Day 333 : Tuesday April 7, 2015 : Miles 24211
The Tour of Honor,
http://www.tourofhonor.com/index.html, is an annual charity ride, organized by Steve Brooks and a great team of volunteers, that benefits veterans and first responders. I think this is the 5th year for the ToH, my second year, and each year it just gets bigger.
How it works. A rider pays a registration fee, $15 goes to one of a few designated charities, and then the rider will get a rider package in the mail that contains a rider "flag", a hand towel with the rider's number printed on one side, a tea shirt and other bits of swag. The ToH picks memorial sights all around the country, seven in most states but some smaller states are combined into regions, and these locations are kept secret until April 1, when they are released. Riders then ride to different memorials, as many as they desire, take pictures at each site with their flag and motorcycle to prove that they where at that location, then email these photos to the verification team to get credit for visiting each location. Lots of fun and a great reason to go for a motorcycle ride.
There are trophies for the first three riders to visit all 7 sites in a state, or all the sites in a region, as well as certificates and such for people who visit at least 7 memorial sites between April 1, and October 31. If this is not enough of a challenge, there are other places to be visited and there is even cooperation between the Tour of Honor and the IBA. The IBA has a special Saddle Sore 1000 ride certification for people who visit 4 sites, or for people who visit 7 sites in a state or region. This is a challenge that I can't resist.
So... April 1 arrives and the memorial site locations are released to a bunch of avid riders at 12:00 midnight EDT. There are quite or few riders sitting at their computers who are soon out the door as they strive to earn a trophy by visiting all the sites in their state or region. I can't help but grin thinking about this wonderful foolishness, but this is not my thing. When you think about it, this is a reward for finishing in the shortest amount of time, and that is a race on public roads. That is not something I am going to do, but I love IBA rides which are a level effort achievement and not at all a race. I had thought about this for some time, and I will never be riding for a ToH trophy, but some day I might end up with one by accident. I will, however, ride hard and then submit my ride to the IBA for certification.
April 1, arrives and I take a quick peak at this years memorial sites in Texas.
>>>> 2015 Tour of Honor Memorial sites in Texas.
I fire up Basecamp, a Garmin mapping program, and get to work looking at various routing options. After about 15 minutes working on a plan, I am not a happy man. I like a challenging ride and I love to see a lot of country roll past as a day goes on, but a shorter ride can be a lot more fun as it gives you time to stop to take pictures, a few minutes to eat, a chance to take a nap. My favorite distance for a day ride is about 1200 miles, but I can ride a lot further if needed. I had been looking forward to a good, hard, fun, ToH ride, but the most efficient route I could find was 1505 miles. This is not that big a deal, not that hard on west Texas superslabs with posted speed limits of 80 MPH, all you need do is keep riding with fast, efficient gas stops. Sit there, twist that. The problem is that I also needed to visit all seven Tour of Honor sites including site TX7 that is deep down in south Texas in the city of McAllen, right on the border with Mexico. To get to McAllen and back, I was going to need to put some serious time in on the bike.
I spend the next couple of days thinking about this ride, considering the fact that almost all of the ride would be on secondary roads, thinking about the time it will take to document my visits to each memorial site, contemplating all of those small Texas towns I would ride through that get significant portions of their annual budget by giving performance awards to passing motorists. I let this ride ferment in my head for quite a while before I made the decision to ride. Then, it was just a matter of deciding what time to depart and looking at weather forecasts for the weekend. I left the house Saturday morning at about 02:45 CDT.
This was going to be a maximum effort ride.
>>>> Spotwalla track of my 2015 ToH ride.
Link to Spottwalla interactive map:
https://spotwalla.com/tripViewer.php?id ... f35d483429
The Iron Butt Association,
http://www.ironbutt.com/, is an organization dedicated to the sport of safe, long distance motorcycle riding and they have rather strict rules to certify a wide range of level of effort rides. To document a ride, you must get computer printed dated receipts at the start and end of the ride, and then periodically along the ride and you must log your stops. The IBA is going to calculate your ride by looking at the distance between the addresses on each of these receipts, shortest distance between, and then adding up those numbers, so, if you have a complex ride you are going to need to document a lot of locations with a receipt to prove that you rode to that route. These tasks take time.
My first stop was very near my houme to document my starting location and time. I got my first gas receipt on April 4 at 02:58:53 CDT, the first of 12 gas receipts, and I tucked this slip of paper carefully into my wallet. I would return to the exact same station to document the end of my ride on April 5. I was then on my way to College Station, TX for my first ToH memorial site. The plan was to get there just a bit before sunrise in the hope of having a little light to get my photo, but it was still a bit dark when I arrived at 06:15 CDT.
>>>> ToH TX5 - College Station
I got a gas receipt in College Station to document the "corner" of my route and then I was off to Pflugerville, out side of Austin, then McAllen, San Antonio, Leakey, and so on. Each location involved getting a photograph containing my rider flag, the monument and the bike, and a stop for a gas receipt to document the ride for the IBA. At some locations, where it is not possible to get the bike in the photograph of the memorial, you must take a second photograph with bike and the location in the background.
>>>> ToH TX4 - Pflugerville
Note my helmet in the photo. This monument was about 500 feet into a park and I felt very strange walking with my helmet on my head, sharing the morning with quite a few people out for their daily exercise. This was the only time I took my helmet off for the entire ride.
>>>> ToH TX7 - McAllen
After Pflugerville, it was time to put on the big miles to get down to McAllen in south Texas and back. This is not a great ride, this part of Texas is rather boring, but it is just a matter of putting time in the saddle. There was also quite a bit of rain for the last 150 miles down to McAllen and then back.
>>>> ToH TX6 - San Antonio
For each memorial stop I need to make a log entry to document my ride for the IBA and I obviously need a photo for the ToH. My procedure is very strait forward and involves a specific set of steps that are altered as required by the circumstances of a location.
1. If possible, position the motorcycle facing the monument.
2. Take off both gloves and store in lap.
3. Write down mileage and arrival time in a notebook kept in the tank bag.
4. Get out rider flag and clip to windshield.
5. Get out camera and take the photo.
6. Check the photo to make sure all the elements are correct.
7. Put camera back in zip lock bag and then back in the tank bag.
8. Take down flag and put it back in the tank bag.
9. Write down time on note pad and zip up tank bag.
10. Depart
Don't get off the motorcycle if at all possible.
My log entry for ToH TX6 - San Antonio read "23509 16:43 16:46". Three minutes is a reasonable good time for grabbing a bonus under rally conditions and the ToH provides a great opportunity to practice basic rally skills.
>>>> ToH TX2 - Leakey
>>>> ToH TX3 - Fredericksburg
The ride between San Antonio, Leaky and Fredericksburg was just wonderful Texas hill country motorcycle riding with a lot of color from wildflowers, lots of twisty road, nice rugged hills, and no time at all to take any pictures. A ride like this is all about time management. The entire route is programmed into the GPS, a Zumo 390LM, and I have my estimated time arrival at the end of the ride continually displayed. At the start of the ride, my ETA was 02:18 on the morning of April 5, so I had a bit of a buffer, but I also knew that this time would change with the large number of stops I was going to be making. At each stop, I would loose some time, quite a bit if I have to get off the bike to get a photo down some path, or if I need to go into the a gas station to get a duplicate receipt. After a stop, I would slowly "claw back" a minute every now and then, but over the day I had been loosing a bit of time and this was expected considering all of the small towns I rode through.
When I entered Frederiskburg, I had 26 minutes of a time buffer. It was right at dusk so my first priority was to get my photo of the memorial, but I am always looking for a good gas station to get a quick fill up and a quality receipt. As I drove into town I noted a nice new Shell and decided that I would stop on the way out. Fredericksburg is a spring destination in the Texas Hill Country where people come from all over for the wild flowers, shopping, and a large number of thriving vineyards in the area. I hate traffic and I wanted to kill all the jay walking pedestrians, but I stayed on task, got my photo, and fought my way back out of town looking for the shiny new Shell. I passed a rather shabby looking Chevron that had been my planned stop, and was grateful for the Shell that was up ahead.
The GPS told me to turn right and I was soon out of town, no Shell station, no gas, no receipt to prove this corner of my route. Ok.... lets see if we can find a station, but no luck so I had to make the very painful choice of turning around and I ended up at the very Chevron at which I had originally planned to stop. I fill up with gas and I tell the rather old pump that I want a receipt. It tells me to "See Attendant", so now I need to grab my GPS and tank bag and head into the store to get that precious slip of paper with about 5 people in the line to the only cash register. I got my receipt and had a quick look. Good date, good time, good gallons, a street address, but no "Fredericksburg, TX". This is a required element for a solid receipt to submit to the IBA, but I had no more time. I scribbled Fredericksburg, TX on the receipt placed it carefully into my wallet and I got the hell out of that time sink of the town. My time in the bank, my time buffer, had been reduced to 7 minutes and I still had one more ToH location to document and then an additional 300 miles to get back to my starting location to end this ride.
I rode the next 100 miles angry.
Did I go for throttle up? Not at all. This is the sport of "safe" long distance riding, and there is nothing more important than getting home. Risk management is fare more important than time management and I ride with the flow of traffic to minimize interactions with other vehicles, or, if there is no traffic, I will ride just a bit over the posted speed limit, +2 or +3.
My final ToH location was to be in San Angelo and I knew that this was going to be well after dark. By the time I got there, 22:18, I had clawed back about 4 minutes of buffer time, but the site had no lighting at all and it was pitch dark. It was not going to be easy to get a good picture to prove my visit to the location. I have a inexpensive point and shoot with a built in flash, a flashlight, and the high beams on the motorcycle. With a good camera, a small tripod, and a long exposure, this would have been easy. I took a lot of photos and ended up with two that might work. One showing the flag on the bike and some of the location without using the flash and with my flashlight on the flag, and a second photo showing only the top edge of my wind screen, the top edge of the flag, and the memorial, a helicopter mounted on a large pole, illuminated by the camera's flash.
>>>> ToH TX1 - San Angelo
>>>> ToH TX1 - San Angelo
As I left San Angelo, I had only 5 minutes of buffer time and 300 miles to ride with one planned gas stop in Ranger, Texas.
When I arrived back at my starting gas station I pulled right up to the pump and started by fueling procedure. I had made it, but I had no time to make any mistakes. My pump spit out my 12th gas receipt to end my ride on April 5 at 02:56:16 CDT. I had ridden 1502.7 GPS miles with 2 minutes 37 seconds to spare on my 24 hour clock.
The two basic IBA rides are the Saddle Sore 1000, 1000 miles in 24 hours, and the Bun Burner 1500, 1500 miles in 36 hours. A Bun Burner Gold, is 1500 miles in 24 hours and is consider a much more difficult ride. I have done a number of BBG and this ToH ride would qualify for a BBG by 2 minutes 37 seconds and 2.7 miles, but the ToH does not allow BBGs so it will be submitted as a SS1000 instead. What is also true is that it was a very complex route and the verification team at the IBA might not get the same mileage numbers as did my GPS. It is best to pad a ride with extra miles, but the honest purpose of my ride was not to ride a BBG, it was to ride a ToH SS1000. A very long and hard SS1000, but that was my plan and I rode my plan.
This was a maximum effort ride and it allowed me to explore the outer edges of my personal performance envelope. I now have a much better idea of how much I can accomplish in a day of focused riding.
I emailed my photos to the ToH verification team and was credited with all 7 sites in Texas.
This afternoon, I mailed my certification documents to the IBA. To supplement the receipt in Fredericksburg, the one that is missing the name of the city and state, I went to the Fredericksburg Chamber of Commerce website and printed out the listing for the business that matches the name and street address on the receipt.
I wrote a lot about this ride as I want to be able to go back and think about what I had experienced and what I had learned.
Safe Travels,
Richard
