What exactly is the Iron Butt? It is an eleven day scavenger hunt on steroids. It is also a chance for you to meet all the demons you carry, even the ones you didn’t know about. It is a grand game, a huge personal challenge and the motorcycle touring version of sprinting up Mt. Everest all in the name of fun.
The night before the start riders are presented with a Rally Book that will contain a number of locations scattered about the United States and Canada. Based on the information in the book riders develop a route that gets them to a mandatory checkpoint at a specified time.
Before getting their rally books, riders must pass a technical inspection to insure the motorcycle meets the rules. We are given a rally flag with our number, an emergency contact card we must wear around our necks and a name tag that must be worn at all functions including scoring.
The concept of the rally is simple, riders choose locations from the rally book to visit and complete specific tasks such as taking a photo, answering a question or making a purchase to claim the points associated with the bonus location. Additionally we can also get points for keeping a fuel log and taking minimum rest stops. It is a good idea to bag these points, they take little effort for something you need to do anyway. Unfortunately in 2005 I lost a fuel receipt that was also an anchor to a rest period. This one lost receipt dropped me from sixth to sixty-third at the scoring table after the first leg which was very difficult to recover from.
2005 was a tough rally for me. I had some personal issues that boiled over in the winter before the rally and it was difficult to get in the right frame of mind for the ride which likely contributed to my loosing the receipt. I also did not do a single competitive or documented ride between 03 and 05.
07 is going much better. I rode the Void Rally last fall with my good friend Peter Withers and we tied for first. I did the Cape Fear Rally this spring with a focus on some new navigation and paperwork methods and was happy with the result even though I had to pretty much disqualify myself for a rookie mistake.
For me part of the game is preparing the motorcycle. My background is in preparing ocean going sailing yachts for racing offshore such as Newport, Rhode Island to Bermuda. Systems must be tested and able to endure the punishment of the event without failure. I believe in doing everything possible to identify situations where time can be saved and errors minimized. While it is a game with someone keeping score for me I really want to have a ride I can be proud of and have fun too boot. If I didn’t think it was going to be fun I couldn’t get up for it.