Yesterday we ran into a guy named lee smith. He had been running with the front group until he blew his clutch going up a steep muddy dirt road to one of the checkpoints. After getting the bike fixed he rode 60 miles pulled over to get gas and realized he had lost his key. So he was stranded. Thanks martin and Eric for trying to help. Before we left him with a beer and his bike being towed to the local HD dealership he told us about the guys in the front pack. Lee is doing this because 7 years ago on the 20th he lost his son and was doing this in honor of him and to raise money for charity. Mark and I have been saying the guy who is going to win this is either going to win, end up in jail (we saw one of the front runners pulled over with his bike being loaded on a wrecker and the state patrol not letting him go on because of sleep deprivation. He had already hit a guard rail and he did not look so good), seriously injured, or worse. The guys up front have been averaging 2 hours of sleep, they have not showered, changed their clothes, and most impressively most are on sportsters with little to no bags. Lee says they are so tired that their eyes are swollen almost shut and that most of his time up front was dedicated to helping the others who are in the lead. What's more, they are over 24 hours ahead of us. With this knowledge in mind, mark and I are going to skip a couple of check points and jump to the front. We want to make sure that we are in homer when these guys come through. So with that in mind we found a great camp site in the middle of a field off of the 212 in Montana got 7 hours of sleep and are going to push through to the next checkpoint on a modified route. We will get some pics and post when we get up there. If we can help one of these guys we will.

Separately, there is more and more controversy building up. Nothing concrete but a lot of rumors. One of which that is most obvious is that it is virtually impossible to not "cheat" and be disqualified. Miss one road or turn in a 7k+ mile race and u are out. I do not know one person who has been able to follow this rule, there are too many turns or roads that are not marked or poorly marked that somebody did not miss it and had to find their way back or to a similar place. Very interested to see this finish

7k miles, I think not. The route so far has been just under 6k miles. Right now we are outside of Missoula Montana. We have not broken into Canada yet let alone the Alaskan peninsula. How many miles will this end up being, no idea. I do know we have another 2,500 miles or so to go to homer, but the way our routes going we have been spending a lot of time zigzagging back and forth.

How did the front runners get so far?
1. Not stopping to sleep
2. Packed light to get good gas mileage
3. Small bikes to get good mileage
4. Not getting lost
5. Only eating while filling up for gas
6. No showers
7. No changing clothes


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Location:Montana Ave,Laurel,United States