Iron Butt Rally 2023 – Day -3 – Touchdown in Pittsburgh

Well, my arrival in Toronto was expected – a quick Passport control, taxi ride to Air Canada Cargo and….then staff was confused…”this usually takes more than six hours”. No, it didn’t. However, I had to walk back from customs to get my passport, they needed it. I had to wait for a while, but staff got more and more friendly. Finally I got back back the BMW and rode to the hotel. The night was not pleasant, I got some cramps in the calves…too much sweating and a dehydrating intercontinental flight. Luckily I was prepared and solved the problem with magnesium and lots of water.

In the morning I had a barely edible breakfast and set off soon. On the way to the border, I changed my mind and decided to pass by the Niagara Falls and to do the border crossing there like in 2013. It should be quick as it is a minor crossing. I went to the Falls and took some pictures. Compared to the Victoria Falls in Africa and the falls in Iceland….cute.

When I went on the Rainbow Bridge that spans over the river, I got stuck in traffic…it took one hour to cross the bridge! At the border port, the official did not how to introduce a ‘foreign’ number plate. I had to go into the immigrations building and faced an enormous crowd in the waiting room. Urgs.

Left: a sticker of Hansa Rostock on the Rainbow Bridge??

After one hour of waiting time I was admitted, could answer some questions and got my passport back. Without a stamp, they don’t do this anymore. I had lost a lot of time and in the next hours I learned that the preferred, direct route led right through Western upstate New York, quite rural, slow and with bumpy road. And the worst of all: no filtering permitted. What is quite acceptable to jump the queue with a bike is a no-go here, people would get quite angry. So this route seemed to take forever, with a fuel and sandwich stop in between. Later I continued on Interstates and finally arrived in Gaithersburg after 760 km before sunset. I filled up and prepared my visit for the following day.

Today, I stored my luggage and was picked up by the Director of the Reference Materials Office at NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), my peer in the US. I gave a presentation to the department about the European Reference Material program and we had a lot of good exchanges and discussions. It made sense to make a little detour to visit NIST for the first time.

I changed at the hotel and set off for the rally hotel in Pittsburgh where I arrived after a lot of traffic after four hours. I checked in and went to the bar where I found some familiar faces and had some good chats. The “team Europe” is rather small with two Irish, one English and me.

Tomorrow will be a tough day doing the whole registration, this will take the whole day. But everything should go smooth. I hope.