My 2001 IRON BUTT RALLY

By George Barnes

For over a year before the 2001 Iron Butt Rally, Mike Kneebone, the chairman of the Iron Butt Association, had been teasing the entrants with hints that we would be going to Alaska.  He lengthened the third leg of the rally from the normal 88 hours to 114 hours to make it possible to go to our northernmost state before going to Maine, and even posted in an e-mail message to the Long Distance Riders’ internet list that the winner of the ’01 Iron Butt would go to Alaska.  I, however, did not believe that Mike would make it necessary to go to Alaska to win the rally.  I was certain that there would be bonuses worth equal points somewhere in the Lower 48.

With that theory in mind, I developed a plan for the rally, which started in Madison, Alabama, on the 26^th of August.  I would ride hard in the first two legs and try to be in the lead at the second check in Washington.  Then, if the ride to Alaska didn’t make sense to me after seeing the bonus list, I would ride to the bonuses in the southern states.  If they were worth less than a trip to Alaska, my reasoning went, I should still be in good shape in Maine, points-wise, and would probably be better rested than anyone who went to Alaska.  Then I could make a strong push for the win on the fourth and final leg.

My preparations for the rally went okay, at best.  I had ordered a rear shock and two sets of brake pads for the front wheel three weeks before I was due to leave for Alabama.  By Wednesday, the day before I was supposed to leave, the shock was unavailable anywhere and only one of the sets of brake pads had come in.  I called the shop in Alabama where I had a reservation to have tires installed on Saturday, and asked if they could get me a set of pads to match the ones I had.  “Not this week” was their answer.

I left my home in Rifle, Colorado on Thursday at about noon.  I stopped in Denver and bought two sets of brake pads, not wanting to mix brands.  I then headed east towards Alabama.  Later that night, I rode into a fantastic thunder storm.  It rained very hard, but the light show was truly incredible!

I got to the Ramada Inn, the location of the start of the rally, Friday at midday.  I did my odometer check and went through the check-in procedure.  Saturday morning, I rode over to a local shop and had my tires installed.  I took the wheels off myself in the parking lot and, while my front tire was being mounted, I installed the new brake pads.

The scene at the Ramada was typical of the start of the ‘Butt.  There were dozens of people milling about talking, packing and re-packing and doing last minute maintenance chores.  All in all, it was very exciting. 

At the riders’ banquet Sunday night, Mike threw us all a curve ball when he announced that we could go to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, and then return to the start/finish in Madison, bypassing the three checkpoints. The name of the bonus was “Mightwin” and was worth 500,000 points.  Considering I won the 1999 event with 47,784 points, that was quite a bonus!

I was still certain that the third leg of the rally would hold the key to winning the event and, therefore, chose not to take the Alaska option.  Also, I felt that going to one bonus and back to the start, bypassing the checkpoints, would be contrary to the whole spirit of the event.  I chose, instead, to ride east to bonuses in North Carolina. 

We were told to be in line to leave at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, after attending a riders’ meeting at 9:30 a.m.  I didn’t want to walk around in the Alabama heat in my Aerostitch, so, after getting enough cash out of one of the pockets to pay my room tab, I threw the ‘Stitch over my shoulder and walked outside.  I rode the bike around and parked it in line, threw the ‘Stitch over the seat, and joined the approximately 150 people milling about.

We were given a last-minute bonus list which included a bonus in Key West, Florida.  It could be picked up anytime on the first leg, which meant that if a rider wanted to go to Alaska, he could then go to Key West and gain an additional 100,000 points.  It didn’t tempt me at all.  As I suited up and prepared to embark on this latest adventure, I was convinced that I was making the right decision. 

I was about twenty miles from the start when I finally got out of the hustle and bustle of the Hunstville area.  It wasn’t until then that I went through my mental checklist, making sure my wallet was in my pocket, that I had re-set the trip meter on the GPS, and that the all of the zippers on the ‘Stitch were closed.  Oh, shit!  The zipper to the pocket where I kept my stash of cash was open.  I reached inside, hoping that the envelope with over $500.00 in cash was still there.  No such luck.  It was gone.  I tried not to take this as an omen of what might await me over the next 11 days.

A few hours into the rally I picked up two bonuses on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  This was the first time I had ever been on this famous road and I was really glad I had made the trip.  The road was a motorcyclist’s dream and the views were incredible. 

From the Parkway I headed to Robbinsville, North Carolina, for another bonus.  After securing my gas receipt a little after sundown, I headed over the Cherohala Parkway to Tellico Plaines, Tennessee. By this time it had begun to rain.  I rode the next sixty-some miles through patchy fog and steady rain, but I was still having a good time.

After getting the Tellico Plains bonus, I headed south and then west towards a bonus near Fort Worth, Texas.  It was a long ride and I only slept once, for an hour and a half.  While at Eddie Metz’s house in Texas, which was one of the bonuses, I decided to bypass several other bonuses on I-40 and head straight for Southern California.  I would decide which bonuses to go for once I was in the Golden State. Shortly after leaving Eddie’s house, I hit a large pot hole in a construction zone and the upper supports for the fairing on my bike broke.  I decided to put off repairs until I reached the check in Pomona.

I rode west out of Texas and across New Mexico, cutting north in Arizona to get to Interstate 10 in Phoenix.  It was well into the wee hours of the morning when I got off the freeway in Phoenix to look at my map.  I pulled into a large, well-lit parking lot, got out my map, and tried to determine the fastest way to Barstow, CA.  When I couldn’t focus on the map, I realized how badly I needed sleep.  It was a warm night and there was an inviting stretch of grass just a few feet from where I parked the bike.  I spread my EZ Touring cover out, set my sleep timer for one hour and was asleep as soon as my head hit my arms.  It seemed like only a few minutes later that I was being awakened by someone asking if I was okay. 

 “Yes,” I said.

  “What are you doing?” the guy on a bicycle asked.

  “Sleeping,” I said.  I then continued.  “I was riding through town and became very tired, so I stopped to take a short nap.”

  “Well,” he said, “you can’t sleep here.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “The owners don’t allow it.” he said.  I asked what kind of place this was and he told me it was a junior college. 

I looked at my timer and realized I had only gotten 15 minutes of sleep.  I jumped up and began to pack my bike cover, all the while cussing this poor security guard out, telling him, in no uncertain terms, what I thought of him and his bosses.

I got on the freeway and began to look for more suitable sleeping accommodations.  I then realized that the anger at being wakened had gotten me all fired up and I was no longer tired.  However, I still needed to look at my map, so I got off the freeway and plotted the quickest route to Barstow.

As I finally crossed into California at Quartzite, I stopped for gas.  When I entered the station, I saw Bob Mulcher’s sidecar rig parked off to the side.  After looking around for a few seconds, I spotted Bob on a bench, sound asleep.  I asked the station attendant how long Bob had been there and if he, the attendant, thought Bob was all right.

 “Yeah,” he said, “he’s just real tired.”

 I decided not to wake Bob just to ask him if he was okay, knowing how I felt when someone did it to me a few hours earlier.

I rode past Palm Desert and turned north, eventually acquiring the large bonus near Barstow at the entrance to Fort Irwin.  I was in familiar territory now, having ridden all over the western states for over twenty years before moving to Colorado.  It was a bright, sunny day and I was having a great time! 

My last, and biggest, bonus of this first leg was at the Widder Electric Clothing factory in Ojai.  After documenting my presence, I headed for the check in Pomona, riding with a friend from the ’99 rally, Art Holland.  We arrived at the check a few hours early. After checking in with the rally crew, I asked Bob Brown, the owner of Brown’s Motor Works and the host of the check, if I could use a small welder to try to fix my broken fairing mounts.  His reply was, “We’ll make it happen.”, and he did.  I worked on the bike for a little over an hour and got it pretty well tacked back together.

There were several friends of mine at the check in Pomona.  Some were from Southern California and others were from Colorado.  It was great visiting with them while I worked on the bike.  After I got the welding done and the bike re-packed, my friend, Bill Gillespie, from Colorado, offered to let me use his motel room for a couple of hours of sleep.  I secured a ride to the motel from one of the checkpoint staff and, after a two-hour nap, was chauffeured back to the check.   It was great service!

At the riders’ meeting, I learned that over twenty riders had opted to go to Alaska on the first leg.  I was undaunted; I knew the third leg still was the key to the win.  I also found out I was in first place.  Most people would have been elated to be in the top spot, but I knew I had a long ride ahead of me and that it was only going to get more difficult.  I had gotten less than two hours of sleep before getting to the check and the two hours I got in Pomona wouldn’t keep me going too long.

I left the check about nine that night and rode to Primm, on the California/Nevada border, for a bonus at Buffalo Bill’s Casino.  There were three or four other contestants in the parking lot, all in one stage or another of securing the bonus.  From Primm I headed for a huge bonus near the eastern Sierra town of Mammoth Lakes. I had lived near Mammoth for a while and knew the area well.  The information in our rider’s instructions, and Mike Kneebone, advised us to get to the area after sunrise, but before seven in the morning, when the road would be closed. I knew I had plenty of time and pulled off the road in Beatty, Nevada, near midnight, for a half-hour nap.

I stopped at the turn from US 95 to put on my Gerbing electric jacket before heading over Westgard Pass.  As I was suiting up, a friend from Colorado and fellow competitor, Greg McQueen, pulled up.  He told me he had been riding with a partner but that they had decided to split up.  He asked if he could tag along with me for a while.  I said sure, not thinking the relationship would last too long.

We arrived at the parking lot at the Devil’s Postpile Monument a little after sunrise and walked what seemed like 3 miles up the trail to take our bonus photos.  It was exhilarating, yet tiring at the same time.  One nice benefit of this bonus was getting the chance to talk with other riders as we made the hike.  

Somewhere, on the road down to the Postpile, the welds on my fairing mount broke loose.  It wasn’t possible to do a good weld job back at Brown’s while the fairing was on the bike, which is why it didn’t hold.  I figured I could wait till I got to the check in Sunnyside to try and fix it again.

From Mammoth Lakes, Greg and I rode to Reno, where I made my first major mistake of the rally.  There were two bonuses in Reno; only one of them could be obtained any time of day.                 

To get points for the other one, the riders had to wait until three in the afternoon.  We arrived in Reno around eleven in the morning.  I intended to get the ‘anytime’ bonus, then head straight for Gerlach, Nevada, where there was another three o’clock bonus.  If things went as planned, I could get to Gerlach early and get a couple of hours of sleep, then leave as soon as the check opened and head for some large bonuses on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. 

The bonus in Reno that we could get anytime was across the street from a beautiful, shaded park on the shore of the Truckee River.  I allowed Greg to convince me to stay there and get some sleep before the other bonus would be available.  I have to admit, he didn’t have to twist my arm too hard.

Greg and I got signed out at the bonus at the Silver Queen Hotel by Chuck Hickey and Jeff Fisher at three o’clock, and then headed to Gerlach.  It took a little longer to get there than usual; it was the weekend of the Burning Man Festival and traffic on all of the roads was heavy.  At one point, a calf ran across the road a few hundred yards ahead of us.  Even though the calf made it safely to the other side of the road, one of the cars in front of us decided to stop.  A van, which was in front of Greg, had to stop as well.  For some reason, Greg didn’t notice the van was stopping until the last second.  He locked up both brakes momentarily, then released them, then repeated the spectacle.  I was sure he was going to rear-end the van as I saw smoke coming from his tires.  At the last second he let off the brakes and swerved to the left, coming to a stop just a couple of feet past the rear bumper of the van.  It was the closest I had ever seen anyone come to having an accident without actually having one.

Once we secured the bonus photos at Guru Lane, a truly weird place near Gerlach, we rode west, heading for Oregon.  I knew the road well and was leading, setting a pretty brisk pace.  We passed several Iron Butt riders, all out enjoying the openness of the Nevada countryside.  Just after I passed Archie and Irene Bailey, riding two-up on a Cagiva Gran Canyon, I came upon a left hand sweeper.  I applied my front brake to scrub off a little speed and realized I didn’t have any front brakes!  I cautiously negotiated a turn to pull off the road into a large, make-shift picnic area.  Greg pulled up and asked what the problem was.

“I don’t have any front brakes.” I told him.

 “Oh shit!” was his reply.

“Yeah, no shit.” I thought to myself.

I walked around to the front of the bike and looked at the calipers.  It was immediately obvious what the problem was; the inside pad on the right side caliper was missing.

 “I’m missing a pad.” I said to Greg.  “Did you see anything fly off my bike?”

 “Yeah” he said, “it just missed hitting Archie and Irene in the head.  I thought it was something your tire threw up off the road.”

I guess my brake replacement job in the parking lot of the bike shop in Alabama left a little to be desired.

Greg asked what we were going to do now; how could I ride with no front brakes?  I told him not to worry and started one of the timers on my Radio Shack timer.  I then opened my saddlebag and pulled out the extra set of brake pads I had brought from home.  I got out my tools and changed the pad, hitting the stop button on the timer at twelve minutes, forty-five seconds when the job was done.  Greg was truly amazed!

We stopped in Klamath Falls, Oregon, for a dinner break.  We were just taking off our helmets when a guy walked by and hollered over to us.

“You guys oughta watch where you’re going.”

“Okay.” we said.

“You almost hit me,” he continued.  He appeared to be drunk.

 Neither Greg nor I knew what he was talking about.  Then, he stopped walking and took a couple of steps toward us.

 “I ought to kick your asses.” he yelled.

We both ignored him, but I was beginning to reach for my Mag Lite flashlight, the closest thing I had to a weapon, just in case he came charging over.  As I got my hand on the light, he took a couple of steps back, apparently deciding we weren’t worth any more of his time.  We went into the restaurant, making sure to get a table where we could keep an eye on the bikes in case the drunk reappeared.

While we ate, Greg indicated he thought it would be more beneficial to go to Point Roberts in Washington rather than the bonuses on the Olympic Peninsula.  I pretty much ignored him, knowing the bonuses on the peninsula were worth many more points and would probably involve less traffic, although possibly more miles.

The ride from Klamath Falls to Highway 97 was very exciting; there were deer everywhere.  I later found out that a friend and fellow competitor, Steve Chalmers, hit two deer on two separate occasions on that stretch of road that same night, the second one taking him out of the rally.

Greg and I split up when we reached Interstate 5.  Greg wanted to get some sleep and I wanted to press on towards northern Washington.  I rode up Interstate 5, then on to the Olympic Peninsula, where I had to take a couple of 1-hour naps, either on the bike or laying next to it.  As I traveled north on the eastern side of the peninsula in the early morning hours, I realized I was going to need to take a ferry from the peninsula over to the Seattle area.  I didn’t know anything about the ferry schedules, or even the departure locations.

As I rode north, then west, I began to fear that I might be late getting in to the check if I went all the way to the Hoh Rainforest, the biggest bonus on the peninsula.  I stopped 30 miles from the bonus and talked to a bread delivery truck driver.  He told me where the ferries departed from and what the schedules were.  After seeing how far back south I had to go to catch a ferry, I decided to turn around and head for the other bonus in the area.  It was a decision that, in retrospect, may have cost me the win in the rally.

After taking my photo of a sign for the George Barnes Guide Service in Joyce, Washington, on the far northern edge of the peninsula, I rode back down the way I had come and found a ferry port.  It was 10:00 in the morning when I rode up to the entrance and the sign said they were selling tickets for the 10:05 ferry; the timing couldn’t have been better. After a 30 minute ferry ride, during which I had breakfast, I grabbed two more bonuses in the Seattle area, and then headed for the checkpoint.  As I crossed Snoqualmie Pass I stopped to take a 1-hour nap in the warm sunshine.   I arrived at the check in Sunnyside, Washington, 1 ½ hours before it opened.  Obviously, I would have had time to get the Hoh Rainforest bonus; I just didn’t know it at the time.

When I checked in at the check in Sunnyside, Mike Kneebone asked if I was well rested.  “No”, I said, “but I will be before I leave”.  I told him I was going to find a motel room and set up my computer to map out the bonuses on the third leg.  Mike said “You won’t need a computer.  You’ll know where you’re going within five minutes of receiving the bonus list”. 

After attempting to secure the broken fairing mount on the bike with one super strong zip tie that Art Holland gave me, and a couple of regular sized ones, I headed to a room that Randy Carlson graciously offered me. As I pulled into the parking lot of the motel, I turned my handlebars to the right.  As I did so, the bike’s engine revved up.  I quickly straightened the bars, but the tach was still reading six grand!  I hit the kill switch and managed to coast into a parking space.  A quick inspection revealed that I had gotten the throttle cable inside the large zip tie.  Obviously, that wouldn’t work, so I took out my pocket knife and cut the offending tie off the bike.  I would have to get by with the two smaller ties in place.  After this quick repair job I took a shower, booted up the computer, and headed back to the check to pick up my bonus list. 

It was at this checkpoint that I found out that Shane Smith and other riders had made it to Prudhoe Bay and were on their way south.  I also found out that I was still in first place, but that Bob Hall had moved into second place, only 66 points behind me.

During the riders’ meeting, Mike told us that he had a friend on the State Patrol in Alaska that was stationed on the Dalton Highway.  He told us that “Officer Bob” or whatever his name was, would not tolerate anyone speeding on “his” highway.  Each time Mike mentioned speeding, he would look at me.  He even said, “Officer Bob will not let you tear up his road at 80 miles an hour, George!”  I didn’t know why Mike seemed to have a problem with me, but, apparently, he did.  I objected to being singled out, but I didn’t say anything.

When I received my bonus list, I realized that Mike was right about which direction I would take.  As I walked back to my bike, I read the bonus pack and realized that he had thrown us another curve ball. Instead of some monster bonus in the lower 48, as I expected, the huge bonus was again at Prudhoe Bay.  This time it was named “Willwin” and it was worth one million points!  It became very clear, very quickly, that the only way I was going to win this rally was to ride to Prudhoe Bay, then head for the finish line in Alabama, all in six and a half days! I went back to the room and let the computer map a route to Prudhoe and then back to Madison.  I divided the mileage by the number of hours we had and came up with a number in the low 50’s.  This was a very reasonable pace, although it wouldn’t allow too much room for problems.  I wrote the instructions on steno pad sheets and secured the sheets in the tank bag map pocket, or so I thought, and headed out. 

I chose to forego sleep, leaving Sunnyside and riding north for a while, planning to get some sleep in Canada, early in the morning.  Apparently I hadn’t closed my map pocket securely, and shortly outside of Sunnyside, the steno pad sheets blew away.  Then, a few hours later, my sleep plan fell apart as I crossed into Canada and it began to rain.  It’s really hard to get sleep beside the road in the rain and I didn’t feel I could afford the time to get a motel room.  I was on a mission and wouldn’t let up until I was in Fairbanks.  Eventually, I found a fruit stand in the Frazier River Canyon that had an overhang large enough to shelter me from the rain.  There, I managed to get two hours of sleep just before dawn. 

During the next couple of days, I settled into a pace of riding for 8 hours, then sleeping for one, then riding another 8.  It seemed to be working well and I was making good time towards Fairbanks.  I had dinner and got gas in Fort Nelson a little before dusk on Saturday, expecting to get my next load of gas in Watson Lake.  As I rode through the desolate night, I had to stop a few times to do jumping jacks and run around a bit to wake up.  It became a major battle of will power to shake off the desire to sleep. 

Just after doing one of my many wake-up routines and getting back on the bike, I approached a sign warning motorists of road construction and a flag person ahead.  I figured the signs had been left up inadvertently; surely they wouldn’t be working on the road at midnight.  WRONG!  Up ahead was a truck with its amber light flashing.  It turned out that the road had been chip-sealed a couple of days before and, according to the flag girl, it is a state law there that they must escort traffic through for two days due to the incredible dust.

 

I waited for about five minutes for the pilot truck to arrive and turn around.  The flagger told me to follow the truck.  I asked her to tell the driver of the truck that I would be holding back a ways, not wanting to be hit by any gravel the truck might throw up.  She walked over to the truck, then back to me.  She said “She said to go ahead of her”.  OK by me, I thought.  I started down the road, maintaining about a 30 mph pace. I soon got bored going so slowly, and began to increase my speed.  Within a couple of miles, I noticed the “pilot” truck was no longer behind me.  I picked up the pace a little more and was soon out of the construction zone.

I pushed on through the night, encountering and barely missing a selection of caribou, moose and bison. When I arrived in Watson Lake at 3:30 a.m., I was disappointed to find there were no gas stations open.  Nor could I find any motels open.  I parked the bike alongside the pumps at a gas station, set the thermostat for my electric clothes on low, leaned back against the fuel cell and tried to sleep.  It didn’t work too well; I kept waking up shivering.  I was afraid the battery would die if I turned the thermostat up, so instead I got off the bike and ran around to get some blood flowing and to warm up.  It was a restless night, to say the least.

That Sunday morning, I continued up the road, stopping at a small resort store/restaurant for breakfast.  As I sat there eating my bacon and eggs, Mark Kieker came in, having noticed my bike in the parking lot. He told me he was heading for Alaska, but wasn’t going to try for Prudhoe Bay.  He also said that he had seen Rick Morrison heading north.  Neither Mark nor I thought that Rick was going to try for Prudhoe.

Later in the day, as I was riding through some horrific road construction just below Kluane Lake, my fairing mount broke completely.  I was forced to hold onto the accessory shelf to keep the fairing from dropping down and possibly breaking the lower fairing pieces as well.  It was while I was riding like this, one hand on the throttle and the other on the shelf, going maybe 15 mph, that Eric Jewell passed me.  I saw Eric a little later as we both gassed up in Tok, Alaska.  We commented on how the rain, which started almost the instant we passed into Alaska, would “make things a little interesting”.

I arrived in Fairbanks Sunday evening about five o’clock, after riding through rain for several hours.  I looked at my maps and decided I wanted to go for Prudhoe.  After a quick dinner at a KFC, I found a Super 8 motel where I saw Eric’s bike parked outside.  As I was heading into the motel, Eric was coming out.  We talked and decided that, even though we were both there trying for the win, that it would be in our best interests to ride together to Prudhoe and back, especially considering the road was almost 500 miles of dirt and it had been raining all day.  We made arrangements to meet 5 hours later.

I called a number in my BMW MOA anonymous book and found some members who offered me their dry, lighted garage to work on my bike. I rode the few miles to my night-time repair shop and, after about an hour, managed to get the fairing secured using some stainless steel hose clamps.  It seemed to hold pretty well, the only drawback being that the bike would die whenever I would turn the handlebars completely to the right.  I had apparently pinched a wire under the clamp, but I didn’t want to deal with it right then.  I needed to get some sleep.  I rode back to the Super 8, took a shower and got almost four hours sleep before Eric called me.  It was only the second time in seven days that I had slept in a bed and it felt really nice. That was the only time on the entire rally that I paid for a motel room.

Eric and I left Fairbanks at close to six in the morning on Monday, Labor Day.  As we rode north, I used my CB radio to talk to the truckers coming the opposite direction, asking how the road was.  I was told that, other than two large construction zones, the road was dry and in great shape.  This came as a great relief to both of us and we pressed on, stopping only occasionally to take pictures of the incredible Alaskan scenery.

There were only two places to get gas on the ‘haul road’, as the Dalton Highway is called.  We passed up the station at the Yukon River, but stopped in Cold Foot, an outpost about halfway between Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay.  It was a bright, sunny day and we were having a great time. 

At one point, in the middle of a 50-mile construction zone, we were stopped by a flagman.  We had to wait about twenty minutes for a pilot car to lead us through some very rough gravel; well, more like small boulders.  Standing there, we had a chance to talk with the flagman, a rather strange individual.  He told us how the construction workers worked eleven-hour days, seven days a week.  I asked where he went when he left for R&R.  “Someplace warmer?” I queried. “Oh yeah, someplace warmer!” he responded.  I was thinking someplace like Hawaii or Florida.  “So where do you go?” I asked.

 “Anchorage!” he shot back.  This guy had been in Alaska too long!  He continued to tell us that the Dalton was a “Mean road, a really mean road!”  Quite a unique individual was he.

A couple of hours from Prudhoe Bay, in the same nasty construction zone, we saw Bob Hall coming the other way.  We stopped and chatted for a few minutes.  Bob told us he had not gone to Denali National Park, another huge bonus in Alaska, but he didn’t say if he was going to try for it later.  I thought Bob looked and acted pretty tired, but Eric disagreed.

Eric and I arrived at the bonus, the Arctic Caribou Inn, in Prudhoe Bay, at close to five in the afternoon.  It was cloudy and cold, but our spirits were soaring as we high-fived each other, congratulations for a great ride. 

We took a few pictures, bought some souvenirs, had a quick dinner at the Arctic Caribou, gassed up, and headed south.  It was a tough ride down the road through the dark Alaska night.  Eric was having trouble staying awake and the fuel transfer system on my bike had quit working.  (I later determined it was a result of the pinched wires from the fairing repair). 

At one point Eric pulled over and suggested I work on my fuel transfer system while he took a quick nap.  It sounded okay to me.  While Eric slept I ran a wire, with a covered alligator clip on one end, from a hot wire near the battery.  I let it hang out from under the seat near the gas tank.  I then cut the wire to the auxiliary fuel pump, bared the end and taped it in the same area as the alligator clip.  When I wanted to transfer fuel I would reach down next to the seat and clip the alligator clip on the bare wire, making the connection that would start the transfer.  It was a little crude, but it worked.

 Even after the delays, we arrived back in Fairbanks at six on Tuesday morning.  We had completed the thousand-mile round trip, most of it on gravel roads, in 24 hours.  We were truly proud of ourselves!  It had been an incredible 24 hours; I had seen grizzly bear, moose and caribou and had visited hell on earth at Prudhoe Bay and survived the worst construction zones I had ever seen.

Once back in Fairbanks, I had to make a decision; should I head back to Alabama, and maybe pick up the bonus in Rugby, ND, on the way, or should I go to Denali Park and grab 165,000 points.  The Denali bonus would insure me the win, if I were able to make it back to Madison on time, which I was sure I could do.

I was pretty sure that Bob Hall, being only 66 points behind me at checkpoint two, would surely be going for more points.  Why, I reasoned, would anyone ride 7,000 miles just to come in second by only 66 points?  Which bonuses he would attempt, I didn’t know, but I did know that if I got Denali, I would be in pretty good shape.  I also didn’t feel, based on our encounter on the haul road, that he was in good enough shape to make it to Denali and back to Alabama on time.  Even if Bob did get Denali, I would then still be ahead of him at the finish.  I took the chance and headed west toward Denali National Park.

A little less than two hours later, at eight o’clock Tuesday morning, I walked into the visitor center at the park entrance.  As I went up to the information desk to have my paperwork stamped, I asked the girl who was helping me if any motorcyclists had been in that morning. “No”, she replied, “there have been a bunch of them here the last few days, but none today”.  In fact, the date on the stamp was still set for the day before.  I knew that Bob couldn’t have made it to the park before the visitor center closed the day before, so it was evident that he hadn’t gotten the bonus.  All I had to do was get back to Madison before ten in the morning on Friday and I would have my second Iron Butt win!

On the way back to Fairbanks I stopped for a celebratory breakfast.  A couple of hours later, around noon, I started to fall asleep.  I was angry at myself for having eaten a large breakfast. This would be the start of a string of bad luck that would plague me all the way to the finish line.

As I stopped for gas at the border of Alaska and the Yukon Province, somehow I became distracted and, after adding oil to the engine, I drove off without putting the oil cap back on the motor.  I realized the problem within about twenty miles when I smelled the oil vapors, but it was too late; the cap, which I always set on the saddlebag, was gone.

Over the next few hours, I tried a couple of different methods of keeping the oil in the engine.  I stopped in Fort Nelson and went to three different shops, both auto parts and motorcycle, trying to find a suitable plug.  The one I came up with lasted only thirty miles before blowing out.  Next, I whittled the threads off of a plastic coke bottle and shoved it in the hole. It, too, only lasted a few miles.  Each time the make-shift plugs would blow out I would try to keep the oil from blowing out by putting my right boot on the oil fill hole.  It didn’t work very well, allowing a constant mist of oil vapors to blow up into the air behind the fairing.  To make matters worse, the position caused a major, painful cramp in my leg.

Finally, I stopped in the middle of a forest, hobbled into the brush and cut a small limb off of a tree and carved a plug with my pocket knife.  I wrapped it in a rag and pounded it into the hole with my flashlight.  It worked pretty well, only allowing a very small amount of oil to seep out.  I stopped at the next town and called the BMW dealer in Edmonton.  After being on hold for a terminally long time, I made arrangements to have a plug left outside the dealership where I could find it later that night when I passed through. The dealership was quite a ways out of my way in Edmonton, but I finally had a real plug.  All in all, I probably lost at least three hours due to this screw-up.

While I was traveling along through the nearly empty, desolate Yukon and upper British Columbia, I was practicing methods to help keep me awake and alert.  One project I set for myself was to devise a bracket that I could mount to the bike’s saddlebag to set the oil cap in, just in case I ever forgot to put it back on the engine again.  I was doing the engineering in my head; what materials to use, what shape would it be, how much spring tension would be necessary to hold the cap, yet make it easy to use.  This exercise lasted for over an hour and had the desired affect; I was wide awake and alert.  Then, as I had the whole thing worked out, I said to myself, “Shit George, why don’t you just buy a spare oil cap!”  Laughing at myself kept me alert for another hour or more. 

At one point, while crossing through the Yukon, I stopped to take a nap around three in the morning.  I was in an area that had recently been under construction.  In fact, I think it was the same area I had seen the flag girl and pilot car a few nights earlier.  I was really tired and didn’t want to wait to find a rest area, so I just stopped at a wide spot in the road. I put the bike on the centerstand, and took a one-hour nap.  When I awoke, I got off the bike and did some jumping jacks and ran around in circles to warm up and wake up.  I then got back on the bike and, as I rolled it off the centerstand, I put my right foot down for balance.  As it turned out, there was no pavement under my foot, just loose gravel from the construction, and I wound up dropping the bike on the right side.  It ended up with the wheels higher than the handle bars on a down-hill slope.  To make matters worse, the dirt under the gravel was wet, more like mud.  Every time I tried to lift the bike my feet would just slide out from under me.  It was a hopeless situation.

About an hour later, a truck came down the road and the driver stopped and helped me get the bike upright.  I lost about 80 minutes on this problem but, even worse, it was very difficult to get my mental attitude back.  I needed to work very hard to convince myself to keep on going, that I could still make it to Alabama on time.  I started to yell out loud at myself, saying “You can do it.  If you just keep riding you can make it!”

As I headed for the U.S. border below Regina, Saskatchewan, I got stopped by an RCMP who was using laser near a small town.  It seemed like another terminally long delay, although it was probably no more than twenty minutes.

After crossing into North Dakota, I contemplated going to the bonus in Rugby.  It would have been a small detour, but I decided against it.  A few miles later, I came on another area of road construction where I, again, had to wait for a pilot car and then ride at 20 mph for about ten miles, all of it in sloppy, slimy mud, constantly fearing I would drop the bike.  The side trip to Rugby would have actually been quicker.  A little further down the road, in Jamestown, ND, there was more construction.  These two areas delayed me at least another hour.

In Jamestown, I got on I-94 and headed east.  I didn’t have any route sheets and was relying on quick glimpses at maps and the GPS for directions.  As I was heading towards Madison, Wisconsin, it began to rain very hard.  It was late in the evening and dark when I was stopped by a state trooper.  He pulled me over because my tail light was not working and I couldn’t be seen from the rear.  He wanted to have the bike towed to a service station, but I told him I would change the bulb.  I did that, but it didn’t help; the problem wasn’t the bulb. Again, the pinched wire loom under the hose clamp was the problem. The trooper again insisted on taking me to a truck stop to call for a tow truck.  Again I resisted and told him I would fix the problem.  I took a piece of wire out of my kit and ran it from the alligator clip I had set up in Alaska to the tab on the tail light socket.  I had a tail light and brake light and the trooper let me go, but not until after he ran my license through his computer.  The whole process took almost an hour.

Again, I had to dig way down deep and come up with the resolve to keep going.  It was Thursday night and I was still about 800 miles from Madison, Alabama.  I kept going, fighting off fatigue and the gnawing feeling that I was, somehow, causing these problems.

My final mistake came when I got off the freeway in Chicago for gas.  Actually, just riding through Chicago was probably a mistake as well, although the mileage wasn’t much further than other routes.

After getting gas, I asked the attendant what was the quickest route to I-65.  Somehow, either due to his directions or my misunderstanding them, I got on the wrong freeway in Chicago and got really screwed up.  All in all, I lost at least two hours in Chicago.

When I finally got on Interstate 65 heading south, I was able to use the GPS to determine that I had 450 miles to go and about 5 ½ hours in which to do it.  That would require a made-good speed of 81 mph, which would require a rolling speed of over 90.  This would certainly be possible, but, considering I would be passing through several large cities, all of which had construction going on, it wasn’t very feasible.  I felt that attempting to make it to Madison in time would be a very unsafe and irresponsible thing to do.

I resigned myself to the reality that I couldn’t make it on time.  I pulled into a rest area and called the finish line to let them know, and then I took a three hour nap.  Later, as I rode south to Madison, sometimes openly sobbing, I determined that, had I not taken that last nap, I would have been between 60 and ninety minutes late getting to the finish line.  Obviously, if almost any of the problems I had encountered coming back from Alaska had not happened, I would have made it on time. Bob Hall rode straight back from Prudhoe Bay and did finish on time, thus ensuring himself the win in his first Iron Butt.  Shane Smith had ridden to Prudhoe Bay on the first leg, and then had gone all the way to Key West before picking up more points on the return trip to Alabama.  He truly earned second place. 

What, exactly, cost me the win this year?  In retrospect, it could have been the result of any one of a number of things.  My first mistake, on Leg Two, was the beginning.  If I had ridden on out of Reno as I had planned, I would have had time to get the bonus at the Hoh Rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula.  If I had gotten that bonus, I would have been 2,778 points ahead of Bob Hall at check two.  Had I had that kind of lead, I would not have gone for the Denali bonus, which took almost four hours.  Then there was losing the oil cap, dropping the bike, delays in road construction, getting stopped for the tail light and getting lost in Chicago.

All in all, I am proud of my ride and feel that, for the most part, I made the correct decisions. Obviously, I wish I had done a few things differently, but I am also keenly aware that the Iron Butt is never won with an easy ride.  In order to win, a rider must take some chances and must also have a fair amount of luck.  During my ’99 ride I had a great deal of good luck.  In this year’s ride, I had a bunch of bad luck.  I tried to overcome the setbacks but, in the end, I just couldn’t pull it off.  One small consolation was that I broke the Iron Butt Rally mileage record that I, myself, set in 1999 by 11 miles, riding a total of 13,357 miles in the 11 days, and, since I only missed one checkpoint, I was still considered a finisher.

George Barnes