just be getting out of work now, and here I am on my bike halfway into the mid-western US and more adventures ahead of me – can’t let a little bad weather freak me out. The air was cold, especially at speed, but it was still in the high 30’s and the ground was not frozen. I’m still in this, think! So I quickly browsed the weather maps and current temps for cities on the road ahead, and it seemed that temps would be staying above freezing until 8-9 pm at least and later than that the further I got. Also, the radar showed sporadic weather activity along my route rather than a wall of unpleasantness, plus it looked like everything west of Indianapolis was clear already. So if I could just beat the freezing temps to avoid ice…
Newly determined and focused, I mounted back up and headed back out into the snowflakes, at reduced speed, and watching the road surface very carefully now for any signs of freezing. The cold air kept my face shield permanently fogged and I regularly flipped up the shield enough to swipe my thumb across the bottom for a clear line of sight every 3-5 minutes. Soon enough, I left that pocket of weather and was back to plain cold air and some pockets of rain here and there. I found myself wishing I had taken a photo or two of the snow at the gas station, but I’d been too stressed about beating the freeze to want to take the time. Shortly after skirting Columbus OH, with evening coming on (made darker by the clouds socked in above), I hit some REAL snow squalls. This time, visibility was like driving in fog as the snow came quickly. My windshield was covered by snow in less than a minute, and I reduced speed once again, traveling in the right lane about 50 mph, peering over the windshield and continuing my thumb-swipe de-fogging routine. I laughed at myself now…what the HELL was I doing?? I continued to monitor the roadway and ground and was comforted to see that no snow was sticking and the road was simply wet. Cars and semis slowed down as well, but continued to blast by me toddling along in the right lane. Maybe 20 minutes or so of these unsettling conditions, and I began to see lighter skies on the horizon, past the dark clouds overhead. The snow eventually eased up and finally stopped coming down.
The pavement began looking drier as darkness fell, though my mind kept playing tricks thinking every shiny area on the roadway might just be frozen run-off (was probably just dry salt that had been sprayed on previously). while I may have hit a couple more small pockets of rain I crossed Indiana, I knew when I hit Indianapolis under full cover of night that I’d made it through the storm system and would be in the clear until my destination. Back up to full speed, I gritted my teeth against the cold and wiggled my fingers and toes continuously to keep the blood flowing. Although, I discovered later that my AlpineStar gore-tex boots had done their job of keeping my feet dry, during the ride it felt like they had possibly let in some water due to how cold my toes were in their own sweat. I mentally congratulated myself upon passing the actual 1000 mile mark from my starting place, somewhere just after Terre Haute IN (I think). Just a scant 50 miles or so and I saw the lights and water tower of Casey IL up ahead as I pulled off I-70 and into the Phillips 66 station.
Filled up and gathered my hard-earned final receipt, time-stamped at 10:28 PM CDT. Double checked: time, date, city, state…yep all present and accounted for on the receipt…I was DONE! I noted the ending odometer reading of 27,045 on the receipt, officially marking the end of my first Saddlesore at 1094 miles in 20 hrs 17 min. After a quick warm-up inside at the friendly neighborhood restroom hand dryer, I snapped a couple photos and grudgingly mounted the bike one last time to ride back north up the highway 18 miles to my hotel in Marshall, IL.
Hard to see, but a MUCH dirtier bike than the starting pic:
I felt much more relaxed now and kept the speed down to finish the day out safely. The friendly folks at Lincoln Suites kept the light on for me and allowed me to park right outside the front door under the canopy. I saw several other bikes already parked in the lot and buttoned up for the night. I wondered where they’d come from, since they were literally the ONLY other motorcycles I had seen the entire journey. I had imagined thousands of riders from all over converging on this spot in Illinois and had been sure I’d run into at least some of them along the way. I was looking forward to meeting some of the riders at the upcoming events and sharing stories of our rides – I had one to tell at least! And man o man, did I want a Moonburger!
Only after I covered the bike, lugged my gear to my room, and checked in by phone with the wife to let her know I was safe, did I finally allow myself to feel the elation and realization of the day’s ride. The Saddlesore is just the entry level ride for Iron Butt riders and hundreds of folks have done crazy distances above and beyond it, but it was a nice feeling to have completed this milestone at last, especially under the conditions I’d seen. This was no pleasant summer’s day ride! As a local rallymaster once put it, it’s a good tool to have in your bag of riding skills, knowing you can ride a long highway distance in one day, whether it be to meet up with distant friends or get to a far-off destination for more “fun” riding on the secondary roads and twisties. It’s a tool that would become immediately useful to me later in this trip…
RANDOM LESSONS LEARNED:
– Find some way to deal with keeping hands warm in VERY COLD wet conditions…heated glove liners perhaps? Not sure I want to do heated grips.
– Don’t pour cold water over hot lights!
– Bungee your rain cover on rear luggage.
– Check the weather forecasts and patterns VERY carefully, from multiple sources. Especially in the early spring/late fall seasons when patterns are changing more frequently.
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