Here's a ride report in case anyone ever wants to attempt something as silly as this.
I've been trying to complete a Summer Solstice route for about 5 or so years, but something always slows us down. So this year I did it alone on Canada Day and realized that it's just too long of a ride to do with others, because every time we stop we always have the normal chit chat which can't work on ride like this. I've hit 1300km before on this route with friends, but never finished it. This is the planned route:
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The day before I did a bunch of overdue maintenance on the bike. The ride would have sucked if I didn't do this stuff.
I had a set of front forks on my other FZ1, where the left fork was very slightly bent, but the internals were upgraded. I found a straight set of front forks with blown seals, so I had a local shop swap over the upgraded internals into the straight set and slapped those on this bike. The front end felt much nicer now. Also put on a new front tire, did an oil change, swapped over to a new chain and bled the brakes / changed the pads. I've been riding with a shorty screen lately, but the wind blast from it is very draining over 120km/hr, so I put back on the touring screen and spoiler. The rear tire will be done after this ride, because I've been commuting on this one and the middle is worn, but the edges have lot's of tread left. Took the bike out for a quick spin the night before and it was riding like a champ!
The night before I made sure everything else was ready.
I load up the route onto the GPS and make sure it reads the route properly.
Tank bag has a wet rag and a dry rag for keeping the helmet visor clean while on the move. I keep a battery pack in there to charge my cell while riding or charge my helmet communicator everytime I stop. And very important - a kickstand plate for parking on the soft ground at the side of road.
Tail bag has all my food, which consists of 4 slices of pizza, 4 homemade chocolate chip cookies, my Mom's famous nut and grain loaf, 1L of hot green tea and a 2L bottle of electrolytes. I also ride wearing a 3L hydration knapsack. Even though it wasn't that hot out, I ended up finishing my drinks an hour before the ride ended.
I was up extra early and left the house before sunrise. Kiss my wife goodbye and she asks me to please be safe - will do. As soon as I leave the GPS is not loading the route! I stop on my street and fumble with all kinds of route settings and it's still not loading. After wasting 10 minutes by now, I decide to just leave and figure out the GPS thing while riding. While on the 401, I remember that I can just load a track onto the GPS and follow that instead of a normal route. Success!
I should have worn my heated gear, because it was pretty cold out for July 1st that early in the morning. I'm wearing a full gortex suit and a long sleeved shirt and jogging pants underneath, but I was chilled until 10am.
I wanted to see the rising sun while I was out riding and it's was really beautiful. I think this pic is on Ganaraska Rd.
I head over to the Frontenac area and learned that Mountain Rd near Tamworth is getting repaved, so a decent length of it is gravel. This would become a theme for me, since I didn't scope out any of the roads beforehand. It was only gravel for about 10km, but that slowed me down. Harburn Rd is also getting repaved for about 10km and so is Chetwynd Rd., so those roads added time. My route directed me to go down a dead end forest road near Sydenham, so the 30km detour cost me and I also missed an exit near Burks Falls which added an extra 15km. For a ride like this, that's not too bad, considering how many things can go wrong.
Stopped off at one of my favourite rest stops along Old Barrys Bay Road. The whole Highlands region never disappoints.
As I was riding I realized that these little detours and route planning mistakes were adding enough distance onto my ride and now I was going to be very close to 1600km, which is the Iron Butt distance. I've never cared about doing an Iron Butt ride in the past, because I hate riding on the highway and it seems like everyone who does one just rides in a straight line. I did think it would be pretty sweet to do that kind of distance, but with this many twisty roads in it. Just to make sure I would cross the 1600km mark, I decided to ride out and back on Glamorgan Rd to add another 35km.
Happy Maple Leaf Day!
It's also worth mentioning that if you ever want to try a ride like this, don't do what I did and have a bunch of extra tight, twisty roads in there, because they are too slow for this kind of thing. I should have eliminated some of the 50km/hr and 60km/hr roads and kept it more to 80km/hr roads. As the sun was starting to set, I realized that another mistake I made in planning my route was in having very twisty roads surrounded by trees that had me facing the setting sun. For example, I was riding on the 518 eastbound around 7:30pm and a big deer jumped out in front of me. It was fine since sun was on my back and I could easily see it and slowed down. However at the mid point of the road, I was supposed to turn around and ride it back the other way for 30km, because that's the best part. After the deer encounter and the blinding sun heading back, this would have been silly, so I modified the route on the fly to reduce some of that stuff, but still keeping with twisty backroads theme overall.
The bike performed amazing. I love the Michelin Road 6 tires. I learned that having a spoiler on the taller windshield and moving a little extra quick on those very long straight sections can cause your windshield screws to rip out of the fairing - mounting tabs and all. So looks like I might need to buy a new headlight fairing if I can't fix this. But hey, you'll knever know what happens if you don't try.
I ended up getting home at 11pm.
All in all I did 1630km, of which around 1400km was twisty backroads.
Iron Butt Member #420 - don't try this at home kids
