1990 K75RT - My Iron Butt Initiation

This K75 gets honorable mention among the list of K bikes I've owned because I bought it as a parts bike so never really considered it a bike I owned and rode but I did do my first Iron Butt ride on it.

I bought this bike as a parts bike to get some fairing panels after my "real" K75RT found some sand at a downhill stop sign and violently threw itself to the ground as I stepped off of it.  At the time I purchased this other K75RT it had about 179,000 miles on it. It was getting pretty old and tired but still ran and rode well.

It was located near San Diego.  I'd thought of doing an Iron Butt Association Saddle Sore 1,000 (1,000+ miles in less than 24 hours) before and this seemed like a good opportunity to get my IBA feet wet.

I flew down to Ontario, CA on 12/12/03 and spent the night at the seller's house. I got up very early the next morning and geared up for the ride. My official departure time was 5:04 am. Riding up through California on I-5 was a breeze - sunny and dry the whole way.

I'd been watching the weather forecast for my route and knew that there was a cold storm front coming into Oregon that evening.  This gave me further incentive to do the ride from San Diego to Seattle in one day.  Otherwise I'd probably get snowed in in Oregon for who knows how many days.

At about 750 miles into my ride, I hit the Oregon border just as dusk was setting in. And of course it started to rain.  I've ridden/driven the I-5 California-Oregon border countless times and it seems as though Mother Nature knows exactly where the border is since Oregon is usually wet and California dry. The further I rode up into Oregon, the rainier and colder it got.  The nasty weather front was coming on full bore.

I quickly discovered that the supposedly waterproof riding boots I'd bought specifically for this trip were indeed waterproof - but the wrong way. Once water got in them it never left so my boots were quickly filled with rain.  I literally poured all of the water out of my boots when I stopped to gas up in Canyonville, OR about 100 miles after the border  .

When I got back on I-5, it started to snow.  Fortunately it was a wet snow and not sticking yet so traction wasn't an issue. However, with the wet snow sticking to my bike's windscreen and helmet shield, combined with the glare of oncoming headlights in it, I could barely see ahead of me.  I was forced to slow down to about 40 MPH and navigate by the tail lights of the cars around me on the freeway.  I really couldn't see at all and I was getting pretty cold. It wasn't very fun. And by now all of the layers of clothing I had on (mostly ski stuff and a pair of 501s underneath my riding gear) were getting soaked.

Before this trip I'd always though that heated grips were for wimps.  This was the first bike I'd ridden that had them. I don't think that without them and the neoprene hunting gloves I had on that I could've made it that night.

After about 40 or 50 miles of riding in the snow, it finally turned back to a heavy rain.  I was very glad to have beaten the brunt of the storm that was coming since the snow would soon be sticking to the pavement.

After over 200 miles of heavy rain and snow in Oregon, the rain finally started letting up a bit so I stopped at the truck stop in Halsey to gas up at a little after 8 o'clock.  By now everything I had on, with the exception of my helmet's interior, was completely soaked.  Until then I'd just done very quick gas stops in order to beat the storm and maintain a good pace for the SS1K so at this point I had about 9 hours left to complete the remaining 260 miles or so. Given how soaked I was, I decided to have dinner and a couple of beers at the truck stop's bar.

The first thing I did was go into the bathroom to get my soaked long johns off.  I grabbed a booth, ordered a beer and a big bowl of clam chowder for dinner and then started hanging my soaked clothes on some of the available chairs around me.  Without even being asked, the gal tending bar went to truck stop's hotel and grabbed me a big stack of towels that I could use to dry myself off and wring some of the water out of my clothes.  Of course when I told some of the people in the bar where I'd come from and what I was up to they all told me that I was crazy.

After about 70 minutes, I was fed, somewhat dry, gassed up and back on the road. The remaining 260 miles were pretty uneventful with only some on and off medium rain between Halsey and my home in Seattle. I made it home at 1:48 with a total of 1,231 miles under my belt for the day.

By that time I was on my second wind and felt very awake and alert. I considered going out and riding another 270 miles just to make it a 1,500 mile day but common sense got the better of me as I decided to have a couple of beers and hit the hay.

Here's a map I made of my SS1K ride:

And here's my mileage log:

(The odometer reading for my IBA log doesn't agree with the 179K figure above because the instrument cluster had been replaced at some point in its long life.)

Out for respect for its long history (180K miles) and the fact that it had performed so well in getting me home from San Diego, later in December I took it for a nice long "last ride" in the SW Washington countryside before "decommissioning" it and making it a parts bike. (The picture at the top of the page.)

Aside from the fairing panels I needed, I also ended up getting lots of upgrades for my "real" K75RT from it - heated grips, Progressive fork springs, a Progressive shock and a gauge panel for the fairing.

Also notable is that when I parted it out, I sold the final drive to Paul Glaves who used it on his famed 340K+ 1986 K75, "Old Smokey."

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