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This is an extended version of an article that originally appeared in the Winter 2007 issue of the Victory Rider magazine, the official magazine of the Victory Riders Association.
Andy Mills put the Victory Vision into the history books in August, riding a Victory Vision Tour to a 15th place finish in the grueling Iron Butt Rally. He rolled up 10,552 trouble-free miles in 11 days on a bike that was not modified except for an auxiliary 4.6-gallon fuel tank in the trunk, and the addition of electronic devices such as multiple GPS units, a radar detector and cell phone. Andy spoke with Victory Rider about the experience.
Victory Rider: Tell us about yourself and how you got started in long-distance riding.
Andy Mills: I’m 28 and I’m a Developmental Engineer in the Polaris Powertrain Group in Roseau. I mostly work on ATV drivetrain projects but have worked on just about everything.
I have ridden dirt bikes since I was really young, and street bikes since I got out of college. The first distance rally I entered was the Minnesota 1000 in 2003. I entered it not really knowing anything about it and I got first place. That event is what got me hooked.
One thing that helped me was that they had a big team bonus deal and most of the experienced riders considered it to be a “sucker bonus” in the Northwest Angle [the northernmost point in Minnesota, just north of Roseau]. To earn the bonus you had to get the phone number of a remote pay phone up in the Angle.
What many people didn’t know was that in the Northwest Angle, there were actually two pay phones, and one of them was a sucker one, so they got the wrong number. That was one bonus that actually helped me a lot.
I also completed the Utah 1088, a 26-hour event, in 2003 or 2004. This is considered one of the more challenging short rallies. A lot of the big dogs ride that one. I’ve been in it a couple times, and I rode it 2-up once, too, and took first in the 2-up class. I rode the Minnesota 1000 2-up, too.
After the first Utah 1088, I did a personal evaluation ride. I rode to San Francisco and then all the way up the coast, into Canada, to Alaska and back to Minneapolis in 10 days. That was my personal evaluation of whether I would be able to do the Iron Butt Rally.
The biggest thing I learned was how many miles I could ride before I had to get some rest and then get up and do it again the next day without pushing myself. You sleep in a ditch, in a car wash, on a bench – places like that. You find yourself saying “I know I need to sleep a little bit,” so you stop, get 20 minutes sleep and then get going again.
I have slept on the tank bag on the bike, too.
VR: Victory Engineering asked you to ride the Victory Vision in this year’s Iron Butt Rally, and the ride organizers gave you permission to do so. [Factory-supported competitors are not allowed.] Had you ridden a Victory Vision prior to the rally?
AM: I had one chance in March 2007. By luck, I was on an ATV calibration trip at the same time and location as a Victory calibration trip, so I was able to go and put on 500 miles as an evaluation of “Hey, is this bike going to be acceptable or am I going to have to make a lot of changes?” I jumped on that bike after not riding since October and put on 500 miles in around 24 hours and it was nothing. I was thinking, “Yeah, this will work.”
VM: Did you have to make many changes to the bike for the rally?
AM: Usually, a very large portion of the riders get custom seats made, but I rode the whole rally on the stock seat, which surprised a lot of people. My butt never got sore once, which was impressive.
I got the bike two weeks before start of the rally, which is really last-minute. The bike I got had been used for on-road durability testing and it had over 26,000 miles on it… I got it and went out and put a bunch of miles on it. I didn’t really have to change anything. The key is you have to have long range for fuel, so I built a fuel tank – a 4.6-gallon tank I installed in the trunk – giving me 10.6 gallons of capacity.
On the passenger seat I put a square-shaped container with a half-gallon Thermos jug with a hose like a big long straw so I could drink while riding. One of the big things is staying hydrated – you’re putting on a lot of miles between fuel stops with the wind on you so you’ve got to drink a lot of water… I wore a full-face Shoei helmet with an opening in the front you can drink through. Through the course of the rally I usually eat granola bars, beef jerky, trail mix also some Gatorade.
VR: When you ran in the 2005 rally, you hit a truck tire carcass [without serious injury] and DNFed. This year you rode a bike that was new to you, you rolled up a lot of miles and points and finished 15th overall. That's impressive.
AM: The whole mantra of the rally is "11,000 miles in 11 days" and I rode 10,552 miles with pretty similar mileage day to day, close to 1,000 miles a day. If you don't have trouble or get stuck in traffic, it's not that difficult to get 1,000 miles in a day riding at freeway speeds. It's a mater of how much time you waste at gas stops and things like that.
I was getting quite a bit of rest each day. I spent the night in a hotel just about every single day.
The organizers stress that it’s not a race. The people who do well focus on the fact it’s a game to figure out who can come up with the best strategy of piecing together bonus locations and getting the most points. The common misconception is that it’s a wild race around the country. It absolutely is not, and you can be disqualified for things like traffic violations and excessive speed.
VR: Yet you got stopped by police even before the rally began. Tell that story.
AM: The Victory guys definitely did a really good job on this bike. The styling is very controversial, so much so that no matter where you go people are snapping their heads, doing double takes. It turns heads wherever you go. Before the rally started I was in St. Louis and I stopped by the Victory dealer so I knew where the dealership was and to generate some buzz.
After I left the dealership and was riding back for the start of the rally, I got pulled over by a cop, and I don’t know why. He immediately walks over and says “I’m really sorry, I know I shouldn’t do this, but I pulled you over because I had to see the bike.” He wasn’t even a motorcyclist but he said “I had to see this,” and I said to myself, I hope this doesn’t happen during the rally!
VR: Some bonuses were so far away, or in such remote locations, that you had to evaluate whether the points available were worth the time and effort you would expend. These bonuses are attractive, but might not be worth it. AM:Some people consider a lot of them to be what they call “sucker bonuses”… There was one in Northeast Quebec: Perce Rock. This “rock” is in ocean and you had to walk out to it and put your rally flag on the rock to take your photo.
The catch is that you can only do it at low tide, and to take the photo it has to be daylight only, so you had about a 4-hour window each day when you could earn this bonus. So you’ve got to plan your route around that. In this rally, it was more of something everybody wanted to do. It was the absolute furthest point away for most people, and it was over 2,000 miles from St. Louis.
[According to Wikipedia: Percé Rock (French: rocher Percé, "pierced rock") is one of the largest and most spectacular natural arches in the world. It rises sheer from the Gulf of St. Lawrence just off the tip of the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec near the village of Percé. It is a massive limestone stack 433 meters long (1,420 ft.), 90 meters wide (296 ft.) and 88 meters (289 ft.) at its highest point. The rock gets its name from a large, 15-meter/50-ft. high arch near its seaward end.]
VR: What was the response to the bike among your fellow rally riders?
AM: These are pretty informed motorcyclists, self-proclaimed experts. Most of them knew what the Victory Vision was but hadn’t seen it before in person, and they wanted to know every detail about it.
They asked a lot of questions and there was a mix of opinions. I’m sure my rally finish changed a few minds. Before we started, I heard a few snide comments, people taking bets on whether this bike would make it back, and when I did, a lot more people came over and asked even more questions – the kinds of questions people interested in buying motorcycles would ask.
VR: The results say it was a good choice as an Iron Butt Rally bike.
AM: The fuel mileage was right in there with every other bike, right around the low 40s mark, so that was really, really good and consistent with most of the other bikes that get decent mileage. As far as power, it’s got good power, more than enough power to go up any road comfortably. It really cruises at highway speeds and the sixth gear overdrive was very nice.
The seat was more comfortable than any other stock motorcycle seat I’ve ever sat on. It’s difficult to say you would need an Iron Butt to ride that thing because at no point on the rally did my butt ever hurt. Not once.
VR: Will you do it again?
AM: I would like to do it again and my girlfriend wants to ride 2-up in the rally, but only if we have a Victory Vision! She rode with me on another bike on a 3,000-mile trip and she was not all that comfortable. She rode on the back of this bike and determined if we were going on a trip again, it’ll be on a Victory Vision.
Sidebar: The Iron Butt Rally
The Iron Butt Association (www.ironbutt.com) holds the Iron Butt Rally every other year. It is an 11-day, 11,000-mile-plus marathon. Riders start in one city (St. Louis this year), ride for several days accumulating bonus points at specified locations, then visit a checkpoint in another city within a 2-hour window. They also have to check in at the finish within a 2-hour window. Most riders who finish cover approximately 1,000 miles per day, and standings are based on points earned for meeting rally requirements and visiting bonus sites. Riders must present print photos of themselves with their rider number at the bonus sites to receive points; no digital photos are allowed.
Andy Mills finished 15th overall on a Victory Vision, covering 10,552 miles and earning 283,621 points. (For comparison, the winner had 344,122 points, and only the top five riders earned as many as 300,000.)
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