(~ January 31, 2025)

Some good news on the long-distance rally front had hit just after Thanksgiving — Paul Tong has stepped in to grab the throttle as Rallymaster of the newly confirmed 2025 running of the Iron Butt Rally. I’ve spent many an unrestful and disappointed hour over the past several months feeling a bit directionless after the announcement that insurance snafus had halted forward progress of the IBR. But I held on to some small hope down deep that somehow, IBA President Mike Kneebone would find a way to re-organize the rally next summer, however small, casual, and perhaps under-the-radar the event might need to become. As the year waned, however, the hope had become buried under the certainty that surely there was no way to pull off such a complicated escapade at this late hour.

For reasons probably known only to himself and his family & team, Paul has agreed not only to take on this monumental task of not only wrangling “The World’s Toughest Motorcycle Competition”, but to do so with roughly a quarter of the usual preparation and lead time. With the standard mid-June timeframe announced for this edition of the rally, things are going to have to happen on an accelerated schedule. If there’s one thing the Lone Star Rallies group can do, however, given their embrace of technology advancements and online communications, it’s run an efficient rally event.

Amazingly, despite huge increases in insurance costs for the event, the entry fee is going to be kept right around the same as the 2023 event, due to efficiency measures and digital processes to be implemented by the new rally management team. That starts with the application process. To save time and money, there was be no application fee, but interested riders were asked to apply via online form by December 10, just two short weeks of notice to make a decision worth a few thousand dollars and hundreds of hours of prep, worrying, and then riding. They are not wasting any time!

So I needed to decide quickly on how I’d be occupying the bulk of my spare time and mind-space over the next several months. Without the rally on the schedule, Char and I had talked about possibly doing an extended riding tour in 2025, maybe to the Pacific Northwest and/or Colorado. At the time, I still hadn’t mentally processed, let alone begun writing about, my experience riding in the 2024 LDX Rally back in June, particularly regarding some of the new rules & process changes that event had introduced. But as the Oracle pshaw’d in The Matrix Reloaded, “…you didn’t come here to make the choice… you’ve already made it. You’re here to try to understand why you made it.”

Char understands and even urged me on to apply. Submitting my application in early December, I was pretty sure I could count on no-draw acceptance into the rally as a perk of my top 10 finish in the LDX. That was indeed the case, and the LDX podium riders all received unofficial confirmation about that less than a week later via email. On Christmas day, the official rally welcome emails were sent out, including a two-part payment schedule for the still-hefty entrance fee.

Under the new management, I have to assume that the 2025 IBR is going to resemble the last LDX event much more than it will past Iron Butt Rallies, in terms of process and rules. That thinking seemed to bear out based on early communications from rally staff and the updated IBR 2025 rulebook that was posted sometime in December. Several obvious changes that confirmed it right off the bat were the switch to cell phone cameras, using the LDX mobile phone rally app for bonus submittal, and a continued prohibition on radar detectors, for example.

I’ve tended to view participation in LD rallies akin to partaking in an amateur sports league. We’re out there mostly for fun, but still consistently building established skills within the rules of the game by repetition ad nauseum — grinding out variations until familiarity and improvement occurs. That and solving the routing puzzles, playing with maps, is how I get my biggest kicks out of this hobby. This learning trajectory had been more or less consistent while participating in the Butt Lite IX and three Iron Butt Rallies, not to mention the various shorter events over the past 10 years, which were overall similar in approach and necessary skills — the mental toughness, physical stamina, routing skills, and the ridecraft that all required honing to improve one’s placing.

Now there are outside parties like the insurance industry keeping watch and forcing changes in order to underwrite these events that they don’t really understand. Not only the rally theme, but the very rules of engagement now often change with each game. This time around more than most IBRs in the past I think, we riders must avoid any fixed expectations about the rally before that final riders’ meeting. Besides what’s specifically in the rulebook and the fact that we’ll be on our bikes for some portion of each day for 11 days straight, collecting points — nothing else is given.

It took me a week or so around New Years to digest the rulebook changes and get my head right with this new paradigm of “expected uncertainty” before sending in the first entry fee installment and committing myself. But as I’ve alluded, being offered this unexpected reprieve — another chance to participate in this incredible event, I felt compelled to grab on to the opportunity with both hands, and my check was sent in on time. It won’t be the same IBR experience that I’ve gotten used to, but I’ve had a great time riding the LDX rallies and in the end it is still riding around the continent for 11 days at the same time as 100 other crazies, with no other agenda than to hunt for Points.

I’m filled with gratitude to Paul and his crew for stepping up to save the beloved Big Dance, and curious how I’ll perform in the revamped event with no expectations and three Tong rallies under my belt now. Who knows, maybe this time I’ll be able to get out of my own way! 😬

All of this IBR business was of course happening concurrently with my alternator replacement maintenance work, which along with weather and the holidays, has cut out any chance for riding opportunities since November. But the announcement has injected me with some motivation to continue getting the ST and myself into operating condition sooner rather than later. As did the news that Wolfe Bonham (rallymaster of Lobo Loco Rallies) was planning to run a 24-hour “Snowbirds Rally” down in Florida on the weekend of the IBA annual meetup in Jacksonville… an opportunity to get the season jumpstarted with saddle time AND dusting off the rally skills!