Depending how you look at it, a dozen tough riders or a pack of crazy fools set off from Digby just before sunrise last Thursday.
The 13 bikers were taking part in the Wharf Rat Rally’s first Iron Butt ride.
The plan was to drive 1600 km in less than 24 hours.
Heather Devine of Yarmouth talked her husband Hubert into signing up.
“For the adventure,” she said. “I just like to go, go, go. It should be fun.”
That’s what she said at 6 a.m. Thursday morning at the Digby Irving just before the start of the ride. The Devines rode together, Heather on back.
Scott Cameron and Don Cook of New Glasgow were the first to roar up exit 26 onto the 101 headed for Yarmouth; Cameron on a Yamaha FJR and Cook on a Kawasaki ZX 14. That was 6:13 a.m. The sun was painting the sky a frenzied mix of reds and oranges but it wasn’t up yet.
Cameron has taken part in lots of these rides, even longer ones. He admits he wears special underwear – not diapers – but a seamless boxer to reduce chaffing.
He already has a bunch of badges proving he can go the distance.
The Iron Butt Association sanctions long distance motorcycling events in North America. They award t-shirts and badges to riders who complete certain challenges.
According to the IBA the Wharf Rat event is a “saddle sore”. To get the t-shirt the riders have to be back in Digby in under 24 hours. At four designated stops they had to get receipts to prove they were there.
Other challenges are more like scavenger hunts where you take certain photos in certain places, or find clues or gather information – all for points.
The big event for the IBA is the Iron Butt Rally. To qualify you have to have completed a saddle sore like the Wharf Rat Rally run. Your reward then is you get to do 11 rides all of 1,600 km on 11 consecutive days.
The IBA also provides certificates for riders who do a 160,000 km in one year, or who go from coast to coast and back in less than 100 hours. In Canada you get a certificate if you can make the ride from Halifax to Vancouver all on Canadian roads, one way in less than 90 hours.
The Wharf Rat route took the riders to Yarmouth, Liverpool, Halifax, Port Elgin, Moncton, Fredericton, Saint John, back to Truro and Halifax and through the valley to Digby.
Cameron decided to drop out of the ride on the way back through Truro – he was 45 minutes from home and over two hours from Digby. His rear tire was looking thin.
“Safety first,” said Cameron the next day by phone. “But I’m really glad the rally put this on and I hope they do it again next year. I’ll be there. It’s great for those guys who like to put on some kilometers. For some of us, it’s just about the ride.”
Michael Gaudet of Little Brook was the first one back in Digby. It took him 15 hours and 12 minutes to drive his Harley Davidson Street Bob 1,656 km.
He only had two sips of water, four crackers and two little mouthfuls of cold steak. He only stopped to gas up, went to the washroom just twice during gas stops. Otherwise he was driving.
“It ain’t easy,” he said back at the Digby Irving, a broad grin beaming from his tired and wind-burnt face. “My butt’s okay. It’s my shoulders. I dropped the bike a few weeks ago and hurt my shoulders.”
Gaudet says the important thing is to know your bike and to manage the gas.
Cameron’s partner Cook was second to arrive, forty minutes later at 10 p.m. His legs were sore.
“I need a softer seat,” he said limping into the Irving for something to drink.
Joey Comeau of Meteghan arrived with six riders at 12:40 a.m. He had expected it to be harder than it was. The next day he woke up thinking he could do it all over again.
“We’ve been talking about next year already,” he said Friday night. “I’ll definitely be here.”
The Devines also arrived at 12:40.
“The last hour was brutal,” said Heather the next day. “It was cold, damp, dark. I was frozen.”
Still that was her only complaint.
“It is a great feeling out there,” she says. “It’s just you, the bike and the road. You see a lot of things you don’t see from a car and you smell everything; the woods, the fields, skunks.”
They also enjoyed driving with the others in their group.
“If it was just Heather and me, we might have made quicker stops and been done a little sooner,” said Hubert.
“But it was really fun to ride with the others and to talk a bit at the stops,” says Heather.
And yeah, they’d do it again.
