 Dancin Dave’s Mileageslaves
By Dave Cwi
BMW OWNERS NEWS
January 2012
It’s About Time
Jack Shoalmire had a
mission: A Saddle Sore 1000
in every state. He was making
progress before he died.
Howard Entman asked for
volunteers willing to
“memorialize Jack’s dream by
riding in-state SS1k’s in each
of the 50 states on one day.”
So on October 15th past, 160
of us started off, at least one
rider per state. There were
several Mr. Indianas and at
least one Ms. I never met or
saw any of them.
At the start of the ride, I was
not in the best riding mood.
So I was grateful that the day
began with some amusement.
Everyone doing a Saddle
Sore needs someone to sign
a “witness state-ment” and
validate their start mileage. So
at 5 a.m., there I was chatting
up the kid “manning” the hotel
front desk. He listened with
some amusement and then,
to make sure he “got it,”
asked the usual question.
“You are doing what today?”
Gotta love the “you’re nuts”
look some folks can’t help but
give you.
We were alone in the hotel
lobby at that hour and my bike
was parked right there at the
front door, just to make his life
easy. He was happy for the
break in routine, stepping
outside to peer at the
odometer and sign my
witness form. He joked that it
was cold enough that morning
to snow. Then he gave me
that look.
I
digested his weather
information along with two
cups of coffee and a pile of
quick cook oatmeal with dried
fruit microwaved earlier in my
room. I’d packed this
concoction ahead of time in a
Ziplock® bag and stopped on
the ride there to fill up my
thermos with coffee. I can
keep coffee hot for 10 hours.
Since I’m addicted to coffee in
the morning, this thermos is
ever present when I ride.
To complete my rolling kitchen,
the bike was packed with Cliff
Bars and a jar of shelled
peanuts, along with a starter set
of fluids—my diet for the day. It
would be gas up, get receipt, and
go to get this over with, ending
16 hours later with a real world
dinner and a beer. Sixteen hours
or less. Set the cruise. Gas. Go.
Receipt. Snack. Pee. Sure was
gonna be fun. Now you know my
mood.
Back outside, I quickly realized
that the kid was right and it was
colder than I reckoned. I flipped
the heated grips switch to max
heat and checked the time. You
see, it’s all about time and doing
the little things to stay
comfortable. All day I’d be
checking what needed to be
checked to stay stress free. But
Harrison Ford in that famous
movie quote had it wrong. It’s not
about the mileage. It’s all about
time. (To prepare for this ride, I
even bolted up an easy-to-view
day-glow-on-demand $8 dollar
clock!)
At this point in my BMW life, a
1000-mile day is not a challenge.
I’m not “bragging” but just
remarking, and it’s true for lots of
other riders. For 2011, the
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 Dancin’Dave’s
Mileageslaves
Shoalmire ride would be my
fourth Saddle Sore for the
year. But for some of the 160
running around today, this
would be their first really long
day.
They were lucky. For most of
the country the weather was
perfect. But for many of these
newbies the real challenge
ahead was not the miles but
old fashioned boredom. The
ride can at some point in time
drive you nuts if you’re
continuously looking at the
odometer to where you start
the inevitable mileage
countdown—one thousand
bottles of mileage on the wall
and now thank God the
odometer shows just 999. The
boredom and the countdown
will especially work their
magic if you get
uncomfortable on your bike.
Even today, that thought
takes me back in mental time
to my early days on BMWs,
when for me a 1000-mile day
was anything but “routine.”
Picture an Airhead, ’76
vintage. It’s dark; I’m going
uphill on the Pennsylva-nia
Turnpike. I’m a man on a
mission to get home whatever
it takes and however late I get
there, as I have to be at work
the next morning. I’m on my
first long day forced march—
north Chicago suburbs back
home to Baltimore.
There is a saying: If you don’t
mind it don’t matter. But I was
sure enough “minding” that
night as I dealt with killer
discomfort. Maybe that was a
good thing, as for sure there
was no danger that I’d get
bored and fall asleep. I was
counting down mileage and
very aware of how many more
miles I had to go, wondering if
I could stand it. Some freakin’
trigger spasm or knot or
whatever in my upper back
had me wanting to scream.
So I did, and it got better.
That early episode got me
started on how to fix my
riding, in this case figure out
and stop whatever it was that
triggered that spasm. Over
the years I learned to fix lots
of other things making for
discomfort. But if those other
guys on the Shoalmire ride
are counting down the miles
while just now finding out
what they have to figure out,
then they’re not happy.
But there is another challenge
--2--
here. All you are doing is sitting
there and stopping on occasion
for gas or to pee. It is no great
accomplishment, especially if all
you are doing is setting cruise
control and rolling to get it done.
The problem is simple: You must
do the ride and stay within the
confines of the state. See the
problem? It’s not as if you’re
going anywhere. In my
case, the “nowhere” I’m riding
boils down to Interstates I’ve
known for years. I’m going to be
forced to see again lots of stuff
I’ve seen a million times. How to
make this more interesting?
Well now…maybe there are local
folks who have never done a
Saddle Sore who might want to
give it a try, so at least I’d be
shepherding and tormenting a
group of newbies and that might
be fun. We could do it the Raider
Way and have a good pre-flight
dinner and end the ride with
another one.
In desperation I sent out emails
to clubs and riders I knew in
Indiana. My mind was saying
this. Help. I may die of boredom.
Share the misery. But instead I
said: This is a special IBA-
certified ride with a special
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Mileageslaves
certificate and the price of the
award is even lower than
normal. Gee…if you’ve never
done a Saddle Sore, now is a
good time. Etcetera, et cetera,
et cetera, schmooze and
more schmooze.
No takers. I was to be a
Raiding Party of One for
Indiana (although there were
Raider List folks doing the ride
elsewhere). [To get on the
Raider Ride List visit
I understood the larger global
significance of being a part of
this ride, but truth be told I do
better when a ride has a per-
sonal purpose, like taking me
back to a great rally, or taking
me 1,000 miles to end up on
great new technical roads with
the 1000-mile run allowing me
to stay on those great roads a
day or two longer, as I only
had to spend one day to get
there.
Running around the state of
Indiana chasing my tail is not
getting me anywhere on my
own personal journey. That
said, there was no doubt I
was going to do the Shoalmire
ride. I now had a reason to
ride a Saddle Sore. Putting
the idea into my head was no
different than a pusher
showing me my drug of
choice. Hold that thought.
Nobody wants to say they are
addicted to something.
Instead, we all come up with
some other rationale. But in
fairly short order following that
first long ride out of Chicago, I
was feeling no pain and
fabricating reasons to ride.
I remember one example in
particular of my stunning
ability to fabricate a rationale
and purpose. It was decades
ago, or so it now seems,
that I agreed to stop by for a
few hours and help Paul
Zarcovich assemble “soft
clutches”—a gizmo he would
sell as a vendor at that year’s
national rally. It gave me an
excuse to ride west to a part
of the world I had yet to see,
in this case Okla-homa, as up
to that point I’d not been far-
ther west than St. Louis.
Besides, my
Airhead could use a soft
clutch properly installed.
(Don’t ask what harm these
could do to your clutch if not
properly adjusted.)
So I was not just going for a
long ride because I had to. I
was getting a soft clutch for
free and installed, hanging
with one of the last old school
vendors, and pushing farther
west. I started that ride
--3--
somewhere in the southeast. By
noon, the temperature turned
Africa hot. As the temperature
rose, the lure of the West waned.
So I checked in by phone.
“Paul. Give me a reason to suffer
through and end up today at your
place. Please. Motivate me.”
“Dave, I’ll have a cold beer
waiting for you.”
Just what the Doctor ordered
when you are young and stupid.
Right after that ride I made it my
mission to learn about vented
gear and air wings and how to
stay cool.
Staying cool was not going to be
a worry on the Shoalmire ride. By
the time I gassed up and got my
first receipt, I was already cold.
But the heated grips would soon
be heating up and I had layers
aplenty, so it was time to wonder
if my proposed Interstate mind
game was going to work.
What deliberate delusion was I
counting on? Very simple. I
planned to delude myself that I
was actually going somewhere.
So I was not simply running I-69
to get to the border and then
turning around. Oh no. I was
running to Howell, MI, to see
Tiffany, our famous Great Lakes
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Mileageslaves
Challenge Ride Witness.
When I turned around just
before the state line instead
of continuing on to Michigan,
it’s because I suddenly had
an over-powering desire to
visit Greg for dinner near
Greenwood. You get the
point.
It would all be over in 16
hours or less as long as I just
gassed, got a receipt,
snacked, and pee’d.
To make things a bit easier, I
decided to start in a part of
the state that I didn’t know
well—an area that might in
fact be new and even
interesting. The best we have
is southern Indiana. I’d do
well to spend time in that
neck of the woods, because
once I left there I would soon
enough confront the
inevitable mind numbing re-
hash of familiar mile markers
offering no surprises while
triggering an unconscious
awareness of time still left to
ride - just like your daily
journey to work tells you
whether you’ll be there on
time and you know just by the
bill-boards and junkyard dogs
you pass. Maybe down here
in the south I could find that
feeling of time suspended.
Maybe I could achieve that
oneness with the road driven
by the wonder of new sights.
Maybe I could get in the zone.
Quite addictive.
Maybe it’s time to finally talk a
bit about addiction. I’ve been
credited with inventing the
term “mileage slave” some
decades ago, when I used it
for the first time as part of the
title of this MOA column. The
recent October ride makes me
wonder if there’s a darker side
to this mileage infatuation; that
October ride and the
circumstances surrounding the
death of Amy Winehouse.
I know what you are
thinking. Where the heck is
that segue leading?
You see, it was different down
there in southern Indiana that
cold morning. It was pitch
dark. The Interstate was
empty. My headlight carved a
tunnel in the night and many
portions of the road were cut
into low hills so there was no
horizon line on either side, but
just a wall. My ride would go
down into gullies and rise up
again and drop.
Do not call it hypnotic.
I looped from Corydon, where
I started, and went west
toward the state line, getting
off in Cynthiana where
MapQuest said I’d find a gas
--4--
station. That meant I could
get a receipt even at that
early hour and then turn
back east reversing. Then
do this loop again because
it felt good and only leaving
once the sun came up and I
could see my surroundings.
This gets hard to explain as
there’s more.
I ride with ear plugs and no
sound; no music, no
nothing. So in that pitch
dark there was nothing but
the roar of the night and
that strong beam of light. In
the zone. No time. Moving
through a landscape with
no familiarity and no cues
and no memory triggers
and no innate awareness of
the distance to the next
turning, so no impatience to
get there as there was no
“there” anyway and no time
for me.
It’s all about time.
So I am wondering now
about the newbies starting
on their first journey via this
past October ride and about
myself. I am considering
this bit of news about Amy
Winehouse. It seems she
died because she relapsed
into drinking booze after an
absence and her system,
once able to handle it in
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Mileageslaves
whatever amounts she drank,
could not handle it on that
last day. As recounted in the
news:
Tolerance develops in part
because the brain is a very
conservative organ. . . That
means that the same dose of
a drug will over time produce
a smaller effect. And this
increasingly unsatisfying
experience prompts addicts
to take more and more.
Eventually, users need
extreme doses to get the
same high.
I understand the
significance of this. Don’t
stop riding. It could kill you.
See you down the road!
© 2011 David Cwi
--5--
Raiders are Quick In The Corners and
Hard On The Miles
sm
Each year Raider
Sport Touring organizes “rides” including
the Great Lakes Challenge, Nova Scotia
Blast, and the Ozarks Rendezvous, Get
on the ride list here:
For 2012 we are again in the West on
great technical roads in Colorado,
Wyoming, and Montana. These rides are
free and limited to small Raiding Parties.
In September we have our Ride Clinic
with Susan Galpin … Can you survive
your training ride with that QOB?
If you are serious about your distance
riding you need serious ride planning
tools. Check out Raider Weather and the
other tools at the web site which work off
your smart phone or your computer.
Raider Weather can be used each day to
literally find your weather at every stage of
your trip. Road closure and other data is
also there for you.
Get on the list and you wil also get our
soon to be released overview of trip
planning via free internet tools that can
also push the route to your GPS.
Going to Jacksonville for the IBA 2012
Dinner and the Florida 1000? Contact
dancindave@aol.com We’re planning a
Raider get together and would love to see
you.
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