Iron Butt Rally: Day 8
Yakima WA

9.2.97

A Piece of Tape

  The news of Ron Major's death in Arizona struck everyone associated with
this rally like a falling tree.  The days that led up to this penultimate
checkpoint have been long for everyone, rallyist and organizer alike, but
nothing like today.

  This terrible incident remains shrouded in mystery.  Bill Muhr of the
MotoCentral Forum on the MicroSoft Network told us that radio station
KYMA in Yuma was reporting on the circumstances of the accident: "Between
midnight and seven Sunday morning, the cyclist hit the guard rail on I-8
about 24 miles east of Yuma.  The driver was thrown onto an embankment on
the other side of the freeway.  But the motorcycle continued along the
guard rail for nearly a half-mile before coming to a stop.  A Border
Patrol helicopter found the man's body.  Officials have not yet released
his name."
 
   To accept this account you must believe that a motorcycle can travel
riderless for upwards of 2,500' and bring itself to a gentle stop,
resting upright against a guard rail.  You have to believe that hitting a
guard rail can throw a grown man across two lanes of interstate highway,
yet leave no evidence of appreciable damage on the motorcycle.  You have
to believe things that we cannot, especially since the view taken by
investigators to date does not account for the fact that in the
photograph we have seen of the motorcycle, the key is not in the
ignition.
 
   One day, we sincerely hope, what really happened to Ron Major will be
fully understood.  That day is not here.

(LATER ADDITION FROM RON'S DAUGHTER, SENT TO MIKE KNEEBONE, ORGANIZER OF THE RUN):

Michael,

I am Ron's daughter Kathy and I would like to put the speculation and questions about my fathers death to rest. An autopsy was performed after the services, because I (who have ridden bikes since I was 5) did not believe that my father fell asleep and caused his own death! He was to professional to do that, not even for the sake of coming in first (which I know was his ultimate goal). The autopsy revealed a massive coronary. He died instantly and before he even hit the ground. There were no other substantial injuries that would have caused his death.

I know it is hard to accept the death of my father, as I more than anyone can attest too!! But please remember that he died doing what he loved and with those friends he so admired and cared for.

Kathy

  When we arrived in Yakima, Jan Cutler, co-owner of Reno BMW and a former
Iron Butt rallymaster and participant, was already there to help us run
the checkpoint.  We asked Jan to tell each of the riders arriving today
what we had so far learned.  It was a difficult and delicate but
necessary job.  Several riders broke down in tears when told what had
occurred.  No one could believe it.  That someone might be hurt during
the rally was almost a given.  That someone could be killed, particularly
a rider of Ron Major's extraordinary talents, was almost unthinkable.
 
   To a non-rider, that may seem to be a childish denial of obvious fact,
particularly in a rally of the Iron Butt's extreme nature.  But
motorcyclists are not fatalistic.  If they were, they wouldn't ride a
bike.  Injury and death happen, but you cannot believe that it is going
to happen to you.  To harbor such thoughts is to deprive yourself is a
microscopic edge that could save your life.  You need every positive
thought you can muster circulating in you at all times.  I have never
thought of it as a matter of denial; to me it is simply self-preservation.
 When disaster does strike, however, it is all the more difficult to
absorb.  Not only has someone you know been struck down, but you have
been shorn at least temporarily of your sincere, albeit deluded, belief
in your own invincibility.  Twin blows of that kind are devastating.
There is no defense to it.  You might as well be rendered as naked and
helpless as the day you were born.
 
   I have often thought that the sorts of people who enter endurance
motorcycle events are a subset of humans two orders of magnitude distant
from the norm.  Motorcyclists constitute just over 1% of the motoring
public; long distance riders are perhaps 1% of motorcyclists.  In
Jonathan Swift's poem he likens this disparity in scale to a flea that
sits upon the back of an elephant.  That flea has upon its own back a
flea of comparably small size.  And so it goes, Swift says, ad
infinitum.
 
   There aren't many people who can do, or would even want to do, the kind
of riding required merely to finish the IBR on time, not to mention
lengthening their route to obtain bonus points.  Such riders tend to
stick together.  They have something in common that cannot be understood
or appreciated by anone who has not walked into the fire and survived.
 
   That is why Ron's demise has struck this small band of hard riders with
such force.  He was not just a biker; he was an Iron Butt rider, and a
great one.  He won this rally six years ago.  He won the 8/48 last year.
He designed equipment that could help a rider stay on a bike longer and
with greater safety.  If you moved in this circle at all, you knew Ron,
the man with greater name recognition among the long riders than King
Kong.  He was that good.
 
   At 1900 PDT the riders received the last of the bonus packs.  They have
64 hours to get back to Chicago, some 1,970 miles to the east.  They
won't forget about Ron Major during that last long ride of this event.
Warren Harhay, one of the contestants, asked each departing rider if he
or she would like to carry a reminder of Ron on the last leg.  No one
declined.
 
   Every bike leaving the checkpoint parking lot tonight had a 2" strip of
black tape on the windshield.

-----------------------

  Peter Hoogeveen, leading at every checkpoint so far, held onto his lead
on the next to last checkpoint today by the slimmest of margins.  It
wasn't a particularly inspired route, but it was enough to hold off a
giant effort by Rick Morrison.  The difference between first and second
place has been cut to a trivial 60 points out of more than 25,000 total
to date.  Morrison, cranking out 2,001 miles in 49 hours since southern
California, outdid every other rider by almost 200 miles, in the process
picking up almost 700 more bonus points than unflappable Bill Kramer, who
scored the second highest total for the leg.
 
   Mike Stewart, with a second straight big run, climbed to within 700
points of Hoogeveen.  Mike Stockton, Dale Wilson, and Tom Loftus are
hovering within clear striking range.  Eddie James, having run a notably
quiet event, lurks not much more back.  Harold Brooks and Jerry Clemmons,
riding together as if they shared a single carburetor, are tied for 8th
place.  Mary Sue Johnson, upon whom Ron Major's death hit particularly
hard, climbed back into the top ten with a determined ride.
 
   Two notable misses on the leg were Ron Ayres and Boyd Young.  Ayres was
time barred because he pressed himself, went too far afield, and could
not return in time.  Young's problem was more prosaic, a flat tire, but
one that was ripped to the point that four plugs could not repair the
damage.  They'd each been close to the top, Ayres tantalizingly so.  Now
they're running just to finish.
 
   A rider who never had any chance at all, Marty Jones, turned in his
third straight sensational leg.  This is a man who missed the first
checkpoint with mechanical problems and has now climbed to 42nd place,
ahead of thirteen riders who have missed no checkpoints at all.  In one
of my first posts, I predicted Jones would win the Iron Butt before his
career was through.  He's showing why I wrote that.
 
   And Manny Sameiro climbed out of the negative points pile today, jumping
over three riders who never made a checkpoint.  For the first time on the
rally, he has a positive points score next to his name and stands 75th of
78.  We knew you could do it, Manny.
 
   It'll be over soon.  And safely, we all pray.

-----------------------

The Top Twenty in Yakima (200 elapsed hours):

Rank   Rider  Bike  Miles Points

 1 Hoogeveen, Peter Honda   8,633   25,392
 2 Morrison,Rick BMW         8,730   25,332
 3 Stewart,Mike Honda         7,863   24,657
 4 Stockton, Michael BMW   8,069   24,351
 5 Wilson, Dale Honda          7,697   24,320
 6 Loftus, Tom  Honda          7,676   23,904
 7 James, Eddie BMW          7,720   23,843
 8 Brooks, Harold Honda       7,554  23,721
 8 Clemmons, Jerry Honda     7,524  23,721

10 Johnson, Mary Sue BMW  8,353 23,714
11 Kugler,Heinz BMW  7,398 23,712
12 Smith, Shane Honda  8,557 23,512
13 Kramer, Bill Honda  7,559 23,172
14 Tegeler, Craig BMW  7,237 23,091
15 Johnson, Gary Honda  7,855 22,761
16 Withers, Peter Yamaha 7,373 22,632
17 Keating, Keith BMW  7,568 22,468
18 Ferber, John Triumph 7,510 22,449
19 Franklin, Rand Yamaha 7,610 22,307
20 Crane, Fran  Buell  8,393 22,295

**************************

     Iron Butt Rally: Day 9
Gillette WY

9.3.97

The Rock and the Hard Place

  I started grinding my teeth.  Spending even ten seconds giving
non-negotiable instructions to this man was becoming less productive than
the time I tried to teach my cat Bud the multiplication tables.  She
didn't seem to care what I said.  Neither did Martin.
 
   "Look, Chicago is that way."  I waved my hand in a generally easterly
direction.  "If you see the sun in your eyes in the late afternoon,
you're going the wrong way.  Understand?"
 
   He smiled and nodded.
 
   "Now I'm not a bit happy about your picking up these bonuses on the
last leg.  I'm telling the checkpoint people in Chicago that if you show up
with so much as one measly bonus on this last leg that they are to give
you zero points for it.  Zero.  I don't know how to say it in German.
Zerorbeschweigenscheiss.  Nada.  Nothing.  Understand?"
 
   He nodded again, still giving me the look he uses to suffer fools.
 
   "You get on I-90 and you stay on it until you see the checkpoint.  You
don't get off of it except to get gas, take a nap, eat, or pee.  Gotit?"
 
   Another nod.
 
   "OK.  Any questions?"
 
   "Yes," he said.  "Where is Lander, Wyoming?"
 
   "Damnit, Martin!  Don't do this to me.  Lander is not on the 90."
 
   "I know, but you were talking about South Pass."
 
   "If you love me, you will forget that.  South Pass is U.S. history.  You
are going to make Iron Butt history if you finish this rally on that ugly
bike.  Straight to Chicago you go, and not by way of South Pass."
 
   I think he promised me he'd consider it.  I can't remember.  At that
point I was just trying to find a brick wall to bang my head against.
 
   Martin Hildebrandt will finish.  When he does, he'll have ridden the
smallest bike, a 175cc Zundapp, ever to complete the rally.  But he's not
content with just finishing these days.  He wants to beat some people.
He's been averaging 880 miles every day for eight days, manhandling the
screaming two-stroke up mountains and hanging on downhill, a large man on
an ancient, small bike.  When he's astride it, he bears a passing
resemblance to Arte Johnson on a tricycle in the old "Laugh In" show.
 
   Why would someone with such a mammoth handicap try to beat anyone except
the rally itself?  He's a competitor.  He's doing what competitors do.
He must feel that he already has the rally by the neck.  Now he's looking
for another challenge.  In that sense he's no different from most of the
other riders, except that he's from Germany and has ridden more miles
around the United States during the last two IBRs than most American
bikers will do in a lifetime.  He has blood in his eye.  He's ahead of
six guys who have had previous top ten finishes in this rally.
 
   On the last leg he sucked up 7,331 points, a full 600 more than the
average for the field and just 443 less than Peter Hoogeveen roped in on
a bike that's nearly three times as fast as Hildebrandt's.  He has to
stop at least every 500 miles to pre-mix the oil/gasoline sludge that his
engine requires.  His knowledge of the geography of the U.S. is limited,
but it's getting better every day.  He probably knows by now that Miami
isn't a suburb of Seattle.  That wasn't always the case.
 
   He didn't take the best route on the California-Washington leg, but 1)
he doesn't have the bike to do that and 2) no one else took the best
route either.  The riders should have passed up a bundle of bonuses
hiding in the woods and coastal mountains in northern California in order
to head straight for the Olympic peninsula.  It was an easier ride and
was worth more than what most of them actually did do on the leg.  Mike
and I don't wonder why any longer.  They're tired.  They don't want to
think too much about optimizing miles and points.  That takes work.
They'd rather jump on their bikes and head for the first big bonus site.
Among the top riders, whoever does the best job of avoiding that
temptation on the final leg will be the man to beat.
 
   Temptation #1 is in Hyder, Alaska.  It's worth 9,999 points, but it
would take an average of 60 mph for some 60 hours to scoop it up, not to
mention crossing four international borders.  Anyone who goes that way
won't be seen again on this event.
 
   Temptation #2 is in southern California --- Sequoia national park and
Joshua Tree national monument.  They're worth slightly less than Hyder,
but require almost as much effort.  Arguably they're doable.  Eddie James
might go that way.  He's more than 1,500 points behind Hoogeveen and
needs a show stopper finish.  He asked Mike about his chances if he did
ride south.
 
   "If you go, give me your ticket to the finishers' banquet right now,"
Mike said.  "You'll never need it."
 
   Take away the two giant temptations and you're left with smaller
temptations of varying worth and difficulty that are scattered around
I-90 for miles in every direction.  Do you visit Andy Goldfine's
Aerostich factory in Duluth or make a beeline for The Elvis Is Still
Alive museum near St. Louis?  Can you pick up Mt. Rushmore and still make
Metropolis, Illinois to take a picture of the Superman statue?  Should
you do Devil's Tower or Carhenge or Chimney Rock?  Can you do two of
them?  All three?  Will there be time to have your head phrenologically
examined at the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices in Minneapolis?
 Mike and Ed Otto spent months sorting through these combinations and
permutations.  The riders don't have months.  They have to make decisions
in precious little time.  Assuming everything else goes well, those
choices will determine their final placement.  The correct decisions will
be forgotten in the haze of a happy triumph.  The wrong ones will be
remembered for the rest of their lives.
 
   It isn't easy to do.  If it were, anyone could do it.
 
   I don't know where Martin Hildebrandt is tonight.  I barely know where I
am.  But if he's heading for Bismark ND to pick up a coffee mug that says
"Forty Below Keeps The Riff-Raff Out," then he and I are going to have a
little talk on Friday morning.

**************************

     Iron Butt Rally: Day 10
Southern Minnesota

9.4.97

Homing Pigeons

 I turned the Chrysler battlewagon into the parking lot of the Black
Hills Motorcycle Museum.  Mike and I saw the rider at the same time.  I
pulled up next to the bike.  Its owner was about to enter the building.
 
   "Hey, Leonard!" Mike yelled.
 
   Leonard Roy turned around.  For a moment he didn't recognize us.  You
see the same elevator operator in your office building every day for
twenty years, but if you see him throwing a Frisbee around on the beach,
he might as well be from the moon for all your brain can recall.
 
   Bong.  Something clicked in his head and he smiled.  We asked him
how he was doing.
 
   "Great," he said enthusiastically.  "I got six hours of sleep last night."
 
   "He's lying," I said to Mike without enthusiasm.  We hadn't gotten
six hours of sleep last night.
 
   "No, really," Leonard protested.  "I've been in a motel every night
except the first night."
 
   "More lies," I said.
 
   We walked into the museum.  A grizzled Harley vet came toward us. I'm
always careful with these guys.  They seem playful enough until you get a
couple of hundred liters of beer into them.  Although it was 10:00 a.m.,
still this was Sturgis SD, the home of the oldest, raunchiest, most
homicidal, post-Raphaelite, rip-up-the-streets, lock-up-your-women biker
rally of them all, a nose-buster that makes Daytona's bike week seem like
a Tupperware party.
 
   "You guys with the Iron Ass rally?"
 
  "Iron Butt, right," Mike said.  He introduced us.
 
   "And I guess you want to take the picture?" he asked Leonard. With his
full-bore Aerostich suit, he was the only one of us who looked like an
actual Iron Ass.  Mike and I looked like we'd been sleeping in a car for
ten days, which was what we'd been doing.
 
   Leonard trooped off happily to take a picture of a 1915 motorcycle that
actor Steve McQueen once owned.  That was worth 106 points to Leonard.  I
didn't even want to see the bike.  I wanted to be in Chicago with this
rally behind me, drinking a couple of hundred liters of beer.
 
   While we waited for him to come back, we glanced at the sign-in sheet.
Four of our people had been there last night, including first and second
place riders Peter Hoogeveen and Rick Morrison.  Phil Mann (24th), a BMW
rider who won a mileage contest a few years ago by pounding out an
unbelievable 113,000 miles in six months, and Suzy Johnson (10th), had
also signed in before the museum closed at 1800.  Leonard was the fifth
Butt to show up this morning.
 
   "You see who's not on this list?" I said to Mike.
 
   "The Mikes, Stewart and Stockton.  Dale Wilson."

   "And Tom Loftus."
 
   "And Eddie James," Mike said, staring hard at me.  We'd just clicked off
the names of the 3rd through 7th riders overall at Yakima.  If they
hadn't come to Sturgis, where had they gone?
 
   Leonard reappeared with his Polaroid photo.  We walked outside with him.
He went through his pre-flight boarding process, which included spraying
some stuff on his sunglasses to clean them off.  I would bet folding
money that by now he's done this drill so often and in the identical
order that a rocket grenade coming through the parking lot wouldn't throw
him out of synch.  We had turned a normal human into an automaton.  The
behaviorist, B. F. Skinner, would be proud of us.  He once taught a
pigeon to walk without bobbing its head up and down.  I think he got a
Nobel Prize for that.  Or maybe 106 bonus points.

   "Where to now, Leonard?" Mike asked.

   "Wall Drug," he replied cheerfully.  "Then the Badlands."
 
   "Then Chicago, right?"
 
   "Right!  See you tomorrow morning."  Leonard Roy cranked up his big bike
and rode off.  Not once did he bob his head.
 
   He has the fever.  He doesn't look as if he does, but he does.  He's
working hard but he makes it look easy.  He was in 50th place in Maine.
Then 45th.  Then 30th.  In Yakima he was 23rd.  He wants to be in the top
twenty.  You just know it.  He didn't spend the night in Sturgis.  He was
in Hot Springs, many miles to the south, last night.  Sturgis is not on
the way to Chicago from Hot Springs.

 
   Mike and I drove up the street to the Country Kitchen for breakfast.
 
   "Didn't Superman grow up in Smallville?" I asked.
 
   "Yes," Mike said. "But he lived in Metropolis as an adult."
 
   We discussed briefly whether Metropolis IL was the man of steel's actual
home, or whether it was a metaphor for a larger city like West Palm
Beach.  Of late the intellectual quality of our conversations has taken
something of a nose dive.  If I had the time, I'd go to a bookstore and
find some Dr. Seuss poems.  Hell, if I had the time I'd just Yahoo
through the web on a search for "Daily Planet."  I'd find out where that
newspaper is published.  We'd pin the big guy's real home town down in a
hurry.
 
   "So why didn't Leonard just go to Metropolis to take a shot of the
Superman statue for 1,201 points instead of coming here for a lousy 106?"
I wondered.
 
   "Going to Metropolis would add about 650 miles to his route, that's
why."
 
   "Well, some of these guys are going there," I said.  "I can feel
it."
 
   I pawed idly at my blueberry pancakes, thinking of Superman's rippling
figure cast in bronze.  I've never seen it.  I have, on the other hand,
seen what the pigeons have done to Popeye's statue in Chester IL.  If
they'd desecrate the mighty sailor's wizened face, why should Superman
fare any better?  I hope there's no kryptonite in their droppings.
 
   We plow along I-90 tonight, reeling off mile after dull mile.  The
digital trip odo pod in the multi-function readout probe of our Chrysler
starcruiser tells us that we've done 711 miles since Gillette this
morning, a dog day average so far.  We have maybe 350 to go before we
find the Hilton from whence we began this odyssey.  It's a moonless,
windy night with occasional rain, the temperature at 60F and dropping.
It's Martin Hildebrandt's kind of weather, not mine.  I wish I were in
Chicago right now.
 
   I wish all of them were in Chicago tonight, safe somewhere in a coop.
But they're not.  They're out flying around somewhere.

**************************

     Iron Butt Rally: Day 11

Chicago IL
9.5.97

The Circle Closes

   We started the trophy awards with the last finishing rider, Manny Sameiro.
He'd smashed his Suzuki Stratocruiser in Maine, bought another bike for a
ten thousand point penalty, and finished the rally on a 500cc Honda Shadow.
Every time he'd try to get off the bike at a gas stop, the scabs on his
knees would crack open.  He's not walking quite right even now, but one day
he will.  Scabs heal.  We honored his deed of switching bikes and taking a
penalty that guarantees a finish at the bottom of the pile by calling his
effort "pulling a Manny."
 
   "What a country," Sameiro says.  "Only in America can you get a
trophy for coming in last."
 
   The second lowest placing rider, Dwight Hagemann, also pulled a Manny
on the last leg, but because Manny had pulled a Manny first, Dwight had to
take the ten thousand point hit without even the benefit of having his
miscue called "pulling a Dwight."  Then the Langs came in, though not
together.  Fritz took another enormous late penalty on the final leg, but
that was better than the miss that Phyllis' took, one which she alleged was
caused by Fritz' hopeless sense of direction, an allegation that Fritz was
smart enough not to deny.  But after DNFs on the previous two Iron Butts,
they both finished, a cause for much clapping of hands at the banquet.
 
   Dennis Cunningham jammed his sidecar into 51st place.  No one has ever
ridden a hack before in the Butt.  After seeing how battered he looked as
he shoved his rig into the parking lot at Laurel BMW in suburban Chicago,
no one may ever try again.  But the look on his son's face was enough to
make it worthwhile for the beaten rider.  The boy showed up at checkpoints
in California and Illinois sporting a T-shirt that said "Go Dennis Go!"  He
should be proud of his old man tonight: Dennis went, and in style.
 
   Grandmotherly Ardys Kellerman came in 42nd.  The Iron Butt two years ago
put her in a hospital.  It didn't this year.  Age doth not wither her, nor
custom spoil her infinite desire to crank out miles, so to speak.
 
   Martin Hildebrandt took 41st place, grabbing a bunch of bonuses on the
final leg despite my specific directions to the contrary.  I might as well
have tried to instruct an avalanche to roll uphill.  Elsie Smith, whose
50th birthday present to herself was an entry into the '97 IBR, quietly
crept into 28th place overall, having gained position on each leg.  She's
the pride and joy of the BMW Bikers of Metropolitan Washington and the
toughest long rider ever to emerge from that huge club.
 
   Adam Wolkoff labored under the dual burdens of having to complete a
demanding ride as well as having to act as Eddie James' attorney.  It would
be difficult to decide which was the harder task.  But he carried both jobs
off with apparent ease, finishing 15th overall.  Jerry Clemmons and Harold
Brooks, riding together for every mile of the event, shared 11th place.
For Harold it was the completion of his fourth Iron Butt, tying him with
Gregg Smith.  No one has more career IBR miles behind him than does the
quiet Virginian.
 
   Tom Loftus, the son of an American serviceman and a Samoan mother,
claimed the 8th spot.  He jokes that he's the only Samoan on earth who doesn't
weigh 300 pounds.  His heart is a pretty fair size, I imagine.  And by
taking 7th place in the rally, Shane Smith instantly became the most famous
person to emerge from McComb, Mississippi since Frances Durelle Felder, my
mother.  He'd also kept pace during huge chunks of the event with the
blazing Fran Crane, something that few riders can claim to have
accomplished.
 
   Six years ago IBR rallymaster Jan Cutler denied Mary Sue ("Suzy Q")
Johnson a place in the starting field.  "Insufficient experience," he said.
Today, averaging 998 miles a day for eleven days, she has the experience
of having beaten all but five of the toughest motorcycle riders on earth.
 Dale Wilson began riding motorcycles just five years ago to erase the pain
of having lost a custody battle for his son.  Anger used to propel him down
roads that he today cannot even remember having travelled.  He's calmer
these days but still is a ferocious competitor.  His fifth place trophy
will undoubtedly find a home in his boy's bedroom.
 
   It was going to take a monster ride for Eddie James to make people forget
his being thrown out of the '95 IBR, and he came up with one.  Eighteenth
in Maine, he crawled steadily upward on each leg.  No, people aren't going
to forget what he did in 1995, but they also won't forget his fourth place
finish this year.  No rider could have been under more scrutiny, knowing
that everything he did would be triple-checked.  He stared down the
pressure to the end, laughing and telling outrageous stories that couldn't
be any better if even half of them were true.
 
   Fifteen or twenty people had gathered around at the finish to watch Brian
Bush and his film crew interviewing Mike Stewart, the guy who'd taken a box
of parts worth $525 and turned those parts into a motorcycle that nearly
won the Iron Butt Rally.  But I wasn't watching Mike.  I was watching his
wife.  Rarely have I seen a look of such undiluted pride as that which was
etched on Katherine Stewart's face.  In every way this daunting event is
far harder on the families and close friends that the riders leave behind
than it ever could be for the motorcyclists.  The riders are doing what
they seem born to do.  Their loved ones can only wait and hope for the
best.  As she watched her husband easily fielding Brian's questions, she
must have known that when she picked Mike, she'd picked the right guy.
 
   And then there were but two names left, the riders who'd stood just sixty
points apart in Yakima, Peter Hoogeveen and Rick Morrison.  Could Peter
finally shake the demon that seemed to condemn him perpetually to a second
place finish?  It wasn't just a monkey on his back; it was an ape the size
of Mighty Joe Young.  He'd led at every checkpoint on this rally.  Would he
finally lead at the last one, the only one that mattered?
 
   In 1991 he had found a dozen ways to win the IBR but thirteen ways to
lose it.  He'd been stopped for a speeding violation fifty yards from a
checkpoint in Pennsylvania, accruing hundreds of penalty points in
lateness.  He'd left his route instructions at a restaurant and had to
backtrack 100 miles to retrieve them.  Still he was leading the event as
they headed for the last checkpoint in Reno.  Legend has it --- Peter
vigorously denies it, but that hardly matters any longer --- that he
stopped for a six-pack of beer before hitting the finish line, taking a six
point lateness penalty for his trouble.  He lost the rally by two points.
 
   Whether the story is true or not, it is unforgettable.  Mike Kneebone
certainly hasn't forgotten it.  The final bonus on this year's rally, a
whopping 999 points, required the riders to bring a cold six-pack of soda
or beer to the scoring table at the finish.
 
   As we sat there today, logging in arriving riders, the news flashed
through the parking lot like a bolt of electricity.  Peter was down.  Run
off the road by some stupid car.  Fifteen miles short of the finish.  Bike
wrecked.  Probably couldn't be ridden.  His parents, having come to the
finish in Chicago from Ontario, stood together in shocked silence, quietly
holding hands.
 
   Somehow he made it in.  I don't know how.  The right side of the
motorcycle had been ripped away.  There was no coolant left in the
motorcycle.  The magnificent Honda Blackbird, once the fastest bike in the
field, was finished.  Peter took forty points in lateness, relieved that it
wasn't worse.  Now all he could do was wait.  His name would be called out
at the banquet.  With another huge ride behind him on the last leg, he knew
that he would finish no lower than second.  But would he be first?
 
   No.
 
   Rick Morrison had done it again with a second straight monster ride.
In the two legs since California, he'd put more miles away than any other
rider in the field.  Those miles added up to points, nearly eleven thousand
of them on the last leg alone.  No one was going to beat this rail-thin
flight attendant from Seattle.  He'd averaged 1,076 miles each day for
eleven straight days, in the process taking first overall with a winning
margin of more than 1,000 points.  It wasn't even close.
 
   For the young Canadian it was just another heartbreaking second place
finish in what seems to be an endless string of them.  Despite that, he is
still the man to beat at every endurance event he enters.  No one in the
history of this game has ever had such a remarkable consistency.  He'll
win, and he'll win a lot, before he quits.  But if he never rode another
mile, I'd still call him what I've called him for years: Peter the Great.
 
   The riders went out into the parking lot after the banquet for a group
photo.  I looked at them.  Some appeared tired, surely, and the strain of
what they'd done to themselves still showed, but the most common expression
was one of satisfaction, a tranquility and inner peace that you could
almost touch.  They smiled.  Mike Stewart even smiled as he awkwardly ran
his fingers over his bald head.  He'd rashly told Bob Ray earlier in the
rally that "If I finish third or better, you can cut off my hair."  And at
the banquet Bob Ray was there with the barber's clippers.
 
   For most of these men and women, the Iron Butt Rally is a defining
moment in their lives.  Few things they will ever do will demand so much of them
for so long under such trying conditions.  It really is an unforgettable
experience, one that can be shared truly only with others who have also run
along this demanding, nearly interminable, gauntlet.  They are changed,
most of them, and will never think of themselves quite in the same light
again.
 
   For everyone, however, this rally will always be remembered as the last
one that Ron Major ran.  Mike Murphy, the neurosurgeon who ran in the '95
IBR, has begun a memorial fund in Ron's memory.  Rallymaster Ed Otto has
arranged for a plaque in Ron's name to be placed in the American
Motorcyclist Museum.  The black tape that the riders put on their bikes in
Yakima will one day come off and be forgotten.  For those of us who had the
happiness of knowing Ron, however, our memory of him will continue.
 
   And now it's over.  The parking lot, once filled with motorcycles of
breathtaking beauty and variety, will slowly empty, only an occasional spot
of oil or a side stand scrape in the tarmac to mark the spot where one of
them once stood.  The bikes will go home, some --- like Peter's broken
Blackbird --- in a truck.  But most of them will be ridden, perhaps not so
far tomorrow or as hard as they have been recently, but ridden just the same.
 
 Part 1   Part 2
 
   They don't seem to mind.

Bob Higdon
higdon@ironbutt.com
http://www.ironbutt.com