iron butt
Jul. 4th, 2025 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
totientPart of an occasional series on superpowers. My superpowers are all Mystery Men level superpowers, but they're real.
I have what I'm told is called in motorcycling an Iron Butt.
Partly that's literally being able to sit for a long time with no side effects. I bicycled 3700 miles across the United States, averaging 8 hours a day in the saddle for a month and a half, and did not get any saddle sores.
But also with only a little bit of adjustment to my hydration and caffeination routine I can go 8 hours without a bathroom. This means when I drive the limiting factor on how far I go between stops is almost always the range of the vehicle I am driving. I rented a particularly fuel efficient car one time and drove it 450 miles without taking it out of gear. It hated this and kept trying to get me to take a coffee break. In less fuel-efficient cars sometimes I will refuel at a full service gas station and go two tankfuls between getting out of the car at all.
Being able to drive anywhere in my general region that much more quickly is a big factor in how I choose to make medium-distance trips. Beyond the question of how long the travel takes compared to a train or airplane, I'm sure I'd also find driving less enjoyable if I needed more stops.
I have actually rather a lot of superpowers, some inborn and some developed (or perhaps, I am told, earned). This one I suppose is some of each.
I have what I'm told is called in motorcycling an Iron Butt.
Partly that's literally being able to sit for a long time with no side effects. I bicycled 3700 miles across the United States, averaging 8 hours a day in the saddle for a month and a half, and did not get any saddle sores.
But also with only a little bit of adjustment to my hydration and caffeination routine I can go 8 hours without a bathroom. This means when I drive the limiting factor on how far I go between stops is almost always the range of the vehicle I am driving. I rented a particularly fuel efficient car one time and drove it 450 miles without taking it out of gear. It hated this and kept trying to get me to take a coffee break. In less fuel-efficient cars sometimes I will refuel at a full service gas station and go two tankfuls between getting out of the car at all.
Being able to drive anywhere in my general region that much more quickly is a big factor in how I choose to make medium-distance trips. Beyond the question of how long the travel takes compared to a train or airplane, I'm sure I'd also find driving less enjoyable if I needed more stops.
I have actually rather a lot of superpowers, some inborn and some developed (or perhaps, I am told, earned). This one I suppose is some of each.
