Chris' Write-up

 Chris' write-up of their IBR gold.  Great read!

https://www.wiltshire.net/2025/07/16/iron-butt-rally-2025-the-fa-fo-chronicles/

2025 IBR Part Two

So, I had a late night on Friday night as I kept an eye on Chris, Stella and Bill finished off an epic eleven days of riding with Chris and Stella successfully finishing their second IBR.

(These pics of the ride finish are stolen from an album provided by a nice bloke who shared them with the world - cheers!)

And not only did they complete the ride, but they achieved a Gold Medal finish by riding 11,437 miles and not missing any of their bonuses.  This included visiting 42 State capitals (compulsory with the ride option they chose) which they had to somehow work into their route....

Today, I along with a few others got to chat with team FA-FO and hear a little about the ride and it was good to see and hear from them after they'd caught up on a wee bit of sleep as they make their way back Bills place to park up the Connie.

Oh, and here's an interesting looking tyre with 13,500 miles on it...

Anyway, another great achievement for the guys and I'm looking forward to catching up with them when they land back in NZ.

2025 IBR

The 2025 Iron Butt Rally started just over 12 hours ago and once again Chris and Stella are over there giving it another nudge.

This year they have entered with one of their mates from the states (how poetic) as Team FAFO.  I'm not sure what the difference is if entering as a team - probably all need to finish to get finishers status.  Maybe I should read the rules.

Anyone, here's a video of the ride start.  See if you can find the mighty Connie:

Spot them?  Oh well, here they are - at about the 1:34 mark.  Yes, I stole a screen grab.

The ride started in Iowa and you can see how much everyone has spread out in just 12 hours on this Spotwalla page.  They really do cover the ground I'd say every state except Hawaii will get a visit by someone.  Canda probably isn't off limits either.

If you're interested there is plenty of stuff on the net and daily write-ups are available on the IBA website.

Go team FAFO!

Chris's FAFO cruise

Last week, Chris and his mate Bill completed a 1,000miler to finish off another epic ride in the States.

They started out on the 30/7 and finished just before 1am on the 15/8 (USA dates) and covered a massive 18,746km.

Along the way they completed a number of IBA certified rides.  I don't know the full list but here's a guess:

• numerous SS1000's (or SS1600's over here)
• Trans Canada (they did just over 6,000km in 86 hours)
• a special concert themed SS1000
• Four corners

Hopefully now he's back home, he'll post up the exact achievements at some stage...

It's been great following on and watching his Spotwalla.

Go that yankee Connie!

Chris & Stella - Eggsanity ride

On Sunday I had the chance to tag along for just a wee bit (500 or so km) of yet another IBA ride that Chris and Stella were attempting.  Not happy with having completed a SS1600 (that incorporated this years NI800 route) on Good Friday, they had decided to do the NI1600 (having ridden the special NI1600 Super Twisty on the day), but with a couple of twists...

First, they decided to start and finish from their home North of Auckland (the NI1600 started and finished in Ohakune) and to also include all the requirements for an IBA Eggsanity Gold ride.  Here I'll just steal the ride requirements from Chris's FB post:

We had to find and photograph 5 Easter themed items: A business sign with 'Egg' in the name, a Bacon and Egg pie, eat an Egg meal, have a chocolate egg and take a photo of somewhere worth investing our Nest Egg with, each of which need to be at least 241km apart from each other.

Anyway, spoiler alert, this meant that they had to ride a total distance of 1938km with the required 1610 for the IBA ride done inside of 24 hours.  They nailed the full whack in 23 hours, 58 minutes!

To meet them I kept an eye on their Spotwalla and then rode out to one of the NI1600 checkpoints up the Pohangina Valley.  I got my timing pretty right too as I reckon it was less than ten minutes until I heard a Concours and R1 coming my way.

Triumph porn

Stella on her Yamaha YZF R1-LD

I'd promised to be TEC so I just settled in behind the two maniacs as we rode back to Ashhurst and then pottered over the Saddle to Woodville and then on towards Pahiatua.  There's video coming but none of the poor learner rider struggling there way over the Saddle holding up traffic and eventually been buzzed by three bikes wearing IBA platebacks.

We gave Pahiatua a miss by turning early to make our way to the next CP at Alfredton before popping into Masterton for fuel.  Chris & Stella also picked up the chocolate egg requirement for the Eggsanity ride and I may also have joined in on this but failed the rest of the requirements...

From Masterton it was back out East again to pick up a couple more NI1600 checkpoints and for Chris to vandalise a sign...

Chris & Stella both have IBA numbers less than 1,000 as they completed the Iron Butt Rally in the US last year.  I have to put up with being #73,269

Cruising out of Martinborough we rejoined SH2 at Featherston for the run over the Rimutakas.  The hill road was typically busy with only a few opportunities to pass.  Then it was onto another interesting section - crossing Wellington City at around 5 o'clockish to get their next NI1600 CP.  This was a picture of the Wellington sign.  I completed failed at getting this CP, preferring to get another picture of the sexy Triumph and the other two.  I did manage to steal Chris's picture off Facebook though...

Besides, this picture has a nice bird mural on it...

I'm not really that gigantic...thanks Chris!

Now it was time to turn around and retrace our steps a bit before carrying on North on SH1.  Probably shouldn't mention the IBA veteran's wee navigational mistake...

The ride up to the next stop in Levin was mostly on the flash new highway so was easy k's and I got to utilise the Tiger's cruise control:

Once we got to the miserable 80km/h section things got a bit boring but Chris and I might have caused a bit of entertainment to the car following when he passed me over a bierstick - it was delicious!

The next stop was in Levin where two bikes needed fuel and the team took on a quick bit of sustenance (I got another bierstick and some rations from Stella's tankbag!).  Then it was around the corner for the guys to pick up another of the Eggsanity requirements - a bank for Nest eggs.  I didn't bother with a photo as I was now well aware that I had only met one of the other ride requirements (mmmm, chocolate).  Not sure why I bothered with my Spotwalla:

More SH1 and slow traffic got us into Sanson where I at last said goodbye and went home for some sleep as opposed to continuing on riding until after 3am like some others...

Anyway, as always it was great to catch up with the guys and join them in just a slice of their mad fun, maybe I should look at another 1600 at some stage...

Oh, and this one didn't survive all the Eggsanity...

Anzac Antics

Three years ago I first met Chris as he was completing a special Anzac SS1600k on his R1 and this year he was at it again on Connie #2 while his wife Stella was tackling it on the R1.  And with their route once again coming through Ashhurst, I really couldn't come up with a decent enough excuse not to go out and say hi.

Colin and I both kept an eye on their Spotwalla tracks throughout the day and then Colin went up to meet them at their Levin stop while I got to wait a bit longer before heading out to Ashhurst to meet them there.  My timing was pretty good as when I checked their track after I'd arrived they looked like they were only about 5 mins out and so were soon on the scene with Colin in tow.

After some quick hellos, Chris and Stella had to hustle to take on a bit of fuel and get their evidence dockets and photos sorted while Colin and I just got in the way for a bit.

Synchronised refuelling

Stella is probably pretty good at fuelling the R1 eh Chillertek?

Important stuff done, it was now back into it for Chris and Stella as they were just over their halfway point so still had plenty of miles to ride.

Colin led us out through Colyton to Cheltenham and then onto Vinegar Hill.  I mostly stayed at the back until Stella and Chris waved me through.  Chris later gobbled me up as I was a bit slower with my PR4's having seen better days.

It was a nice we ride through to SH1 in reasonably temperatures and we had a quite stop there to say goodbye to the iron butters before returning back to my place for coffee via Halcombe and Feilding.

Something different to do on a Saturday night and a nice little ride to catch up with Chris and Stella!

The Hard men's stories

 Finally Chris has finished his write-up of his epic trip around the Top paddock and Julian was also good enough to write about his lap of the bottom paddock.

Both are great reads and Chris's has some good video as well as some of his planning tips.  Well worth a read.

Here are the links:

Riding the Bottom Paddock

Ride around the Top Paddock

Oh, and Julian has made it into Bike Rider Magazine for his efforts - I may need to grab a copy!

Hard men

If you've been paying attention, you would have seen this post a wee while ago about Julian completing an epic 3,015km lap of the South Island in a touch under 48 hours.  Well, last week he went out and did it again - more on that shortly...

A couple of days after that wee scoot Chris leapt aboard his trusty Connie and rattled of a quick lap of the North Island.  He managed 3,367km in 46.5 hours - epic!  I'll post a link to his ride report when he gets around to finishing it - no pressure Chris...

So, we have two hard men out cutting some laps around our wee islands.  Why?

Well, as Chris explains it here, he, (with a little help from his friends) have managed to get three new New Zealand based IBA rides (the 3rd being a special award for someone who as completed both of the paddock runs) approved by the IBA, and someone had to prove that they could be done.

And that's why Julian went out and rode another 3,048kms (with about 4hrs to spare) last week as the weather on his previous ride prevented him from actually completing the bottom paddock (he was unable to finish where he started from).  Rules are rules I 'spose and Julian appears to like spending quite a bit of time on his Indian.  That's his Indian pictured below in an IBA line-up (Julian wanted a photo of all the IBA plates) at the NI800/NI1600 last year - he did both rides one after another that weekend...

Stella's R1, Chris's Connie, Luke's ZX-14, Julian's Indian and my old girl 😍

Stella & Chris - both IBA certified riders 💪
(Stella needs a special award for completing hers on the R1)

Hopefully Chris won't kill me, but I suspect that he has put an enormous lot of work in getting these rides approved by the IBA (thanks Chris!) - which now means that any mad sod can give them a whirl and get a flash certificate...

Congrats Chris and Julian - you guys really are crazy but maybe the crazy got you through those epic rides!  See ya soon!

Hard man

Earlier today a distance riding machine named Julian completed a SS3000K.  That's 3,000km in less than 48 hours!

He actually rode his mighty Indian 3,015km with 25 minutes to spare.  But what makes it even more awesome is that the South Island got hammered by bad weather towards the end of his ride.  There were roads closed, bridges washed away and all sorts of carnage.  Rumour has it that his mufflers were underwater at one stage and he was dodging fence posts as they floated by...

Yes, he is awesome!

IBA Awesomeness

So, a few days ago the 2019 Iron Butt Rally finished and it's been really neat to watch all the posts on their Facebook page.  There are also daily reports and finishing stats available on the IBA Website here.

And there was also big news this year.  A mad woman (and I mean that with the hugest respect) won the event!  And man did she cover some ground: 12,998 miles in 11 days on her FJR.  Now that is impressive!  A bit much for this little black duck...

Full scorecard http://ibr.wvi.com/ibr/2019/FinalRiderScorecards/.

If you're interested in all this madness then I highly recommend you checkout the IBA website and I'll leave you with this cool link - it's an animation showing the travels of all the competitors.  Very trick!

Solstice Ride

So, as mentioned in the last blog, Chris was at it again, riding yet another Saddlesore 1000 for charity.  This time around he had his wife Stella on the back and a mate Luke to join him in his mid-winter madness.  Colin and I approve of this sort of madness and decided to crash the party for just a couple of hundred kms of their ride.  We made plans to meet them in Bulls and ride through to Napier with them.

Our ride over to Bulls was uneventful except for being passed by some scumbags with patches on their backs and absolutely no respect for any other road users.  What made it worse was that their support vehicle also drove similarly and was practically running oncoming traffic of the road.  Over coffee in Bulls, Colin and I both came up with some imaginative ways of sorting out this sort of problem...

While we were getting the caffeine levels up to an acceptable level we got a couple of progress reports from Chris and kept an eye on his Spotwalla page.  Eventually the team turned up for their quick fuel stop.

Racing pitstop

Colin & Stella supervising

Luke filling the mighty 14

Photos taken, Colin and I hustled into our gear so we didn't hold things up and we were soon on the road and then promptly caught up in some slow moving traffic (you may need to open a bigger version of the picture).

After a quiet pootle across to Ashhurst it was time for a trip across the Saddle into the Hawkes Bay.

Ashhurst

Next up was the cruise up SH2 to Waipawa which was about smack on the half way mark (800km) for the guys and they needed some pics :)

Colin really needs a Kawasaki...

Important documenting complete we hit the road again - next stop Bay View.

Here's a little video from the trip up.

Bay View was where Colin and I chickened out and said our goodbyes as the team got ready to hit the wonderful Napier-Wairoa Road.

Still keen as mustard!

Yes, that ZX-14 sounds nice...

Colin and I grabbed a drink and a snack while we figured out how we were going to get back.  I ended up tucking in behind the GSA for a trip down SH50.  We like SH50...

A quick fuel stop in Dannevirke and then I took over the lead to take Colin through some more fun back roads to Pahiatua and then a blast over the track to finish.

Superb winter's day

Sun getting lower on the shortest day

I got home just before five and the fire was lit before getting all of my gear off or even putting the bike away - it was definitely cooling off.  Chris and Co still had a good 5 or 6 hours to go...

But, the great news is that the team all got home safe and sound (Luke even picked up the milk he had promised his partner...And they managed to raise over $1800 for their favourite charity - top work guys!