5000KM Loop With Iron Butt Leg

“What had you been smoking, you halfwit?” I thought to myself as I looked at the bike’s clock. I’d been in the saddle for nine hours and had less than one hour to reach the Namibia/ SA border 145km away before my Covid certificate expired. And even if I made, it another seven hours of riding loomed after that. You idiot.

- Franco Busetti

The plan for the Lockdown Liberation Tour had been simple. Start in Johannesburg. Get on bike. Ride through Botswana to Swakopmund. Attempt the Iron Butt/Long Distance Riders’ “1000 in 1” – a thousand miles (1 600km) in a day – down to Cape Town. Go home. Since one wants the maximum number of hours of daylight for the endurance run, this meant late December, but the rainy season in Botswana is from November to April, with this year’s La Niña making it wetter than usual.

So, a compromise was early April. Covid added more constraints. At borders one must present a negative Covid PCR certificate for a test that was done within the previous 72 hours. The test result usually takes 36-48 hours to arrive, and while expedited 24-hour testing is available in Johannesburg, this is not possible in Swakopmund. So one needs to be tested, receive the results, enter Botswana and leave the country again within 72 hours. In Namibia one could loiter, then be re-tested there and be sure to cross back into SA within this time window. Because of the often large gap between towns in Botswana and Namibia, and especially in view of limiting the number of fuel stops on the Iron Butt attempt, I decided to carry a reserve of 10L of fuel, good for around 200km, as well as 6L of water in the panniers of my 13-year-old BMW K1200GT. My wife Claire, who usually rides pillion on long trips, demonstrated her superior intelligence by deciding not to do this one, especially in view of the Iron Butt part. So she travelled independently by car and we met up at the end of each day. The planned routine for the average day was to leave at first light, so that one could comfortably do around 700km and still arrive at one’s stopping point by the early afternoon, then kick back and enjoy the venue.