Canadian Border to the Mexican Border
in 23 Hours
It all started with a call to mike saying "Hey Mike, I have an idea". Mike being the good buddy and crazy guy he is, said "Let’s do it". This started the planning of what has become the greatest ride ever.
The idea was to ride our motorcycles from the Canadian border to the Mexican border within 1 day (24 hrs).
This is a ride sanctioned by the Iron Butt Association and carefully checked to determine if the rider/riders actually rode the distance.
The strict rules state that there must be:
1. A start witness in Canada to witness that the rider is in fact in the country at the date and time they said they were.
2. We must have a time start receipt showing the date and time in Canada
3. The rider must keep very accurate receipts and logs of every stop and gas up along the way.
4. The rider must have a end witness to verify that he was in fact in the country at the date and time they said they were.
5. We must have a time send receipt showing the date and time in Mexico within 24hrs of the start time receipt.
All this must be turned into the Iron Butt Association for strict audit to determine the validity of the ride. This is a 2 to 3 month long process done strictly by volunteers.
July 11th 2009 we rode up to Canada to spend the night in Surrey BC so that we could get up early be at the Canadian Border first thing in the morning. We stayed at the Breakaway Motel that was run by Hagen and his wife. They were a great couple.
We knew that our start receipt had to be as close to the border as possible to shave off as much time as possible so we bought a shot glass at the duty free right at the border at exactly 7:05 am on Saturday the 11th. This was the official start time of the ride. We hopped on our bikes and got in line for the border and soon realized that this was not just a quick stroll down the highway. This was a ride fraught with problems and peril. The first thing we ran into was border traffic. We ended up sitting in 30 minutes of traffic and believe me, when you know you have 24 hours of hard riding ahead; you feel every minute slip by. We had not even crossed the border and we were already 30 minutes ahead of time. Because of the tracking sheet Mike had developed beforehand to calculate the trip down we knew that if we kept a steady 71 miles an hour we would have about 1 hour and 50 minutes to play with. However, 30 minutes were already stolen out of that due to the border traffic. As we both crossed the border and saw its pale grey building disappear in the mirror behind us we knew we were on our way.
