Plastic Validation
Did I ever tell you about the time I paid 45 dollars for a license plate bracket? It's likely. I've told a lot of people. Some of them even put up a brave effort to pretend they cared. Actually, it wasn’t only a bracket. That’d be ridiculous. Even I wouldn’t pay that much money for a piece of plastic with no real function. There was also a sheet of paper that came with it.
The paper was a form-type certificate, indicating that one or more people - none of whom I had ever met - were officially notifying me that I had ridden over a thousand miles on my motorcycle in less than 24 hours.
Of course, I already knew that.
Yeah, I know. Looking at it in print, none of it sounds like the sum of a particularly intelligent thought process to me, either. But, like so many poorly-made decisions that end up generating great stories later, it seemed like a good idea at the time. It started when my best riding friend said it out loud.
Here, for the sake of clarity, is a good place to add a little background. We have this thing we do, my friend and I. Talking about potential adventures is fine. Dreaming of traversing the rugged, rock-strewn Dalton highway in Alaska, hammering coast-to-coast in some insanely short amount of time, spending a week exploring the old-growth forests and craggy coastline of the Pacific Northwest…those are things we talk about whenever the conversation drifts toward motorcycles. Which is pretty much most of the time.
But if one of us declares something - if somebody actually says, out loud, that we will do something - it must happen. Bridges are burned, shore lines are untied, cut up and thrown into the sea, wives are notified. There is no going back from it. Our deal is that what is said cannot be unsaid.
We’re normal guys, with families and jobs, so usually, (though I’ve done nothing to prevent it sounding that way) it doesn’t happen in a “damn-the-torpedos - let’s ride” fashion. It's not nearly that glamorous. Planning proceeds slowly, and usually well in advance. We hint around about it at work, check our schedules, double-check with our wives that we aren’t overlooking something unforgivable, look at maps and weather forecasts. Then the day comes, after the 'T's are crossed and the gutters are cleaned out, that we officially say we’re leaving.
This time was different. We were driving to Starbucks - the wellspring of so much of our genius - and just talking normally. Bikes, of course. Weather, chainsaws, politics. Innocuous, average stuff. But then my friend just says it. Casually. Like he was telling me he needed to stop at the hardware store or that he had a hamburger for lunch. He says we’re riding a thousand miles in 24 hours or less. An “iron butt”, he called it. As soon as the words left his mouth, there was an awkward silence, like one of us just urinated in his pants in a crowded elevator. Neither one of us could believe he had broken protocol by not slowly leading up to an idea, but there it was. We had it to do, and we would leave in a week or two.
The Iron Butt Association is a bona fide, honest-to-goodness, legitimately recognized organization. The rides and rallies they certify are the de-facto benchmarks for long-distance riders - a fringe sub-group of the larger class of motorcyclists. The Iron Butt Rally, held every two years, is, to the uninitiated, a bizarre suffer-fest of ridiculous proportions: To finish the rally, the rider must ride at least 11,000 miles in 11 days. Points must be earned by hitting checkpoints, and extra points are added by completing mind-numbing rides-within-the ride, so most finishers actually ride much further than the 11,000 mile minimum. No consideration is given for weather. Or breakdowns. Or being late to a checkpoint. You may have just ridden from Boston to Colorado Springs to pick up the bonus, but if you’re one second late, it's all for nothing. No points are awarded. You rode all that way just to burn gas. It's not so terribly difficult to see why fewer than 500 people have ever finished an Iron Butt Rally.
But the rally is the domain of nut jobs and the psychologically deficient. And they’re proud of it. For the rest of us, the IBA certifies more realistic rides, too. That’s why many riders refer to riding 1000 miles in 24 hours as an “iron butt”, because it’s the shortest ride one can complete to receive credentials from the association.
Looking at the map, the most direct route to ride an unbroken thousand-miler from eastern Illinois, is to head straight west on Interstate 70, through western Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado.
So that’s what we did. In hopes of arriving at our destination with some daylight remaining, we left at 2:30 AM. Departure and arrival times require verification from a third-party observer, so Corky (that’s what it says on my time sheet) at the gas station finished his contribution to the day’s ride with a signature. We thanked him, and made a left turn into the blackness to finish ours.
We were through St. Louis, 150 miles away, before daylight. We watched the sun come up over the Missouri farm country, cut through blistering wind in 104 degree heat across Kansas, became ensnarled in rush-hour traffic in Denver. But then, just like that, we were there. “There”, in this case, was Silverthorne, Colorado. The sun was long gone behind the mountains, but it wasn’t yet dark when we arrived. We found a gas station, thanked “Greg” for his autograph, and that was it.
I mean, that really was it. Sure, we got a little sore. We were ready to get off by the end. We couldn't sit around and talk at fuel stops because we were on a tight schedule, but we had Bluetooth headsets in our helmets, which allowed us to talk ourselves hoarse while on the move, anyway. It was actually pretty easy.
You might think from the trip summary, that the whole thing was hugely anticlimactic. A waste of time, fuel and tires.
It wasn’t. Not even a little.
As surprised as we were at how quickly the time passed, at the utter lack of exhaustion we felt at the end, we were even more taken aback by the elation. The feeling of accomplishment, like we had flung ourselves through the gauntlet and shown that we were it’s match. But why? Why, when it was so uneventful, so seemingly without purpose, was the psychological reward so disproportionate? Anyone who can sit still for awhile, and who doesn’t mind a little boredom could do it. Seriously. Anyone could do it.
But I think that was part of it, for us: Just because anyone could do it, doesn't mean that just anyone does.
Not everyone decides to do something, just to see what it would be like. Not everyone climbs the wall - even the short one - to see what the other side is all about. The world shrinks, when you push yourself a little. Places that once seemed so far away, now feel like the next town over.
We left our homes in small-town Illinois in the morning, only to eat steak in the Rockies on the same day. Without ever entering an airport. We breathed fresh air, watching - and feeling - the world go by, for a thousand miles. That fact opened up possibilities we hadn’t even considered before. We could tour Yellowstone, Glacier, The Four Corners and Mesa Verde again. Only now, we could do it all on the same trip, if we wanted. The distance was, of course, the same as it had always been. Our perception of it would never be so again.
That’s why I'm glad we do that thing. That “saying it out loud” thing. Not only does it put second-thoughts in their rightful place, it puts me in a mindset that makes more things seem possible. A thousand miles is a long way, if one only plans to ride a hundred.
So that license plate frame...it's on the back of my bike now. My friend has one too. To other riders, it probably says something about what we did. Places we’ve been. Maybe something about how much we love riding.
To me, it's a reminder of the places I have yet to go, and that I will do what it takes to get there.