Interview - Bob Ray from Madison

Bob is from Madison, Alabama. He currently works for Jacobs Engineering in support of NASA at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He has a wife, Julie, and two sons, Bobby and Ian. Bob is currently working on advanced reconfigurable computing and robotics. He has ridden in three Iron Butt Rallies, the last of which was in 2001 on a Honda Reflex Scooter on which he earned a gold medal finish!

KSC: Bob, what were the bikes you used to compete in your first two IBR's?
Bob: In 1997, I used a Honda Pacific Coast for a gold medal finish. In 1999, I rode a Kawasaki GPz1100 for a silver medal finish. The "gold medal" finishes aren't quite as significant as they may sound. I got the one in 2001 even though I had a lot fewer points than some others simply because I made it to Denali/Fairbanks Alaska and back. Everyone that went to Alaska that year and finished was declared a gold medal finisher. This is largely because Mike Kneebone wanted to tease Bob Higdon about it.

KSC: Do you still own your Reflex?
Bob: Nope. Bought it for the sole purpose of riding it in the IBR after seeing a press release photo of it in one of the magazines (Cycle World?). Modified the snot out of it, rode the Butt, and sold it a couple of weeks after the IBR. hear Ed Otto, who finished the 1995 Iron Butt Rally on a Honda Helix, now owns it.


KSC: How long have you been riding?
Bob: Since 1971. Hmmm. 38+ years. My dad bought me my first bike, a Honda CL175, a little while after taking me to see "On Any Sunday". Have had somewhere around 20 bikes since.

KSC: How long did you ride on a scooter?
Bob: The Reflex is the only scooter I've ever owned. I had it for about 6 months (approx. 20,000 miles). The Reflex was featured on TV a few times, largely thanks to Dave Despain of Speedvision. His show's opening shot had me leading him through a North Georgia corner on it (before he blasted by me on his superbike) for a while. That trip was a lot of fun. Another scooter fan, Bobb Todd, was on that trip. You may know of him through his involvement with the Mad Bastards Scooter Club of Toronto. They have a big ride every year, around Lake Ontario, I think. Bobb has finished a couple of IBRs, too.


KSC: What exactly did you do to the Reflex to make it worthy of the "11,000 miles in 11 days"?
Bob: It has been 9 years, but here's what I recall:

• A. I sent the seat to Rick Mayer for modification. He replaced/reshaped the foam which made a big difference.



• B. Givi shield and rack. Nice stuff.



• C. 3 gallon fuel cell on the rack. Jaz, I think. This gave me a 6.2 gallon total, which is under the 7 gallon IBR cutoff, meaning I didn't have to keep a fuel log for the rally. Still, I got well over 50mpg the entire rally and often ran well north of 300 miles per fill up.



• D. Throttlemeister. A great piece of metal, very useful.



• E. Radio Shack weather resistant CB radio (the old yellow one, got it on closeout). I mounted a whip antenna to the rack and tuned it with a SWR (short wave radio) meter a friend here in Huntsville built (yep, a homemade SWR meter, he's a geek, lol). It was absolutely useless once I got into Canada. But, it looked impressive I guess.



• F. HID lights. Very useful, great light, but the primary reason I put them on (replacing both high and low beam bulbs) was so that I could run an electric vest and gloves. The HID lights use less power than the stock bulbs, freeing up an extra 55 watts for the electrics. The two stock bulbs use 55 watts (low beam) and 60 watts (high beam). The HID bulbs use 35 watts each. This was very necessary in the Yukon and Alaska although I didn't know I was going THAT far North when I put them on.



• G. 2 BMW-type power outlets on the left with a rheostat for one and lighted switches for both above them (vest, gloves) and a cigarette lighter on the right (a nasty habit).



• H. Marine fuse panel under the seat (powered the radio, lights, power outlets, etc.).



• I. Garmin gps mounted on handlebar.

• J. Motofizz seat bag, ordered from England, great bags. This was before Andy Goldfine/Aerostich started importing them.

There was probably more that I did to it, but that's enough. Carried a spare belt and the official Honda shop manual with me. Needed both! You can get a lot of info from the Iron Butt Rally web page simply by reading the stories of the 2001 rally. http://www.ironbutt.com/IBR/2001.cfm

KSC: I have heard good things about Rick Mayer seats. Did you ever have them work on any of your other bikes?

Bob: Nope, but I haven't ridden an IBR since 2001 either. If I do ride another, you can bet I'll be sending the seat to Rick.

KSC: In the 2001 IBR you used a CB radio. What do you use for communication now?

Bob: Nothing. I'm trying to preserve what little hearing I have left. Nothing but ear plugs these days! Tell your younger readers to wear them every time. They'll thank you when they are older.

KSC: Then I take it you don't believe in-ear music, GPS, and communication on the road is a good idea either?

Bob: Not at all. I do believe in it and really enjoyed listening to, for example, The Allman Brothers Band (Live at Fillmore East) while crossing West Texas. I don't think people need a talking GPS, but that's probably just a personal thing. I used a Garmin GPS on the scooter during the 2001 IBR, where I rode the full length of the Alcan highway (Alaska Highway) twice in 8 days. You may recall that the road was carved out of the wilderness during WWII (as we feared the Japanese were going to attack the US mainland through the Aleutians). For most of it's length, it is the only road. My auto-routing GPS kept declaring that I was off-route and that it must recalculate. For thousands of miles, it would do this. I'm glad it didn't talk, and glad I didn't have it wired into my helmet. If it had been wired into my helmet, and kept declaring I was off-route, on the only road for miles and miles, where the only road had been there for 60 years, I probably would have shot it right then and there, on the side of the Alcan, somewhere in the Yukon, in the darkness in the middle of nowhere. For group travel, which you seem to do but I don't, CB radios are great. I listen to CBs to hear the truckers jabbering endlessly about upcoming law enforcement zones. Far more effective then radar detectors, especially in these days of instant on and LIDAR. I rarely use them to talk to others. I just don't hear as well as I used to, so to help preserve what hearing I have left, I don't put speakers in my helmet anymore. My TV already is too loud for my wife.

KSC: It's obvious that the Honda Reflex was up to the job in 2001. Do you think it would work in next year's IBR? What about something like the Honda Silverwing or the Yamaha Majesty, or the Burgman 400 or 650?
Bob: The Reflex would do fine. Although the rules since adopted (about being able to maintain speed up a grade) may prevent anyone from ever riding the IBR again on a 250 or smaller. The only power issue I had with it was trying to pass trucks on the interstate. It'd run at 80mph all day long, except when it encountered the wind coming off the front of a truck. Spent the better part of 100 miles trying to pass a truck in South Dakota. Would draft up the side, then hit the "wall" of air spilling off his front bumper. Driver would laugh at me, I'd shrug, and wait for another downhill to have another go at it. When I was in Canada, with their far slower speed limits, the Reflex was in it's element. A Silverwing or Majesty or Burgman would not have the problem with the trucks I had. Then again, they wouldn't get the fuel mileage I got either.

• 
• KSC: What was your general impression of competing on a scooter vs. a motorcycle?
  Bob: I thought it was the easiest IBR I'd ever done, and the scooter was very comfortable (thanks to the large Givi shield and Rick Mayer's saddle work). Of course, a lot of that is probably because I didn't have any checkpoints other than the finish which was an oddity of the 2001 rally. I just had to ride from Madison, Alabama to Denali National Park and back in 11 days. As they say, "Sit here, twist that." I did pick up some bonuses in Memphis. I didn't want to end up tied with someone who "only did Denali."
  

KSC: Was the Reflex experience just a fluke ride or would you consider owning a scooter 'full-time'?
Bob: I think about it from time to time. Especially when I'm in stop and go traffic and my knees start bothering me.


KSC: Would you ever consider other long-distance rides on a scooter?
Bob: I'd like to try the 100CCC on a Reflex. The 100CCC consists of back-to-back 50CC rides, where a 50CC consists of riding coast-to-coast in under 50 hours. The 100CCC is coast-to-coast-to-coast in under 100 hours. I failed in my first attempt at it in 1997, only completing a 50CC, Jacksonville to San Diego, on a Honda Nighthawk 750. I didn't have a fuel cell on the Nighthawk, so I had to stop for gas every 100-150 miles. Over the course of 2400+ miles, this means a difference of 12-14 fuel stops when compared to a bike with a 300+ mile range between fill ups.
Unknown to me at the time, but Colorado rider Brad Hogue was trying a 100CCC in the other direction, but he, also, was unable to pull it off. A little bit later, I suggested to Randell Hendricks that he give it a go (we were chatting in Vince Putt's speed shop outside of Dallas while Vince was fabricating a fuel cell mount for my Pacific Coast). Randell was the first to finish it (100CCC). Kneebone called him insane at the time. Many have since. After the IBR on the Reflex, I think it'd be a piece of cake - as long as one had a fuel cell.

KSC: Do you belong to a club? If so, what club? Tell me a bit about it.
Bob: No club. I used to ride with others until a guy crashed behind me on a group ride. He wasn't paying attention, I braked, he didn't brake, instead he "layed 'er down". Stupid. The rubber parts get a lot more traction than the metal parts. I swore then I'd only ride with truly experienced riders (IBR guys or AMA-licensed racers). Most of the time, I'm by myself and like it that way.


KSC: I recently had that same thing happen at a scooter rally, but since it was at low speed, I just got dinged and nobody got hurt. In my club we do a lot of group riding. We follow the guidelines of the MSF, and anybody who doesn't get in the right frame of mind usually doesn't ride with us long. You have to know people well to ride with them. Do you agree? Do you have any people you trust enough to ride on a regular basis?
Bob: MSF doesn't want you riding 1000 miles in a day, either! Knowing someone well and knowing how well they ride are two very different things. Even very experienced riders sometimes forget things such as "don't take your foot off the rear brake lever after the rear tire has broken loose while leaned over in a curve in North Carolina." Still, there are some l'd ride with whom I've never met (e.g. Valentino Rossi) and some people that I've known for 30 years around whom I try to not even mention motorcycling. About the closest thing to a riding partner I have is this crazy old Canadian named Bobb Todd (who, being Canadian, lives 1000 miles away).



KSC: What do you like best about riding on two wheels?
Bob: Not thinking about the rest of the world...


KSC: What is your all-time favorite stretch of road?
Bob: Highway 69 between Oakman and Northport, Alabama, before the state highway department straightened out the curves, making the road safer for the common folk (and spending all those federal dollars brought home by Representative Tom Bevill, the "King of Pork"). Oakman is South of my hometown of Jasper, Northport is North of Tuscaloosa. I went to undergraduate school at Alabama and dated a girl in Northport. I would ride very quickly down that stretch of road. Other than that, which doesn't exist anymore, at least not as I remember it, perhaps Highway 6 in Nevada, between Ely and Tonopah, or Highway 101 in California from Eureka North through the Redwoods to Oregon, or Highway 64 near Ducktown, Tennessee, or, or, or. There are a lot of good roads. All over the place. Just ride.


KSC: What do you think about the whole "green factor" of riding a bike vs. driving a monster SUV? Do you ever play into that or make a point of it?
Bob: Not really. Most people are terrified of motorcycles so the subject rarely enters the conversation. This is not to say that I'm not a "greenie" - I've already put a deposit down on a Nissan Leaf. OTOH, both my wife and I drool over the new 400+hp Ford Mustangs. We're conflicted. With the world having already hit "peak oil", it seems likely that I'll never own that Mustang. But, today's 600cc fuel injected sport bikes are faster, better handling, and more reliable than any bike I owned in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I guess they'll have to do. LOL.


KSC: You say that "Most people are terrified of motorcycles". Can you elaborate on that? Why do you think they fear motorcycles?
Bob: Duh. Pain and death.



KSC: What is one odd, interesting, or amazing thing that has occured to you while you were riding?
Note: Bob has directed us to the Iron Butt Association's account of the 2001 Iron Butt Rally for our answer:

"Bob Ray was riding the newest bike in the rally, a 2002 Honda Reflex, to Denali National Park in Alaska. Although certainly an extreme distance and subject to all the vagaries of iffy weather along the Alcan Highway, he did have the advantage of traveling over all paved roadways. At least that's what the maps said. Along his journey he had to stop at Watson Lake to replace the scooter's drive belt. Later Bob came upon the buffalo carcass that was the handiwork of Phil Mann Jr. On his way back south through Canada the little scooter broke down once again. Bob was about to tear down the Reflex for a roadside repair when he noticed a grizzly observing the
process from the forest. Since the big bear was not as curious about the new 2002 model scooter and really more interested in doing lunch, Ray decided to call for assistance and have the Reflex towed to a nearby Honda dealer in Fort Nelson, British Columbia. Every rally entrant was rooting for Bob's timely arrival, as a finisher's party was scheduled at his home in Madison on Friday evening. It is always polite to be in attendance at your own dinner party rather than to BE the dinner at someone else's." (Used with permission from "Mind Game" © 2010, Iron Butt Association, Chicago, Illinois)

To see how Bob's 2001 ride ended and how the Honda Reflex became the only motorbike to finish the 2001 Iron Butt Rally twice read "It's Not Over 'Till It's Over"


KSC: When you were in the middle of Alaska and needed the belt changed, how exactly did you plan on going about that? Had you done it before? I know that generally it takes a specialized tool and/or a couple people to get that done. The clutch housing spins with the retaining bolt and you have to have somebody holding it with a specialized tool while you break the nut loose, or else an impact wrench. After I read the entire story, I was just thinking about that.
Bob: You can jam it with a wrench handle or screwdriver, just like most belts. The rest is just figuring out how to make a sufficient lever/breaker bar (a socket handle plus an adjustable wrench works). Or you could just angrily stomp on the socket handle when you get really tired of the damn thing not moving. You are right in that an impact wrench makes things a lot simpler. You are right in that Honda will gladly sell you a specialized tool. In my case, some people drove by and said they'd have a truck sent out. Nice people. Apparently, it is de rigueur in the Yukon to not leave anyone stranded. Good thing, eh? While I was waiting for the truck, Jeff Earls passed by heading North (I was already on my way back), saw me chain-smoking on the side of the Alcan, stopped, and asked if I'd seen George Barnes. It seemed really odd at the time. I didn't find out until I got back to Alabama that there was a second wave of riders heading to Deadhorse. A few minutes later, a pickup truck showed up and took me and the scooter back to a mechanic in town. Although the mechanic had never seen a scooter before, once I got the plastic off, he said, "It's just like a snowmobile!" When he was done (yes, he had air and an impact wrench), I put the plastic back on, paid the man $30 bucks Canadian, and was buzzing along back down the Alcan. Total time was about two hours from when the belt first disintegrated to when I was rolling again.



KSC: That's a personal insight I didn't get in the IBA writeup. Thanks for that! Bob, you said you've owned a lot of bikes. What were some of the bikes have you owned?
Bob: Telling you around 20 isn't enough, huh? You really want an exhaustive list? Sheesh. Here's 20: Ducati GTL500, Harley Sportster, Harley Road King, Honda CL175, Honda Reflex 250, Honda FT500, Honda Nighthawk 750, Honda Pacific Coast 800, Honda Goldwing 1500, Kawasaki 750 Mach IV, Kawasaki GPz1100, Suzuki GS400, Suzuki GS500, Suzuki GS500 (yes, two of them), Suzuki GS550, Triumph 750 (triple), Yamaha Seca II, Yamaha FZ6R, Yamaha YZF600, Yamaha FZ-1



KSC: That's a heck of a lot of bikes. Why do you think you've changed so much? Is it difficult to find the perfect one? Do you change automobiles as frequently?
Bob: Some I just wore out, some were lost to crashes, some were sold trying to keep the number of bikes in the garage to a level acceptable to my spouse, some never worked very well (e.g. 1975 Triumph 750, Ducati GTL500), some were sold or traded because I couldn't stand to look at them anymore, some were sold because I needed the money. Perhaps the dominant reason is that I keep being lured into the canard that one bike can serve as both a sport bike and a touring bike. Even though I know better. I do seem to change automobiles frequently, too. But some part of that is because I have two sons who, following in their father's footsteps, seem to destroy them with some regularity.


KSC: With regards to riding in the lower temperatures like they have in Alaska, do you find that the bikes (like scooters) with a good-sized fairing adds to the comfort level?
Bob: Fairings are blessed things in the cold and rain.

KSC: In that same vein, what about the various foot positions you can get on a scoot?
Bob: Not enough foot positions (compared with a motorcycle). At least, not if you are over 6'. Don't know how shorter people would answer that question. I've never asked them.

KSC: Do you see any advantages in the storage capacity?
Bob: Yes and no. I was able to carry a lot in the Reflex underseat storage and Motofizz seat bag. But, it is less than a Goldwing or anything with larger saddlebags. I currently ride a Yamaha 600. With Givi 35 liter bags and a Motofizz seat bag, I think I'd have more storage than on any of the scooters, although I haven't put any saddlebags on it. One thing I did learn through the three IBRs is that you need to carry far less than you think you do. I carried a lot more on the 1997 IBR than I did on the 2001 IBR and it wasn't because I was on a scooter - it was because by 2001 I realized I did not need all the stuff I thought I did in 1997.


KSC: You say that scooters do not have "enough foot positions (compared with a motorcycle)". I find a lot of scooterists who are previous motorcycle riders say the exact opposite. They also seem to agree that the comfort level is greater on a scoot, and attribute a lot of that to the various foot positions and body positions you can use. In fact I see older motorcycle riders convert to scooters for this very reason. Why do you think this may be? Do you ever wonder if you might end up on a Reflex, Burgman, Silverwing, or Majesty in your later years?
Bob: On the Reflex, wearing size 12 Aerostich combat touring boots, and being 6'2", there really weren't too many options as to where I should put my feet. With a motorcycle, I have the option of the rider pegs, passenger pegs, a crash bar (e.g. with the Road King), and all the variations there of (right foot on the rider peg, left foot on the passenger peg), etc. On a scooter, I cannot carry my weight on my feet. Everything is on the butt. Note that this is true for cruisers as well. About the only option is to shift one's butt from side to side. That is, sit on the right cheek for 100 miles, sit on the left cheek for 100 miles, relax and sit on BOTH cheeks for 100 miles, refuel, repeat [there's a little Iron Butt insider tactic for you].

I think a lot of older riders switch to scooters because of arthritis (degenerative knees and hips). I may be projecting, as both of my knees ache most days. I'll probably be back on a scooter before too long. I know of several Iron Butt veterans who have scooters at home. One old marine simply has bad knees. Another had a stroke which had left him barely able to hold a bike up at a stoplight.

Scooters are comfortable, especially the maxi-scooters, but they are not sport bikes. They cannot take the place of a sport bike no matter how vocal the enthusiast. They can supplement, in terms of capability, a sport bike in one's garage (spousal unit permitting). They may be able to replace a touring bike, or perhaps 80% of one (they need far bigger alternators, for example). I think I showed this in 2001.

KSC: Indeed. If anyone showed that a 'mere' scooter is a road-worthy touring machine, it would be you, Bob. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.

[Photographs taken by Andrew Duthie, 2001 and used with his permission.]