So here's the Cliff Notes:

5:13am Eastern, Woodstock, GA (Start)
Odometer: 10,834

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2:02pm Central, Mandeville, LA (Just north of New Orleans)
Odometer: 11,364

Fazzio's Restaurant:

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2:40am Eastern, Woodstock, GA (End)
Odometer: 12,017

Route:

The long version:


Last Saturday (12/1/07) I went for a Iron Butt SaddleSore 1000 on my 2003 GSXR-600, 1000 miles in 24 hours. I kept my destination pretty basic and shot down to New Orleans, LA from Woodstock. I had a few other routes but this one worked out the best with weather and commute. I wanted to take a route that involved some twisties of course, but in the end this probably would work out the best, keep it simple on a first attempt and go for the tougher routes later. 1000 miles in 24 hours only requires about a 45mph average speed, but I didn't want to take any chances. This will prove a good idea later on in the end!

Although I do feel as a copycat a bit since there was an organized SS1000 last year going down to New Orleans, but I'm not gonna be too picky about these things!

For a ride like this I had to do a little preparation. For one, I had to try out this long distance riding thing a bit, so I did a few longer rides before then. Only about 500 miles round trip, tho. I also had to do a little shopping. I got an extra set of all the basic tools that I would need in the event of an emergency and I had to so some basic stuff on the side of the road. I picked up a compact 12v compressor and tire plug kit, extra fuses, small cans of WD40 and chain lube, duct tape, zipties, etc. I wasn't prepared for everything, but tried to be prepared for most of it! A throttle lock was also a nice touch, and proved itself essential!

Now, on to the ride!

My plan is to stay pretty relaxed and just pace myself with traffic. Figure if I can keep it around 75mph I can have the ability to stop often if I need to and still make alright time, roll into New Orleans around noontime. My route will be I-85, to I-65, to I-10, to I-12, grab lunch in Mandeville, then go into NewOrleans via the Causeway. This put my miles just under 500. To go over the 1000 total, I figure I'll make a loop around New Orleans via US-90 and I-310. This basically makes a figure-8 around the area. Then to head back a different route via I-10, to I-59, bypass Birmingham, AL via I-459, then back into Atl via I-20. If I'm making good time than I'll swing by Blokes in Covington for the party there. This should end up being more than enough miles in case Google Maps distances prove to be lies.

The route:

New Orleans "Figure 8":

The plan is to wake up at 3am, take care of a few quick odds and ends, and be off with a start time of 4:00. Naturally I wake up late and take forever working on the exact details of my route, so my start gets delayed. 5am and the engine starts:

Ready to ride! Can you tell from my eyes: "WTF am I doing this so early?":

I make it to the start gas station in Woodstock and note my odometer. My temp guage is a bit off as when the bike sits the header heats up the temp probe. It's actually around 35 degrees right now:

Fill up and get my receipt, official start time at the bottom is 5:13am.

Time to roll out!

I roll through downtown Atlanta with no problems, other than the cold. It stayed in the 30's for the whole first tank. I actually had to stop just south of Atlanta because my nose was running so bad from the temps. I took the south leg first to hopefully get out of the cold quicker but it didn't really seem to help, as the morning stayed pretty chilly for a while it seemed.

Light finally came out and I make my first stop in Opelika, shortly after getting into Alabama. Temps were hanging around 38 as I pulled in. I take the opportunity to grab some food from the convenience store, and the lady talks about how it is way too cold to be riding a motorcycle, to which I agree. Chow down on my cheap breakfast and then back on the road:

About 50 miles south of Montgomery, I make another stop at Georgiana, AL. Temps getting quite a bit better now in the high 40's.

Next stop is in Grand Bay, AL. This one was kinda wierd as they were pressure washing the big cover thing for the gas stalls getting the old paint off of it. I filled up while water drips down on me and the bike. I'm also noticing paint flakes are falling off with it, so I fill up with my hand over my gas tank. I also go in to use the restroom. This is one of the larger gas stations with the truck stops like a Pilot station, typically these have larger spacious restrooms to use, and are relatively clean. Well they were doing some maintenance on theirs at the time, the lady said the only other one they had was the porta-potty outside that the truckers use. Yea, not so clean. As I'm walking back to the bike one of the guys pressure washing was exchanging phone numbers from some woman who was filling her car a few moments ago. I'm not sure what that was about but I really didn't want to know. I don't think either of them were close to having a full set of teeth, and I'm being serious. My memories from Grand Bay aren't that pleasant. After that, I promptly leave. My new goal is not to make it to New Orleans, but to leave Grand Bay as fast as possible. I did snap a few shots tho:

Cruise through the rest of Alabama and make it through Mississippi. I'm making alright time and I only got a little traffic while getting through Mobile but other than that, smooth sailing. In fact, the rest of AL, MS, and early parts of LA traffic was hauling ass. And the temps were warming up in the 50's and 60's. Although I'm still pretty comfortable on the bike, I do notice I'm using the throttle lock much more, and I'm fidgitting around keeping comfortable. It was interesting as I came into Louisiana all the names on the exit signs start getting a bit French-sounding. I couldn't help but pronounce them in my mind with a bit of a cheesy French-accent. Okay, maybe this is the part of the trip where the distance starts taking its toll on my brain!

Finally make my way into Mandeville on I-12, to make one of my destinations: Fazzio's Restaurant. Ken (ThunderPunk) gave me a heads up about this place so I had to check it out. Kinda like Italian food with a local twist. I decide to not go in with all the gear so I leave my jacket and overpants on the bike and swap the Alpinestars track boots for some tennis shoes. I'm a bit late as I wanted to get in before noon, and it was like 1pm or so. There was a few big groups there so even though it was just myself I had to wait a bit to get a seat. I order a fried seafood plate, and it was good! Definitely make it out there if you get the chance. The service was awesome and the food was real good!

Ready for some food:

Fazzio's:

There was actually a group of old ladies there waiting with me to get a table. They saw I was by myself and actually asked if I wanted to join them. I declined and told them I would probably bore them! Then they asked: "Are you from here or are you visiting?", so of course I tell them I rode 500 miles from Atlanta to have lunch here! The look on their faces was awesome! Naturally they nicely ask "Why?" and I simply told them that a buddy recommended this place so I figured I should try it out. They kind of looked at me wierd from then on, and I'm pretty sure they didn't want me to sit with them anymore. I think they figured I wasn't normal at that point. When the hostess told me to follow her to the table, another lady leaned over to me and said "I hope you order something good". Classic!

Get done with that and gear back up. I'm pretty stoked because I'm not really sore much at all and to be honest, at this point I'm ready for another 500! I had wanted to take a detour and ride down Bourbon St., but with me being so late I figured I should probably skip it. If traffic was bad it would really take it's toll on my schedule. So I make the decision to just make a loop around New Orleans and leave it at that. The only thing that sucked was I couldn't really think of a good place to take a New Orleans picture with the bike, so I got none. I guess it'll give me an excuse to head back sometime in the future! Mardi Gras?!

At 2:30pm I head towards the Causeway which is a 25 mile stretch of bridge thats basically a shortcut that goes into New Orleans. I pay my toll and head off. It's pretty nice, you basically head off into the Ocean and can't even see land for a while. Boats were out there doing their thing and rays of sun were shining down and it was pretty awesome actually. Unfortunately the "seams" of the bridge weren't that great, so my bike felt like it was hitting a big pothole. Every 2 seconds. For 25 miles. Getting my GSXR setup for track duty by Superbike Italia started to seem like a bad idea. I haven't confirmed it yet, but I'm pretty sure I'm about 1/2" shorter!

Here's a random pic I grabbed online, the thing just doesn't end:

Finally make it into New Orleans. I head out on US-90, which basically circles around New Orleans. I didn't really realize that it turns a regular road with traffic lights most of the way. I lost a lot of time here too. And not really a good side of town it looked like either! The area definitely had character. I would have liked to snap a few pics... but... figured I was better off staying on the bike!

Make my way out to Interstate 310 and head back north, completing the figure-eight. This is pretty much a bridge and goes through some serious looking swamps! I was not expecting to see a plane flying so low, and little did I know there is a friggin airport in there! It literally must be in the middle of a swamp. The condition of this road isn't much better than the Causeway. Grab a stop to get gas, so I have a receipt from the longest distance out on the trip, which I get at 4:30. Meet back up with I-10 which leads me back out of New Orleans. The interstates are getting even worse and I swear they layed down a few speedbumps on I-10! Holy hell my back is hurting pretty bad by now. Fortunately getting out of New Orleans meant getting to better interstates, so my back pain went away.

Since I came in on I-10 via the southern route, I decide to head up I-59 and come into Atlanta via I-20. This wasn't such a good idea. It was getting dark, and there really aren't any exits on I-59. And not only that, but the ones that you do see every 20 miles, don't have any exit signs for them showing gas stations. Cause there were none. This was the only part of the trip that kinda freaked me out, the first gas stop was okay, but when I needed gas a second time it got cut a bit close. My light was on for a bit and I had to pass one exit since it didn't have anything. There wasn't a "good" exit for a good 50 or so miles, literally nothing off of the few exits for at least 50 miles, and the exits were just roads, nothing stating a town name at all. And all of I-59 appears to be swamp on both sides. Not good! I'm starting to think heading WAY out of my way more west going north on I-55 would have been a better idea, if not mostly just safer.

I-59 joins up and shares the interstate with I-20 and finally I'm back to normal civilized interstate! I pull off immediately at a Pilot station and take a break! This is around 7:30pm. I was pretty glad to get off of the bike at this point, as I heard some Rod Stewart song on my last fill up in Poplarville and it was stuck in my head for the whole 120 miles. Naturally I don't know the song at all so all I hear is the same chorus over and over. Yeah. Having never been on quite such a long ride, I figure nows a better time than any to take care of chain maintenance. It's been a while since I've done it without a rearstand:

Chain lube for the bike and a cold water for me:

This exit is in Meridian, MS pretty much right at the border of MS and AL. Head back out and the cold starts back up again. I had been doing fine using the throttle lock every so often and about every 50 miles standing up on the bike for a few miles definitely helps a lot! But still, this is where it starts getting tough. With both the cold and the dark, my riding starts to get a little "loose" for lack of a better word, definitely not bad but I can tell it takes more than usual to stay focused. I make my way to Tuscaloosa, AL and make another stop, this one was pretty quick.

Back out and uneventful, make it all the way and see the Leeds, AL exit. I'm about 90 mile into my tank, but hell, the track is so close to the interstate, I figure why not:

I need to figure out how to make it so in darker pictures the reflections do not drown out the picture without using a slow shutter speed. I wanted a pic by the big lit sign off of the road but there was a lot of traffic heading out from the track, so I figure there was something going on there over the weekend. Make my way back and stop at the Chevron gas station that everybody stops at on their way to the track. Currently it's about 10:30pm local time. Then back on the road. Between here and Georgia the interstate is messed up and split with individual lanes. There's no one out there so I take the left lane and figure the chances of seeing a cop. I'm cold and tired, and decide to make up a *little* bit of time. Make it into Georgia pretty quick, stop at the first exit I can get to, Temple, GA, about 1:12 local time:

Give Tiff another call. I could tell pretty easy I was late the whole second half of the trip as every time I called, she questioned it! "You're ONLY just now getting into New Orleans?!" "You're STILL in Mississippi?!" "You're STILL in Alabama?!" "You're JUST NOW getting into Georgia?!" Yea, LOL, so she wasn't so impressed with the timing! I am horrible at planning how long things take. I wanted to make it out to Blokes for the party but by the stop in Temple, I'm starting to think that it wouldn't be a good idea even tho I wanted to. So I figure I'll just call it and head straight into Woodstock. To be honest I could have definitely gone the extra distance to Covington and back to Woodstock, but I didn't want to cut it that close. It's already 1:30 and I'm not that much past the Georgia border. There's no doubt in my mind I could have gone the distance though, mentally, even in hindsight.

This is also where I realize I'm not so "out of it" anymore. I'm back in my regular mindset and pretty relaxed again, even in the cold. Not really fidgetting around anymore. I decide to not use the 285 bypass and again go up downtown Atlanta via the I-75/I-85 connector. It's lit better anyways which seems to make a difference to me. Make my way up I-575, make my Woodstock exit. It's been in the low 40's for the whole last leg. Finally roll up to the original BP that I started at! 2:40am!

Start and end:

The total trip odometer: '1',182.8 miles total:

Back safe and sound, I AM READY FOR BED!

I figure my rear would not have as much roundness as it did:

Definitely a good feeling. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be being on the GSXR but the cold really made it noticeably more tough. (I think) I never really hit "the wall" that I heard a few people talk about. I stayed pretty relaxed and if I felt I had to stop, I did. There is no doubt in my mind if it stays warm, the 1500 miler can be completed in 24 hours on the GSXR as well. This will be my next "endurance" ride. I plan on doing a lot more long distance riding, but the timed event kept me from enjoying a little bit of my trip. I'm glad I did it, but next time, it will stay casual. Just about all of my pics were pretty boring cause I didn't have much time to do much else!

Dan told me that once I ride a true "touring" bike, that I will get spoiled, so my plan is to NEVER ride one. If I don't ride one, I'll never know how nice it is!

It also helped to have my GPS. I didn't get a chance to install the power hookup, but used it on batteries through my trip around New Orleans. I was surprised I could actually use the touch screen pretty well through the clear plastic on my tank bag. Next time I will have it on during the whole trip!

Oh, and Tiff had a nice surprise for me when I got in: