Iron Butt: 48 States in 10 Days - Ride Report

Slip the bike into gear. Check both sides of the street. Ease out the clutch and give it a little throttle. Turn the tunes up a bit and roll out of the neighborhood. The hard part is over. You’ve convinced yourself to try this; the bike is packed; your gear is ready. 9000 miles to go. It only gets easier from here…

My Name is Brian. I’m a 29-year-old engineer living in Austin, TX.
My bike is a 2012 Street Glide. It is my 2nd Harley and 3rd street bike.
I recently completed my first Iron Butt SS1000 in July riding from Austin to El Paso and back to Fredericksburg TX. After seeing that I could do that, my mind was opened up to the possibilities of all the other places I could ride to if I could get the time to do it. I was hooked.

My job announced in August that our paid time off was going from a “pay-out what you don’t use at the end of the year" to a “use it or loose it” policy. Historically, it’s been hard to take big chunks of time off due to workload and other things keeping me busy.

I saw this as my opportunity to take a ride that would be almost impossible before. With a Girlfriend waiting on a ring and dropping hints about wanting kids in the near future, my ability to take time to myself in the future looked even more difficult.

So, with just under a month to plan and prepare, I decided I was going to ride through all 48 states in 10 days and complete the 48/10 Iron Butt Challenge. According the Iron Butt website, only 200 or so people had ever done this and documented it. (and about 1/2 of those were during the Iron Butt Rally in 2011). In 2012, it was completed by 6 people.

My route would require me to ride an average of ~750 miles per day for 10 days to meet the time limit.

I’m writing this now, the day after I returned to Austin, using my gas/food/sleep log, my receipts, my travel notes and my memory while it is fresh so I don’t loose any details later.
My gear is still mostly packed. The bike is in the shop getting some substantial maintenance done. I’m sunburned, wind burned, tired and still coming down off of the rush of a 10-day motorcycle trip.

I writing this mostly for myself to ensure that I don’t forget the details, but also with the hope that other riders will read it and be inspired to try something like it.

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Day 0: Ride to the Start of the ride and Okies from Muskogee
I ducked out of work an hour early and drove home, said goodbye to the GF, did a final gear check and got on the road around 5pm.

My plan for the day was to ride from Austin, TX to Miami, OK (520 miles) where I would officially go on the clock for the 48 states the following morning. Anybody from the area knows that I-35 from Austin to Dallas is a minefield of construction and traffic back-ups sometimes and as a result I only make it to Muskogee, OK for the night. (I’m no sure why Merle Haggard was hung up about this place… there is nothing there.)