This is my usual writeup of the major events that happened this year. And what a year it was! After four meagre years, long distance rallying had a high tide again. In total, 25 rallying days in the saddle. That’s….quite a lot. Approximately 500 hours of riding pleasure under competitive conditions. The highest number ever which will not be reached again. Let’s see what happens if I use this new “AI button” and ask it to write a summary of this post:

Summary of Motorcycle Year 2023

The year 2023 was an eventful one for the rider, encompassing long-distance rallies and memorable journeys. It commenced with a European ride to the Olympic Stadium and included a switch to a new bike due to unforeseen circumstances. A significant highlight was the Iron Butt Rally, where the rider demonstrated competitive prowess and resilience, earning a Gold Medal finish and securing the title of best European rider. This victory was followed by the 12 Days European Rally, marked by strategic riding and scenic adventures. Additionally, the rider triumphed in the Brit Butt Rally, reclaiming the winning position after facing previous setbacks. Culinary experiences during the rallies added a unique flavor to the year. The post reflects on the impressive achievements, acknowledges room for further growth, and hints at a promising future in motorbiking adventures. With a diverse array of rallies and ride events, the year truly encapsulated the spirit of long-distance motorcycle riding.

Artificial Intelligence provided by WordPress

Hmmmm, pretty good, albeit not perfect. Maybe I should stop blogging and leave this to A.I.? No, I am still here to stay. Let’s start.

Preparations in spring

This meant that there was no time to fix the bike as the shock had to be removed, sent to the seller (warranty) who would send it to the manufacturer and then the whole thing backwards… This would leave me with no time to test things before the IBR, and probably the deadline could not be met anyway. So a decision had to be taken.

The only logic decision was to get a new bike. Seems unavoidable, doesn’t it? I sold the 65.000 km red K1600GT to my dealer and bought a 7.500 km white K1600GT from him. I had to wait for the registration and the swapping of all the farces from one bike to the other which meant I had to ride to the European Ride to Eat on my old Honda Pan European. My old trusted steed took me to Barcelona and back without any issues. Actually I had a big time on my favorite route at the Costa Brava and around the Montseny. Meeting point was the Olympic stadium of Barcelona, followed by the usual dinner.

Back home I finally could pick up my new bike, just in time to do a test ride to Italy and a Benelux Four Corners Ride that I completed, but I never handed in. In any case, the new K1600 behaved very well and I could ship it to Canada with a optimistic conscience.

During a week back home in Bavaria, it was the only time to do a proper ride with an XBR this year: a ride along the Bavarian Alps reminds me how beautiful this area is. Especially in May.

The Iron Butt Rally

And then it was time for “the Big Dance”, aka the Iron Butt Rally. This time, my objective was a different one: as I had achieved a finisher status in 2017 at the second attempt, I planned to do more of a competitive rally this time, although I planned to hold my horses in leg 1 and 2 to get used to the competitive pace of the IBR. I am still preparing a report about this adventure, it will be published at a later stage. For the time being, I give only a short summary of this epic ride.

After some interesting pre-start days in Pittsburgh, we set off on a Monday morning (see 3:38 min) to be 11 days on the road. I played it very safe in leg 1 and did not dare to ride at night through the forests of Vermont. And indeed, the first riders ended up in hospital when they crashed into some deer there. I visited Boston area and New York City by night instead. After a quick visit to Atlantic City and Baltimore, I headed west for the first checkpoint in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I had indeed taken it slow, as I was only on 37th place of 110 riders. For the second leg, I had to ramp up the effort a bit. In order to increase my points, I had to go to L.A. via El Paso and Phoenix. From there, I crossed the Nevada desert and blinding Las Vegas to end up in Utah. The next day, I crossed the Rockies and arrived early in Denver for a tyre change before the arrival at the second checkpoint in Denver. I climbed up 10 places in the ranking to the 27th place with this leg, but the biggest chunk was before me: the third leg with five riding days. In order to improve further, I had to go west to San Francisco, down to San Diego and back to El Paso. From New Mexico to Kentucky I rode 22 hours without any bonus point location. I went to Delaware and up again to NYC before I turned west and rode the last stint to the finish in Pittsburgh. I had done it again! This time, with a “proper” ride with 11.100 miles and without any problems, enjoying many rest breaks. I lost some points due to a missing picture and a malfunctioning SD card, but my final standing was quite good under these circumstances: Gold Medal finisher and best European at 16th place! I knew I could have done better, but this was a kind of apprenticeship in competitive IBR rallying, so I was quite happy with the result.

After the rally, I returned to Toronto and flew back to Paris. I used July to relax and to prepare the next big thing: the 12 Days European Rally. Nominally even longer than the Iron Butt Rally, it was an event that would lead you through the whole of Europe.

The 12 Days European Rally

One advantage was the location: the start and finish was in Eindhoven, only 25 min away from my place in Belgium. The participation was unfortunately rather low for such an event, many people in Europe felt probably overwhelmed by this task to compete 12 days, interrupted only by one checkpoint in the Alps. Without going into details, I was not happy with the layout of the rally and how the interesting locations were distributed over Europe: Northern Europe, the British Isles and South-Western Europe was basically not worth visiting through the layout of the combination bonuses that were mainly located in Central Europe. Additionally, at least 19 countries needed to be visited which meant that all the smaller states including the Balkans were high on the list.

I figured out that the key was to combine combos for maximum efficiency. In terms of riding style, I applied the same focussed, but rather relaxed approach as in the IBR, leaving room for rather long rest breaks.

As described in the dedicated rally report, at the checkpoint, my mate Stefan organized a fantastic pit stop that included a wheel/tyre and oil change. On the second leg, I visited the whole of Italy, crossed by boat to Albania and worked my way upwards back to the Netherlands, overcoming some critical situations that should not form part of any rally on purpose. As mentioned in the report, I will not speak about these incidents in public. I tried to make the best out of it and maintained my steady pace, having fun on many of the twisting roads such as the Dalmatian coast road in Croatia. Although my execution was not flawless (I rode past a huge combo location in the rain on the first day), I had most points at the finish at won this probably one-time rally by a large margin. In the end I had visited 22 countries in 12 days: The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Andorra, Monaco, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, San Marino, The Vatican, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia. The report can be found here.

Something I had not stressed so far this year how I turned the second leg of the 12 Days Rally into a nice example of “how to rally in style”. In contrast to the IBR, I took the time to check in early (as the mandatory rest breaks had to be started before midnight) and to have a good dinner…every night. Let me use this opportunity to put a bit of gastronomic touch to this blog 😇.

The Brit Butt Rally

Only two weeks later, I set off for the last rally this year: The Brit Butt Rally. After my golden period between 2015 – 2018 with four consecutive wins, I faced a series of setbacks in 2019 (DNF, leaking tyre and leaking oil sump), in 2021 (hiccups due to electronic scoring and total road closure of the M4, 6th place), and in 2022 (choosing the wrong route due to a tiny planning error, 3rd place). So I was happy to perform perfectly on a challenging route through the Midlands, Wales, Devon, London, East Anglia and back to Coventry. I had some issues with my malfunctioning auxiliary lights, but the new BMW performed perfectly like the whole year, a truly perfect rally bike as long as gravel roads can be avoided. So I received my fifth winning trophy, properly challenged by 2nd and 3rd places Arjen Steiner and Scott Lloyd who will be tough competitors in the future to be reckoned with.

Epilogue

As this year was composed mainly of rallies and Ride to Eats, I concluded the year with a business trip to Munich and the Lago Maggiore and a later Ride to Eat in Paris where we met in front of the Eiffel Tower and had dinner afterwards.

In total, I rode about 48.000 km on the BMWs, 3.000 km on the old ST1100 and 200-300 km on XBRs. A totally different year from 2022….and probably from 2024 as well, as I plan to use again more the old XBR500 with 402.000 km on the clock next year. The new BMW K1600GT behaved very convincingly and I hope it will continue like this.

After all these successes, there is of course a kind of void. Three wins and a gold medal finish in the IBR, how much better can it get? There will probably be no other European rally over 12 days, I have already won every major LD rally in Europe, so the remaining challenge could only be to perform better in the Iron Butt Rally. The 16th place was very good, but I know that there is still room for improvement, especially now that I know how to compete in the IBR. With more efficiency and longer riding days, I guess a potential finish in the high single digit places could be possible if everything works out perfectly. Anything better than this is basically impossible for an European rider IMHO, after all, rallying in America is fundamentally different from Europe. But when I will do another IBR, who knows…

So next year will be a “small” motorbiking year again, but I already have some ideas to make it interesting…stay tuned!😉