The Letdown

Tonight I am getting packed and making the final preparations for my first attempt at an Iron Butt run. It is a motorcycle endurance challenge that requires you to ride 1,000 miles in 24 hours. Up until now, the most I’ve rode in one day has been 650 miles.

Thankfully, I will be attempting this challenge in style as myself and 2 other friends each won a free rental from our local Harley-Davidson dealership last month. I will be renting a brand new Street Glide, my buddy Dan will have a Road King, and my other friend Josh will have a Trike. Also accompanying us on our trip is my other friend Andrew on his Heritage Softail Classic.

I can’t wait to hit the road tomorrow with my buds and get this done. Since there won’t be a lot of stopping and site-seeing on this trip, my updates will be sporadic. As of right now the weather is looking fantastic and I’m keeping my fingers crossed we won’t have to encounter any rain.

Here’s a snapshot of the route we’re looking at taking. If we stick to this we should achieve around 1,005 miles.

~Tom

Riding motorcycles in all 12 months of 2012? Check.

It’s now December 3rd and it’s 67 degrees outside. In Iowa. Looks like we might be in for another mild winter just like last year. Totally fine with that if it means more quality time on two wheels.

Riding bikes in winter and/or below 50 degrees is when you start separating the men from the boys. Just how I like it.

I always thought tattoos were pretty cool, even before they got really popular in the last 10 years or so. But seeing every d-bag with Japanese kanji, tribal art or barbedwire armbands really started to turn me off to them.

As an art guy, I rarely settle on any one thing for an extended period of time. Art has to constantly evolve and change and be flexible. As much as I like tattoos, the one turn-off was that it was kind of permanent and I was afraid I’d get something that I’d later regret in life. I was overthinking it too much when sometimes art just needs to be spontaneous.

One of my loves in life is cheering for the Iowa State Cyclones. I’ve been a fan since moving to Iowa as a kid in 1987 when my dad would take me to football and basketball games. I attended ISU after graduating high school and have a lot of great memories from there. Most of my co-workers and friends are Cyclone fans. Our school doesn’t have a rich tradition of athletic success, but that’s begun to change over the last four years.

So after another big win for our football program that now has us bowl eligible for the 3rd time in the past 4 years, me and my best friends are naturally excited. So we decided to all get ISU tattoos together. Four of us got similar tattoos on our right legs. We each have different Cy mascot versions (I’m rocking the 1978 Walking Cy logo), but we all have the ”Loyal Sons, Forever True” script which is a verse from the school’s fight song.

I’m proud to be a Cyclone fan and support this school. Just hoping our Bowl game is somewhere warm this year! Go State!