Bruce Arnold Hits Iron Butt Ride
5-0 Long Distance Motorcycle Riding Benchmark
BRUCE ARNOLD HITS IRON BUTT RIDE 5-0 LONG DISTANCE MOTORCYCLE RIDING
> BENCHMARK
>
> Of the tens of millions of motorcyclists here and abroad, only 50,000 or
> so have been certified as riding over 1,000 miles in under 24 hours by the
> Iron Butt Association (IBA). Of these, only 11 have completed over 20
> certified distance and endurance rides and qualified as members of the IBA
> Mile Eater GOLD Club. And of these, only BMW rider and LDR legend Jack
> Shoalmire is credited with 50 or more certifications. My current riding
> resume pales in comparison to Jack's, but nevertheless at 10:46pm on
> Saturday (19 June 2010) I logged a Publix/Presto ATM slip to mark the
> successful completion of what should be certified as my 5th SaddleSore
> 2000 and my 50th Iron Butt Ride. And once it is, according to IBA founder
> and President Mike Kneebone, that will be the first time a Harley-Davidson
> rider has hit the 50-ride benchmark, and the first time any Iron Butt
> rider has completed 50 certified rides on the same motorcycle.
>
> I had intended something more ambitious for "Ride 5-0" than a SaddleSore
> 2000 comprised of two round trips to nowhere. But times being what they
> are, I am fortunate and grateful to be doing any distance riding at all...
> Anyway, the SS2000 requires that you ride over 2,000 miles in under 48
> hours. On this particular ride, I covered 2,087 miles in 40 hours 27
> minutes total time, or 30 hours 3 minutes riding time. On the first leg
> (day one), I rode from Miami Beach FL to Cecil GA and back via Alligator
> Alley and IH-75, covering a distance of 1,048 miles in 14 hours 44 minutes
> for an MTH of 71.13. On the second leg (day two), I rode roundtrip from
> Miami Beach FL to Ridgeland SC and back via IH-95, covering a distance of
> 1,039 miles in 15 hours 19 minutes for an MTH of 67.83. There are no
> world records or even personal bests in any of these statistics. But it
> was a safe and successful ride, and that must satisfice. Here are the
> highlights:
>
> Leg 1: Round-Trip from Miami Beach FL to Cecil GA
>
> Sleepy witness signatures gathered, at 6:19am on Friday, 18 June 2010, I
> pulled an ATM slip at a SoBe Wachovia and logged the start of my ride. It
> was a typical muggy South Florida summer morning. But once I got rolling,
> the wind evaporated the beads of sweat and I had cool running all the way
> west across an almost empty Alligator Alley. Workday morning traffic
> slowed me down as I headed north up IH-75 through Naples and Fort Myers,
> but once the traffic thinned I had perfect riding conditions all the way
> to Tampa. Just north of there, I hit the first of three major
> accident-related traffic jams and rubbernecker slowdowns (that seem to
> occur every time I ride that stretch of interstate). These queues
> mandated some creative lane definition in order to maintain an acceptable
> pace of forward progress. But from my gas stop in Alachua northward into
> Georgia, all the cagers kept their eyes on the road and their shiney sides
> up, which allowed me to sail on into my turnaround p!
> oint at Cecil with no further interruptions or irritations beyond the
> seemingly perpetual road construction along that route.
>
> Heading south back to Florida, it was midafternoon by the time I reached
> Ocala. In Central Florida in the summer, it rains almost every afternoon,
> and this day was no exception. Those large, cold thundercloud raindrops
> were a welcome relief from the sweltering heat. But after a couple of
> hundred miles, I'd had all the relief I needed. The downpour finally
> began to dissipate as I rounded the bend towards Alligator Alley just
> after 7:00pm. From that point on, the red-orange sun hanging low in the
> west behind me seemed to be battling yet another band of clouds in front
> of me for dominance of the turbulent skies over the Everglades. And from
> this age-old natural conflict came a Kodak moment that made me regret not
> having a camera:
>
> I was approaching the Broward end of the Alley and home when a glistening
> in Hidalgo's left rearview mirror caught my eye. I glanced over to see
> the reflection of a round red sun sitting in the middle of a bright blue
> strip of daylight bounded by the horizon beneath it and a cloud bank
> above. It made the mirror look like a chrome-framed picture postcard.
> More spectacular, though, was what I saw when I looked back up: A huge,
> thick rainbow was perfectly centered over the highway before me, framing
> within it an arch of dark clouds fronted by intermittent bolts of
> lightning that seemed to flash directly down from the rainbow. It was as
> if God was staging a rock concert, and it was almost time for the band...
>
> Leg 2: Round-Trip from Miami Beach FL to Ridgeland SC
>
> After taking in my fill of skim milk, scrambled eggs and Don Francisco's
> Colombia Supremo, I rolled down to the 5th Street Shell and filled up my
> tank, logging the receipt and the start of leg 2 at 7:27am. From there I
> made the short hop across the causeway and headed north on IH-95. Being a
> Saturday, traffic was light and I had smooth sailing all the way through
> South Florida's tri-county metroplex and northward to my first stop at
> Vero Beach. In fact, I had good weather, open roads and easy riding all
> the way through Jacksonville, Georgia and on into South Carolina.
>
> I reached my turnaround point at Ridgeland SC at 3:08pm ... as did the
> first of several summer showers and thunderstorms I'd be riding through as
> I headed back southward. Just north of Brunswick GA, the rain started
> coming down in slanted sheets that slowed me to 15mph for a few minutes.
> But once I punched through, that was the worst of it.
>
> Sunset was approaching as I stopped for gas in Titusville FL at 7:30pm.
> Clouds would fill the skies for the rest of the evening, but I was south
> of the rain now and had dry roads from there to Miami. "Dry" roads, yes,
> but not necessarily "safe" roads... Somewhere near Mile Marker 100 by
> Stuart at around 9:00pm, I hit something lying in the road that looked,
> felt and sounded like either a heavy metal garbage can lid or an
> overturned manhole cover. It was dark in color, and lying on black
> asphalt under a starless night sky, so I didn't see it until I was right
> on top of it. The impact ripped the spring off my sidestand and took out
> my speedometer and odometer. Luckily though, I was still upright and
> rolling, and I didn't detect any other damage. So at my next and final
> gas stop in Jupiter, I bungied the sidestand then rode her safely home to
> SoBe.
>
> Read more here: http://distanceriding.ldrlongdistancerider.com
>
> ###
>
> Bruce Arnold is ... a record-holding long distance motorcycle rider ... a
> bikers' rights activist, grateful partner to RC and proud member of The
> 100 ... a political agitator targeting social injustice and piercing the
> veil of our two-puppet system to expose the institutionalized greed of the
> Kleptocracy pulling all strings Left and Right ... like Thomas Jefferson,
> an aficionado of ethnic aesthetic and a philosophical anarchist who sees
> the State as a necessary evil under which the best government is less
> government.
>
> Bruce@LdrLongDistanceRider.com | 1348 Washington Ave. #312 | Miami
Beach
> FL 33139
>
> ###
>
> R.I.P. Sputnik (TMRA)
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