Chris Whitmore

2009 MM1K

2009-06-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

The 2009 Minuteman 1000 just ran on 6/6/09.

My friend Tom and I placed in the top 5.

We were both pretty pleased with that but I'd still like the 9,000 points back that I lost a scoring. I also wish some of the directions and coordinates provided in the rally book were more accurate. I wasted a lot of time looking for some of this stuff that could have been spent looking for other stuff.

Here's what my route looked like.

I had a lot of fun riding what seemed like every backroad in VT, NH, and Western ME.

IBR 2007 Vid

2008-12-03T18:02:00.001-08:00

http://www.apgvideo.com/ironbutt07/index.htm

2008 Minuteman 1000

2008-06-12T08:44:00.000-07:00

The 2008 MM1K ran this weekend. Here's what my route looked like.

The big points went to the folks that went to the eight Ivy League colleges in the North East. Knowing I would'nt be able to get a winning score I decided to do a loop through northern VT, NH, and Maine.

I had a blast, they didn't.

2008 Mason Dixon 20-20

2008-05-29T13:01:00.000-07:00

This Rally occurred this weekend from 4:45 AM Saturday 5/24/08 til 2:00 PM Sunday 5/25/08.

Results can be found here:
http://www.masondixon20-20.org/2008/index.htm

I finished 10th. I picked a pretty poor route going through New York city at 1:00 PM. I should have gone the other way and done it early on Sunday morning on my way to the finish.

I did have a really nice Sunday ride all over Maryland and the Chesapeake bay area.

Here is what my route looked like according to the satellites. I started just ouside Hagarstown, MD, went up into Philly, NYC, Long Island, and into NJ where I rode the length of the Jersey shore in holiday traffic. After dark I headed into the pine barrons and woke up in Annapolis, MD around 5:30 AM and bagged about 20 more bonus's in MD.

Here is a close up of my route through NYC. I think it took me about 3 hours to go 20 miles.

I don't remember how many bonus's I got but I uploaded 68 digital images to the photo bucket for scoring. It was a busy day.

Spot Personal Satellite Tracker

2008-05-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to my Spot personal satellite tracker website. It will show my track positions and any "I'm OK" messages it sends. I'd like it to show more than 24 hours worth but I think that's coming.

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?&glId=035PnV24PT5X7DatX3ACu6klZ0JBKkSBT

IBR DVD

2008-05-01T13:13:00.001-07:00

This is a trailer for a DVD being produced on the 2007 IBR.
http://www.abrawizard.com/ironbutt07/

2009 IBR: I've gone and done something stupid

2008-04-28T11:00:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to get a spot in this thing since 97. I've been actively trying since 01. I got in for 09.

Here is a link to a page that describes the basic concept:

http://www.ironbuttrally.com/IBR/default.cfm

It's pretty simple. It's not a race, more like an 11 day scavenger hunt. It's held every two years and less than 100 motorcycles are allowed to compete out of thousands that apply for a starting position. I say motorcycles because there are a number of husband and wife teams that participate. Kristen's not interested.

The organizers claim it to be "The worlds Toughest Motorcycle Competition" and they make every effort to live up to that claim. In 2007 about 1/3 of the 97 riders who started did not finish. Many were due to mechanical failures, the others because they did not visit enough bonus locations to receive the required points to be considered a finisher.

Below is a link to the 07 rally updates. There is a lot of material here but I think you might find it interesting. The daily reports are on the left. The rules are over on the right but they are 26 pages long. They are even longer for 2009.

http://www.ironbuttrally.com/IBR/2007.cfm

The bonus sheets for both legs are also available. Leg one had 123 to choose from and leg two had 134 with this warning:

"IMPORTANT CAUTION: The following Potential Bonus locations
are like a restaurant menu. If you order everything on the menu and
eat it, you are going to get sick and perhaps die. Please pick
and choose bonus destinations carefully!"

Locations from Key West, Goose Bay Labrador, Hawaii, and Prudhoe Bay Alaska were available.

Some significant rules changes have occurred for 2009. No longer will outside assistance be available to riders. If you read through the daily reports you might start to get an understanding of why.

Good stuff but don't tell my Mother.

Things to Do

2008-04-28T08:02:00.000-07:00

Running list of things to do.

Increase Liability insurance
MedJet policy: Does the Search and Rescue insurance fulfill requirement?
Digital Camera (HP M547, AA Battery, Two SD Cards, Date & Time imprint)
Spot Tracker (Alan Pratt's site: http://www.bestbits.org/spot.htm)
IBA Confimed Recipt: Deposit sent 4/24/08
IBA Confimed Recipt: Mailed Release forms 4/28/08
Balance due 1/15/09
Pelican case for spares in taildragger position.
Spare 2610

Daytona Beach 3/8/01 through 3/16/01

2007-03-08T05:51:00.000-08:00

When I left Bath, Maine at 9:30 AM on Thursday 3/8/01 it was 27 degrees. The hard part was over; I had gotten the bike out of my driveway and up to route 1 without dumping it on the ice. We had just gotten two feet of snow two days before I left. The roads were pretty clear but I did have a moment crossing a slushy overpass in Brunswick to get to I-95.

By the time I got to Massachusetts it had warmed up to 41 degrees but it wouldn’t break 50 until I got to Georgia. It got dark at around 4:30 in Delaware but the temperature held steady in the low 40’s due to my southern trajectory. My only source of heat came from a cheap set of under the grip heating elements and my hands had started to cramp due to the death grip I held on them. I just tucked in as much as I could and tried to empty the tank.

By 1:30 AM I had made it to North Carolina. I was cold and tired and started to have trouble maintaining my speed and focus on the road ahead of me, or the cars around me. I started to see the white lines on either side of the highway coming together. I knew it wasn’t good. Shortly after the hallucinations started I saw a deer kill with an exit to a rest stop right behind it. Avoiding the deer I pulled into the rest area and laid out my sleeping matt next to the bike on the tar. I crawled into my sleeping bag without removing a stitch of gear. When I woke up three hours later in a sweat and with a clearing head I determined that I had probably gone into hypothermia. If it had not been for the dead deer that spooked me I may not have had the good sense given my state of mind to pull off the road. Note to self: You don’t recognize the signs of hypothermia when you have it.

After a Coke from a vending machine I got back onto the highway. I had 4 hours to do another 200 plus miles. After two more gas stops and a quick breakfast sandwich I pulled into a gas station with 1,050 miles and about 10 minutes to spare. I was feeling pretty good that I had got my 1000-mile day though. I met up with a guy on a new RT at a gas station in North Carolina and rode with him the rest of the way into Daytona.

I rolled into Daytona that day, Friday 3/9/01. It was toward the end of Bike week and I was alarmed and a little disappointed by the number of Harley's being trailered north. I mainly went for the race anyway so I guess I wasn't bothered that the Main street crowd thinned out a little.

I rode past the Iron Horse and that whole scene first. The cops had a roadblock set up already and were handing out citations left and right for loud pipes (I was so sick of hearing straight pipes.) I never went back that way, no interest.

Daytona was bigger than I expected and the traffic was horrible. A guy on a 35 Flathead pulled up next to me in traffic. I asked him how to get to the beach. He told me to follow him. Turns out he was a local and only pulled the antique out for bike week. We skirted down a bunch of side roads and he had me at the beach in no time.

I stopped at a little pub on the beach and had a burger and a Fosters. Man did I need that, and a nap. By the time I finished my meal the beach had been closed for high tide. The water comes right up to the hotels. To bad, I really wanted to go for a cruise on the beach. I braved the traffic one more time before I left Daytona Saturday night after the moto-x race but it was high tide again, oh well.

I met a lot of really great people. Most of them were on BMW's. I swear I could have had a place to stay every night on my trip back from all of the offers I got. I was sitting at a gas station having a cup of coffee after spending 3 hours looking for a room along the strip. This guy rides up on a Suzuki cruiser and asked if I really rode all the way from Maine. Cool guy. His wife was also on a bike. They ended up offering to let me stay in their hotel room. I was thankful but had to decline. By this time it was about 6 and I needed to find a room. I only got about 3 hours of rest the night before, on the tar in a rest stop in North Carolina. I ended up getting on the highway and went 50 miles south to a town I can't remember the name of. Got a room next to three brothers with Beamers. Cool guys.

I reserved the room for Saturday night as well so I wouldn't have to worry about sleeping on a park bench. They did the moto-x on Saturday. I headed back toward Daytona along what I thought of as the outer bank. Nice scenery but a bit straight. Met another cool guy from Massachusetts on an RT while sitting in traffic. We ended up hanging out all day.

After the moto-x races, on my way out I asked some sport bike guys where all the hooligans were hanging out. They had an extra pass to the Rice Paddy and gave it to me. The Rice Paddy is a little park not far from the big Harley dealership. There were a group of guys called the Starboyz doing their thing. 100 mph wheelies with their feet over the windshield and that sort of thing. It was pretty outrageous. Complete disregard for their own safety and that of the crowd. The girl standing next to me got hit in the face with a piece of burning tire. By the end of it you couldn't see your hand in front of your face through the smoke. Burnouts through six gears! When the smoke cleared there were five bikes lying on their sides in the middle of the parking lot. All of the rear tires had been burnt until they popped. As I was getting ready to leave I met Steven Meredith whom introduced me to the VFR list.

After that I cruised the strip and all of a sudden it was spring break and not bike week anymore so I went back to my hotel and enjoyed a cold one.

Sunday I hit the road around 8:00 so I could get to the track to get a new Givi windshield installed (much better protection than the smoked Targa.) I had bought an infield pass so I headed in there to park. The infield pass was $10 more then the grandstands and is useless unless you spend the extra $15 to get the paddock pass. Even then you don't have access to see much. While I was wandering around trying to figure out where I could go, I found myself in the paddock grandstands by turn one. It seems the security guard that should have stopped me went to take a leak or something. When I went to do the same I got kicked out but that wasn't until the second red flag. I had a pretty good view of everything from there including the horrible Scott Russell crash on pit road during one of the restarts.

Since I was kicked out and couldn't see the race at all, I decided to walk out to the grandstands to see the final 30 or so laps. I met back up with the guy on the RT from the day before. We watched the end of the race from there and he invited me to head south with him the next day.

I politely declined his invitation because I was starting to get worried about the weather to the north of Florida. I was also being reminded of my mortality by the shooting pains in my neck. 1400 miles in 29 hours on a VFR will do that to you.

So after Matt Miladin smoked the field and Little Nikki showed everyone how much heart he has, I hit the road. By the time I got out of the infield and stopped across the street to get some gas it was 8:30 pm.
Aside: on your way out of the infield they have you cross the track just before the tri-oval. I was so tempted to take a left turn and bust out a fast lap, well, a lap anyway. Needless to say, I thought better of it.

I filled up next to a guy that was a tire changer for Dunlop during the race. He worked in Matt Miladins pit. He was on a sweet bike. He bought a 2001 GSXR 750 and proceeded to put 47 miles on it before completely stripping and polishing it. He replaced the body work with Sharkskin's racing panels and rigged up a headlight from a fog lamp and his break light wasn't much more than a reflector from a bicycle. I asked him how he got away with it like that. He said he didn't and had the tickets to prove it.
Aside: Man! They'll let you register anything in Florida. I saw a YSR 50 with a plate on it.

He was headed to Tennessee that night. Hey me too! I rode with him for a while but broke off after about an hour and 100 miles. I like to make time but decided I wouldn't make much time sitting in a jail cell. According to the weather channel the night before I was really in for it. I rode all night to a Honda shop just outside of Athens Georgia. I took a three-hour nap in the parking lot before I was woken up by raindrops on my face. Here it comes. The shop opened thirty minutes later, and guess what, they didn't have their filter that I thought I needed.
By this time it was really coming down. There were severe thunderstorm warnings for the entire southeast. After 45 minutes on the road I was getting soaked through my Aerostitch. I pulled into a nice little hotel at about 9:30. They were nice enough to let me have that day's continental breakfast in addition to the next mornings. I parked under the second floor walkway, unloaded, locked up, took my suit off and proceeded to breakfast, wet crotch and all. I think my skinny build must have fooled them because I cleaned out the breakfast bar.

By the time I got back on the road in the morning the sun was out and the temperature was up to 64 already. With a full belly and five inches of rain behind me I headed for Deals Gap. I was pretty excited to leave the super slab behind for a while and hit some mountain roads. They really know how to build them down there in North Carolina and Tennessee. I got to the gap and was surprised to see that the speed limit on the NC side was 55 mph. Even after it drops to 40 in Tennessee it was still plenty fast. I never had so much fun trying to do the speed limit. I had to check the bags on the far end to make sure I wasn't wearing holes in them. On my way out I took rte 28 which I think I may have enjoyed even more.

From Deals Gap I headed over to Asheville NC and M.R. Honda…. Where I had an air filter waiting. $50 plus $25 more to have it their when I needed it. Hello MR K&N!! I threw it in the bike in the parking lot and determined that the plugs were fouled. To late, they closed.

For the next two days all I could stand was 725 miles a day, due to the brutal cross winds. Next time you drive past a convenience store, keep your eye out for one of those semi-portable signs out front that points to the store and has the little plastic letter inserts. Now imagine one of those blowing out of the back of a pick-up truck because of the 30 to 50 mph crosswinds. Now imagine trying to avoid it by maneuvering quickly against the same cross wind and keeping it on the road. Holy heart attack Batman. Five more minutes down the road, a big scary truck ran over some sort of critter and sent it flying past me about two feet from my head, followed by a big puff of fur. Yup, time to find a hotel.

According to the weather channel I had to get from outside Roanoke VA to Connecticut the following day. I continued on 81 north to Scranton PA. Route 81 pretty much rides along the top of the Appalachian Mountains, which does not make for ideal motorcycling conditions, especially in early March. Out like a lamb my ass. It didn't get above 39 degrees all day. I was stopping for gas and coffee about every 150 miles. At the first gas stop of the day I had to power away from the pump because I couldn’t put my legs down. After a loop around the pumps I managed to get my knees working. I decided I should test my knees ahead of time from then on to make sure they still worked. I made it into Massachusetts that night just as the puddles from the melting snow were freezing over.
The next morning was beautiful sunny and fifty degrees. Three hours and I was home.

2005 MinuteMan 1000

2005-06-10T13:21:00.000-07:00

June 10, 2005

http://www.minuteman1000.com/

I finished up some loose ends at work and hit the road around 1:30 PM on Friday afternoon. I covered the 190 miles to Greenfield in about 2.5 hours. Mr. Garmin and I did not agree however on what the second exit on roundabout meant so I ended up covering another 13 miles on I-91 before arriving at the Rally HQ.

I was immediately sent out to do the ODO check, which I screwed up and had to ride again. I guess the heat was getting to me. So I added about 50 miles to my ride and was hoping this was not a sign of things to come.

We got our rally books with diner, and it didn’t take long to figure out the winner would be riding “plan B”, which required you to ride to Eastport, ME, West Quaco, NB, and Houlton, ME.

I rode back to my hotel, managed to take the correct exit off the roundabout, stopping along the way to pick up some more film. I spent a few hours looking at the laptop and ingesting as many fluids as I could get down. I selected the plan B route with the planets of the solar system along the 40-mile stretch of rte 1 from Houlton to Presque Isle.

I felt that if I could pull that off, and get back to Greenfield without incurring any penalty points I would have managed a good score, and for me, a 24 hour high of 1,260 miles.

I rolled out of Greenfield at 6:00 AM, about the 20th rider. My goal was to maximize my stock fuel capacity of 6.6 gallons, which gets me from 240 – 280 miles, and minimize my gas stops. I rode within 100 feet of the Delorme bonus in Yarmouth, ME. Without stopping. My first stop was in Waterville, ME for a quick gas-up at about 260 miles.

Actually, my first stop was about 15 miles prior to that. The troopers were handing out tickets to the ball with great efficiency; they had me waiting about 5 minutes. That sucked, but then 4 other riders came cruising by. I don’t take much pride in getting traffic citations, and felt a bit embarrassed. Hope you guys appreciate me taking one for the team. Keep an eye on the sky when traveling in Maine.

From Waterville I headed north through Bangor, bypassing another bonus on Hogan road, and hit the airline. This is rte 9 east, which used to be a lot more fun. It’s been widened, and straightened to the point where it is more like an interstate highway. You can still see portions of the old road off to your right and left that used to snake through the forest.

I took a couple of side roads to cut out some miles and rolled into Eastport behind John Tomasovitch and Alex Schmitt at around 1:00 PM. I took 4 Polaroid pictures of the Coast Guard station before one developed properly.

From there it was to Calais for the border crossing. I went through at the same time as Alex with no wait. I stopped for gas about 40 miles east of the border at 250 miles. I didn’t want to push the gas situation to far in New Brunswick. From there St. Johns came up pretty quick. There is a $.25 Canadian toll here, which I think is just a ploy to get US dollars. All I had was a 20. So my focus turned from the rally to how I was going to unload all this Canadian money. Anyway, Shortly after St. John I followed the directions in the rally book towards St. Martin’s on rte 111. At the T in the road I went right. After about 20 minutes I decided I was going in the wrong direction. I scrolled up along the coast on the 2610 and found West Quaco in the opposite direction. I swung it around, rode past the T, and took a right at the second T. I lost about 40 minutes here and passed John, and Alex on their way out. They were about 40 minutes ahead of me.

I blasted into the lighthouse at West Quaco, hoping I didn’t cut a tire as I “hung it out” on a 90-degree turn on the gravel road. I think I must have forgot which bike I was on. I had less trouble getting back to 1, and was soon heading north on 7, then east on TC-2. The GPS seemed to know less about where I was, or where I was going than I did. Most of the way up to Houlton I was riding by myself on a brand new highway cut through the wilderness.

I arrived at the Houlton border crossing all alone, and got through with no wait. I bagged Pluto at about 5:30 PM, and my gas receipt with 260 miles at 5:37. They let me exchange my Canadian money back to US dollars, but for some reason I only got $13 back. So $.50 Canadian in tolls cost me $7 US?

I bagged about half of the planets on the way to Presque Isle, and the other half on the way back to Houlton. I think I was headed south on I-95 by a little after 7:00.

I was paying extra attention to the shoulders up here on I-95 looking for a moose to snap a Polaroid of for the 100 pt. wildcard bonus. About 20 miles out of Houlton I spotted him. The same Moose I had tried to get a picture of two weeks earlier with my MD 20-20 flag just for fun. I hadn’t seen another car for about 15 miles so I just hauled it off the left hand side and pulled the camera out of the top-box. About the time I laid my flag on my saddlebag and pointed the camera at the moose, I realized that he had taken as much interest in me, as I had him. As he sauntered toward me I snapped the picture, threw the camera in the top box, slammed it shut, jumped on the bike and took off. He was probably only about 30 feet from me when I jammed it into gear with my heel. I had to stop about a half mile down the road to write my mileage down, and lock my top-box. Things you’ll do for 100 measly points.

I was ready to get off the bike at the Hogan road Deli in Bangor after only 120 miles, and again at Delorme in Yarmouth in another 120. I had anticipated this and saved these bonuses for the return. I pulled into the Citgo next door, got some gas and checked my arrival time in Greenfield. I had about 1.5 hours to play with according to the fastest route.

I decided to take my rest break here and try to come up with a plan for the final push back to the HQ. This is something I never thought I would have to do. In my planning the night before I figured I would be at the gas station across the street from the HQ’s watching the penalty points adding up while I waited for my rest period to end. I never thought I’d be looking for more points.

I had a bite to eat and took a nap under an overhang. I woke up with a half hour to go before I could leave and pulled out the paper map. I liked the looks of a route over the Kancamancus highway, and southwest to I-91. I’m very familiar with the roads and thought I could still make pretty good time even though the fog had started to get pretty thick. I thought there was a chance it would lift away from the coast. I plugged the route in and still had 40 minutes to hunt for the bonuses. I thought that if I made good enough time over this section I could stop again and take a look at the bonuses that lay along rte 100 south of Brattleboro. I didn’t, so I didn’t.

The second gas receipt for .01 gallons said the two hours was finally up and I headed out.

After dispensing with a car filled with folks that looked like they had to much fun for a Saturday night, I didn’t see another set of lights for 100 miles. The fog was pretty thick so I was careful not to out-run my HID PIAA 910 lights. They have been doing some construction on the Kanc, so there was about 5 miles of dirt over two sections. I got my elbows up and was able to maintain a pretty good pace over these sections. Shortly after that I had an opportunity to get another moose picture but I decided I didn’t have the time to spare. Luckily, she stayed out of the road and ran in the right direction. The Kancamngus pass bonus, at 2,855 feet, was easy.

The water tower in North Woodstock was a little more difficult. I ended up getting the rally book out and honed in on the coordinates. I continued east on 112 to 118 which climbs up over a mountain. I was thinking to myself that I could let my guard down just a little. I might see a deer, but there shouldn’t be any moose up here. Within a half mile I see another cow. She too stayed out of the road but my guard would have to stay up.

I came down off the mountain into Warren to find out when some fool had put an ICBM in the middle of town. Continued on 25 out to I-91 and started the final 109 miles south for Greenfield. The GPS said I had two minutes to spare, and I decided not to figure out if the points on rte 100 were worth the penalty points. So, kicking myself for loosing that 40 minutes in NB, I headed for the barn.

I rolled in at 5:58 with 1331 miles on the clock, quite pleased with myself.

Big thanks to the MM1K organizers, I had a blast, and explored some new limits riding to a third place finish. I also rode the most flawless rally I’ve done. That is, if you don’t count my ride to the start of the rally, and that wrong turn…oh, nevermind.

See you next year.