Local rider completes Four Corners endurance ride in 26 days

By: 
Ted Wendling, Contributing Writer

Courtesy photo

René Anderson celebrates outside Coco's Restaurant and Bakery in San Ysidro, California, the end point of her lengthy journey.

 

FIFE LAKE – Astride a 1985 Harley Tour Glide motorcycle, René Anderson rode through hailstorms in Oregon and Washington, endured temperatures that reached 112 degrees in Utah, and drank so many cans of Red Bull that she lost count. But when she and a friend roared into Coco’s Restaurant and Bakery in San Ysidro on the southern tip of California on July 8, she knew she had achieved a rare feat – completion of the USA Four Corners “True X” Pattern endurance ride in 26 days.

“We hugged and started crying and said, ‘It’s done, it’s done!’” Anderson said, recalling the exhilaration of reaching the ride’s final checkpoint. “Then we went into Coco’s and ate a celebratory donut. We felt about six inches taller because we had just done it.”

Sponsored by the Southern California Motorcycle Association, the True X is a grueling, iron-butt excursion that requires participants to ride to the four corners of the United States – Blaine, Washington; Madawaska, Maine; Key West, Florida; and San Ysidro, California – passing through the country’s geographic center, Lebanon, Kansas, en route to each corner. That means riders must pass through Lebanon three times, ending at the fourth corner of the country. Participants choose where they begin and end their rides.

Anderson, 56, and her riding partner, Pauline Seymour, left Michigan on June 6, arriving at their first checkpoint in Madawaska on June 13. From there, they rode to Lebanon, to Blaine, back to Lebanon, to Key West, back to Lebanon, and then to San Ysidro.

“We ran into four hailstorms,” Anderson said. “Riding at 70 miles an hour, that’s not fun.”

The Fife Lake resident said she and Seymour tried to hit the road every day by 6 a.m. so they could gauge how many miles they needed to ride based on weather conditions, traffic and other factors. Because riders pay their own room and board and no prize money is awarded, Anderson said she and Seymour slept in inexpensive motels (the “Not a Hilton But It’ll Do Motel” in Atwood, Kansas, was one of their stops) and subsisted mostly on beef jerky, cheese and Red Bull.

“It was eat, sleep, ride and get gas,” she said.

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