Checking out at 04:20, I needed to find a Wal-Mart store. I wasn’t planning just to head back to St Louis, I had decided to get back in the Rally properly and I needed to replace my Polaroid camera that I had left behind me at the St Louis Arch, the first bonus location. The hotel staff told me there was a Wal-Mart five miles up the road, so off I went. America is an amazing place. It might be the middle of the night but you can buy a Polaroid camera, food and water – all you need for an Iron Butt Rally. Armed with my new camera, as well as some bananas, cereal bars and water, I got back on the bike and into the game.
Cleveland, Ohio and the FREE stamp. I got to Cleveland about an hour before dawn. But where was the FREE stamp? I saw a camera crew from a local television station and asked them where the FREE stamp was. Following their directions, I pulled up to find Jim Winterer resting beside his bike and waiting for dawn. We chatted for a couple of minutes, then I headed out for a short walk, a stretch and a hunt for some breakfast. Jim went back to sleep. I had my walk but couldn’t find any breakfast, so I headed back to Jim and the bikes. I laid down for a snooze, too.
No sooner had I closed my eyes than I heard two guys talking as they walked past: “I wouldn’t sleep there unless you wanted to be mugged”. My eyes shot open to see two construction workers on their way to work. Two strong, tough guys. One thing led to another and, within a minute, we were talking bikes and riding. It turned out that the construction guys rode Harleys and had visited the 100-year celebrations of Harley-Davidson. Jim was wide awake by this time and listening to the conversation. The construction guys mentioned what types of Harley they rode and I commented that they were lovely bikes. The guys chatted for another couple of minutes and then headed off to work. A pleasant few minutes chatting with fellow bikers. Jim was aghast. He couldn’t understand how I was still alive after telling two construction workers that their bikes were ‘lovely’. Apparently that word is not used in America to describe another guy’s bike!
Dawn had broken and we felt we could get our photos and roll out of Cleveland. We were making tracks out of town when a heavily-modified Harley zoomed past me and then almost immediately dived for an exit ramp to my right. I thought he was going a bit hard and had not left me a lot of space. Just another road incident, I thought. Jim Winterer was behind me, leaving the FREE stamp and he had a different view of the affair. He saw the Harley guy dive across in front of me, cutting me up. He then saw the guy struggle to make the turn, deck the whole bike down and leave a trail of sparks as he fought to bring his bike back under control. He saw him finally manage to do so. Jim reckoned there was a sudden, very strong smell of ‘adrenaline’ in the air.
West on I-90. The next bonus location was in Clyde, Ohio. I missed the turn off the Interstate and had to go nearly 20 miles further before I could get an off ramp. Both Jim and I arrived at the Twistee Ice Cream booth at the same time, taking two different roads. We talked about our plans for getting back to St Louis by 17:00 (the actual time for the checkpoint was 19:00, but we were both labouring under a 17:00 cut-off).
Bonus 7: The Twistee Kiosk, Clyde, Ohio.
It was now 07:15 in Ohio and we were still a ways from Missouri. Jim headed for the Honda factory in Marysville, while I headed for the Mentone Egg in Indiana. Jim left me with a reminder to be aware of the evening rush hour traffic in St Louis. This was to be a useful reminder, later in the day.
The run to Fort Wayne was uneventful, one of those ‘sit there, twist that’ rides. The weather was hot, the road was good and the traffic was OK. State road 30 out of Fort Wayne seemed to take forever to cross. I was back on a dual carriageway road with traffic lights, towns and frequent stops. After the relative freedom of the Interstate system, it was difficult and it was hot. Then the turn came for Mentone onto Ohio county road 25. I was back home. The road type, the surface and the hedgerows and countryside reminded me of Ireland. I could be comfortable on this small winding road. This was my type of road and it came at just the right time for me. Great fun.
Bonus 8: The Mentone Egg, Mentone, Ohio.
The Mentone Egg is a six-foot-tall egg, marking Mentone as the ‘Egg Basket of the Mid West’. Mentone is a small village, built in the middle of a wonderful stretch of road. The Egg is located right at the centre of the village’s main street, outside the general store. I couldn’t help but wonder what the village’s people thought of all these strange creatures descending on their town with big bikes and lots of gadgets and who were gone as soon as they blinked.
I bought four litres of water and refilled my water cooler. I downed half a litre of Gatorade, refilled my bar-mounted drinks bottle and headed out of town. If the road into Mentone was fun, the road out should have been classified as addictive. Fabulous, open corners, top class surface, a biker’s playground.
It was time to head for St Louis now, on IN25 to IN31 and down to Indianapolis. The traffic built up as I got closer to the city, as it always does. I was very interested when I passed some road works. They had built small motorised buggies, with workmen driving along popping in cats eyes, sitting only a couple of inches from the ground. Strange but effective.
Back onto I-70 at Indianapolis and my Interstate head came back on. St Louis was still 250 miles away and Rally HQ a further 20 miles. Time to get on with it. Refill and ride. The sky started to go dark 100 miles from St Louis. And then it got really black. I knew what was coming and braced myself. Within 20 minutes, the winds had risen and the first rains hit. I was at 70 mph and watching the storm the way a dog watches its dinner. I was giving it a lot of careful attention. There was an exit coming about a mile ahead of me but none any sooner. Then the storm hit. Within seconds, the winds had risen to gale force strength. The rain made it nearly impossible to see the road. The turn-off I had been expecting came just on cue and I made a dive for the exit to get off the Interstate and get into shelter. It was all I could do to hold the bike upright in the wind. Water was flowing down the road, about one to two inches deep. I saw the lights of a petrol station and crawled my way over, fighting the winds all the way. Under the canopy, I drew breath again, putting the bike up on the main stand. Inside, I got a coffee and a muffin and gathered my nerves. I was going nowhere until this one had blown over. The thunder and lightning came quickly, with barely one to two seconds between the flashes and booms. From the relative security of the petrol station, I watched the storm roll in towards me from the west.
The storm seemed to have a life of its own. The electricity cut out in the petrol station for a couple of seconds. The storm was over us, around us, on all sides. Rain covered the ground to two or three inches. Cars were filling the petrol station rapidly. I wasn’t the only one looking for shelter. The storm continued to move east. The winds and the rain eased off. It was around 15:00 and I had to be in St Louis for 17:00. I rang Lisa Landry to tell her I might be late in getting back in. “No problem, keep it safe”. The storm was gone. As if it had never been there. The sky to the west was clear and bright. The sky to the east was black. Barns that had been clearly visible to the east had disappeared. I finished my coffee and saddled up.
Riding through the post-storm countryside was a pleasure. The road had dried out very quickly but the air still was cool from the rain. After the heat of the day, it was very comfortable, for about an hour. I began to close on St Louis. As I came into the rush hour traffic, I saw a bike about four cars in front of me. It was Jim Winterer and we were both caught in the St Louis rush hour. After a few minutes of very slow, stop-start traffic, we started a programme of lane-changing. I live in Dublin, the capital of Ireland, and I suppose that I am used to heavy traffic and making progress under such conditions. I avoided lane-splitting completely but did make liberal use of the lane-changing method. Jim sat on my six and, in no time at all, we were back at Rally HQ with our clocks stopped and out of the rain that had started to fall again. Jim had a huge grin on his face; apparently, he quite enjoyed the Irish system of traffic management.
The car park of the DoubleTree Chesterfield hotel, which served as Rally HQ was a different place to the one we had left four-and-a-half days ago. Gazebo-type tents had sprung up in a line, with crews of people working on bikes under the shade and cover of the gazebos. It looked like a scene from the Paris-Dakar Rally. Guys were having their tyres changed, oil changed and running repairs done on their bikes by pals and supporters. Now my clock was stopped, I unpacked my bike and pulled a rain-cover over the top. She needed no work done to her and she was not going to get any fiddling done. All systems were working well and all bits were still attached. I headed into the hotel and out of the rain.
Homer also was at the Rally HQ. He had made Mentone and headed up to Chicago for the big bonus locations there, only to run into a serious storm in Chicago with hurricane winds of 70 to 80 mph, widespread power cuts and Interstate closures. He had managed to get into a motel that night and back to St Louis. We did our paperwork for Leg 1 and prepared to go into the scoring room. The Rally staff had laid on a beautiful BBQ buffet and we were very glad of the food.
I waited for my turn to sit at the scoring table for the first time. Of course, I had not gotten my paperwork right. The scorer rightly told me to leave the table, correct the oversight and queue up again. Bill Watts was managing the process and told me to take my time, answer the question on the scoring sheet I had missed and he got me scheduled to a scoring table soon afterwards. I had been very particular in keeping my fuel logs accurate during the ride and sailed through that part of the process. The question I had missed was “Are there any bonus locations claimed that were different to the bonus sheet instructions?”. The answer was “Yes” – remember the Honda factory and getting the business card and not a photo. My final total for Leg 1 of the Rally was 77,323 points with zero penalties. I was placed 45th, with 4,001 miles travelled.
Leg 1 over, time to get ready for Leg 2. It was 22:15 on Friday, 24 August. Bonus sheets for Leg 2 would be issued at 04:00 on Saturday morning.
Time for bed.