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Iron Butt Rally starts next week

Yeeha! Stephen

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TWT posters and Dallas area residents Charlie Clemmer (Rocket Cowboy) and Bo Griffin (Bo Griffin Rides), are on their way to Spartanburg SC, to participate in this years Iron Butt Rally.

They had a good send-off Monday night with friends signing Good Luck cards and generous donations of Monkey Butt Powder for both.

Follow their adventures on Charlies and Bo's blog entries.


Good Luck Charlie and Bo! :clap:
 
Too cool!! I know Rocket_Cowboy has been into the distance riding for a long time. Has he ever done the IBA Rally before?
 
It's the first attempt for both riders. Charlie and Bo, both have been into that long distance stuff for a while.

I met them both through the Motorcycle Tourers Forum which is an Ant Hill of long distance ride enthusiasts.

While I seriously doubt my qualifications as a sideline reporter, I did find some things interesting about their approach to the Rally. From the outside it looks like they are contrasts in style.

Both guys are riding BMW's. Both riding without a network of support teams, and both told me the goal is just to finish and to place well. From there though, there is some humor in the their differences (funny to only us MC people I'll bet).

Bo is riding a BMW 1200 Adventure... Charlie a BMW 1200 RT.
Bo's riding with a stock fuel tank/system... Charlie has an Aux tank.
Bo has been doing practice runs all over the country, Colorado, Tennessee and such, while Charlie admits he hasn't done any ride training.
Bo has 2 GPS's and one computer... Charlie came from the Department of Redundancy Department and has 3 GPS's, multiple cameras, and 3 cell phones!

The kicker for Charlie and maybe no so funny to us BMW riders... is he's carrying a spare Final Drive complete with a vial of pre-measure FD lube!

Too much!

Both Bo and Charlie are great guys. I hope everyone gets the chance to meet and talk to them some day. You'd find the experience interesting.


IBA Rally SPOT Trackers

IBA Rally Info and other's Blogs
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:tab It was Charlie that helped Get TWT really rolling years back when I was first getting started. The first six months of our existence was on a shared server with some hosting service for $10 a month. That was a disaster!! The site was down more often than not. I ran into Charlie on CycleForums and he offered to help me out with the hosting. He set me up on one of his machines and cut me a smoking deal. He provided exceptional technical support, both for the server and for running the forum software. For the first couple years TWT was around I leaned on him pretty heavily for the technical stuff. Eventually, changes in his jobs required him to get out of the hosting side of things and we tried using another service. That lasted about six months. This was when we were always getting those "server busy" messages. It was in Oct 2007 that I finally made the decision to purchase a dedicated server for TWT. Charlie gave a LOT of time and expertise to help keep things running smoothly here! I REALLY appreciate that!

:tab I don't know that I've ever gotten to meet Bo yet.
 
I don't know about you all, but I am so disappointed the SPOT pages are password protected this year. I do not have the privilege of personally knowing any of the participants, other than through various forum postings and vicariously through the legend that follows each of them. But have really enjoyed following their progress during the rally via the trackers.

I wish the competitors good luck on their rides.
 
The kicker for Charlie and maybe no so funny to us BMW riders... is he's carrying a spare Final Drive complete with a vial of pre-measure FD lube!

Too much!

Now THAT is funny / scary / being prepared for the worst.

My best to both of these guys. I admire the drive it must take to ride a thousand miles a day, eleven days in a row.
 
Now THAT is funny / scary / being prepared for the worst.

Unfortunately, it's not that far fetched to need to use that spare FD. :miffed:
He increased his chances of reaching his goal tenfold with that spare!

Good luck to all the competitors! :rider:
 
Re: final drives, Warchild over on ST.N had this observation. I suppose this pretty much sums up what the BMW folks are frantically trying to fix in their product line and shrinking LD community support.

"The number of BMWs in the Start Line is significantly down from previous years... no need to discuss why; it's clear among the LD community why this marque doesn't have the following it used to. The number of Gold Wings is way, waaaaay up as a result of beemer owners punting their broke-**** machines.

Further, the number of FJR1300 riders is significant up as well - again, thanks to Motorrad. In fact, the FJR1300 is the highest representation of ANY sport-touring bike... there are nineteen FJR1300s on the Start Line this year, just under 1/5th of the entire field.

It ain't all bad news from beemerland, however.... there is a mid-60's era BMW BMW R60/6 entered... Joel Rappoport's, and it has 512,000 miles on it. He is the original owner.

Strangely, there are NO Suzuki bikes, other than the two 1976 Suzuki Rotary RE-5s in the Hopeless Class. Kinda wierd that no V-Stroms are entered"
 
Don't blink, but there's a KLR in the field as well. Also, it seems that several of the BMW riders are carrying spare FD's.
 
Well, one of the 'zook RE-5s is out before the first checkpoint (maybe not a huge surprise, but kind of dissapointing), as well as one of the BMWs with "significant driveshaft problems" (even less of a surprise?).

With the theme of the rally, it's gotta be almost certain that Dealey plaza will be one of the bonii. I wonder how to figure out when they'll be coming by...
 
I must be blind. I see that they welcome spectators to come to the main checkpoints, but I can't for the life of me figure out where they are.
 
I must be blind. I see that they welcome spectators to come to the main checkpoints, but I can't for the life of me figure out where they are.

That's because they've banned any blogging or updates of any sort, including public SPOT tracking, on penalty of disqualification.
 
That's because they've banned any blogging or updates of any sort, including public SPOT tracking, on penalty of disqualification.
Yea, but aren't the primary checkpoints supposed to be known? It doesn't have anything to do with status or anything since there's a two hour window for everyone to show up during. I mean, reading the status listed, we already know the first checkpoint.
 
Yea, but aren't the primary checkpoints supposed to be known? It doesn't have anything to do with status or anything since there's a two hour window for everyone to show up during. I mean, reading the status listed, we already know the first checkpoint.

Ah, gotcha! I didn't realize you were just trying to figure out where the checkpoints were. From here...

Checkpoint 1 - Wednesday, August 26, 9 - 11pm Scoring opens at 5 pm
Pheasant Run Resort
4051 East Main Street
St. Charles, IL 60174
800 474 3272

Checkpoint 2 – Sunday, August 30, 9pm – 11pm Scoring opens at 5pm
Doubletree Hotel Santa Ana/Orange County Airport
201 East MacArthur Boulevard
Santa Ana CA 92707

Finish – Friday, September 4, 9am
Red Lion Inn at the Park
303 W. North River Drive
Spokane, WA 99205
Phone: 509-777-6300
Fax: 509-777-6313
 
Charlie is in 78th, and Bo is 59th after leg one.

For KLR fans, the lone KLR entered this year is in 73rd after leg one.
 
Too bad they don't have a RSS/Twitter/Blog setup from the IBA folks, not the riders, so we could follow it closer then the daily updates.
 
TWT posters and Dallas area residents Charlie Clemmer (Rocket Cowboy) and Bo Griffin (Bo Griffin Rides), are on their way to Spartanburg SC, to participate in this years Iron Butt Rally.

I met Rocket Cowboy several years ago when he was riding a ST1300 for the LD rides. He had just accomplished the coast-to-coast ride in a very good time.

I wish him the best. I think he rides a BMW RT now.

RB
 
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