Step 1 with the Iron Butt thing is clearly the SaddleSore 1000. There wasn't much mental wrestling with the decision to try it. I would attempt and be successful at the entry level task for this tribe. Power of positive thinking goes a long way, even on long hard roads and unfamiliar adventures. Now for the details. I visited my pal Google maps and started ticking around with 1000 mile routes in all directions. The routes mainly focused on places I had not been rather than New England. I can be hard headed and slightly over-confident in my abilities at times. I am rational however, and realize that for most problems it is best to seek advice from the successfully experienced. How would I go about this?
In researching the requirements of the ride, I ran across a "witness list" (every ride needs at least 2 witnesses for it to be official). Assuming that to make the short list, there had to be some experience there, and the list was no where near 50K people long, I decided to make contact with the tribe for the first time. No, I am no Dr Livingston either.
I found 2 names which were situated quite close to me. This would be ideal because getting out of my area has a number of slab options, most of which are heavily congested being situated equidistant between New York City and Philadelphia. I fired off an email to both names asking for advice. I didn't expect much, but if someone responded, it would certainly be a bonus. If they didn't I would widen the net until some soul took pity on a noob.
1 email bounced immediately for a bad address, but that left the potential for the other one in play. I shut down operations in Dream/Goal HQ and hit the sack with head swirling from all I had been exposed. It was a fine, fine day.
Alarm went off the next morning and I rolled over and checked my phone as is my custom. No disasters at work, all my servers checked in without issue, it was a good day. Then I saw the reply. No kidding, a real live person. I immediately shifted gears right back into adventure mode and read an email from "Jim". It could have said "go away" or "you're crazy", or "saddlesores are for the weak noob, get back to me when you do a real ride".
I didn't.
I received a nice email which began with encouragement that this area was a great place to be located. There were a plethora of roads available to do what I wished. There were several route suggestions, along with talk of circadian rhythms and how that relates to start and finish times. There was a discussion on moving averages and gas stops. I eat that type of information up, and it tickled me right in my nerd spot. Then there was the reminder to have fun because "that's the bottom line". This is further confirmation that this tribe isn't made up solely of mindless machines who obliviously blew by the world at a blistering pace. I was grateful and resolved as the pencil marks were removed from "Goal" and re-written in mental ink.
I reviewed several of the options I had been given. Over the next week there was some great back and forth with Jim as I reviewed my options, being careful to hopefully not overstay my welcome, but gleaning as much as I could in the process. Jim is clearly both knowledgeable and accessible. I learned quite a bit and for that I am very grateful.
I finally decided on a route which would take me from my home to Bristol, TN for a total of 1048 miles. A route I had traveled several times in the past to visit my ex-laws, but one that would gain me MD, WV, VA and TN on my stupid little map. It was February in the mid-Atlantic. My heated gloves are fantastic, but realistically it was a bit chilly to hop on and do the virgin attempt with nighttime temps in the 20's. I am generally a patient man, but I knew it would be a challenge converging mother nature with my life schedule in an acceptable time frame.
Patience grasshopper.
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