Ironbutt… Almost, part 1
by Titus Gee
The engine stutters, sputters, coughs, then dies.
Not my favorite omen two hours into a 24-hour ride — especially on a barren stretch of two-lane, in the middle of the Mojave Desert, in June, with the sun pumping 90 degrees long before noon.
I hit the brake, pull the Nighthawk onto the shoulder. A drip-sizzle drip-sizzle continues. Fluid splashing on the tailpipe.
I’m out of gas and miles short of my first scheduled stop. Of course I have an extra quart of fuel in my saddlebag . . . a saddlebag that is now dripping something onto the superheated chrome of my pipes . . .
Maybe all big adventures stumble at the start. Charley Boorman dropped his touring Beemer half a minute into his ride around the world. And Ted Simon kicked off a four-year journey by dumping his tool bag all over the highway. Or maybe it’s just in my pedigree. Can a bad sign be a good sign?
I’m supposed to ride 1,000 miles today. Ok, just short of that — 940. But anyway, longer than I have ever ridden before, and without stopping for anything but fuel. Google says that’s 18 hours of drive time. My three-gallon tank has other ideas. It needs a fill-up every two hours. ::Correction:: Every hour and a half, apparently. I’m hoping to make it in 24 hours flat.
There’s a club for people who do long rides like this. It’s called Ironbutt, and someday I will join, but not today. A true Ironbutt requires documentation, references to verify your start and end time, logs and gas receipts and time stamps. They don’t take fisherman’s tales, and they don’t have a category for ‘Participation.’ Either you did it or you didn’t. I decided to skip the paperwork and just see what I could do, verified by me and for me.
I felt pretty confident, frankly. I’d driven longer and farther in a cage. A full eight hours beyond the drive time and a route 60 miles short of the coveted triple zero ought to be a nice little warm-up run through the desert.
drip-sizzle drip-sizzle
The first hour covered familiar ground, since I had been working in northern LA County for a couple of years. Up the 14 Freeway and on past Mojave, where the road trickles down to two wind-blasted lanes and winds out through Red Rock Canyon and the genuine wasteland.
I’d started later than I hoped and slept less than I should. What else is new? I had filled my new saddlebags and my old red backpack with five days worth of clothes and riding gear and tools and anything I could imagine needing on the side of the road in the middle of the desert. I think they call that irony.
The first time the engine coughed, I reached behind my left knee for the reserve switch. Seemed a long way to go, but I decided to trust the math. Of course the ‘math’ never included everything I could think of crammed onto the back of the Nighthawk. The weight of my emergency preparation dragged me to a sputtering halt.
drip-sizzle drip-sizzle
I jumped off and yanked the bag outward to get the drip off the pipes, in case not being in flames yet was a coincidence. The leather felt hot and greasy. My hands came away black with soot. The drip was oil. Also the bottom of the bag had been scorched by the tailpipe. I’d hung my new bags too low.
I unpacked the saddlebag and pulled out the two plastic quart containers. No problem with the gas, but the oil bottle had rested against a metal rivet that got hot enough to melt a hole right through. If I had packed them the other way round, it would have been the gas.
If my fuel had lasted another five miles, I might have caught fire anyway. As omens go, definitely a mixed bag.
To be continued . . .
