The First Two Saddlesore 1000 Trips

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1st Saddlesore 1000 - Raleigh, NC to Kansas City, MO - July 2001

I got this new K1200LT and it just itches to be ridden lots of miles. My little day trips and forays around North Carolina just weren't putting enough miles on it. I stumbled into the  Iron Butt Association's self directed tours and decided this was just the thing. Family and friends are in Kansas City and it is nicely situated about a 1000 miles from Raleigh. This made it the perfect destination. I grabbed the witness signature from a fire department at 2200 hours the night before, grabbed fuel and ATM receipts at my 0500 hour departure and headed west. A rainstorm about 80 miles down the road forced a stop to don the rain gear. I learned here why waterproof riding gear is essential. Stop management is the key to LD riding, 15 minutes to "suit up" ruins an overall average. Since I didn't want to log any stops over 15 minutes I made sure all my stops were 15 minutes or less. Managed to complete the 1080 mile trip in 17.5 hours. The GPS said I had about 90 minutes of stop time. This got me thinking about ways to shorten the stops.

2nd Saddlesore 1000 - What I call the 5 State Springtime I-Mountain Tour - April 2002
Eric Justason (a coworker) emailed and asked if I wanted to join him for a qualifying run.
At first I was reluctant, hadn't practiced up and prepared like I had for the first trip.
After about 10 hours of thought I decided I wasn't really an Ironbutt if I couldn't
jump on the bike and ride a thousand miles.

Not much to say abou this trip. We just rode a big circle and took about 19 hours with about 2.5 hours of stop time. I found out that having a partner makes the stops longer -- you end up jawboning at the service station and those miles and minutes just slip away.
Here are the pictures.