20 hour endurance ride

[Carter Turk]

I went on a mission yesterday to check out a campsite for my wife. I left at 6 am and returned at 2 am this morning. 20 hours total. 1 hour for lunch, 1 for dinner. 8 gas stops averaging about 40 mpg. One tank I had 164 miles showing and put 4 gallons in. 860 miles total with 50 on the interstate, all the rest on secondary windy roads including some dirt stretches and several u-turns on roads the gazetteer said were paved that turned to dirt.

My starter clutch is broken, so I bump started every time I stopped, which was 20 times. I managed to start on dusty dirt roads by engaging forth and dropping the clutch. The bike ran flawlessly otherwise, managed to get a weep through the head gasket in the 90 plus heat though.

18 hours is for sure the longest I've ever spent in the saddle. I considered a hotel, but didn't really want to spend $ 70 to pass out and leave early the next morning. I can also say I'm not fond of night riding with deer crossing signs every 3 miles. Only saw two. Luckily only 200 miles were at night

 

[Dogma]

Sounds like fun. Just a little longer (and some documentation) and you could have had your Iron Butt cert.

 

[Guest]

So,how was the campsite?.Did you make it into weirdo thought land?That's where I usually end up.Singing at the top of your voice,laughing outrageously at almost nothing------good stuff!!!Cheers,Simon.

 

[Carter Turk]

I think those iron butters are interstaters for the most part.

The campsite was weird. I was only there about 15 minutes and the site was right below a small dam. Not very picturesque. The lake and stream were nice, but there was this strange hissing noise coming out of this pipe on top of the dam.

 

[Steve]

I think those iron butters are interstaters for the most part.

"For the most part", you are correct. There are, however, exceptions.

.

 

[Sandy]

Good ride Carter, I wonder how many others here have done these long days. I recently did 825 miles in 14 hours to the Western Rally and thought of doing another 3 hours for the Ironbutt but it was 90+ degrees and I was well baked by then. I cheated though, I stuck to paved roads. LOL. These old bikes were capable of doing it back then and with proper care and maintainance will still do it. It would have been fun to register with the Ironbutt guys and put down "Stock 1979 GS1000" as the bike ridden.

 

[Carter Turk]

Steve,

Back and forth down the "Gap" is a long stint. Was he riding a Wing? Isn't that like sitting in a Lazy Boy? I repeated about 200 miles of the ride, the rest was on different roads.

 

[DanTheMan]

I'm currently at my daughter and son-in-law's house in NC (Pope AFB). My last day's ride was from Seymour, Ind. to Pope. I left at 6:15 am, took a tour down the old ridge road to Lexington, rode in through Knoxville, TN and down to Fayettevile. I took a 45 min power nap on a table in a rest area, the last leg took me just under18 hours with all the 100 mile gas stops. It was a total of 785 miles. I'm going to leave out the touristing when I leave tomorrow and get my IB stuff taken care of.
BTW, with the detours and sightseeing, my trip out here logged 1780 miles on the GPS.