NEWS
The 2015 Iron Butt Rally By Wes Fleming #87301
MOTORCYCLE RIDERS DO A LOT of weird stuff—and I’m not just talk- ing about farkling this and rewiring that. Why, right here in this very mag- azine we’ve got Chris “Teach” McNeil, who does things on an S 1000 RR that I’m sure make the honchos in Ger- many shake their heads and exclaim, “It’s not designed to do that!” There’s a group of us who think 200
miles before breakfast is a mere warm-up and that it’s no problem to ride to a diner in the middle of nowhere to grab a burger with old friends only to turn around and ride the same 600 miles back home. I myself have a friend who woke up one morning in Jacksonville, Florida, then rode to San Diego, California, and back to Jacksonville in 92 hours.
She did it on purpose, too. You might
think she’s crazy, but I assure you she’s not – she’s just been bitten by the long distance bug.
The truly hardcore among long distance
riders gather in the summer of odd-num- bered years to engage in what is surely the most grueling motorcycling contest ever conceived by man or beast, the Iron Butt Rally. It never starts in the same place twice, and it doesn’t even always end in the same place it started. It’s important to know that the Iron Butt
Rally isn’t a race, and while I’d be lying to you if I told you the competitors never exceed the posted speed limit, it’s the kind of competition where being the fastest might not notch you a win. It’s the kind of contest where riding smart is more likely to bring victory than riding hard, but if you
don’t ride hard enough, you’ll get left at the back of the pack. In essence, it’s a scavenger hunt. This
year’s rally took one of the Iron Butt Asso- ciation’s certified rides and compressed it into just 11 days. The National Parks Tour requires a rider to “collect” at
least 50
national parks, monuments or battlefields in at least 25 different states. Normally rid- ers have a full calendar year to attain this goal, but in the 2015 Iron Butt Rally, just to qualify as a finisher, riders had to do it in 11 days. While one of this year’s finishers, Rob Jaime, completed the challenge on his 2014 Honda NC700XD in a mere 7,569 miles, the winner, Eric Jewell, and his 2007 Honda ST1300 did 11,087 miles. The high mileage rider, Will Barclay, did 12,900 miles on his 2014 Harley-Davidson Ultra Classic, but he finished in 25th place. Barclay, if you’re
Chris Comly and his 2006 Harley-Davidson Sportster.
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BMW OWNERS NEWS September 2015
NEWS
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