When I was younger (mid 30’s) I did two sort of endurance rides. Neither was specifically planned to be an endurance ride. I simply wanted (needed?) to see if I could get somewhere which happened to be fairly far away, in as little time as possible. I was not trying to set any speed record, though. Just wanted to get there without lallygagging.
The bike for both rides was my old R100/7. No windshield other than a small home-made fairing from the headlight nacelle ending just over the top of the instruments. A period photo of the machine is shown at the top of this email and here (dry-stored in the basement today, near our clothes washer and dryer). This bike started out as an ‘RS’ but shortly after I purchased it from its original owner in about 1981, I converted it to a /7 naked bike and sold its fairing and everything else that was ‘RS’. I still have this bike and would guess it has about 100-150K on its odometer (which was not working for a few years, twice). It has the RS’s bigger 40mm exhaust and a few other ’RS’ items. With the help of an extremely talented friend, and over the course of several winters, I hot-rodded it the way I wanted (at that time…): /2 ‘high’ handlebars, Kehin ‘slant slide’ pumper carbs, high performance cam, bigger pistons, mono lever swingarm, oversize Heinrich tank, frame stiffener bars, extra holes in its cast aluminum airbox, drilled-out straight-through mufflers, lightened flywheel, special clutch, etc. It made 68HP on a dyno, which is a lot for one of these, and would wheelie on the throttle in 2nd with only a light effort. Which stock versions of this bike won’t do. It’s a tank, but back-in-the day was still a lot of fun to build and ride.
One of my two quasi-accidental endurance rides involved two back-to-back 900-mile days riding home from Bike Week in Florida to Duluth Minnesota. What made it an endurance ride wasn’t the distance, though. It was the low temperature. The second day it was below freezing the entire time. When I reached my residence, it had gotten down into the low twenties, I think. There were quite large snowbanks on the sides of the roads from Chicago north, but the road itself was dry all the way. In my driveway when I got home there was about a foot of accumulated snow. I was so tired I ploughed into it as far as I could and then just left the bike on its sidestand right there, surrounded by great clouds of steam coming from the hot engine melting the snow. Then I staggered inside leaving a trail of shedded gear all through the house like a three-year-old and slept for ten or twelve hours. Woke up famished but alive.
The other long-hard ride was the year the BMW National Rally was in York PA. I rode there from Duluth in one very long day and when I pulled up at the gate at three or four AM wanting to camp, the entrance security would not let me in, so I got back on the bike and rode down to somewhere near the shore of the Chesapeake Bay, where I watched the sun come up over the water, then turned around went back to the rally site, got right in, set up my tent and slept until noon. I think the total miles of that ride was about 1,250-1,300 and the total hours was around 22 or 23.
I don’t consider myself an endurance rider, but for most of my years when riding on road trips a good day is around 750 miles and an easy day is around 500-600. Today at age 68 I’m satisfied and comfortable with anywhere in the 3–600-mile range and have nearly zero interest going for more. The well-known cliche: "The older one gets, the faster one was” is sometimes true, but both hard-ride accounts are as close to accuracy as I can remember them.
Famously, whatever doesn’t kill you hopefully makes you stronger. What were some of your hardest/fastest/longest rides?
- Mr. Subjective, 11-21
My longest trip was my 2013 "Epic Post-Retirement Ride to Alaska, the Four Corners of the US, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Labrador, an 80-day, 21,000-mile jaunt.
My hardest ride was a Bun Burner Gold on the same ’10 Honda NT700VA. It was part of the Rachel Insanity Days ride. The ride started and ended in Alamo, NV. I rode 1524 miles in 23 hours, 48 minutes.
My longest recent (-ish) ride was the last on my first NT700. It happened while I was riding to Spokane to trade NT#1 in for NT#2. #2 is actually 7 serial numbers older than #1, but #1 had 139,000 miles when I got to the dealer’s in Spokane. #2 only had 22,000 miles. When I left Greeley, CO, to head to Spokane, I had only had an hour of sleep. On the night before a ride, I’m like a little kid on the night before Christmas — I go to sleep for an hour, wake up, and that’s it. I had planned on leaving at about 8, but ended up getting away at 6. I figured I’d ride till I was sleepy and then stop for the night. I ended up riding to Missoula — 822 miles. I slept well that night! I had breakfast with another NT owner, and rode on to Spokane to pick up my new bike.
In Response to Joe M: Joe, was that on the Adventure? When I followed you, you were on a Norton, then pulling a trailer – with Tim’s crashed RT.
Your post brings back memories: I had a ’78 R80/7 in the 1990s, and the guy I bought it from had painted it yellow. I rode that around the Western U.S. a few times, but 600 miles in a day was about all I could stand. It was probably making around 45 horsepower. This was before I had the sense to invest in nice technical riding gear. At times uncomfortable but also liberating.
In Response to Timothy Lindstrom: Dear Mr S… We need to hear from Mrs S about her first long distant pillion ride.
With over 400,000 miles under my two wheels I have had a number of long rides, including a half dozen undocumented Iron Butts. My son played football for Penn State so for four years I rode to all of his away games on my motorcycle. The rides were fun when we won, and very long when we lost. The grandaddy of all of my rides was in 2011 where I left my home in eastern Pennylvania and rode all of the lower 48 states in 23 days. I did this as a fund raiser for our church’s food pantry and was able to raise $10,500 from donors, both corporate and individual. It was the experience of a lifetime and I would highly encourage others to challenge themselves in the interest of a worthy charity and get out and meet people. You will never be the same. That said, I left the day after labor day in 2011 in the middle of a hurricane passing up through the North East along with a following tropical storm. The first day I rode 13 hours through 13 inches of rain. My Aerostitch three fingered rain gloves were my saving grace. The rain did not end until I was well west of Chicago and had logged all of the states in the north east and across the top of the country. Here is my route.
/Users/mckelvy/Desktop/Route_Map.jpg. I did not take the shortest route as I wanted to see certain things such as the Reno Air Races. That happened to be the day the Galloping Ghost crashed killing and injuring many people. I was very near the path of destruction, but was not injured. What a day and what a trip. My only advice is get out and do it while you can. I am now 72 and still ride almost every day it is dry, but I have no interest in 1,000 mile days any more. I am happy anywhere up to about 600. Ride Safe and Ride Often.
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