Thirty Days on the Road – this Year’s Epic Adventure!

My epic adventure this year of 30 days on the road begins in Stafford, Virginia on Saturday, July 18.  My first 10 days on the road will be a thrilling Iron Butt Association ride called 48 Plus! that involves visiting all 48 lower states plus Alaska in 10 days or less.  Ron Ayres set the record in 1998 when he visited the lower 48 states in 6 days and 5 minutes and all 49 states in 7 days and 20 minutes.  I will be thrilled to safely ride through all 49 states in 9 or 10 days.  Then after resting in Hyder, Alaska for a day, I plan on a relaxing ride back through British Columbia and Alberta, Canada and camping out for 5 or 6 days in Wyoming and Montana.  I will then meet up with some 1.2 million of my best biker friends August 3 – 9 at the 75th Annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

Overall, my route to Hyder will entail a planned 73 gas stops over 8,991 miles.  For those who like calculators, at 10 minutes (very optimistic) for each gas stop, that’s more than 12 hours pumping gas during the 8 – 10 day ride from Stafford, Virginia to Hyder, Alaska!  Argh.  The 48 Plus! ride and the remainder of the trip returning from Hyder, camping in Wyoming and Montana, touring around Sturgis for a week, and then cruising home will add some 12,890 miles or more to my Gold Wing's odometer in less than 30 days.  In context – 12,890 miles is farther than half way around the earth at the equator; it is farther than traveling from the North Pole to the South Pole; and it is twice as far as traveling from Beijing, China across the Asian and European continents to Lisbon, Portugal.  Here is my planned route.

I have a SPOT Personal Tracker so you can track my 48 Plus! adventure and my travels while camping out, visiting Sturgis, and returning home.  I will be posting daily journals on this blog that reports 'states visited' and 'miles traveled' during my 48 Plus! ride, and I will be Tweeting photos and other spontaneous updates throughout the 30 days from my @AmJourney handle using the #IBA48Plus and #BikerHaiku hashtags.  Hope to see you on the road!